François-René was born on April 1, 1834, in Arrancy, Aisne, Picardy Region, France ‘’’’. He was the eldest son of Humbert de La Tour du Pin, Marquis de La Charce, and Charlotte Alexandrine de Maussion. François-René was a descendant from an old noble dauphinoise family, Catholic, and royalist. In 1892, he married his cousin, Marie Séraphine de La Tour du Pin Montauban. The marriage never produced any children.
In 1877, François-René was appointed military attaché in Austria-Hungary. In Vienna, he was influenced by the Austrian Social Catholicism. While in Frohsdorf, he met exiled Henri, Count of Chambord, the Legitimistpretender to the French throne. In 1881, he resigned from the army and retired to Arrancy, where he became mayor. In 1883, Henri's death left the Legitimist line of succession distinctly confused. On one hand, Henri himself had accepted that the head of the Maison de France would be the head of the Orléans line,. This was accepted by many Legitimists, and was the default on legal grounds; the only surviving Bourbon line more senior was the Spanish branch, which had renounced its right to inherit the throne of France as a condition of the Treaty of Utrecht. However, many if not most of Henri's supporters, including his widow, chose to disregard his statements and this law, arguing that no one had the right to deny to the senior direct-male-line male Bourbon to be the head of the Maison de France and thus the legitimate King of France; the renunciation of the Spanish branch is under this interpretation illegitimate and therefore void. Thus these Legitimists settled on Juan, Count of Montizón, the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, as their claimant to the French crown. François-René, along with other supporters of the Count of Chambord, prevented, Philippe d’Orleans, from claiming the French Crown. In early 1885, while passing through Rome, François-René was received by Pope Leo XIII to discuss Social Catholicism. In 1891, unlike Albert de Mun, he prevented French Catholics from rallying against the Third Republic. Hubert Lyautey, the futureMarshal of France, published The Social Role of the Officer, which largely inspired these rallying Catholics, however, François-René remained faithful to his monarchists beliefs. In 1892, he met a young Charles Maurras and they began correspondence with each other, that lasted until his death. Once the Action Française was founded in 1899, François-René assisted the movement and published three articles in the journal of the same name: "the nobility", "the professional representation", and "territorial organization of France". In 1907, he published ‘‘"Towards a Christian Social Order"’’. François René de La Tour du Pin Chambly, Marquis de la Charce, died in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 4, 1924, at 90 years of age.
Published works
Towards a Christian social order - Milestones road 1882-1907, Paris, New National Library, undated, size 8vo, xii + 514 pages. This is a collection of articles published between 1882 and circumstance 1907 in various journals, mainly the Catholic Revival and French.
