The Day France Finally Lost The Monarchy

How one man’s intransigence derailed France’s royalty forever

There was little left to do: agree a flag, formalize the constitution, and the upheaval of the French Revolution would slide into the past, replaced by a renewed and revitalized parliamentary monarchy.

And yet, France still managed to mess it up.

By the early 1870s, France was in a shambles. It had just lost the Franco-Prussian War, the Second Empire had collapsed, Alsace-Lorraine had been annexed by Germany and the country was exhausted. After nearly a century of upheaval, France had become a Republic (of sorts), at least for now. But a large majority of deputies in the National Assembly were still monarchists of one stripe or another, and the idea of bringing back a king wasn’t all that farfetched.

The final heir

Royalist hopes centered around a single man whom the various factions had managed to support: Henri d’Artois, Count of Chambord, the last male descendant of France’s former royal family.

Baptism of Henri, duc de Bordeaux (later Comte de Chambord). He was the great-nephew of King Louis XVIII and third in line to the French throne at birth. ©Musée Carnavalet

Henri was anything but a revolutionary, quite the opposite. Born in 1820, he embodied the most traditional traits of a French king: Catholic, hereditary, divinely sanctioned – and famously unwilling to budge. The royalists considered him the legitimate heir, and moderates felt he was acceptable, as long as there were limits to his power.

A young Henri d’Artois, inspecting soldiers of the Royal Guard

By 1871, those limits had mostly been negotiated. France would be a constitutional monarchy, English-style, governed by a Parliament, with the king at its head, his powers checked by an assembly. France was so fragile at the time that even republicans considered this compromise tolerable.

A royal restoration actually made sense at this point, especially since most members of the National Assembly agreed to restore the king, as long as he reigned constitutionally. It was all meant to be provisional anyway, with one faction ceding to another upon Henri’s death. As for the republicans, they were mostly resigned to any solution that would pull them out of a political impasse caused by defeat and collapse. The arrangement was fragile, but it was concrete, and France was closer to restoring a monarchy in the early 1870s than it had been at any point since the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in the July Revolution of 1830.

So yes, the stage was set.

And then the flag happened.

One condition too many

Since the Revolution of 1789, France had used the tricolor flag: blue, white, and red, both during times of republic and empire. By the 1870s, it was no longer a revolutionary banner so much as a national one.

Henri , however, would have none of it.

He insisted that France revert to the white Bourbon flag, the banner of the old monarchy. This wasn’t about cosmetics – it was basic, philosophical even. Accepting the tricolor meant accepting the Revolution, and that is something he was not prepared to do.

One of the many versions of the white flag which symbolized the French monarchy. Some had more fleurs de lys, some fewer, some none.

His supporters were appalled and begged him to compromise, but on this he stood firm. He even put his refusal in writing. In a public letter on 5 July 1871, Henri declared that he could not abandon the white flag, calling it inseparable from the principles of monarchy and legitimacy. Any compromise, he argued, would make his reign meaningless before it began.

Plaque at the château de Chambord of the "declaration of the white flag" by Henri, Count of Chambord. Photo: Carcharoth (Commons), CC BY-SA 3.0

And that was the beginning of the end. Monarchists split into those who accepted or rejected the tricolor, and royalist allies began to drift away. Slowly, momentum for a restoration stalled and the notion of a parliamentary monarchy crumbled. A mish-mash of measures was enacted and slowly, a republic took shape, one that was relatively unplanned.

As for Henri, he lived until 1883 and when he died, the senior Bourbon line ended.

France would never seriously attempt a royal restoration again.

🧲 France’s ruling families: why bloodlines matter

The Bourbons had ruled France, on and off, since the late 16th century. Their predecessors, the Capetians, had produced French kings since the Middle Ages.

Henri d’Artois was born in Paris in 1820 under extraordinary circumstances. His father, the duc de Berry, had been assassinated just months earlier, making Henri the last direct male heir of the senior Bourbon line. His supporters became known as the Legitimists.

France, however, no longer treated kingship as automatic. When Henri’s grandfather Charles X was overthrown in the July Revolution of 1830, the monarchy was not abolished. Instead, Parliament chose a different king, Louis-Philippe, from another branch of the family – one willing to accept constitutional limits. Henri was not rejected because of his lineage, but because France had moved away from the kind of monarchy he represented.

For the Legitimists, none of this changed the essential point. Revolutions, parliaments, and regime changes did not break a bloodline. In their eyes, Henri remained the legitimate king, simply waiting for France to recognize him.

That unresolved split is what made a restoration possible decades later – until the flag undid it all.

A monarchy quietly ends

When France lost its monarchy in 1873, it was the final blow in a process that had stalled two years earlier, in large part because one man would not yield on a principle most of the country had already moved past.

What became known as the Third Republic went on to become France’s longest-lasting regime since the Middle Ages, shaping institutions that still define the country today, from compulsory secular education to the 1905 separation of church and state.

Things could have gone very differently, and monarchists will forever bear the burden of having snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

From the travel blog

Visiting Chambord Castle, France’s Most Ambitious Renaissance Château

If you’re planning a trip to France, visit my travel blog at OffbeatFrance.com and explore France’s lesser known corners – without skipping the places you’ve always dreamed of seeing, of course. Practical, curious, and a little unexpected.

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Further reading

• Christopher Andrew, The French Third Republic: A Political History (1981)

• Philip Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution 1852–1871 (2001)

• Comte de Chambord, Mes Idées (1871)(in French) Available online

• Assemblée Nationale (in French)

• Comte de Chambord (in French)

• Chateau de Chambord (Encyclopedia Britannica)