Wine, friends and royalist popular politics: legitimist associations in mid-nineteenth-century France

Legitimism in nineteenth-century France did not simply take the form of a movement that sought to advance the cause of the Bourbons through associations and social activity. In the middle years of the century, it engaged with the new force of universal suffrage and attempted to harness elections for the creation of new political activities. Democracy could be experimented with for reactionary aims. In this case-study of royalist associations in Montpellier, the activities of legitimist politicians are shown to have evolved, from an important but little-known phase of engagement with democratic politics, to a retreat, later in the Third Republic, into social activism.