The reference is to the commission of 17 Orleanists and Legitimists- deputies of the Legislative Assembly- appointed by the Minister of the Interior on May 1, 1850 to draft a new electoral law. Its members were nicknamed burgraves, a name borrowed from the title of a historical drama by Victor Hugo, as an allusion to their unwarranted claims to power and their reactionary aspirations. The drama is set in medieval Germany, where the Burggraf was governor, appointed by the emperor, of a Burg (city) or district.