White Terror and the Political Reaction after Waterloo

In this first monograph on the White Terror since Ernest Daudet wrote on the subject in 1878, Daniel Resnick presents the only documented account of the magnitude of the political reaction of 1815–16 in France. By means of a statistical record of police arrests and judicial convictions, he demonstrates the nature, extent, and impact on French political history of the widespread repression that grew out of the royalist crusade to extirpate any trace of Napoleonic influences. The calculated policy of intimidation pursued by the royalists, the author argues, engendered the political reflexes that were to prove fatal to the House of Bourbon.