Legitimists

Following the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, a strongly restricted census suffrage sent to the Chamber of Deputies an Ultra-royalist majority in 1815–1816 (la Chambre introuvable) and from 1824 to 1827. Called as such because they were more royalist than the king (plus royalistes que le roi), the Ultras were thus the dominant political faction under Louis XVIII (1815–1824) and Charles X (1824–1830). 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 rupture created by the French Revolution. By the same token, Ultras opposed all liberal, republican and democratic ideas. While Louis XVIII hoped to moderate the restoration of the Ancien Régime in order to make it acceptable to the population, the Ultras would never abandon the dream of an integral restoration even after the 1830 July Revolution which set the Orléanist branch on the throne and sent the Ultras back to their castles in the countryside and to private life. Their importance during the Restoration was in part due to electoral laws which largely favored them (on one hand a Chamber of Peers composed of hereditary members and on the other a Chamber of Deputies elected under a heavily restricted census suffrage which permitted approximately 100,000 Frenchmen to vote).

Louis XVIII's first ministers, who included Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Armand-Emmanuel de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu and Élie, duc Decazes, were replaced by the Chambre introuvable dominated by the Ultras. Louis XVIII finally decided to dissolve this chaotic assembly, but the new liberals who replaced them were no easier to govern. After the 1820 assassination of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, the ultra-reactionary son of the comte d'Artois (Louis XVIII's brother and future Charles X) and a short interval during which the Richelieu governed, the Ultras were back in government headed by the Jean-Baptiste de Villèle.

The death in 1824 of the moderate Louis XVIII emboldened the Ultra faction. 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 This anachronistic law (Jean-Noël Jeanneney) was in the end never applied (except on a minor point) and repealed in the first months of Louis Philippe I's reign (1830–1848). The Ultras also wanted to create courts to punish radicals and passed laws restricting freedom of the press.

After the 1830 July Revolution replaced the Bourbons with the more liberal Orléanist branch, the Ultras' influence declined, although it survived until at least the 16 May 1877 crisis and 1879 and perhaps even longer. They softened their views and made the restoration of the House of Bourbon their main aim. From 1830 on, they became known as Legitimists.

During the July Monarchy of 1830 to 1848, when the junior Orléanist branch held the throne, the Legitimists were politically marginalized, many withdrawing from active participation in political life. The situation was complicated before 1844 by debate as to who the legitimate king was as Charles X and his son Louis-Antoine the Dauphin had both abdicated during the 1830 Revolution in favor of Charles's young grandson, Henri, Count of Chambord. Until the deaths of Charles X and his son in 1836 and 1844, respectively, many Legitimists continued to recognize each of them in turn as the rightful king, ahead of Chambord.

The fall of King Louis Philippe I in 1848 led to a strengthening of the Legitimist position. Although the childlessness of Chambord weakened the hand of the Legitimists, they came back into political prominence during the Second Republic. Legitimists joined with Orleanists to form the Party of Order which dominated parliament from the elections of May 1849 until Bonaparte's coup on 2 December 1851. 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.

Through much of this time there was discussion of fusion with the Orléanist party so that the two could effect a monarchical restoration. This prospect prompted several sons of Louis Philippe to declare their support for Chambord, but fusion was not actually achieved, and after 1850 the two parties again diverged. The most committed Orléanists supported the candidacy of Louis Philippe's third son, François d'Orléans, Prince of Joinville, for the presidency while the Legitimists largely supported allowing Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte to run for a second term. In spite of this support for Bonaparte's ambitions, they opposed his scheme to restore universal suffrage in the last months of 1851 and their leaders like those of the Orléanists were arrested during Bonaparte's coup.

The period of the Second Empire saw the Legitimists once again cast out of active political life.

Nevertheless, the Legitimists remained a significant party within elite opinion, attracting support of the larger part of the Ancien Régime aristocracy. After the Siege of Paris in 1870 and the 1871 Paris Commune, the Legitimists returned for one final time to political prominence. The 8 February 1871 elections, held under universal manhood suffrage, gave the National Assembly a royalist majority supported by the provinces while all the Parisian deputies were republican. This time the Legitimists were able to agree with the Orléanists on a program of fusion largely because of the growing likelihood that the Chambord would die without children. The liberal Orléanists agreed to recognize Chambord as king and the Orléanists claimant himself Prince Philippe, Count of Paris (1838–1894) recognized Chambord as head of the French royal house. In return, Legitimists in the Assembly agreed that should Chambord die childless, Philippe d'Orléans would succeed him as king. Unfortunately for French monarchism, Chambord's refusal to accept the tricolor as the flag of France and to abandon the fleur-de-lys, symbol of the Ancien Régime, made restoration impossible until after his death in 1883, by which time the monarchists had long since lost their parliamentary majority due to the 16 May 1877 crisis. The death of Chambord effectively dissolved the Legitimists as a political force in France.

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). However, they changed their name in 1899 and entered the 1902 elections under the name Action libérale (Liberal Action). By 1910, the only group which openly claimed descent from the right-wing gathered only nostalgic royalists and from 1924 on the term right-wing practically vanished from the parliamentary right's glossary.

By this time, the vast majority of Legitimists had retired to their country chateaux and abandoned the political arena. Although the Action française (French Action) remained an influential movement throughout the 1930s, its motivations for the restoration of monarchy were quite distinct from older Legitimists' views and Charles Maurras' instrumental use of Catholicism set them at odds. Thus, Legitimists participated little in the political events of the 1920s and 1930s, in particular in the 6 February 1934 riots organized by far-right leagues. The royalist aristocrats clearly distinguished themselves from the new ultra right which was influenced by the emerging movements of fascism and Nazism. However, Legitimists joined Maurras in celebrating the fall of the Third Republic after the 1940 Battle of France as a divine surprise and many of them entered Philippe Pétain's Vichy administration, seeing a golden opportunity to impose a reactionary program in occupied France.

French royalism largely receded to irrelevance in World War II and beyond. While before World War II, many French conservatives and other members of the right also harbored royalist aspirations, conservative movements dropped this platform during and after the war. Charles de Gaulle's center-rightist Gaullism explicitly repudiated monarchism, and far-right organizations disdained the old aristocratic elite. According to historian René Rémond's studies of right-wing factions in France, Legitimists strongly supported the Vichy regime; nevertheless, they received little from the Vichy government, and the regime emphasized Catholic traditionalism rather than a return to aristocracy. According to Rémond, Marcel Lefebvre's Society of Saint Pius X, founded in 1970, shares aspects with the Legitimist movement. Nevertheless, Legitimism is a largely spent force; right-wing parties such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front or Philippe de Villiers' Movement for France exist that bear some similarities with aspects of previous Legitimist parties, but are populist parties that accept parliamentarianism and elections; they do not actually advocate for abolition of the Republic and a return to the Kingdom of France.