LEGITIMISM. - It is the theory postulated at the time of the Restoration concerning the ethical-legal obligation to restore the Bourbons to the throne of France and the other ex-sovereigns to their thrones after the collapse of “the usurper” Napoleon.
In the diplomatic field the principle of l. did not progress beyond an empirical stage, hence the lament of Talleyrand: “la forte mysteriose de la légitimité se perd parce qu’elle n’a jamais été comprise. Tous les hommes de révolution la réduisent à être un moyen de conservatori pour la puissance des rois, tandis que c’est surtout un élément nécessaire de repos et de bonheur pour les peuples, tandis que c’est la garantie la plus solide et, j’oserais dire, la seule de l’existence des nations et de leur durée” (G. Lacour-Gayet, Talleyrand, III, Paris 1932, pp. 107-108). The principle of l. served in France as a method of alliance between State and Church against the aftermath of Jacobin revolutionary fervour.
But l. did not remain confined to a tactical plane; it became, for example in Italy, a veritable ideal. For Cesare Balbo the principle of l. represents justice in the face of force, legality in the face of arbitrariness, positing the principle of l. against Jacobin abstractionism, a substantial political historicism. The legitimist principle was also theorised on an economic-social plane by Antonio Rosmini, who defended a concept of patrimonial legitimacy precisely because property is the criterion of l. Those who upheld the Bourbons against Louis-Philippe of Orléans in France, or analogous situations in other countries and at other times, were later called legitimists.