| has gloss | eng: The Charter of 1815, signed on April 22, 1815, was the French constitution prepared by Benjamin Constant at the request of Napoleon I when he returned from exile on Elba. This act took into account amendments to the Charter of 1814 which had previously liberalized the Constitution. It also served to amend that charter during the second return of Louis XVIII. It was very liberal in spirit, and gave the French people rights which had previously been unknown to them, such as the right to elect the mayor in communes of less than 5,000 in population. To diminish the effect of the changes and concessions from the new liberal spirit, Napoleon treated it as a mere continuation of the previous constitutions, and it therefore took the form of an ordinary legislative act "additional to the constitutions of the Empire". |