On July 8, 1815, Louis XVIII returned to Paris as king of France, following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the end of the Hundred Days. Louis had been restored to the throne in 1814 but fled to Ghent, Belgium, when Napoleon returned from Elba in March 1815. His second restoration was supported by the Allied powers, who sought to re-establish the Bourbon monarchy as a stable and conservative regime. Louis XVIII's return marked the beginning of the second Bourbon Restoration, which would last until the Revolution of 1830. His reign was characterized by efforts to reconcile the revolutionary and royalist factions of French society.

The return of Louis XVIII and the Bourbon Restoration became a central theme in French literature, inspiring poets and novelists who grappled with the legacy of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Writers like Victor Hugo and Alphonse de Lamartine explored the tensions between royalism and liberalism in their works, using historical events to examine questions of identity, memory, and political change. The Restoration period also saw the rise of Romanticism in France, as poets sought to express the emotional and ideological conflicts of a society in transition.