WI: Bourbon Restoration after Franco-Prussian War

What would be the repercussion if the republic established in 1871 was in fact a mere transitional government and the Bourbons were restored to the throne of France?
 
There was a very narrow window where you had a constitutional monarchist majority in the Assembly but the problem was it was split between Legitimists and Orléanists. The Orléanists were willing to compromise and support the Henri, Comte de Chambord (the Legitimist pretender) as King as he was childless and his dynastic heir was the Philippe, Comte de Paris the Orléanists candidate. The problem was that Henri was completely unwilling to compromise on the "divine right" and seems to have genuinely believed that France would be forced by God to come crawling on its knees to him and restore him as absolute Monarch. Essentially he was Charles I of England in 1870.

So while you could get a restoration it needs Henri to die.
 
Or... just have him have some sense of realpolitik and be less idealistic. I don't mean to change his character altogether, I can't say how determined was he to outright refuse any kind of compromise... couldn't someone in his circle make him see that was the best window the monarchy would ever get? That refusing on principle the tricoleur would leave France with the tricoleur and a republican regime?

Because if he just dies, several legitimists will still flock to the view that the count of Chambord's successors are the Spanish Bourbons and not the Orléans. No united monarchical front there.
 
Or... just have him have some sense of realpolitik and be less idealistic. I don't mean to change his character altogether, I can't say how determined was he to outright refuse any kind of compromise... couldn't someone in his circle make him see that was the best window the monarchy would ever get? That refusing on principle the tricoleur would leave France with the tricoleur and a republican regime?

Henri was a Bourbon and with that he inherited a good dose of stubbornness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he would need a vastly different upbringing to let him agree that constitutional monarchy = good. One of his earliest indoctrinators in this regard was Marie Thérèse de France, the former Madame Royal, daughter of the beheaded Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I think it was Chateaubriand who originally made an offer of educating him as a monarch for the 19th century, and while the duchesse de Berri (his mom) agreed, she didn't really have much clout with anyone really after the secret of her second marriage came out. So, he was entrusted to the guardianship of Marie Thérèse Charlotte who proceeded to give him Jesuit tutors (and absolutism ahoy!).

Also, even if Chambord/Bordeaux dies, Spain's got enough problems of their own with their own monarchy that I doubt anyone in France (except your archconservatives) are gonna take it seriously. It'll be like the scene in Ever After where the king and queen of France look at the king and queen of Spain bickering at the failed wedding of their children, and King Francis turns to his wife and says "And I thought I had problems".

A Spanish Borbon capable of ruling France doesn't exist at that point - at least not high in the succession: Alfonso XII and the duke of Seville being after the "pro-Absolutist, ultramontane" D. Carlos.

So, easiest way would be to kill Chambord/Bordeaux and let the Comte de Paris succeed as King Philippe VIII (for the "conservatives") or Louis Philippe II (for the "liberals").
 
Or... just have him have some sense of realpolitik and be less idealistic. I don't mean to change his character altogether, I can't say how determined was he to outright refuse any kind of compromise... couldn't someone in his circle make him see that was the best window the monarchy would ever get? That refusing on principle the tricoleur would leave France with the tricoleur and a republican regime?

Because if he just dies, several legitimists will still flock to the view that the count of Chambord's successors are the Spanish Bourbons and not the Orléans. No united monarchical front there.
We could have the Bourbon-Parmas gain the French throne..the eldest branch of the Spanish Bourbons have a doubtful parentage.
 
he would need a vastly different upbringing to let him agree that constitutional monarchy = good.
The point was "constitutional monarchy = bad, yet better than a republic".

Also, even if Chambord/Bordeaux dies, Spain's got enough problems of their own with their own monarchy that I doubt anyone in France (except your archconservatives) are gonna take it seriously. It'll be like the scene in Ever After where the king and queen of France look at the king and queen of Spain bickering at the failed wedding of their children, and King Francis turns to his wife and says "And I thought I had problems".

A Spanish Borbon capable of ruling France doesn't exist at that point - at least not high in the succession: Alfonso XII and the duke of Seville being after the "pro-Absolutist, ultramontane" D. Carlos.
But those Spanish Bourbons were kind of unemployed by then :)
 
We could have the Bourbon-Parmas gain the French throne..the eldest branch of the Spanish Bourbons have a doubtful parentage.
You probably mean the present senior male-line bourbons who descend from Isabel II and, allegedly, not from her husband.
At the time, there was the original more senior Carlist line that hadn't yet died out.
 
You probably mean the present senior male-line bourbons who descend from Isabel II and, allegedly, not from her husband.
At the time, there was the original more senior Carlist line that hadn't yet died out.
Yeah, perhaps we could give them France...:Dand allow Spain to pass via female line.
 
Yeah, perhaps we could give them France...:Dand allow Spain to pass via female line.

So - besides D. Juan "III", Conde de Montizon, who was shockingly liberal by comparison to his immediate relatives - you would give France a king who's likely even more hardheaded, more Catholic, more royalist, more absolutist than Chambord?
 
The Spanish Bourbons have got no chance. The Orleanists probably outnumbered the Legitimists (though they needed the Legitimists to outnumber the Republicans) and in the absence of Chambord most Legitimists as in OTL will follow the line of succession and support Phillippe. A hardcore of nutters might look to Spain but it's a tiny minority.
 
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