Camelots du Roy
Encyclopedia
The Camelots du Roi were the youth organization of the Royalist
Monarchism
Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government out of principle, independent from the person, the Monarch.In this system, the Monarch may be the...

 Action française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...

French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 integralist
Integralism
Integralism, or Integral nationalism, is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups...

 movement. Created on 16 November 1908, it was closely influenced by Charles Maurras
Charles Maurras
Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...

' integralism
Integralism
Integralism, or Integral nationalism, is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups...

 doctrine of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

, and was quite popular between the two World Wars. The name of the group means "street-hawkers of the king" and does not refer to Camelot
Camelot
Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world...

; in fact, the e, t, and s of the name are silent.

The Camelots du Roi were initially charged of selling in the street the Action française newspaper, founded by Henri Vaugeois
Henri Vaugeois
Henri Vaugeois was a French far right politician and one of the founders of Action Française.Born in L'Aigle, Orne, Vaugeois settled in Coulommiers where he taught philosophy. Initially a republican liberal, Vaugeois even flirted with Marxism in his youth...

 and Maurice Pujo
Maurice Pujo
Maurice Pujo was a French journalist and co-founder, with Henri Vaugeois in 1898, of the Comité d'Action Française, which subsequently became the nationalist and monarchist Action Française movement.His son, Pierre Pujo led Action Française until his death on 10 November 2007....

. Recruited among the student population, they made Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

's Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band* Latin Quarter , a 1945 British film*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...

 their fief. The Camelots were involved in many brawls and street-fights against left wing organizations or competing far right organizations. They were originally directed by Maxime Real del Sarte, president of the National Federation of the Camelots du Roy. This royalist youth organization has included popular figures such as Catholic writer Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...

, Théodore de Fallois, Armand du Tertre, Marius Plateau, Henri des Lyons or Jean de Barrau, member of the directing committee of the National Federation, and particular secretary of the duke of Orléans (1869–1926), the son of the Orleanist
Orléanist
The Orléanists were a French right-wing/center-right party which arose out of the French Revolution. It governed France 1830-1848 in the "July Monarchy" of king Louis Philippe. It is generally seen as a transitional period dominated by the bourgeoisie and the conservative Orleanist doctrine in...

 count of Paris
Philippe, Comte de Paris
Philippe d'Orléans, Count of Paris was the grandson of Louis Philippe I, King of the French. He was a claimant to the French throne from 1848 until his death.-Early life:...

 (1838–1894) and hence Orleanist heir to the throne of France.

The Camelots organized riots against Amédée Thalamas' lessons, accused of having "insulted Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

" (1908); Lucien Lacour, a young Camelot, gave a memorable smack to the president of the Council Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...

; riots against a representation by Henri Bernstein
Henri Bernstein
Henri-Léon-Gustave-Charles Bernstein was a French playwright associated with Boulevard theatre.The far-right royalist Camelots du Roi youth organization of the Action française organized an anti-Semitic riot against a production of one of his plays in 1911...

, a Jew whom they accused of having deserted during his military service (1911); and riots against the transfer to the Panthéon
Pantheon
-Mythology:* Pantheon , the set of gods belonging to a particular mythology* Pantheon * Pantheon, Rome, now a Catholic church, once a temple to the gods of ancient Rome* Any temple dedicated to an entire pantheon-Other buildings:...

 of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

's ashes (1912).

Presenting a young and rebellious aspect, the Camelots du Roi recruited well beyond monarchist circles, while their violence and tendency to become involved for street brawls attracted disapproval from reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...

 royalist circles, including from the duc d'Orléans. The Camelots took an active part in the 6 February 1934 riots which overthrew the second Cartel des gauches
Cartel des Gauches
The Cartel des gauches was the name of the governmental alliance between the Radical-Socialist Party and the socialist French Section of the Workers' International after World War I , which lasted until the end of the Popular Front . The Cartel des gauches twice won general elections, in 1924 and...

, and were dissolved along with other far right leagues
Far right leagues
The Far right leagues were several French far right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties...

 on 18 January 1936.

Oath

Members of the organisation were required to take the following oath:

External links

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