Marriage License For A Guide Of The Imperial Guard Of The Second Empire.

"He who has not seen the Guides regiment has seen nothing," wrote James de Chambrier in 1904. The memory of the Guides is bound up with the most splendid aspects of the Second Empire—with that pageantry of which the reign of Napoleon III offered a final spectacle. It was less through their combat record than through the regiment’s close association with the person of the sovereign that the Guides earned their place in history; only the *Cent-Gardes* could lay claim to such an eminent position. The Guides owed this status not to any special standing—unlike the *Cent-Gardes*, who were part of the Emperor’s Military Household—but to a prestigious precedent: that of Bonaparte’s Guides, who had become the *Chasseurs à Cheval* of the Guard. This legacy was astutely harnessed, above all, by Count Fleury. An unwavering Bonapartist, a key figure in the 1851 coup d’état, and a close confidant of Napoleon III, the future colonel of the Guides would become the instrument of a grand design: the re-establishment of an Imperial Guard centered on his regiment, immediately following the change of regime. Louis Delpérier.