Ultra-royalists Ultraroyalistes | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Joseph de Villèle |
| Founded | 1815; 210 years ago (1815) |
| Dissolved | 1830; 195 years ago (1830) |
| Succeeded by | Legitimists |
| Newspaper | La Gazette La Quotidienne Le Conservateur |
| Ideology | Monarchism Reactionarism[1][2] Ultramontanism[3][4][5] Conservatism[6][7] |
| Political position | Right-wing[8] |
| Religion | Catholic Church |
| Chamber of Deputies (1824) | 413 / 430 |
TheUltra-royalists (French:ultraroyalistes, collectivelyUltras) were aFrench political faction from 1815 to 1830 under theBourbon Restoration. An Ultra was usually a member of the nobility of high society who strongly supportedRoman Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, theBourbonmonarchy,[9]traditional hierarchy between classes andcensus suffrage (privileged voting rights), while rejecting the political philosophy ofpopular will and the interests of thebourgeoisie along with theirliberal anddemocratic tendencies.[10]
TheLegitimists, another of the mainright-wing factions identified inRené Rémond'sLes Droites en France, were disparagingly classified with the Ultras after the 1830July Revolution by the victors, theOrléanists, who deposed the Bourbon dynasty for the more liberal kingLouis Philippe.
Following the return ofLouis XVIII to power in 1815, people suspected of having ties with the governments of theFrench Revolution or ofNapoleon suffered arrest. Several hundred were killed by angry mobs or executed after an informal summary court-martial. The episodes happened primarily in the south of France.[11]
HistorianJohn Baptist Wolf argues Ultra-royalists—many of whom had just returned from exile—were staging acounter-revolution against the French Revolution and also againstNapoleon's revolution.
Inaugurating the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), a strongly restricted census suffrage elected to theChamber of Deputies an Ultra-royalist majority (laChambre introuvable) in 1815–1816 and again from 1824 to 1827. Known to be "more royalist than the king" (plus royalistes que le roi), the Ultras were the dominant political faction underLouis XVIII (1815–1824) andCharles X (1824–1830). Opposed to the limitation of thesovereign's power under theconstitutional monarchy, they hoped to restore theAncien Régime and annul the rupture created by theFrench Revolution. Passionately espousing the ruling ideology of the Restoration, the Ultras opposedliberalism,republicanism anddemocracy. While Louis XVIII hoped for a moderate restoration of the Ancien Régime, acceptable to the masses who had participated in the Revolution, the Ultras held rigidly to the dream of an integral restoration. Their power was due in part to electoral laws which largely favored them: on one hand aChamber of Peers composed of hereditary members and on the other hand a Chamber of Deputies elected under a heavily restricted census suffrage of approximately 100,000 voters.
In 1815, an Ultra majority was elected to the chamber of deputies. Louis XVIII dubbed themLa Chambre Introuvable, "the unfindable chamber", due to his astonishment at a group of deputies more royalist than himself. Under the guidance of his chief minister theArmand-Emmenuel de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, Louis XVIII finally decided to dissolve this turbulent assembly, invoking Article 14 of the Constitutional Charter. There followed a "Liberal Interlude" from 1816–1820, a period of "wilderness years" for the Ultras. Then on 13 February 1820, theDuke of Berry was stabbed by a republican assassin as he left the Paris Opera House with his wife and died the next day. This outrage strengthened the Ultras, who then introduced laws such as theLaw of the Double Vote [fr] which allowed them to further dominate the Chamber of Deputies. In addition to other factors, Louis XVIII's health was in serious decline, reducing his resistance to Ultra demands: even before he came to the throne, the Comte d'Artois (Charles X) already dominated the government.
The 1824 death of Louis XVIII, whom they saw as too moderate, lifted the spirits of the Ultras: they expected their leader, the new king Charles X, would soon become an absolute monarch, answerable only to God. In January 1825, Villèle's government enacted theAnti-Sacrilege Act, institutingcapital punishment for the theft of sacredmonstrance vases (with or without consecrated hosts). This "anachronistic law" (Jean-Noël Jeanneney) was never seriously applied and was repealed in the first months of Louis Philippe's reign (1830–1848). The Ultras also wanted to create courts to punishRadicals and passed laws restrictingfreedom of the press.
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 the16 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 historianRené Rémond has identified the Legitimists as the first of the "right-wing families" of French politics, followed by the Orléanists and theBonapartists. According to him, many modernfar-right movements, including parts ofJean-Marie Le Pen'sNational Front andArchbishop Marcel Lefebvre'sSociety of St. Pius X, should be considered as parts of the Legitimist family.
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| 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, |
| 1820 | 34,780 | 36.9% | 160 / 434 |  190[a] | 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 |
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