L’abate, il Principe e l’Usurpatore: Aimé Guillon e i finti commentari di Napoleone a Machiavelli tra legittimismo e gallicanesimo

This paper focuses on a particular political use of Machiavelli’s thought and figure in one of the most turbulent periods of French History: the first months of Second Restoration, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. In conflictive circumstances in which both opponents and apologists of the 1789 principles use Machiavelli's name to justify their own political stances, a little-known and counterrevolutionary abbot named Aimé Guillon publishes a work entitled Machiavel commenté par N[apole]on Buonaparte. Although it is immediately clear that it is a fake, the work is important as a mirror of this historical moment: Guillon does not just want to delegitimize Bonapartist enemies but, advising Louis XVIII to read and use Machiavelli’s Prince, he also wants to claim a political position based on Bourbon legitimism and gallicanism.