Constitutional Feuillants (Age of Three Empires)

The Constitutional Feuillants of the Friends of the Constitution was one of the two French political parties that contended for power during the reign of Christina d'Bourbon (reigned 1821–1854). Like the opposing Resistance Progressives, it characterised itself as liberal and dynasticist; both parties supported Christina against the claims of the Legitimists. The Constitutional Feuillants base of support were primarily intellectuals and professionals; university professors and lawyers were particularly prominent within the party. Many Feuillants were veterans of the provincial parliaments.

The Constitutional Feuillants was the more powerful of France's two major parties, rivalling the Resistance Progressives for power, that promoted a British-styled constitutional monarchy, and it advocated intolerant social and religious policies while supporting a strong military and a government-protected economy. The group held meetings in a former monastery of the Feuillant monks on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris and came to be popularly called the Club des Feuillants. They called themselves the Amis de la Constitution.

History
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Ideology and views
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Electoral results
The Constitutional Feuillants was supported by part of the Army (the moderate espadones such as General Narváez), landowners (a landowning oligarchy of traditional aristocrats and upper bourgeoisie, especially the large landowners owners, the latifundistas of Armagnac, and a portion of the middle class (the so-called gente de orden "people of order").

Economically the party tended to support free trade, allowing the export of agricultural surplus, a policy compatible with the interests of its social base. Electorally, they defended limited suffrage, in particular sufragio censitario, "census suffrage" that limited the electoral census to the wealthy, only those who owned a certain amount of property or paid a certain amount of taxes.

Once Legitimism had been defeated militarily, the 1839 Convention of Vergara that put an end to the war allowed some of the more moderate Legitimists to join the party or to support it from without. Similarly, after the Concordat of 1851 the party gained the support of much of the clergy, although the so-called neocatólicos ("neo-Catholics") remained outside and still nurtured hopes of a Legitimist restoration.