Popular Legitimism and the Monarchy in France

Mass Politics without Parties, 1830–1880

Bernard Rulof

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030527587
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

This book explores mid-nineteenth-century French legitimism and the implications of popular support for a movement that has traditionally been portrayed as an aristocratic force intent on restoring the Old Regime. This type of monarchism has often been understood as a form of elitist patronage politics or, alternatively, identified with ultramontane Catholicism. Although historians have offered a more nuanced view in the last few decades, their work, nevertheless, has predominantly focused on legitimist leaders rather than their followers and their professed feelings of loyalty to monarchy and monarch. This book's originality therefore is twofold: firstly as an analysis of popular rather than élite monarchism; and secondly, as a study which portrays this form of royalism as a political movement characteristic of a period which saw the emergence of mass politics, while parties were still non-existent. It not only discusses the social and cultural settings of (popular) monarchism, but also contributes to the history of political parties, citizenship and democracy.

© The Author(s) 2020

B. RulofPopular Legitimism and the Monarchy in FrancePalgrave Studies in Modern Monarchyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52758-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Bernard Rulof¹

(1)

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

End Abstract

This book is about legitimism, more specifically about the legitimist movement in Montpellier and its immediate hinterland. Its partisans wanted to restore what they believed to be the “legitimate” rule of the eldest branch of the Bourbon family. Opposed to Louis-Philippe who had become King of the French after the Revolution of 1830, they placed all their hopes in Henri, Comte de Chambord. Grandson of Charles X, Henri, who spent most of his life abroad, was the descendant of a line of kings who had ruled over France ever since Henri IV acceded the throne in 1589. In mid-nineteenth-century Montpellier, public officials and others had no doubt in their mind that the city was a legitimist stronghold. The prefect of the Second Republic, for example, referred to it as a ‘metropolis of legitimism’.¹ A few years later, another official told his Parisian superiors that the royalist movement was a considerable force. Yet, he was quick to add that they had no reason to worry. To him, the partisans of the eldest branch were ‘rootless [and] will cease to be a party on the very day that the last offspring of the eldest branch will go down in the grave’. Indeed, he suggested that the inhabitants of Montpellier would soon understand that the legitimists only constituted ‘the militia of privileges and abuses abolished in 1789’.² In this respect, he reiterated what others had said before him about legitimism. In 1832, Nicolas Massias, for example, claimed that one could find ‘the wealthiest people [as well as] old stocks [among the] legitimists of the divine right’. He too believed that there was no future for legitimists whose ‘political and religious faith only casts a faint glimmer. It dies out, if it has not already gone out’. According to him, the widening of voting rights in particular would destroy their chance for success, since the masses disliked the old-style monarchy.³

In contrast, other contemporary authors such as Eugène Ténot noted that legitimism fostered an impressive popular following in southern France.⁴ Indeed, it was this aspect, which made this type of royalism a political and social force to reckon with during the years 1830–1880. A local study in particular makes it possible not only to study ordinary royalists and their activities but also to examine the social, cultural, and political embedding of popular legitimism in detail. Indeed, the city’s legitimist parti was firmly rooted in local society and its institutions, such as, for example, personal and professional relations or forms of social and neighbourhood sociability. As such, it was typical of political movements in mid-century France. True, a few legitimists, such as the writer, orator and deputy Pierre-Antoine Berryer, enjoyed nation-wide support, and national legitimist newspapers and a national committee whose members were endorsed by Chambord did exist. Yet, the lowest common denominator that united all partisans, the desire for monarchical restoration often went hand in hand with disagreements, tensions, and bitter conflicts. In this respect, this book argues that legitimism was more than a movement of the propertied elites alone. The presence of numerous ordinary people among the partisans of the eldest branch in Montpellier had important implications for the movement. Actually, the tensions between the latter and more elitist supporters of Chambord ultimately accounted for much of the ultimate decline of local legitimism.

Consequently, this book takes lower-class royalists seriously. Contrary to much of the work published on popular royalism so far, it assumes that there is no a priori reason why ordinary people could not be royalists. Besides, it suggests that disagreements about strategy and tactics revealed an ambivalence at the root of popular legitimism in Montpellier and elsewhere. Moreover, it was this ambivalence in particular, which caused the decline of what had been an influential political and social force. Two seemingly insignificant incidents reveal that contemporaries themselves were well aware of such complexities. The mayor of Buzignargues, a village near Montpellier, informed the prefect that ‘our legitimists whom one [calls] Montagnards blancs’ had planted a liberty tree on top of which they had tied a tricolour with a red bonnet after the 1848 Revolution. In January 1849, however, villagers noted that ‘the red strip of the flag has been removed. (…) Rather than to see the national flag, one now sees a white flag, ornamented with a small red bonnet’. This mix of symbols and colours (white and red), which the French commonly identified with legitimism and the Left respectively, displeased the mayor much.⁵ On consecutive days in December 1849, the police removed an engraving from the walls in the centre of Montpellier. They finally confiscated numerous other copies in a shop, whose owner also sold L’Étoile du Gard , a legitimist newspaper published in Nîmes. Made by John Lewis Brown, the engraving (see frontispiece) combined what most observers of monarchism would have found incompatible elements. While an angel-like figure carries a crown of bay leaves, a cornucopia suggests that the monarchy will bring prosperity for all. Henri’s hand rests on a parchment with the text “Monarchical principles and national liberties” unrolled on a pedestal, which carries the inscription “Hereditary Monarchy. Universal Suffrage”. Besides, it portrays the claimant as “rex Francorum”, or “King of the French”, rather than “King of France”, the title preferred by Chambord. The engraving celebrated the ideas of those who wanted to restore the monarchy following upon an appeal by the political nation. Indeed, the latter would use the drawing in May 1850 to protest against the decision, taken by a majority of parliamentarians, including most legitimist deputies, to deprive millions of lower-class voters of their voting rights, which they had received two years before.⁶

This engraving revealed a fundamental struggle fought between legitimists about membership of the political nation and the conditions on which adult men could participate in politics. Besides, it raised important questions about the preferred relationship between the King and his people. Put differently, it tried to reconcile the notion of popular sovereignty, on the one hand, with the monarchical principle, on the other. In this respect, the republican Le Suffrage Universel expressed its surprise about hearing ‘irreconcilable words: king and people; monarchy and liberty; right of inheritance, legitimacy and popular sovereignty’ among legitimists. However, it is important to understand that the ordinary people who turned to legitimism wanted to be part of the political nation by 1848. After they had gained the right to participate in politics, they had every intention in practicing their citizenship. True, their repertoire of political behaviour, which involved occasional use of violence, as well as their understanding of national politics, may have been less than ideal. Nevertheless, they considered themselves citizens rather than subjects, obedient to King and local notables.⁷

In this respect, Montpellier’s legitimist movement was illustrative of the type of legitimism, known as the Droit National. In the early-1840s, legitimism found itself in a cul-de-sac. The majority of its partisans accepted compromise with Orleanist notables to preserve the social order. In contrast, others, such as Antoine-Eugène de Genoude, director of La Gazette de France , formed a sizable minority that pursued restoration at all costs. They distrusted those who accommodated themselves to the July Monarchy. Moreover, they were ‘self-consciously exclusivist’, and offered candidates in opposition to those of the Party of Order in the years 1848–1849. This militancy resulted from their belief that “King Henri V” found unqualified support among lower class males. Indeed, partisans of the Droit National believed in what Marvin Cox has called ‘the warm monarchist heart’ of the ordinary people. Hence, they demanded the introduction of universal male suffrage; some even cooperated with the republican campaign for suffrage reform. Distrustful of parliamentary politics, they pursued restoration by means of a plebiscite. To them, a restoration could only be truly national, if it was the outcome of an unmediated popular call for the return of the monarchy. In Montpellier, this faction initially enjoyed much support. The newspaper, L’Écho du Midi propagated its policy proposals into the Second Republic. Roger de Larcy, who played a crucial role in local legitimism, contributed to the formulation of Genoude’s concept of national sovereignty, and supported the call for suffrage reform. This made it possible for him to cooperate with republicans and to be elected deputy in the 1840s. It also explains why Larcy, at first, adamantly opposed the proposals, made by fellow legitimists, to shape a closer union between legitimism and Catholicism, since such a development would diminish his chances of being re-elected. Moreover, local legitimists convinced none other than Genoude himself to run for deputy in two legislative by-elections in 1848.⁸

Ultimately, the fate of this faction depended upon the degree to which its leadership mobilised lasting support among ordinary people. While conservative notables ‘were bent on calming the masses’, these more radical legitimists, in contrast, ‘encouraged displays of messianic fervor’. Their partisans ‘threatened public order in the towns and cities of the Midi’. In Montpellier, lower class royalists met one another in societies, where ‘“animated crowds (…) willingly resign themselves, without thinking of the harm, to the sacrifice of the world”’. These men would have ‘a taste for direct action’ and ‘ritual vengeance’, most particularly if and when they confronted their republican opponents. Under such circumstances, officials did not hesitate to speak of a situation akin to “civil war”.⁹ Confronted with popular legitimists, the Restoration prefect Hippolyte Creuzé de Lesser had already felt uneasy with men whose royalism ‘for a long time and still today has not gone (…) hand in hand with respect and loyalty due to King and government’.¹⁰ During the Second Republic, an official described lower class royalists by means of a verbiage used to disqualify socialists, too. These legitimists, the prosecutor noted, ‘have everything to gain from disorder’. Fanatics driven by propaganda, they would constitute a mob that was hard to contain, even by their leaders.¹¹ After the introduction of universal manhood suffrage in March 1848, the elections revealed widespread support for legitimism across the Hérault and other departments in the Midi. Yet, they also made clear that the tactics and strategy of the Droit National had unforeseen and undesirable consequences, as this book will argue.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Disputing Space and Citizenship: Popular Legitimism in 1848
• 3. ‘Individuals without cohesion among themselves’? Or, the Making of a Movement
• 4. Legitimist Electoral Politics, 1830–1851
• 5. “How Have We Let the Flag of Order (…) Slip Out of Our Hands?” Legitimism on the Defence, 1852–1883
• 6. A City of Inequalities
• 7. The Legitimist Movement
• 8. Imagining the Bon Roi
• 9. Writing Legitimism: The Local Press
• 10. From Pleasure to Supervision: Legitimist Sociability
• 11. Conclusion
• Back Matter