Legitimists

For other uses, see Legitimists (disambiguation).

The Royal coat of arms of France. These arms are used by the House of Bourbon's supporters.

The Legitimists (French: Légitimistes) are royalists who adhere to the rights of dynastic succession to the French crown of the descendants of the eldest branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution. They reject the claim of the July Monarchy of 1830–1848 which placed Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, head of the Orléans cadet branch of the Bourbon dynasty on the throne until he, too, was dethroned and driven, with his family, into exile.

Following the movement of Ultra-royalists during the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, legitimists came to form one of the three main right-wing factions in France, which was principally characterized by its counter-revolutionary views. The other two right-wing factions were, according to historian René Rémond, the Orléanists and the Bonapartists.

Legitimists hold that the king of France must be chosen according to the traditional rules of succession based on the Salic law. When the direct line of Charles X became extinct in 1883 with the death of his grandson Henri, Count of Chambord, the most senior heir to the throne under these traditional rules was Juan, Count of Montizón, a descendant of Louis XIV through his grandson Philip V of Spain. The fact that all French legitimist claimants since 1883 have been members of the Spanish royal dynasty remains irrelevant to Legitimism, but has prompted other French monarchists to pivot to support of the Orléans line.

The current legitimist pretender is Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, the senior grandson of Alphonso XIII of Spain by male primogeniture, whose line was excluded from the Spanish throne by a morganatic marriage.

History

The Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830)

Main article: Ultra-royalists

Following the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, a strongly restricted census suffrage sent to the Chamber of Deputies an ultra-royalist majority in 1815–1816 (la Chambre introuvable) and from 1824 to 1827. Called as such because they were "more royalist than the king" (plus royalistes que le roi), the Ultras were thus the dominant political faction under Louis XVIII (1815–1824) and Charles X (1824–1830). Opposed to the constitutional monarchy of Louis XVIII and to the limitation of the sovereign's power, they hoped to restore the Ancien Régime and cancel the rupture created by the French Revolution. By the same token, Ultras opposed all liberal, republican and democratic ideas. While Louis XVIII hoped to moderate the "restoration" of the Ancien Régime in order to make it acceptable to the population, the Ultras would never abandon the dream of an integral restoration, even after the 1830 July Revolution which set the Orleanist branch on the throne and sent the Ultras back to their castles in the countryside and to private life. Their importance during the Restoration was in part due to electoral laws which largely favored them (on one hand, a Chamber of Peers composed of hereditary members; on the other hand, a Chamber of Deputies elected under a heavily restricted census suffrage, which permitted approximately 100,000 Frenchmen to vote).

Louis XVIII's first ministers, who included Talleyrand, the duc de Richelieu and Decazes, were replaced by the Chambre introuvable dominated by the Ultras. Louis XVIII finally decided to dissolve this chaotic assembly, but the new liberals who replaced them were no easier to govern. After the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry, the ultra-reactionary son of the comte d'Artois (Louis XVIII's brother and future Charles X), and a short interval during which the duc de Richelieu governed, the Ultras were back in government, headed by the comte de Villèle.

The death in 1824 of the moderate Louis XVIII emboldened the Ultra faction. In January 1825, Villèle's government passed the Anti-Sacrilege Act, which punished by death the theft of sacred vessels (with or without consecrated hosts). This "anachronistic law" (Jean-Noël Jeanneney) was in the end never applied (except on a minor point) and repealed in the first months of Louis Philippe I's reign (1830–1848). The Ultras also wanted to create courts to punish Radicals, and passed laws restricting freedom of the press.

After the 1830 July Revolution replaced the Bourbons with the more liberal Orleanist branch, the Ultras' influence declined, although it survived until at least the 16 May 1877 crisis and 1879, and even longer. They softened their views and made the restoration of the House of Bourbon their main aim. From 1830 on they became known as Legitimists.

Legitimists under the July Monarchy (1830–1848)

During the July Monarchy of 1830 to 1848, when the junior Orleanist branch held the throne, the Legitimists were politically marginalized, many withdrawing from active participation in political life. The situation was complicated before 1844 by debate as to who the legitimate king was: Charles X and his son Louis-Antoine the Dauphin had both abdicated during the 1830 Revolution in favor of Charles's young grandson, Henri comte de Chambord. Until the deaths of Charles X and his son in 1836 and 1844, respectively, many Legitimists continued to recognize each of them in turn as the rightful king, ahead of Chambord.

Legitimists under the Second Republic and the Second Empire (1848–1871)

The fall of King Louis Philippe I in 1848 led to a strengthening of the Legitimist position. Although the childlessness of Chambord weakened the hand of the Legitimists, they came back into political prominence during the Second Republic. Legitimists joined with Orleanists to form the Party of Order which dominated parliament from the elections of May 1849 until Bonaparte's coup on December 2, 1851. They formed a prominent part of Odilon Barrot's ministry from December 1848 to November 1849, and in 1850 were successful in passing the Falloux Law which brought the Catholic Church back into secondary education.

Through much of this time there was discussion of "fusion" with the Orleanist Party so that the two could effect a monarchical restoration. This prospect prompted several sons of Louis Philippe to declare their support for Chambord. But fusion was not actually achieved, and after 1850 the two parties again diverged. The most committed Orleanists supported the candidacy of Louis Philippe's third son, the Prince de Joinville, for the presidency, while the legitimists largely supported allowing Bonaparte to run for a second term. In spite of this support for Bonaparte's ambitions, they opposed his scheme to restore universal suffrage in the last months of 1851, and their leaders were, like those of the Orleanists, arrested during Bonaparte's coup.

The period of the Second Empire saw the Legitimists once again cast out of active political life.

Legitimists under the Third Republic (1871–1940)

Nevertheless, the Legitimists remained a significant party within elite opinion, attracting support of the larger part of the ancien régime aristocracy. After the Siege of Paris in 1870 and the 1871 Paris Commune, the Legitimists returned for one final time to political prominence. The 8 February 1871 elections, held under universal manhood suffrage, gave the National Assembly of France a royalist majority supported by the provinces, while all the Parisian deputies were republican. This time, the Legitimists were able to agree with the Orleanists on a program of fusion, largely because of the growing likelihood that the Count of Chambord would die without children. The liberal Orleanists agreed to recognize Chambord as king, and the Orleanist claimant himself, Philippe, comte de Paris (1838–1894), recognized Chambord as head of the French royal house. In return, Legitimists in the Assembly agreed that, should Chambord die childless, Philippe d'Orléans would succeed him as king. Unfortunately for French monarchism, Chambord's refusal to accept the Tricolor as the flag of France and to abandon the fleur-de-lys, symbol of the Ancien régime, made restoration impossible until after his death in 1883, by which time the monarchists had long since lost their parliamentary majority due to the 16 May 1877 crisis. The death of Chambord effectively dissolved the parti légitimiste as a political force in France.

Affected by sinistrisme, few conservatives explicitly called themselves right wing during the Third Republic: it became a term associated with the Counter-Revolution and anti-republican feelings, and by the 1900s was reserved for reactionary groups. Those Legitimists who had rallied to the Republic in 1893, after the comte de Chambord's death ten years before, still called themselves Droite constitutionnelle or républicaine (Constitutional or Republican Right). But they changed their name in 1899, and entered the 1902 elections under the name Action libérale. By 1910, the only group which openly claimed descent from the right wing gathered only nostalgic royalists, and from 1924 on the term "right wing" practically vanished from the parliamentary right's glossary.

By this time, the vast majority of legitimists had retired to their country chateaux and abandoned the political arena. Although the Action française remained an influential movement throughout the 1930s, its motivations for the restoration of monarchy were quite distinct from older Legitimists' views, and Charles Maurras' instrumental use of Catholicism set them at odds. Thus, Legitimists participated little in the political events of the 1920s and 1930s, in particular in the 6 February 1934 riots organized by far right leagues. The royalist aristocrats clearly distinguished themselves from the new ultra right which was influenced by the emerging movements of fascism and nazism. However, Legitimists joined Maurras in celebrating the fall of the Third Republic after the 1940 Battle of France as a "divine surprise", and many of them entered Pétain's Vichy administration, seeing a golden opportunity to impose a reactionary program in occupied France.

Legitimists under Vichy and after World War II (1940–Present)

Legitimists returned to prominence during the Vichy regime, according to historian René Rémond's studies of right-wing factions in France. Some would also support the OAS during the Algerian War (1954–62). Marcel Lefebvre's Society of Saint Pius X, founded in 1970, especially in France, shares aspects with the legitimist movement, according to Rémond.

As of 2006, some remain strongly attached to the traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church. Such Legitimists are strongly opposed to the proposed European Constitution and anything else perceived as diminishing the independence of France. Among French Legitimists, there is diversity of political opinion. Some tend to gather around Traditionalist Catholic places, such as the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church in Paris, or around far-right parties such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National or de Villiers' Mouvement pour la France.

Spanish Bourbons

Main article: Carlism

A remnant of Legitimists, known as the blancs d'Espagne ("Whites of Spain"), by repudiating Philip V's renunciation of the French throne as ultra vires and contrary to the Fundamental French monarchical law, upheld the rights of the eldest branch of the Bourbons, represented as of 1883 by the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne. This group was initially minuscule, but began to grow larger after World War II due both to the political leftism of the Orleanist pretender Henri, comte de Paris, and to the active efforts of the claimants of the elder line after extinction of the Carlist male-line — Jaime, Duke of Segovia, the disinherited second son of Alfonso XIII of Spain, and his son Alfonso, Duke of Anjou and Cádiz — to secure legitimist support, such that by the 1980s, the elder line had fully reclaimed for its supporters the political title of "Legitimists".

The Spanish-born Louis-Alphonse de Bourbon (Luis-Alfonso de Borbón y Martínez Bordiú), styled duc d'Anjou, is the Bourbon whom the French legitimists consider to be the de jure king of France under the name "Louis XX". A 1987 attempt by the Orleanist heir (and other Bourbons, none of the elder branch) to contest Louis-Alphonse's use of the Anjou title and to deny him use of the plain coat of arms of France was dismissed by the French courts in March 1989 for lack of jurisdiction (the courts did not address the merits of the claims). The duc d'Anjou is a French citizen through his paternal grandmother, and is generally recognised as the senior legitimate representative of the House of Capet.

Dynastic arguments

Legitimists consider the valid rationale for restoration and the order of succession to the French throne derives from fundamental laws of the Ancien Régime, which were formed in the early centuries of the Capetian monarchy.

According to these rules, monarchy is the basic form of government and the monarch the indispensable executive of government, succession to the throne being hereditary and passing by Salic primogeniture. Thus females, and any male who is not the premier né (i.e. the legitimate eldest descendant of the most senior Capetian line), are excluded from the throne. The king must also be Catholic.

Other tenets of the legitimist position are the following:

• Continuity (or immediacy) of the Crown: upon the death of a monarch, his heir automatically and immediately becomes king, without the need of any formal act of investiture, and even if political circumstances would not allow him to actually take power.
• Unavailability (or inalienability) of the crown: the crown is not the personal property of the king, therefore, nobody, not even the king himself, can alter the line of succession by abdication, renunciation, or appointment of an heir of his own choosing. This argument is crucial for legitimists regarding the continuing validity of the rights of succession of the Spanish line of Philip V and his descendants. According to this view, Philip's renunciation of his rights of succession to the French throne in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 was null and void, and therefore his descendants still retain their claim to the French throne ahead of the Orléans line.

It has been a point of contention within the legitimist camp to what extent French nationality constitutes a precondition for royal succession. While adherents of the Spanish (Anjou) line argue that princes of foreign nationality can still succeed to the French crown, others hold that French nationality of both the claimant and his ancestors is a requirement.

List of Legitimist claimants to French throne

Those Legitimists who did not accept the Orléanist line as the successors of Chambord argued that the renunciation of the French throne by Philip V of Spain, second grandson of Louis XIV, was invalid, and that in 1883 (when Chambord died childless) the throne passed by right to Philip V's male heirs. In 1883, the senior male of the Spanish branch of Bourbons, Carlos de Borbón, Count of Molina, had lost Spain's throne in favor of the non-Salic heiress Isabella II, and his lineage became known as the Carlist pretenders in Spain.

The French claim was reunited with that of the Isabelline Spanish line when the Carlist branch died out in 1936, although Alfonso XIII of Spain had by that time been dethroned by the Second Spanish Republic. The French and Spanish claims separated again at Alfonso's death, as his eldest surviving son Infante Jaime renounced his claim to the Spanish throne due to physical disability and, some years later, asserted a claim to the French succession based on Legitimist principles. The present French Legitimist claimant descends from Jaime, while the present king of Spain descends from his younger brother, Don Juan.

In the 1870s the rival Legitimist and Orléanist claimants agreed, for the sake of restoration of the monarchy in France, to end their rivalry. Philippe d'Orléans, the comte de Paris and grandson of Louis Philippe I, accepted the prior claim to the throne of the comte de Chambord. Chambord, who remained childless, in turn acknowledged that Philippe would claim the right to succeed him as heir, and after his death many Legitimists accepted the descendants of Philippe as the rightful pretenders, and became known as "Unionists".

French line (1792–1883)

Claimant	Portrait	Birth	Marriages	Death
Louis XVI 1792–1793		23 August 1754, Versailles son of Dauphin Louis and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony	Marie Antoinette of Austria 16 May 1770 4 children	21 January 1793 Paris aged 38
Louis-Charles, Dauphin of France (Louis XVII) 1793–1795		27 March 1785, Versailles son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of Austria	never married	8 June 1795 Paris aged 10
Louis XVIII 1795–1824 (King of France 1814–1815, 1815–1824)		17 November 1755, Versailles son of Dauphin Louis and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony	Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy 14 May 1771 No children	16 September 1824 Paris aged 68
Charles X 1824–1836 (King of France 1824–1830)		9 October 1757, Versailles son of Dauphin Louis and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony	Marie Thérèse of Savoy 16 November 1773 3 children	6 November 1836 Gorizia aged 79
Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (Louis XIX) 1836–1844		6 August 1775, Versailles son of Charles X and Marie Thérèse of Savoy	Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France 10 June 1799 No children	3 June 1844 Gorizia aged 68
Henri, Count of Chambord (Henri V) 1844–1883		29 September 1820, Paris son of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry and Caroline Ferdinande Louise of Two Sicilies	Marie Thérèse of Austria-Este 7 November 1846 No children	24 August 1883 Schloss Frohsdorf aged 63

Spanish line (1883–present)

Claimant	Portrait	Birth	Marriages	Death
Juan de Borbón, Count of Montizón (Jean III) 1883–1887		15 May 1822, Aranjuez son of Carlos de Borbon, Count of Molina and Maria Francisca of Portugal	Beatrix of Austria-Este 6 February 1847 2 children	21 November 1887 Hove aged 65
Carlos, Duke of Madrid (Charles XI) 1887–1909		30 March 1848, Ljubljana son of Juan, Count of Montizón and Beatrix of Austria-Este	Margarita of Bourbon-Parma 4 February 1867 5 children Berthe de Rohan 28 April 1894 No children	18 July 1909 Varese aged 61
Jaime, Duke of Madrid (Jacques I) 1909–1931		27 June 1870, Vevey son of Carlos, Duke of Madrid and Margarita of Bourbon-Parma	never married	2 October 1931 París aged 61
Alfonso Carlos of Bourbon, Duke of San Jaime (Charles XII) 1931–1936		12 September 1849 London son of Juan, Count of Montizón and Beatrix of Austria-Este	Maria das Neves of Portugal 26 April 1871 1 child	29 September 1936 Vienna aged 87
Alfonso XIII of Spain (Alphonse I) 1936–1941		17 May 1886, Madrid son of Alfonso XII of Spain and Maria Christina of Austria	Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg 31 May 1906 7 children	28 February 1941 Rome aged 54
Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia (Henri VI/Jacques II) 1941–1975		23 June 1908, Segovia son of Alfonso XIII of Spain and Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg	first marriage Emmanuelle de Dampierre 4 March 1935 Rome (divorced 6 May 1947) 2 children - - - - - - - - - - - - - - second marriage (civil only, not recognized by the Church) Charlotte Luise Auguste Tiedemann 3 August 1949 Vienna No children	20 March 1975 St. Gallen aged 67
Alfonso, Duke of Anjou and Cádiz (Alphonse II) 1975–1989		20 April 1936, Rome son of Jaime, Duke of Segovia and Emmanuelle de Dampierre	María del Carmen Martínez-Bordiú y Franco 8 March 1972 Royal Palace of El Pardo (divorced 1982/annulled 1986) 2 children	30 January 1989 Beaver Creek aged 53
Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou (Louis XX) 1989–present		25 April 1974, Madrid son of Alfonso, Duke of Anjou and Cádiz and María del Carmen Martínez-Bordiú y Franco	María Margarita Vargas Santaella 5 November 2004 Caracas 3 children

Electoral results

These are the results for broadly Legitimist parties in French national elections.

Election year	# of overall votes	% of overall vote	# of overall seats won	+/–	Leader
1831	unknown (#2)	?	104 / 460	0	François-René de Chateaubriand
1834	unknown (#4)	?	15 / 460	89	Pierre-Antoine Berryer
1837	unknown (#6)	?	15 / 460	-	Pierre-Antoine Berryer
1839	unknown (#3)	?	20 / 460	5	Pierre-Antoine Berryer
National Assembly (French Third Republic)
1871	unknown (#2)	?	182 / 675	182	Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot
1876	unknown (#7)	?	24 / 553	158	Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot
1877	unknown (#3)	?	44 / 521	20	Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot

See also

• French dynastic disputes
• Succession to the French throne
• René Rémond
• Bonapartism
• Orleanism
• Ultra-royalists
• Bourbon Restoration
• France in the nineteenth century
• Parti de l'Ordre
• Line of succession to the French throne (Legitimist-Anjou)
• Line of succession to the French throne (Legitimist-Orléanist)
• Democratic Rally (France) - A legitimist political party in France.

External links

• Legitimist Line of Succession