Ultra-royalist

Ultra-royalists Ultraroyalistes
Leader	Charles X of France
Founded	1815 (1815)
Dissolved	1830 (1830)
Succeeded by	Legitimists
Newspaper	Le Conservateur Le Drapeau blanc La Gazette La Quotidienne
Ideology	Monarchism Reactionarism Ultramontanism Conservatism
Political position	Right-wing
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Chamber of Deputies (1824)	413 / 430
Politics of France Political parties Elections

Ultra-royalism (French: ultraroyalistes, also called ultracism, and whose members were designated as ultra-royalists or collectively ultras, was a political movement of the Restoration. Ultra-royalism did not formed a structured movement, but a movement whose common principle was loyalty to the sovereigns of the Capetian dynasty. The ultra-royalists defended the sacred character of royalty — Louis XVI being the object of a veneration similar to that of a saint — but they tended to exclude the king from governmental practice by appropriating the Constitutional Charter of 1814 and by defending a monarchical system which was based on the nobility.

Ultra-royalism began in 1815, at the time of the Second Restoration, and until 1821 and the advent of the Villèle ministry, formed an opposition movement within the royal power. Supporters of the counter-revolutionary struggles waged since 1789, the ultraroyalists criticized Louis XVIII for his centrist policy, embodied by the rather liberal ministry of Decazes, and opposed revolutionary and imperial innovations. The accession to the throne in 1824 of Charles X fully satisfied the ultra-royalists, even if the ordinances issued during his reign were not unanimous among the members of this movement.

The Legitimists, another of the main right-wing factions identified in René Rémond's The Right Wing in 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.

History

Introduction

The name "ultraroyalist" was supposedly invented by Joseph Fouché and was rejected by those concerned. François-René de Chateaubriand attributes the neologism ultraroyalism to "the faction":

At the commencement of the Revolution they spoke of the Aristocrats, they now talk of the Ultra-Royalists. The foreign journals in their pay or their interests call us simply Ultras. We are then the Ultras; we, alas, the unhappy heirs of those Aristocrats whose ashes repose in the promiscuous graves of Picpus and the Madeleine. By means of the Police, the Faction governs the public papers, and laughs with presumptuous security at those who are not permitted to defend themselves. The great watch-word is, one must not be more Royalist than the King. This phrase is not quite new; it was invented under Louis XVI. to tie the hands of the loyal, and to leave northing free but the arm of the executioner.

The ultra-royalist wave appeared in a context of rejection of the revolutionary ideas arising from the Revolution of 1789, in the last years of the Napoleonic period and constituted an important movement in the opposition to the Charter of 1814.

The fall of the Empire and the royalist restoration appeared to the victorious émigrés as the fulfillment of a biblical cycle and a providential renewal. Once divine anger had been appeased, the reconciliation between France and its king seemed to be confirmed by the election of an "unobtainable chamber" largely dominated by the ultra-royalists. Young, without experience of government, with no political past other than the battles and plots against the Republic, the ultras belonged for the most part to the small and middle provincial nobility, antagonistic towards the great nobility and defiant of the court and the government. Their rebellious loyalty to the king was summed up in their ritual exclamation: "Long live the king, even though!"

Their first political affirmation was the rejection of the charter granted by Louis XVIII to the French and which in their eyes constituted a lowering of the authority of the king, an insult to the Catholic religion in that it recognized freedom of worship and a stigma in that it constituted a compromise with the Revolution. To this rejection was added a constitutional challenge: as a majority in parliament, they should, according to the interpretation made by Chateaubriand in his The Monarchy According to the Charter or by Vitrolles in his Ministry in the Representative Government, see the king's ministers chosen from among them. Thus the ultras became defenders of a parliamentary regime. Similarly, they opportunely defended, against the doctrinaire ministerial minority, the complete renewal of the chamber in elections and the extension of the right to vote to the working classes.

One of the main goals of the ultras was to reestablish the predominance of the aristocracy over the bourgeoisie. In this respect, they sought to rely on the provinces against Paris by advocating decentralisation and by demanding in 1815 the establishment of universal suffrage to replace the census suffrage.

According to historian Hélène Becquet: "Belief in the sacredness of the royal person does not ipso facto lead to the recognition of absolute royal power. The ultra monarchist model is not Louis XIV but rather Henri IV or rather a reinvented Henri IV, who relies on his nobility and his faithful to govern. The ultras are, from an ideological point of view, the direct heirs of Boulainvilliers and Montesquieu, which explains the ease with which they appropriate the Charter. It is Chateaubriand who, in his The Monarchy According to the Charter, best synthesized these ideas. The king, God's representative on Earth, is an arbiter rather than an actor in the political game and his sacred character obliges him to stand above the parties."

With the launch of the newspaper Le Conservateur, Chateaubriand sets out his principles:

First, I must declare that neither I nor my friends will ever take any interest in a work that is not perfectly constitutional. We want the Charter: we think that the strength of the royalists lies in the frank adoption of the representative monarchy. Their enemies feel this so well that they fear them only on this ground: also see what they do to drive them out! "We have all taken the Charter as a cloak," they say, "but, in the depths of our hearts, we have sworn the loss of liberty, the restoration of the old regime, the return of the Privy Council, the Inquisition and feudalism."

This is indeed how they can fight us: if they once agreed that we are sincere in our constitutional opinions, their empire would have passed.

Louis de Bonald, on the other hand, strongly criticizes the Charter: "Any representative constitution pushes towards democracy, and consequently towards revolutions, since it admits democracy as a necessary element of power. It is a worm placed in the heart of the tree: it is useless to hide it, and the danger must be recognized in order to fight it." De Bonald advocates a return to a society of monarchical and religious order. God is the sole holder of sovereignty, royal power being only a mediator between men and God. He substitutes a Declaration of the Rights of God for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, where man has only duties and no rights. Since power comes from God, it can only be absolute, any limitation or dependence is foreign to it. The king is the obligatory intermediary between the power that commands and the subject who obeys.

Chateaubriand and Bonald held similar views on the inviolability of royal power, the place of religion in society and education, but were in direct opposition on the Charter and freedom of the press.

The emergence of a counter-revolutionary reaction

The emergence of ultraroyalism

Ultra-royalism was initially only embodied by a small number and remained only a political opinion. But the men who were part of it wanted a complete restoration of the monarchy. Ferdinand de Bertier de Sauvigny founded the Order of the Knights of the Faith in mid-1810, but left the command to Mathieu de Montmorency, who was older and more experienced.

At the end of 1813, the "banner" of Paris was presided over by the Count of Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, his secretary being Louis de Gobineau. During the following years, the Order expanded into the provinces, especially in the Aquitaine South and the West where it had been sufficient to revive the old organizations, such as the Chouannerie in Vendée, and to affiliate their leaders.

The members of the Order communicated and exchanged information orally, the fear of the imperial police being very present and any written document being able to be intercepted. Thus, castles, presbyteries served as stops or objectives, so that the messenger would not travel more than 10-12 leagues before transmitting his message to another man who would relay it. This means allowed for example to spread the success of the allied armies well before the official mail. But, while the Empire was still standing, it was only this form of resistance that the members favored, that is to say a form of concealed resistance, making propaganda their means of gaining fame and exciting popular discontent against the imperial regime by highlighting its weaknesses.

The return of the Bourbons

The royalists considered that it was only a matter of time to return to legitimacy. It was with this objective of an eventual return of the Bourbons that the royalists patiently prepared the ground for such an event. They disseminated the papal brief of excommunication against Napoleon Bonaparte, and ensured that the French ports, ruined by the blockade, were totally acquired by the Bourbons, because they would be synonymous with a return of peace and prosperity. In some cities, the allied troops who came to restore the monarchy there were even cheered by installing the Count of Provence, that is to say Louis XVIII, on the throne, twice: in April 1814, and in June 1815, after the episode of the Hundred Days. During this episode, the royalists resisted in the same way as before, except in the West, where insurrections took place, led by Louis du Vergier de La Rochejaquelein. Louis XVIII had then gone into exile in Belgium. But the royal family, before returning to power, had emigrated for a quarter of a century. Consequently, it was quite natural that it remained attached to the conceptions of the 18th century and the Old Regime. But the political realism of Louis XVIII tempered these intentions, and he would try to find an intermediate way in order to restore real monarchical power, without alienating the people.

The ultra opposition at the beginning of the Restoration (1814–1824)

The White Terror

Main article: Second White Terror

Louis XVIII wanted to be a conciliatory king. He pardoned the former Bonapartists and established a Charter. This Charter was to be a counter-revolutionary document and granted by the king to the French. It pretends to consider the revolutionary period as non-existent: "In seeking to reconnect the chain of time, which had been interrupted by fatal deviations, we have erased from our memory, as we would like them to be erased from History, all the evils that have afflicted the homeland during our absence...". But despite these concessions made to the spirit of the Old Regime, the Charter was in fact a true Constitution that made the monarchy a much more liberal regime than the imperial regime had been. The king, himself, had executive power. His domains were therefore foreign policy, treaties, peace and declarations of war. But this conciliatory spirit was not to the taste of the ultra-royalists who demanded punishment against those who had supported Napoleon during the Hundred Days. And so massacres were carried out and all those who were supposedly hostile to the monarchy, as was the case for the Mamaluks, brought back from Egypt by Napoleon, or former marshals of the Empire. This was even more true in the South where the "verdets" were present, so called because they wore a green cockade named after the Count of Artois, the future Charles X.

The chambre introuvable

Main article: Chambre introuvable

It was in this climate of retribution that the elections of August 1815 took place, which saw the success of the ultra-royalists (350 seats won out of 389). Louis XVIII called this chamber the "unobtainable Chamber" to express the idea that he could not have dreamed of one so favorable to his throne. However, the king sensed that the counter-revolutionary orientation of this chamber was doomed to failure. Behind the leaders of this ultra-right, Joseph de Villèle, Louis de Bonald, François-Régis de La Bourdonnaye and Jacques-Joseph Corbière. The king appointed a moderate to head the government, the Duke of Richelieu, who, under pressure from the Chamber, obtained the vote of a set of repressive laws such as the condemnation of seditious writings. The king, who was seeking compromises between royalist and revolutionary ideas, decided to dissolve the Chamber on September 5, 1816.

The new Chamber now included more men in favour of the Charter of 1814. When Decazes, who was Minister of Police, replaced Richelieu in 1818, his power was great because he enjoyed the full confidence of the king. The ultras would subsequently criticise Decazes' policy and on 13 February 1820, an event occurred that would destroy his career: the assassination of the Duke of Berry. The latter was one of the ultras, who, as a result, accused Decazes of laxity. According to them, Decazes had been an accomplice of the assassins. The king dismissed Decazes, who would be replaced by Richelieu, then by Villèle in 1821. The influence of the ultras would thus remain at its maximum thanks to the latter at the head of the government. Moreover, Louis XVIII's health was failing and he began to hand over the reins of power to his brother, the Count of Artois, leader of the ultras, who became king under the name of Charles X, upon his brother's death in 1824.

The ultras in power

The craze for the restored monarchy

When Charles X came to power, he enjoyed a great prestige, so much so that the repression of the Carbonarist movement, composed of liberals, Bonapartists and republicans, only led to a small popular upheaval due to a lack of popularity. The preponderance of the ultra-royalists was even confirmed. In the general elections of 1824, there were only 19 liberals elected out of 430 deputies. It is true that still, at this time, only the richest notables voted, but the bourgeoisie, who were part of this social class, were generally liberal, and the fact that they voted in favor of the ultra-royalists constituted a real change in mentalities. It is enough to add to that the aristocracy which traditionally voted in this same camp, and the majority of the electorate was thus united there. In the field of literature, the Romantic movement revived the memory of the Old Regime, Chateaubriand exalted Christianity, as for Victor Hugo and Lamartine (decorated with the Legion of Honor), they were inspired by monarchical France, Henry IV in particular, who was seen as a political model. The Middle Ages were even fashionable among the young generation. Finally, the coronation of Charles X gave rise to a grandiose spectacle, acclaimed by the crowd. It was a real enthusiasm for a France reconciled in the cult of its dynasty.

The fall of the ultras

But this prestige was short-lived. Their desire to reconnect too strongly with the past led them to make mistakes. The ultras had truly been in power since Villèle was appointed head of government in 1821. They thus had an enormous influence in the country's politics. It was from this moment that the real beginnings of the Restoration began. In addition, they pursued an authoritarian and clerical policy, thus calling into question the principles of the new France that Louis XVIII wished to preserve.

On June 30, 1820, the double vote law, which reserved the election of 172 deputies out of 430 for the richest, in order to limit the liberal vote, was accepted. The liberals now had only 80 seats in the November 1820 elections. Villèle became head of government. In 1822, a law was passed that suppressed the opposition press. Also, the universities were taken over by the clergy. The Vicar General of Paris, Mgr Frayssinous, was appointed Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Education in 1824. Under his influence, the law on sacrilege, which punished anyone who stole an object of worship, was passed in 1825 but was never applied. France returned to a most absolute and Catholic monarchy. Finally, Charles X had expiatory ceremonies performed in memory of the death of Louis XVI. The regime thus opposed the revolution and its multiple abuses, this caused the fall of the ultras, because it was difficult to take away from the people the freedoms acquired. It was this return to rights acquired during the revolution that pushed the people to rise up, provoking the July revolution.

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 16 May 1877 crisis and even further. Their views softened, their principal aim became the restoration of the House of Bourbon and they became known from 1830 on as Legitimists. The historian René Rémond has identified the Legitimists as the first of the "right-wing families" of French politics, followed by the Orléanists and the Bonapartists. According to him, many modern far-right movements, including parts of Jean-Marie Le Pen's 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 Artoisbecame King Charles X Prince Charles, Count of Artois became King Charles X

Ministers and top parliamentarians

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

Intellectuals and patrons
Joseph de Maistre, chief ideologist  Viscount of Bonald,chief ideologist Viscount of Bonald, chief ideologist  Zoé Talon,paramour of Louis XVIII Zoé Talon, paramour of Louis XVIII  Alphonse de Lamartine  Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie 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	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

See also

• Anti-Sacrilege Act
• Legitimists
• Political parties under Restoration
• Ultra-Tories

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