Ultra-royalist

Ultra-royalists

Ultraroyalistes
Ultra-royalists Ultraroyalistes
Roman Catholicism
Chamber of; Deputies (1824)	413 / 430
	Politics of France; Political parties; Elections;

The Ultra-royalists (

Roman Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, the Bourbon monarchy,^[9] traditional hierarchy between classes and census suffrage (privileged voting rights), while rejecting the political philosophy of popular will and the interests of the bourgeoisie along with their liberal and democratic tendencies.^[10]

The Legitimists, another of the main right-wing factions identified in René Rémond's Les Droites en France, were disparagingly classified with the Ultras after the 1830 July Revolution by the victors, the Orléanists, who deposed the Bourbon dynasty for the more liberal king Louis Philippe.

Second White Terror

Following the return of

Louis XVIII to power in 1815, people suspected of having ties with the governments of the French Revolution or of Napoleon suffered arrest. Several hundred were killed by angry mobs or executed after an informal summary court-martial. The episodes happened primarily in the south of France.^[11]

Historian

counter-revolution against the French Revolution and also against Napoleon's revolution

.

Throughout the Midi — in Provence, Avignon, Languedoc, and many other places — the White Terror raged with unrelenting ferocity. The royalists found in the willingness of the French to desert the king fresh proof of their theory that the nation was honeycombed with traitors, and used every means to seek out and destroy their enemies. The government was powerless or unwilling to intervene.[12]

Bourbon Restoration

Louis XVIII

's had been

Inaugurating the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), a strongly restricted census suffrage elected to the

Ancien Régime and annul the rupture created by the French Revolution. Passionately espousing the ruling ideology of the Restoration, the Ultras opposed liberalism, republicanism and democracy. While Louis XVIII hoped for a moderate restoration of the Ancien Régime, acceptable to the masses who had participated in the Revolution, the Ultras held rigidly to the dream of an integral restoration. Their power was due in part to electoral laws which largely favored them: on one hand a Chamber of Peers

composed of hereditary members and on the other hand a Chamber of Deputies elected under a heavily restricted census suffrage of approximately 100,000 voters.

Prime Minister of France

from 1821 to 1828

In 1815, an Ultra majority was elected to the chamber of deputies. Louis XVIII dubbed them La Chambre Introuvable, "the unfindable chamber", due to his astonishment at a group of deputies more royalist than himself. Under the guidance of his chief minister the

Armand-Emmenuel de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, Louis XVIII finally decided to dissolve this turbulent assembly, invoking Article 14 of the Constitutional Charter. There followed a "Liberal Interlude" from 1816–1820, a period of "wilderness years" for the Ultras. Then on 13 February 1820, the Duke of Berry was stabbed by a republican assassin as he left the Paris Opera House with his wife and died the next day. This outrage strengthened the Ultras, who then introduced laws such as the Law of the Double Vote [fr

] which allowed them to further dominate the Chamber of Deputies. In addition to other factors, Louis XVIII's health was in serious decline, reducing his resistance to Ultra demands: even before he came to the throne, the Comte d'Artois (Charles X) already dominated the government.

The 1824 death of Louis XVIII, whom they saw as too moderate, lifted the spirits of the Ultras: they expected their leader, the new king Charles X, would soon become an absolute monarch, answerable only to God. In January 1825, Villèle's government enacted the

Radicals and passed laws restricting freedom of the press

.

Legitimists, the successor of the Ultras

The 1830 July Revolution replaced the Bourbons with the more liberal Orléanist branch and sent the Ultras back to private life in their country chateaux. However, they retained some influence until at least the

National Front and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X

, should be considered as parts of the Legitimist family.

Notable members

Leader

Prince Charles, Count of Artois
became King Charles X

Ministers and top parliamentarians

Jean-Baptiste de Villèle
Viscount of Chateaubriand
was also very liberal on certain policies (e.g. press)
François-Régis de La Bourdonnaye
Count of Vaublanc
Jacques-Joseph Corbière
Prince Polignac
Ferdinand de Bertier de Sauvigny
Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre
Duke of Montmorency
Abbé Frayssinous,
royal chapelan and peer
Casimir-Louis-Victurnien de Rochechouart de Mortemart
Sosthènes de La Rochefoucauld [fr]
Édouard de Fitz-James

Intellectuals and patrons

Joseph de Maistre,
chief ideologist
Viscount of Bonald
,
chief ideologist
Louis XVIII

Alphonse de Lamartine

Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie

Electoral results

Election year No. of
overall votes
% of
overall vote
No. of
overall seats won
+/– Position Leader

Chamber of Deputies

1815 35,200 87.5%
350 / 400

New
1st (majority) François-Régis de La Bourdonnaye,
Comte de La Bretèche

1820 34,780 36.9%
160 / 434

190^[a]
2nd (minority) Jean-Baptiste Séraphin, Comte de Villèle

1824 90,240 96%
413 / 430

253
1st (majority) Jean-Baptiste Séraphin, Comte de Villèle

1827 40,420 43.1%
185 / 430

228
1st (majority) Jean-Baptiste Séraphin, Comte de Villèle

1830 47,940 50.7%
282 / 556

97
1st (majority) Jules de Polignac, Duke de Polignac

^ This change is compared to the last general election which was in August 1815. The elections in 1816, 1817, and 1819 were all by-elections and those results are included

See also

Anti-Sacrilege Act

Legitimists

Political parties under Restoration

Ultra-Tories

References

ISBN 9782235021197
.

ISBN 9782213659480
.

^ Histoire de France, pendant les annees 1825, 1826, 1827 et commencement de 1828, faisant suite a l'Histoire de France par l'abbe de Montgaillard. Vol. 1. 1829. p. 74.

^ Treuttel et Würtz, ed. (1844). Encyclopédie des gens du monde: répertoire universel des sciences, des lettres et des arts ; avec des notices sur les principales familles historiques et sur les personnages célèbres, morts et vivans. Vol. 22. p. 364.

^ Bailleul, Jacques-Charles (1819). Situation de la France. p. 261.

^ Le Normant, ed. (1818). Le Conservateur: le roi, la charte et les honnêtes gens. Vol. 1. p. 348.

^ Reboul, Pierre (1973). Presses Univ. Septentrion (ed.). Chateaubriand et le conservateur. p. 288.

ISBN 9782021094459.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
)

^ Ultraroyalist. Dictionary of Politics and Government, 2004, p. 250.

^ "Ultra". Encyclopaedia Britannica. "The ultras represented the interests of the large landowners, the aristocracy, clericalists, and former émigrés. They were opposed to the egalitarian and secularizing principles of the Revolution, but they did not aim at restoring the ancien régime; rather, they were concerned with manipulating France’s new constitutional machinery in order to regain the assured political and social predominance of the interests they represented".

^ Gwynn Lewis, "The White Terror of 1815 in the Department of the Gard: Counter-Revolution, Continuity and the Individual" Past & Present No. 58 (February 1973), pp. 108–135 online.

^ John Baptiste Wolf (1963). France: 1814-1919, the Rise of a Liberal-democratic Society. p. 36.

[last-13] This change is compared to the last general election which was in August 1815. The elections in 1816, 1817, and 1819 were all by-elections and those results are included

[1] ISBN 9782235021197
.

[2] ISBN 9782213659480
.

[3] Histoire de France, pendant les annees 1825, 1826, 1827 et commencement de 1828, faisant suite a l'Histoire de France par l'abbe de Montgaillard. Vol. 1. 1829. p. 74.

[4] Treuttel et Würtz, ed. (1844). Encyclopédie des gens du monde: répertoire universel des sciences, des lettres et des arts ; avec des notices sur les principales familles historiques et sur les personnages célèbres, morts et vivans. Vol. 22. p. 364.

[5] Bailleul, Jacques-Charles (1819). Situation de la France. p. 261.

[6] Le Normant, ed. (1818). Le Conservateur: le roi, la charte et les honnêtes gens. Vol. 1. p. 348.

[7] Reboul, Pierre (1973). Presses Univ. Septentrion (ed.). Chateaubriand et le conservateur. p. 288.

[8] ISBN 9782021094459.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
)

[9]

[10]

[11]

[a]