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.

Although the Legitimists were highly visible participants in the intellectual, social, and political life of nineteenth-century France, they have received little scholarly attention. In Legitimism and the Reconstruction of French Society, 1852-1883, Steven D. Kale argues against dismissing the Legitimists as mere anachronisms and analyzes their efforts to define the conditions for a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. More broadly, Kales study presents an intellectual and social history of the French Legitimist movement. Kale examines the social composition of the Legitimist party and outlines the qualities the Legitimists considered necessary for the creation of an appropriate ruling class for nineteenth-century France

Traditionally, the legitimists of early Third Republican Prance have been dismissed as historical anachronisms. To arrive at a fuller understanding of these men, Robert R. Locke has used French public archives, libraries, and previously ignored private sources to investigate the divine right monarchists and the nature of their protest. Professor Locke concentrates on two hundred legitimists in the National Assembly of 1871. He identifies the legitimists socially and occupationally, and evaluates their response to such problems of modernization as industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization. and democratization. The author analyzes legitimist ideas within the context of the immediate historical situation, and contrasts the social-economic background and mentality of the legitimists with that of other French and European monarchists. Far from being anachronisms, the legitimists of Professor Locke's study emerge as men of diverse social-economic origins who frequently accepted economic change and innovation—men who wanted to restore the old monarchy, but not necessarily the old regime. Their characteristics, the author shows, have an affinity with those of all groups who try to uphold traditional beliefs in a changing world. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Moliére's anticlerical comedy Tartuffe is the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis. Moving from the town squares, where state and ecclesiastical officials orchestrated their public spectacles in favor of the monarchy, to the theaters, where the French used Tartuffe to mock the restored monarch and the church, this cultural history of the Restoration offers a rich and colorful portrait of a period in which critical legacies of the revolutionary period were played out and cemented. While most historians have characterized the Restoration as a period of reaction and reversal, Kroen offers convincing evidence that the Restoration was a critical bridge between the emerging practices of the Old Regime, the Revolution, and the post-1830 politics of protest. She re-creates the atmosphere of Restoration France and at the same time brings major nineteenth-century themes into focus: memory and commemoration, public and private spheres, politics and religion, anticlericalism, and the formation of democratic ideologies and practices.

This book is the first serious study of Henry IV's relationship with the towns of France. Rejected by a majority of his subjects because of his Protestant faith, Henry spent the early years of his reign conquering his kingdom through the use of force, persuasion, bribery, and conciliation. By reopening the lines of communication between the crown and the towns, he strengthened the French monarchy. Thus while this book is not a biography of the King, it offers an in-depth analysis of a crucial aspect of his craft of kingship.