The King's Camelots, officially the National Federation of the King's Camelots () was a far-right youth organization of the French militant royalist and integralist movement Action Française active from 1908 to 1936. It is best known for taking part in many right-wing demonstrations in France in the 1920s and 1930s.
History
Genesis
In 1908, the Action française sought to equip itself with a youth militant organization. Commander Louis Cuignet prospected in the ranks of the army in search of a forceful leader. In the end he chose Maxime Real del Sarte, a student at the Beaux-Arts Academy, after his notorious performance in the Court of Cassation. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, the young Real del Sarte undertook to publicly insult the judges during a hearing presided over by the public prosecutor Alexis Ballot-Beaupré:
Created on 16 November 1908, the name "Camelots du Roi" first used in L'Action française daily newspaper to designate the newspaper sellers of the Gazette de France, L'Accord social and L'Action française. The name means "street-hawkers of the king" and does not refer to the legendary locale of Camelot. They were recruited on the one hand from the royalist group of the XVIIe district of Paris organized by Henry des Lyons to sell newspapers at church doors, and on the other hand from among the royalist workers and employees of L'Accord social of Firmin Bacconnier.
Few in number at the start, the first police reports mention about fifty members in January 1909. At the end of 1909, the police counted around 400.
On 21 November 1908, the Camelots du Roi disrupted a reading-tribute dedicated to Émile Zola at the Odéon.
During the winter of 1908 to 1909, the Camelots du Roi damaged or even destroyed statues erected in Paris or in the provinces representing Dreyfusards or Republicans.
The Camelots were the instrument of a policy of tumult on the part of Action Française. They were much more an armed force than a force of political proposal. The idea was to stir up trouble to remind public opinion of the royalist cause and thus bring in new recruits. The members of Les Camelots had great admiration for Charles Maurras as a writer and as a politician. He was their indisputable master, even if some gradually marginalized their position within Action Française, without however questioning their affiliation with this movement. The first president of the King's Camelots was named Maxime Real del Sarte, while Henry des Lyons was the national secretary. Marius Plateau, Lucien Lacour, Armand du Tertre, Lucien Martin, Léon Géraud, Jean Dorange were appointed delegates. The man who decided the relationship of the Camelots with the central organization of Action Française, as well as discipline, was Maurice Pujo.
Thalamas affair
In 1904, the history professor Amédée Thalamas enjoyed a small reputation for having relativized the political role of Joan of Arc during the Hundred Years War and questioned her virtue as well as the supernatural character of the virgin of Orleans. He had received a reprimand from the Minister of Public Instruction. In November 1908, the Council of Professors of the Faculty of Letters, chaired by Dean Alfred Croiset, authorized Thalamas, who did not have the title of Doctor of Letters, to provide a free course once a week throughout the winter on history pedagogy. This course was divided into twelve small courses. Trained by Maxime Real del Sarte, the Camelots du Roi decide to interrupt the lesson given by the professor every Wednesday, even if it meant resorting to violence.
During the first lesson, on 2 December 1908, students and Camelots invaded the Michelet amphitheater and caused a hellish uproar. Maxime Real del Sarte grabbed Thalamas and slapped him. He fled. The young people left the room, spread out on the boulevard Saint-Michel, broke through the police roadblocks, crossed the Seine, and arrived at the statue of Joan of Arc, where they laid a wreath of flowers.
On 9 December, the royalists demonstrated more vigorously at the Sorbonne.
On 23 December, wanting to rehabilitate Joan of Arc, Maurice Pujo undertook to devote a free course to her in the middle of the Sorbonne, in the Guizot amphitheater. He traced in front of his listeners a historical picture, comparing the state of France in the 15th century with that of his time. He was wrapping up when a peace officer, followed by a Captain of the Guard and a line of soldiers, asked him to come out. The listeners dispersed without incident.
The first trial against a Camelot du Roi took place on 24 December: Serge Real del Sarte, a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was accused of "violence against an agent". The same day, a group of 500 demonstrators, led by his brother Maxime and the Camelots, headed for the Senate and invaded the courtyard of the palace to cries of "Down with the republic!" to make themselves known. The Camelots du Roi did not hesitate to be voluntarily arrested in order to appear in a public trial and to get press.
On 31 December, Maxime Real del Sarte was sentenced to fifteen days in prison for "insulting agents".
On 16 February 1909, the professor was spanked in the middle of class, which became a "true feat of arms for the Camelots du Roi".
The campaign against Thalamas lasted three months, with numerous arrests for insults and violence against agents: in addition to those of Maurice Pujo and Maxime Real del Sarte, his brother Yves, Henry des Lyons, Marius Plateau, Georges Bernanos and dozens of anonymous Camelots du Roi were arrested, then released after spending a fortnight in prison.
The Thalamas affair aroused passionate reactions; the thalamist and anti-thalamist camps confronted each other again during the year 1909. The Republican Federation of Students of France, led by Edmond Bloch, tried to obstruct the Camelots du Roi. This episode is part of a period of "mythification" of Joan of Arc in French nationalist circles; it was one of the first feats of the Camelots du roi.
Recruited among the student population, they made the Latin Quarter 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 included popular figures such as Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, Théodore de Fallois, Armand du Tertre, Marius Plateau, Henri des Lyons and 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 count of Paris (1838–1894) and hence the Orleanist heir to the throne of France.
Exchanges with anarchists
In the 1910s, the Camelots du Roi briefly befriended the extreme left, in particular the anarcho-syndicalists. Activists from both sides sympathized in prison and discovered a common enemy: the Republic. For example, the Camelot du Roi Georges Bernanos was arrested on 14 January, 8 February and 10 March 1909. During his last arrest, he was sentenced to 10 days in prison and a 25-franc fine. He recounted his incarceration and his fraternization with revolutionary militants:
There were all the same some hitches between the Camelots du Roi and anarchists, as illustrated by the testimony of the Camelot du Roi Georges Moyrizot, which nuances this prison friendship:
This relationship deepened in the Cercle Proudhon supported by Henri Lagrange, but the urgency of the war quickly put an end to this rapprochement.
1910 floods
During the 1910 Seine flood, the Camelots du Roi helped the victims in various ways: soup kitchens, distribution of coal and clothing, ferries to cross or bring the victims to safety, collection of donations. The Camelots du Roi imagine themselves "in the most working-class neighborhoods, in the reddest suburbs of the outskirts with a certain guts, sometimes expelled by a stubborn police commissioner, as in Javel, or by a mayor [...] like in Issy-les-Moulineaux ». In the suburbs of Issy-les-Moulineaux, the Action Française soup kitchen provided a thousand meals a day and the Camelots du Roi provided regular assistance to 172 families for a total of 882 people. Maurice Pujo gives an account of these events in the Almanach de l'Action française of 1911.
From February 17 to April 20 in Vigneux, the Camelots du Roi build and furnish twenty-five barracks for workers, with the help of the Marquise de Mac Mahon and the Association of Young Royalist Girls.
Previously, Action française had financed barracks to rehouse the victims of the earthquake of June 11, 1909 in the South of France.
The coup of Lucien Lacour On the night of November 19 to 20, 1910, Camelots plastered the walls of Brest with a poster entitled Les Gloires de la République, which depicted a fat Jewish woman — wearing a Phrygian cap and Masonic garb, and attacked with virulence the Chairman of the Board Aristide Briand and Joseph Reinach nicknamed "Reinach Boule-de-Juif" (stings about his overweight, in reference to a short story by Maupassant titled Boule de Suif). The next day, Lucien Lacour managed to slap Briand twice, shouting:
Letter from Lucien Lacour dated 21 November 1910.
On 6 December 1910, Lucien Lacour was sentenced to three years in prison. He was finally released on 16 January 1912 after 422 days in prison. On 23 April 1912, the Camelots of King Henri Bourgoin and Norbert Pinochet freed Gabriel de Baleine, another imprisoned activist. They phone the director of the Central House of Clairvaux pretending to be the President of the Council. The stratagem will inspire telephonist Charlotte Montard a few years later.
Protests at Comédie-Française
In February 1911, Henry Bernstein presented his play Après moi at the Comédie-Française. As soon as the first performance was announced, the Camelots du Roi put up posters reproducing a letter in which Henry Bernstein boasted of having deserted During the second performance on 21 February 1911, Maurice Pujo and several Camelots du Roi were arrested while heckling the play. Each performance gives rise to demonstrations of Action Française. On 3 March, the play is deprogrammed. On 4 March, Maurice Pujo was sentenced to one month in prison and a 25 franc penalty, César Berthollet to eight days and 16 franc, while the other Camelots du Roi received suspended prison sentences and a few francs penalty.
On 22 June 1911, Henry Bernstein feeling offended by an article by Léon Daudet, the two men faced off in a duel. On 26 July 1911, a second duel pitted Maurice Pujo against Henry Bernstein.
The Three Year Law In 1913, faced with the threat of an armed conflict with the German Empire, Action Française decided to support the extension of the duration of military service under the Three Year Law. The Camelots du Roi clashed with left-wing activists who were unfavorable to this measure and more inclined to improving relations with the German Empire and to the military training of reservists. The Camelots du Roi and the leaguers take part in numerous contradictory conferences as well as demonstrations in several cities: Bordeaux, Nice, Toul, Epinal, Toulouse, Limoges, Dijon, Orléans, Lille, Lyon, Rennes.
The law was finally adopted on 7 August 1913. Charles Maurras boasted that the President of the Council Louis Barthou had complimented Action française: "It would not have been possible without the Camelots du Roi". A probably apocryphal quote.
However, the merit of the promulgation of this law does not belong solely to the Camelots du Roi. The historian Rosemonde Sanson recalls that "the press campaigns carried out by groups of moderate republicans, the creation a little later of the Federation of the Lefts on the eve of the legislative elections of 1914 had, without a doubt, a greater repercussion".
During the Great War