Napoleon's senate had called Louis XVIII to…
June 1814 CE
Napoleon's senate had called Louis XVIII to the throne on the condition that he would accept a constitution that entailed recognition of the Republic and the Empire, a bicameral parliament elected every year, and the tricolor flag of the aforementioned regimes.
Louis XVIII had opposed the senate's constitution and stated that he was "disbanding the current senate in all the crimes of Bonaparte, and appealing to the French people".
The senatorial constitution had been burned in a theater in royalist Bordeaux, and the Municipal Council of Lyon had voted for a speech that defamed the senate.
The Great Powers occupying Paris had demanded that Louis XVIII implement a constitution.
Louis responds with the Charter of 1814, which includes many progressive provisions: freedom of religion, a legislature composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers, a press that will enjoy a degree of freedom, and a provision that the Biens nationaux—estates and goods, including art works, that the Republic had confiscated from the clergé, noblesse and émigrés during the Revolution—will remain in the hands of their current owners.
The constitution has seventy-six articles.
Taxation is to be voted on by the chambers.
Catholicism is to be the official religion of France.
To be eligible for membership in the Chamber of Deputies, one has to pay over one thousand francs per year in tax, and be over the age of forty.
The king will appoint peers to the Chamber of Peers on a hereditary basis, or for life at his discretion.
Deputies will be elected every five years, with one fifth of them up for election each year.
There are ninety thousand citizens eligible to vote.