Legitimists (France)

Their roots lay in the Ultra-royalists of the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830). Known as "more royalist than the king", the Ultras dominated the Chamber under Louis XVIII and Charles X and hoped to restore the Ancien Régime. When the July Revolution of 1830 drove out the senior Bourbons and put Louis Philippe of the cadet House of Orléans on the throne, they made the restoration of the House of Bourbon their main aim and from then on were known as Legitimists. The king they recognised was Charles X's grandson Henri, Count of Chambord, "Henri V".

During the eighteen years of the July Monarchy the Legitimists were politically marginalised, and many withdrew to their country chateaux. The fall of Louis Philippe in February 1848 brought them back. Joining the Orléanists in the Party of Order, they dominated parliament from the elections of May 1849 until the coup of December 1851, formed a prominent part of Odilon Barrot's ministry from December 1848 to November 1849, and in 1850 passed the Falloux Law, which brought the Catholic Church back into secondary education.

There was long discussion of a "fusion" of the two royalist parties, but it was not achieved, and after 1850 they diverged again. While the most committed Orléanists backed the presidential candidacy of Louis Philippe's third son, the Prince of Joinville, the Legitimists largely favoured letting Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte run for a second term. They nevertheless opposed his scheme to restore universal suffrage in late 1851, and their leaders, like those of the Orléanists, were arrested in the coup of 2 December. Under the Second Empire they were again cast out of political life.

The election of February 1871 gave the National Assembly a royalist majority and brought the Legitimists back one last time. They agreed with the Orléanists on a fusion: Chambord would be king and, should he die childless, the Orléanist Count of Paris would succeed him. But Chambord refused to accept the tricolour and insisted on the white flag of the Ancien Régime, and restoration failed. His death in 1883 effectively dissolved the Legitimists as a political force; the remaining few have since recognised members of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty as claimants.

In chapter III of The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx argued that what divided the two royalist factions was not flags or loyalty to a dynasty. "The Legitimate Monarchy was merely the political expression of the hereditary rule of the lords of the soil, as the July Monarchy was only the political expression of the usurped rule of the bourgeois parvenus. What kept the two factions apart, therefore, was not any so-called principles, it was their material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property." He also recorded how provincial Legitimists accused their parliamentary leaders Berryer and Falloux of betraying Henri V.