Liberal Union
The chair committee of the Liberal Union was headed by Henri Barboux and composed of prominent personalities including Léon Say, Émile de Marcère, Georges Picot and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. The party was also financed by the Duke of Aumale, the Orléanist pretender to the throne. Thanks to the downfall of General Boulanger, accused of conspiracy against the Republic, the moderate republicans won the 1889 legislative election by a landslide and the Liberal Union gained six seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The members of the Liberal Union in the Parliament called themselves Progressives, joining the Moderates in the Republican Concentration. However, in the legislative elections of 1893 many Catholics left the Liberal Union for the new Rallies movement characterized by its political Catholicism and allied with the monarchists. Rejecting monarchism, the Liberal Union added the appeal Republican to its name in opposition to the Liberal Union of the Rights of the conservative monarchists.