Chambre introuvable
샹브르 앵트루바블
The nickname of the French Chamber of Deputies elected in August 1815, under the Second Restoration after Napoleon's fall. Meaning "the unobtainable chamber", it is attributed to Louis XVIII, who supposedly could not have dreamed of a chamber more favourable to the throne. Most of its members were Ultra-royalists who rejected the results of the Revolution; it gave legal backing to the White Terror and was dissolved by the king on 5 September 1816.
In depth
The elections were held under census suffrage on 14 and 22 August 1815, just after Waterloo, while a White Terror against Bonapartists and former revolutionaries raged in the south and west, with royalist bands wearing the Comte d'Artois's green cockade massacring Bonapartists in Marseilles and killing generals in Toulouse and Avignon. They returned 350 Ultra-royalists among 402 members. The deputies were not only old émigré nobles but also many young lawyers and businessmen, and most had no political experience.
First assembled on 7 October, the chamber was said to be "more royalist than the king". It banned the display of the tricolour, set up military provost courts, banished the members of the Convention who had voted for Louis XVI's execution and abolished divorce. It defied even the king, proclaiming "Long live the king, no matter what". Confronted with rising discontent, Louis XVIII followed the advice of Decazes, the Duc de Richelieu, Wellington as commander of the occupation troops and the Russian ambassador, and dissolved the chamber on 5 September 1816. The next elections returned a majority of moderate royalists and Doctrinaires, and when the Ultras regained their majority in 1824 the new chamber was dubbed the Chambre retrouvée, "the recovered chamber".
In The Civil War in France Marx compared the "Rurals" of the National Assembly of 1871 to this chamber, writing that the wheel of history seemed to have rolled back to a stop at the Chambre introuvable of 1816, and that the most timid attempts to put in a word for Paris were howled down in a manner unknown even to the Chambre introuvable of 1816. He also called the Prussian assembly of 1849, in which Bismarck sat, "the Prussian Chambre introuvable".