Table Of ContentThe Right Wing in France
From 1815 to de Gaulle
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Lamennais et la Démocratie
L'Amérique Anglo-Saxonne
Histoire des Etats-Unis
Les Catholiques, le Communisme et les Crises, IQ2Q-IQ3Q
Les Deux Congrès Ecclésiastiques de Reims et de Bourges
( 1896-IQ00)
Les Etats-Unis devant l'Opinion Française, 181 $-1852,
2 vols.
La Vie Politique en France depuis ij8ç
A contribution to Volume III of Histoire du Catholicisme
en France, by André Latreille
A contribution to Léon Blum, Chef de Gouvernement,
*93à-i937
Editor of Forces Religieuses et Attitudes Politiques dans
la France Contemporaine
Editor of Atlas Historique de la France Contemporaine
The Right Wing
in France
From 1815 to de Gaulle
Second American Edition
RENÉ RÉMOND
Translated from the French by
JAMES M. LAUX
ffl
Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Copyright © 1966, 1969 by the Trustees of the University
of Pennsylvania
Second printing 1968
Second American Edition 1969
Third printing 197]
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-87940
Originally published by Aubier Editions
Montaigne, Paris, in 1954, 1963, and 1968 under
the title LA DROITE EN FRANCE. Copyright
1954, 1963, and 1968 by Aubier Editions Montaigne.
ISBN: 0-8122-7490-3
Printed in the United States of America
Translator's Note to the
Second American Edition
Professor Remond's study of the French Right Wing
was first published in Paris in 1954. A revised second
edition appeared there in 1963 and the University of
Pennsylvania Press published a translation of this edition
in 1966. Late in 1968 M. Remond presented a third
French edition of his work, again revised and brought up
to date, with an epilogue analyzing the crisis of May—June
1968. The first American edition having gone out of print
in the meantime, it was decided to incorporate the most
recent additions and revisions of the third French edition
in a second American edition. The reader should note
that the author revised Chapter 9, dealing with the period
1940-1968, before the events of May-June 1968, and
that his discussion of those events appears in the Epilogue.
The translation does not include a section of appendixes
and documents contained in the French edition. In the
bibliography some of the author's comments have been
condensed and additional titles, primarily of works in
English, have been included. The full names of organiza-
tions designated by abbreviations will be found in the
index. The illustrations are unique to the American edi-
tions of this work.
Contents
Author's Preface to the Third French Edition 9
Introduction: One or Several Right Wing Groups? 19
1. 1815-1830: The Ultras, Extremism and Tra-
dition 32
2. 1830-1848: Legitimism, Old Regime France
and New France 79
3. 1830-1848: Orleanism, Liberalism and Conser-
vation 99
4. 1848-1870: Bonapartism, "Classic" and Autho-
ritarian Rightist Groups 125
5. 1871-1879: Moral Order, A Rightist Coalition 166
6. 1899-1902 : Another Coalition, Nationalism 205
7. Action Française: A Synthesis of Right Wing
Traditions? 233
8. 1919-1939: From the Bloc National to the
National Revolution, the Classic Right Wing
and the Leagues 254
9. 1940-1968 : From the French State to the Fifth
Republic 308
Epilogue: The Right Wing in the Light of the
Events of Spring 1968 395
Bibliography 418
Index 449
Illustrations
The illustrations appear as a group following page 128.
Charles X
Berryer
François Guizot
Duke Victor de Broglie
Thiers
Bonapartist propaganda: the Plebiscite of 1851
The Duke d'Aumale
Paul Déroulède
Raymond Poincaré
Colonel de La Rocque
Jacques Doriot
Charles Maurras
Paul Reynaud
Antoine Pinay
Charles de Gaulle
Author's Preface to the
Third French Edition
In the old days authors added to each new edition of
their books a preface which celebrated the reception that
had greeted the earlier edition and once again stated the
reasons behind their enterprise. As the most recent of
these prefaces did not replace its predecessors, one could
follow in them the successive strata of the work. If we
think it justifiable to do somewhat the same, it is not to
revive a traditional usage but to continue a dialogue with
the course of events that any work begins when it attempts
to explain the contemporary world. In the five years since
the preceding French edition, men, issues, and the rela-
tionships among political forces have changed, some
slightly, others greatly. The reasons which in 1963 re-
quired a revision of the original 1954 edition—the prog-
ress of research and the changes in the political situa-
tion—again press for another revision on a number of
points. And there are other reasons which may lead to
some further considerations on the object of our study.
The progress of research can be measured by the num-
ber of additions that we have had to insert in the bibliog-
raphy: after five years some 60 additional titles, even
though we have not attempted to be exhaustive. These
concern material in the chapters dealing with the earliest
periods as well as very recent times, and foreign his-
torians have contributed as much as Frenchmen. For the
contemporary period, this growth of information reflects
the stimulation given to such studies by the National
Foundation for Political Science in Paris.
9
IO THE RIGHT WING IN FRANCE
But the development of research cannot be measured
by a quantitative increase alone. There has also been a
widening of the field of observation by the use of new
methods, and a deepening by the employment of investi-
gative procedures which only recently have been used in
analyzing political ideologies and traditions. Without en-
tirely superseding the contributions of the traditional
academic disciplines, the application of the methods of
inquiry worked out by social psychology to the study of
political opinions and behavior illuminates a whole area
of reality, teaches us much more about the real content of
opinions, and reveals an aspect of motivations which
strongly affects fundamental choices. Here and there in
the course of this book one may notice some examples of
the sort of contributions that the study of ideologies may
derive from such new methods. Perhaps the use of these
procedures will enable us in part to overcome the logical
obstacle, as yet insurmountable, that opposes to a strictly
objective investigation the prior need for both a prelim-
inary definition of the terms Right and Left, and the
collection of purely empirical data on the diversity of
opinions.
If the multiplication of research has enriched and some-
times altered our knowledge of some aspects of the sub-
ject, the latter has also changed somewhat. Such is one of
the risks of this sort of dialogue carried on with contem-
porary events. It makes any work that does not try to
evoke an entirely dead past a kind of serial story con-
tinued from installment to installment. When one declares
at the very beginning that there is a continuity between
yesterday and today, that relationships continue between
a past which remains alive and a present which is not an
absolutely new beginning, every event raises questions
about the explanatory schema. And in the last five years
