French Legitimism Under The July Monarchy

"The revolution of July 1830 brought Louis-Philippe to the throne as King of the French; eighteen years later he and his government were driven out by the revolution of 1848. The intervening period - "The July Monarch" - has been strangely neglected by historians, yet it is crucial to an understanding of the development of modern France, and its personalities, complexities and contradictions are of absorbing interest in their own right. This important new book is the only modern study in English to survey the whole period in detail. It centres on political and diplomatic history, but also offers thoughtful analyses of the society, culture and economy of the age; and it provides the necessary context for evaluating such important figures as Talleyrand, Lafayette, Guizot, Thiers, de Tocqueville, Lamartine, Hugo, Daumier, Delacroix, Berlioz and the King himself. The book begins by depicting the fragmentation of French society following the July Revolution itself. These divisions were to remain fundamental to the whole period. Even as they took up the task of revising their constitution, Frenchmen fell out over what the revolution had actually meant. During the July Monarchy all aspects of life seemed to emerge as battlegrounds: socialism arose to confront older loyalties like legitimism; economic development increased the gap between rich and poor; liberal Catholics clashed with the more orthodox. A fractious press heightened these antagonisms; and, above all else, the French came to believe in a 'mal du siecle', and conclude that life was better in the past." -- Book jacket

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.

This book examines public discussions around France's four most prominent royal women during the first and second Restoration and July Monarchy: the duchesse d’Angoulême, the duchesse de Berry, Queen of the French Marie-Amélie, and Adélaïde d’Orléans. These were the most powerful women of the last decades of the French monarchy, but the new roles women were assigned in post-revolutionary France did not permit them to openly exercise political influence. This book explores continuities and variations in narratives of royal legitimacy, and how historians, authors, and politicians used national history - particularly medieval and early modern history - to either legitimize or undermine the French monarchy, and to define women's social and political roles.

Historians in France assume that the restoration of Monarchy after the defeat of Napoleon was doomed. The first compact recent history of the period in English, this book reveals that although the French experimented with two Monarchies and a Republic (1814 - 48), there was substantial stability. The Institutional framework constructed during the Revolutionary years (1789 - 1814) remained intact, and the ruling elites retained basic control.

The year of 1832 marked a turning point in France as the country struggled to find its way in the wake of the French Revolution. Following the Revolution of 1830, Legitimists, supporters of the recently ousted Bourbon dynasty’s claim to the throne, continued to plot against King Louis-Philippe and his “July Monarchy.” In early 1832, after failing to launch a coup in Southern France, Legitimists plotted an unsuccessful uprising in the Vendée, a region in Western France that had supported the royalist cause during the French Revolution. The Duchesse de Berry led the rebellion in the hopes of placing her son, the Bourbon heir, on the French throne. The revolt marked the last attempt by the Bourbons to retake the throne by force and helped solidify the end of the Bourbon dynasty. During the cholera outbreak, which also spread throughout France in 1832, lower income areas suffered higher losses to the disease, for they were more likely to have contaminated water supplies. The lower classes spread rumors that the outbreak was an elitist plot to subdue the masses and the epidemic exacerbated class tensions. Meanwhile, conditions in France continued to be characterized by violence during the early 1830s as Louis-Philippe attempted to establish his regime’s authority. The most significant of these uprisings was the republican-dominated June Revolution of 1832. Victor Hugo and other contemporaries perceived the barricades of June as natural extensions of the cholera epidemic, or the “political continuation of a biological crisis.” The sad fate of the uprising, however, prompted republicans to regroup and develop new strategies for success. As a whole, then, 1832 helped solidify the end of the Bourbon monarchy and class identities, and was a crucial moment in the (re)organization and growing solidification of French republicanism that paved the way for the Revolution of 1848. This edited collection examines these three pivotal events in French history in 1832—a royal Legitimist uprising led by the Duchesse de Berry, the cholera epidemic, and the June Revolution (featured in the climax of Hugo’s novel, Les Misérables)—within the context of the legacy of the French Revolution. While the events of 1832 are significant, they have been relatively ignored because scholars have been distracted by the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. This collection is the first piece of scholarship to examine these three events in an interconnected pattern to better examine France as it transitioned from a monarchy to a republic. As a result, this collection will be of value to both historians and academics studying diverse subfields within French and European studies.

An extensive and authoritative study that examines the economic, social and political crises of France during the revolution of 1848. Using analysis of original sources and recent research, Fortescue here offers new interpretations of events leading up to and after the second republic was declared. Looking at Louis Philippe's overthrow, the proclamation of manhood suffrage and the unexpected success of the right-wing in the subsequent elections, this book evaluates the political history of France in 1848 and the French political culture of the time. This should be read by all students of nineteenth century history, political scientists and all those with an interest in the historical development of French political culture.

"The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution or Trois Glorieuses in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, the Bourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the substitution of the principle of popular sovereignty for hereditary right. Supporters of the Bourbon would be called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists."--Wikipedia.