Monarchism in France

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Map of Europe showing current monarchies (red) and republics (blue) as of 2025

Part of a series on Conservatism in France

Ideologies

• Gaullism • Integralism • Nationalist • Monarchism • Bonapartism • Legitimism • Maurrassisme • Orléanism • Nouvelle Droite • Révolution nationale • Sarkozysm • Ultramontanism

Principles

• Anti-communism • Counter-revolution • Dirigisme • Ethnopluralism • Family values • French culture • Imperialism • Meritocracy • Metapolitics • Nationalism • Nativism • Noblesse oblige • Natural order • Patriotism • Royalism • Social hierarchy • Social order • Souverainisme • Traditional authority

History

• Ancien régime • Monarchiens • Feuillant • Constitutional Monarchy • Catholic and Royal Armies • War in the Vendée • Thermidorian Reaction • Chouannerie • Chouan • First White Terror • Companions of Jehu • Muscadins • Second White Terror • Bourbon Restoration • Ultra-royalists • Dreyfus affair • Second French Empire • Philippe Daudet affair • Vichy France • Algiers putsch of 1961 • 2024 The Republicans alliance crisis

Intellectuals

• Ballanche • Bainville • Barbey d’Aurevilly • Barruel • Barrès • Baudelaire • de Benoist • Blanc de Saint-Bonnet • de Bonald • Boutang • Bruckner • Brunetière • Brague • Cau • de Chateaubriand • Fustel de Coulanges • Cochin • Daudet • Delsol • Dumézil • Faguet • Faye • Freund • Girardet • Guizot • Guénon • de Gobineau • Houellebecq • de Jouvenel • Lamennais (early) • Le Bon • Lefebvre • Lemaître • Le Play • Lugan • Madiran • de Maistre • Morel • Maffesoli • Massis • Maurras • Maulnier • Marcel • Nimier • Poulat • Rémond • Renan • de Rivarol • Rohmer • Rueff • Siegfried • Taine • de Tocqueville • Thibon

Literature

• Considerations on France (1796) • Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797) • The Genius of Christianity (1802) • The Pope (1819) • St Petersburg Dialogues (1821) • Democracy in America (1835) • The Ancient City (1864) • “What Is a Nation? ” (1882) • The Crowd (1895) • Inquiry into the Monarchy (1900) • “The Future of the Intelligentsia ” (1905) • My Political Ideas (1937) • The Reign of Quantity (1945) • The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) • Violence and the Sacred (1972) • The Camp of the Saints (1973) • The Tyranny of Guilt (2006) • The French Suicide (2014) • Submission (2015)

Politicians

• Bardella • Bellamy • de Bonald • Boulanger • Cathelineau • Charles X • de Chateaubriand • Ciotti • Flandin • Fouéré • Guizot • de Gaulle • Holeindre • Juppé • de Kérillis • Le Pen (Jean-Marie) • Le Pen (Marine) • Louis XVI • Louis XVIII • Louis Philippe I • Maurras • Malraux • MacMahon • Maréchal • Messiha • Messmer • Necker • Pécresse • Pétain • Peyrefitte • Pichegru • Poincaré • Poisson • de Polignac • Pompidou • Retailleau • de La Rocque • de La Tour du Pin • Sarkozy • Schuman • de Vaublanc • de Villèle • de Villiers • Zemmour

Commentators

• Barbier • Bardot • Buisson • Camus • Cassen • Jean • Giesbert • de Girardin • d’Escufon • Jamet • Lasserre • Lévy • Marmin • Massis • Maulnier • Ménard • Mougeotte • Nay • Obertone • d’Orcival • d’Ornellas • Pauwels • Pujo • Sastre • Sérant • Tasin • Venner

Parties

Active

• Alliance Royale • Debout la France • French Future • The Nationalists • National Republican Movement • Future with Confidence • National Centre of Independents & Peasants • National Rally • Reconquête • The Republicans • Senate Republicans • Soyons libres • VIA, the Way of the People • Union of the Right for the Republic

Defunct

• Democratic Republican Alliance • Feuillants • French Agrarian and Peasant Party • French Social Party • Movement for France • Independent Radicals • Independent Republicans • Party of Order • Rally of the French People • Popular Liberal Action • Rally for France • Rally for the Republic • Republican Federation • Resistance Party • Union for a Popular Movement • Union for the New Republic

Organisations

Active

• Action Française • Carrefour de l’Horloge • Cité catholique • Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne • Initiative and Liberty Movement • La Manif pour tous • Les Identitaires • March for Life • Nouvelle Action Royaliste • Rassemblement national de la jeunesse • Student Cockade • UDR group • Union Nationale Inter-universitaire

Defunct

• Action Française (pre Liberation) • Camelots du Roi • Cercle Proudhon • Civitas • Croix-de-Feu • Independent Republicans • Hussards • Service d’Action Civique

Media

Active

• Atlantico • CNews • Éléments • Famille chrétienne • L’Écho du Sud • La Croix • Le Figaro • Le Figaro Magazine • Le Point • Nouvelle École • Radio Courtoisie • Valeurs actuelles

Defunct

• La Liberté • La Presse • La Nation française • Le Quotidien de Paris • Minute • Présent

Related topics

• Archeofuturism • Clerical philosophers • European New Right • Far-right movements in France • Maurrassisme in Argentina • Ligues d’extrême droite • Politics of France • Remigration • Sinistrisme • Sovereigntist Right • Tocqueville effect

• Conservatism portal • France portal

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Monarchism in France

Monarchism in France is the advocacy of restoring the monarchy (mostly constitutional monarchy ) in France , which was abolished after the 1870 defeat by Prussia , arguably before that in 1848 with the establishment of the French Second Republic . The French monarchist movements are roughly divided today into three groups:

• The Legitimists for the royal House of Bourbon , • the Orléanists for the cadet branch of the House of Orléans , and • the Bonapartists for the imperial House of Bonaparte

History

Following the French Revolution , the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 and the establishment of the First French Republic , monarchist sentiment still remained strong among many elements in France as well as among the now large exiled émigré community abroad. The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the creation of the First French Empire further complicated monarchist politics, as some former royalists supported Bonaparte as a stabilizing figure, while others remained loyal to the deposed Bourbons . With the fall of Napoleon in 1814, the monarchy was restored in the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII and Charles X , only to be overthrown again in the July Revolution of 1830, which replaced the senior Bourbon line with the more liberal House of Orléans under Louis-Philippe I . The overthrow of Louis-Philippe in the French Revolution of 1848 marked the end of the July Monarchy and the beginning of the Second French Republic . Monarchist hopes revived with the rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte , whose declaration of the Second French Empire in 1852 represented an alternative, Bonapartist form of monarchy.

The French tricolore with the royal crown and fleur-de-lys was possibly designed by Henri, comte de Chambord in his younger years as a compromise [1]

The monarchist movement came back into force only after the 1870 defeat by Prussia and the crushing of the 1871 Paris Commune by Orléanist Adolphe Thiers . Legitimists and Orléanists controlled the majority of the Assemblies, and supported Patrice de MacMahon, Duke of Magenta , as president of the Ordre moral government. However, the intransigence of the Count of Chambord , who refused to abandon the white flag and its fleur-de-lis against the republican tricolore , and the 16 May 1877 crisis forced the legitimists to abandon the political arena, while some of the more liberal Orléanists “rallied” throughout years to the Third Republic (1870–1940). However, since the monarchy and Catholicism were long entangled (“the alliance of the Throne and the Altar”), republican ideas were often tinged with anti-clericalism , which led to some turmoil during Radical Émile Combes ’ cabinet in the beginning of the 20th century.

Concerns about monarchists caused the French government to bury the Unknown Soldier of World War I at the Arc de Triomphe , because the Panthéon was associated with the Republic. [2] [ further explanation needed ]

The Action Française , founded in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair , remained an influential far right movement throughout the 1930s, taking part in the 6 February 1934 riots . Some monarchists, such as Georges Valois who founded the Faisceau , became involved in fascism after the 1926 Papal condemnation of the Action Française by Pius XI .

Monarchists were then active under the Vichy regime , with the leader of the Action Française Charles Maurras qualifying as “divine surprise” the overthrow of the Republic and the arrival to power of Marshal Pétain . A few of them, such as Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie , took part in the Resistance out of patriotic concerns. The Action Française was then dissolved after the war , but Maurice Pujo founded it again in 1947.

Some legitimists had become involved in the traditionalist Catholic movement which arose in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and some ultimately followed the 1970 foundation of the traditionalist Catholic Society of Saint Pius X by Marcel Lefebvre . Bertrand Renouvin made a breakaway movement from the Action Française in 1971, the Nouvelle Action Française which became the Nouvelle Action Royaliste , while some legitimists joined Jean-Marie Le Pen ’s Front National , founded in 1972.

Current pretenders

Flag of France used officially in the Kingdom of France and Bourbon Restoration and still used by legitimists today.

The most recognised pretenders to the French throne for each group are:

• Orléanists: Prince Jean, Count of Paris • Legitimists: Prince Louis, Duke of Anjou • Bonapartists: Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon , or Charles, Prince Napoléon

Monarchist groups

Monarchism continues to exist in France. The historian Julian T. Jackson wrote in 2001 that “Indeed in the Vendée there are still families today who will not receive descendants of people who bought biens nationaux during the Revolution.” [2] Falling into one of the three main monarchist streams, some of the active groups in France today are:

• Action Française (Orleanist / right-wing) • Nouvelle Action Royaliste (orleanist / left-wing) • Alliance Royale (no dynastic choice / right-wing) • Cercle d’Action Légitimiste (CAL) (legitimist) • Union des Cercle Légitimistes de France (UCLF) (legitimist) • Bonapartist Central Committee (CCB) (Bonapartist / center-right)

Republican constitutional framework

The only entrenched clause in the Constitution of France , carried on from an 1884 addition to the Constitutional Laws of the Third Republic , prevents any amendment on “the republican form of government”, [3] therefore a restoration of the monarchy. As this provision is not itself entrenched, a restoration would be possible within the present legal framework in two stages, the first to remove the entrenchment, the second to alter the form of government. [4]

However, a little-known, non-sovereign form of monarchy remains in France, with the three traditional kings of Wallis and Futuna , a small Pacific archipelago organized as three kingdoms, who are granted recognition under article 75 of the Constitution. [5] It became French under colonial status in 1917, from an earlier control as a protectorate , before being incorporated in 1946.

Occasional references to the king or the emperor remain in French law , although they are interpreted as applying to the president , who has replaced the monarch under the present constitution. One famous example used to be article 1 of the Civil Code , which provides for when laws take effect : until 2004, it had remained as last amended at the start of the Restoration in 1816, with updated mentions in brackets in most editions: “Laws are enforceable throughout the French territory by virtue of the promulgation made thereof by the King (the President of the Republic). They shall be executed in each part of the Kingdom (of the Republic) from the moment when their promulgation can be known.” [6] It was rewritten in 2004. [7]

In addition, a local civil servant of the French government carries the additional responsibility of “viceroy of Pheasant Island ”, a small, uninhabited island on the border with Spain organized as a condominium of the two countries, six months a year. The French authorities have stated that this is in a parallel with Spain, which has a monarch . [8] The president of France is also ex officio co-prince of Andorra , a sovereign Pyrenean microstate; the position was passed on from the last French kings, who had held it since Henry IV , who upon his French accession was already co-prince as Count of Foix . [9]