Legitimists

Following the movement of Ultra-royalists during the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, Legitimists came to form one of the three main right-wing factions in France, which was principally characterized by its counter-revolutionary views.

[citation needed] Legitimists believe that the traditional rules of succession, based on the Salic law, determine the rightful King of France.

The fact that all Legitimist claimants since 1883 have been members of the Spanish royal dynasty, the allegation that their patrilineal descent from Louis XIV has been in question since 1936, and the belief that Philip V renounced claims to the French throne for himself and his heirs-male in the Treaty of Utrecht, are all irrelevant according to Legitimists; however, these facts have prompted other French royalists to pivot to support of the Orléans line, who would be next in the traditional line of succession if Philip V's heirs were excluded.

The current Legitimist pretender is Prince Louis, Duke of Anjou, the senior great-grandson of Alfonso XIII of Spain by male primogeniture, whose line was excluded from the Spanish succession due to the physical disability, political commitments, and morganatic marriage of Prince Jacques, Duke of Anjou and Segovia.

Opposed to the constitutional monarchy of Louis XVIII and to the limitation of the sovereign's power, they hoped to restore the Ancien Régime and cancel the liberal, republican and democratic ideas of the French Revolution.

In January 1825, Villèle's government passed the Anti-Sacrilege Act which punished by death the theft of sacred vessels (with or without consecrated hosts).

This anachronistic law (according to Jean-Noël Jeanneney) was in the end never applied (except on a minor point) and repealed in the first months of Louis Philippe's reign (1830–1848).

They formed a prominent part of Odilon Barrot's ministry from December 1848 to November 1849, and in 1850 were successful in passing the Falloux Law which brought the Catholic Church back into secondary education.

The 8 February 1871 election, held under universal manhood suffrage, gave the National Assembly a royalist majority supported by the provinces while all the Parisian deputies were republican.

Affected by sinistrisme, few conservatives explicitly called themselves right-wing during the Third Republic as it became a term associated with the counter-revolution and anti-republican feelings and by the 1900s was reserved for reactionary groups.

Those Legitimists who had rallied to the Republic in 1893, after Chambord's death ten years before still called themselves Droite constitutionnelle or républicaine (Constitutional or Republican Right).

Charles de Gaulle's center-rightist Gaullism explicitly repudiated monarchism, and far-right organizations disdained the old aristocratic elite.

Current legitimism has several instances: A remnant of Legitimists, known as the Blancs d'Espagne (Whites of Spain), by repudiating Philip V's renunciation of the French throne as ultra vires and contrary to the fundamental French monarchical law, upheld the rights of the eldest branch of the Bourbons, represented as of 1883 by the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne.

This group was initially minuscule, but it began to grow larger after World War II due both to the political leftism of the Orléanist pretender Henri, Count of Paris and to the active efforts of the claimants of the elder line after extinction of the Carlist male line—Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia, the disinherited second son of Alfonso XIII of Spain; and his son Prince Alphonse, Duke of Anjou—to secure Legitimist support, such that by the 1980s the elder line had fully reclaimed for its supporters the political title of Legitimists.

[citation needed] The Spanish-born Prince Luis Alfonso is the Bourbon whom the French Legitimists consider to be the de jure king of France under the name Louis XX.

Legitimists consider the valid rationale for restoration and the order of succession to the French throne derives from fundamental laws of the Ancien Régime, which were formed in the early centuries of the Capetian monarchy.