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Scarce Map of France Showing Distribution of Deputés during the Restoration
Very scarce antique map of France, divided according to department and showing the post-Napoleonic borders. The map is colored by department, with the location of each division's capital shown.
Detail extends into neighboring states, dividing Italy, Naples, and the low countries into their own regions. In the margins of the map, indexes divided the departments according to a randomly assigned color, and the number of deputies they have in the Chambre des Deputees is marked.
The total of 258 deputies represents an early-Restoration period tally for the number of representatives in Paris, later accounts suggest that this grew to approximately 400. It was estimated by contemporaries that these deputies would have represented at most 100,000 voters in the earliest part of the Restoration when only those who paid 300 Francs or more in taxes per year could vote.
This map was produced by Chamol and engraved by Alphonse Pellicier sometime in the early Restoration period. At a time when the numbers of deputies appeared to have been rapidly changing, it would have been important to know the number of deputies ascribed to each department. The five keys list the numbers of representatives assigned to each department, which ranges from one (for small, rural departments) to eight (for Seine, which has Paris, and Nord, which has Lille and a number of other industrial cities). The map is cleverly split up so that each set of 17 or 18 departments has approximately the same representation.
