Legitimism

The Legitimists (French: Légitimistes) are royalists in France who adhere to the rights of dynastic succession of the descendants of the elder branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution. They reject the claim of the July Monarchy of 1830–1848, whose king was a member of the junior Orléans line of the Bourbon dynasty. 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 are, 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 in 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 descendent of Louis XIV via his grandson Philip V of Spain.

The main current legitimist pretender is Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou.

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 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).

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