Legitimists

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Legitimists are Royalists in France who believe that the King of France and Navarre must be chosen according to the simple application of the Salic Law. They are adherents of the elder branch of the Bourbon dynasty, overthrown in the Revolution of 1830.

During the July Monarchy of 1830 to 1848, when the junior Orléanist branch held the throne, the Legitimists were largely politically marginalized, with many withdrawing from active participation in political life. The situation was complicated before 1844 by the question of who the legitimate king was - Charles X and his son the Dauphin had abdicated during the 1830 Revolution in favor of Charles's young grandson, the Comte de Chambord, but before the death of Charles X and his son, in 1836 an 1844, respectively, many Legitimists continued to recognize them as rightful kings ahead of Chambord.

The fall of Louis Philippe in 1848 led to a strengthening of the Legitimist position. Legitimists came back into political prominence during the Second Republic, and through much of this time there was discussion of a "Fusion" with the Orleanist Party. Fusionism reached the point where several sons of Louis Philippe declared their support for Chambord, but was never actually achieved, and after 1850 the two parties were again separated. The period of the Second Empire saw the Legitimists once again cast out of active political life. Furthermore, the childlessness of Chambord, whose wife was widely known to be barren, weakened the hand of the Legitimists.

Nevertheless, the Legitimists remained a significant party within elite opinion, attracting the support of the larger part of the old aristocracy. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of Napoleon III's dynasty, the Legitimists returned for one final time to political prominence. The National Assembly elected in 1871 contained a monarchist majority, and this time, the two monarchist groups were able to agree on a program of fusion, largely because of the increased likelihood that Chambord would die without children. The Orleanists agreed to recognize Chambord as king, and the Orleanist claimant himself, Philippe, Comte de Paris, recognized Chambord as head of the French royal house. In return, Legitimists agreed that, should Chambord die childless, Paris would succeed him as King. Unfortunately for French monarchism, Chambord's refusal to accept the Tricolor as the flag of France made restoration impossible until after his death, by which time the monarchists had long lost their parliamentary majority. The death of the comte de Chambord in 1883 effectively dissolved the parti légitimiste as a political entity in France.

After Chambord's death, with only the descendants of Philip V of Spain, who had renounced his and his descendants' claims to the French throne at the time of his death in 1713, senior to the Orleanist branch, most French monarchists recognized the Comte de Paris as the legitimate pretender.

A remnant, known as the Blancs d'Espagne, by repudiating Philip V's renunciation of the French throne as ultra vires and contrary to the French monarchical constitution, upheld the rights of the eldest branch of the Bourbons, then represented by the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne. This group was initially minuscule, but began to grow larger after World War II due both to the political leftism of the Orleanist Pretender, Henri, Comte de Paris, and to the active efforts of the claimants of the elder line - Jaime, Duke of Segovia, the disinherited second son of Alfonso XIII of Spain and his son, Alfonso, Duke of Cadiz, to secure legitimist support, such that by the 1980s, the elder line had fully reclaimed for its supporters the title of "Legitimists."

This means that the current legitimist claimant is Spanish Louis-Alphonse de Bourbon (Luis-Alfonso de Borbón), styled duc d'Anjou.

The word légitimiste was not admitted by the Académie française until 1878; but meanwhile it had spread beyond France, and in English 'legitimist' can be applied to any supporter of monarchy by hereditary right, as against a parliamentary or other title.

For other 'legitimists' compare British Jacobites, Spanish Carlists and Portuguese Miguelistas.

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Legitimist claimants to the throne of France

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Nicaragua

In the history of Nicaragua the liberals (called Democrats) were opposed by the conservatives (called Legitimists), who expelled the Democrats from the constitutional assembly in 1853, driving them underground or into exile, and promulgated a constitution of 1854. Under its terms Fruto Chamorro was elected Presidente. The Democrats rejected the constitution and the Chamorro government and returned from exile to fight against it, with help from the governments of Honduras and El Salvador. Civil war broke out in 1854, in which the American adventurer William Walker played a major role.de:Legitimisten fr:Légitimisme pl:Legitymizm

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