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a political principle advanced by the French diplomat Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 to justify and defend the territorial interests of France and, in particular, to preserve the borders existing on Jan. 1, 1792, and prevent Prussian expansion.

According to the principle of legitimism, no one has the right to dispose of a crown or territory until its legitimate owner has formally relinquished his right to it. The possessions taken away from their “legal” sovereign must be returned to him. According to Talleyrand, Europe needed to banish forever any possibility of acquiring the right to a territory by a sheer conquest and to restore the sacred principle of legitimism, which ensures order and stability. The principle of legitimism was not adopted by the Congress of Vienna because it contradicted the annexation plans of tsarist Russia and of Prussia.

The term “legitimism” is also used in another sense: the loyalty to the “legal” (legitimate) dynasty of the Bourbons in France. This term arose after the July Revolution of 1830, which brought Louis Philippe of Orléans to the French throne. In a more general sense, any supporter of an overthrown monarchy is called a legitimist.

References in periodicals archive ?
Joseph Daime was editor of the legitimist L'Aigle, and Clovis Hugues was editor of La Jeune Republique.
(61) Prophecies about the 'Great Monarch' and of France's unique role in salvation history became extremely popular amongst various legitimist groups which emerged over the course of the nineteenth century and remained alive well into the twentieth century in a dwindling right-wing royalist subculture associated with figures like the Breton stigmatist Marie-Julie Jahenny (1850-1941) and her great promoter, the self-proclaimed Marquis de La Franquerie (1901-1992).
A living anachronism, Carlism had sought to place on the Spanish throne a king who would rule according to Christ's teachings, after purging the country of Jacobin politicians and their corrupt clients--such was the "legitimist" view conveyed by the gentry and clergy we meet in Cruzados.
This realization had set in by the late 19th century, when Church leaders came to see the defense of the confessional state by legitimist ultramontanes as a political dead end but recognized the elevation of the papacy by spiritual ultramontanes as an effective defense of Catholic liberties against attacks by anticlerical liberals.
On the other hand, Keller's popularity in the "cour citoyenne" (722) of Louis-Philippe subtly offers Keller as an embodiment, in his mixedness, of a July Monarchy denounced by the legitimist Balzac for what he considered its unholy fusion of bourgeoisie and aristocracy.
Historians also recall the Comte de Chambord, the legitimist Bourbon 'Pretender who turned down the possibility of being called to the French throne in the 1870s because he would not accept the republican tricolour as his flag.
(Le Figaro: "The Estates General, deadlocked among the Legitimist, Orleanist, and Bonapartist candidates, today offered the throne of France to Prince Louis Napoleon of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha ...")
In the same month as the Royal Academy exhibition opened an article by the Marquis de Ruvigny and Raineval in The Albermarle declared the arrival of 'The New Jacobitism', the manifesto of the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland whose purpose was
Thus Vestnik Evropy published the opinion of Louis de Bonald, otherwise a leading legitimist writer, about the illegitimacy of the Ottoman Empire in Europe.
Napier later 'returned' to Scotland, where he organised the Scottish 1897 jubilee petition to Queen Victoria and became a leader of the Jacobite nationalists as secretary of the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland.
The point about Mary's accession in 1553 was that she came to the crown on a legitimist ticket, in other words, on the basis of her descent in blood from Henry VIII.
The resources at the disposal of the Peruvian viceroy not only proved capable of quelling outbreaks in Lima's Andean hinterland but also (as in 1809) effectively defended the legitimist cause in neighboring colonies.