Description
French Ordre du Lys,1814 with paperwork.
Superb First Empire period Order du Lys 1814 ,steel Order complete with original silk ribbon with bow. The order is with an original period piece of paperwork, handwritten and stating The Bourbon Legion of Honor of Louis the 18th- Dated 1814 . presented by Wm.Pepper to Ths. Webb Edge Esq. Condition of Order is very good, the paperwork is fragile and torn where it has been folded, it is however intact and a very very interesting item from the 1st Empire period of French History.
History
King Louis XVIII arrived in Paris on 3 May with his brother Charles de Bourbon, Comte d’Artois, the future Charles X. It was then that little medals with the image of the new king and flours de Lys, on white ribbons, began to circulate to reassure and appease the Paris population.
One of the comte d’Artois’s orders of the day, on 26 April 1814, created the Décoration du Lys for the garde nationale of Paris as “a perpetual sign of the services it has rendered, whether in fighting for their homes and, charged alone on the night of 30 March with ensuring Paris’s guard and safety, preserving the king’s capital for the king and the goods, lives and honour of so many families, or – when occupying posts beside those of the troops of the line – it rendered them an example of devotion and sacrifice, or when – despite this painful service – it acted as the maison militaire du Roi and granted the royal family the satisfaction of, for their guard, not being surrounded by the French.”
By an order of the day on 9 May 1814, king Louis XVIII approved the creation of the Décoration du Lys, extending it to all the gardes nationales of France. It was awarded to the national guards after they took the following oath – “I swear fidelity to God, and to the King, forever” The granting of the Décoration du Lys induced the grant of an official patent.
Assuring the loyalty of the social elite to the new monarchy thanks to this simple honour, the award of the Décoration du Lys would be extended again and again, quickly starting to be awarded in all France’s regions then royal officials granted them successively to generals, ministers, prefects, and finally even mayors.
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