A single incident will put this hero and victim of the Hundred-Days into clear relief.
In 1819, a battalion commanded by royalist officers, young men just out of the Maison Rouge, passed through Issoudun on its way to go into garrison at Bourges.

Not knowing what to do with themselves in so constitutional a place as Issoudun, these young gentlemen went to while away the time at the cafe Militaire.

In every provincial town there is a military cafe.

That of Issoudun, built on the place d'Armes at an angle of the rampart, and kept by the widow of an officer, was naturally the rendezvous of the Bonapartists, chiefly officers on half-pay, and others who shared Max's opinions, to whom the politics of the town allowed free expression of their idolatry for the Emperor.

Every year, dating from 1816, a banquet was given in Issoudun to commemorate the anniversary of his coronation.