Robert R. Locke

2420 French Legitimists and the Politics of Moral Order in the Early Third Republic, by Robert R. Locke (read 11 Nov 1991) The author did a lot of work in France on the legitimists--mostly supporters of a Bourbon restoration in the 1870's--and comes to some reasonable conclusions as to why they thought as they did and why they did not succeed. The last sentence: "What made the legitimists anachronisms in their society was not so much that they believed in a moral order but the specific moral show more order in which they believed." One must agree--hitching the welfare of the Church to a restoration of the Bourbon claimant was a mistake, and invited failure. The book was too detailed to be very interesting, and considered too narrow an aspect, but 19th century French history continues to intrigue me. show less