sb. [f. Bourbon l’Archambault, a town in the department of l’Allier, France.]
1. A member of the family which long held the thrones of France and Naples, and still holds that of Spain: also fig. as in quot. 1873, and attrib.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ. (1775), I. 5. No—said I—the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race.
1873. Tristram, Moab, xiv. 254. Muleteers are certainly typical Bourbons, They learn nothing and they forget nothing.
2. transf. In U.S. politics: A nickname for ‘a Democrat behind the age and unteachable.’
1884. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 29 Nov., 2/4. The Herald wants the Bourbons, ‘the men who still swear by Andrew Jackson,’ sent to the rear. Ibid., 20 Sept. That chief of Bourbon organs, the Charleston (S. C.) News.
3. The former name of the island now called Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, so named in 1642 in honor of the French royal family; whence Bourbon Palm, a common name of the genus Latania, found in Réunion and Mauritius.
Hence [from sense 1] Bourbonian, Bourbonic adjs., of or pertaining to the Bourbons; Bourbonization, reduction under Bourbon predominance; Bourbonism, adhesion to the Bourbon dynasty, or to the Bourbon party in U.S. politics; Bourbonist, a supporter of the Bourbon dynasty.
1651. Howell, Venice, 177*. This present Pope Innocent the tenth is as much an Austrian as the other was a Bourbonian.
1728. Morgan, Hist. Algiers, II. iv. 271. The Burbonian and Austrian Factions.
1883. L. Figuerola, Pol. Cond. Spain, in Fortn. Rev., Nov., 701. The Spaniards believed in good faith that the re-conquest of their rights was closely united with the upholding of the first Bourbonic branch.
1886. Seeley, in Academy, 6 Feb., 93/3. The ‘bourbonisation’ of the Continent.
1884. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 18 Sept. The spirit of pro-slavery Bourbonism.
1820. Edin. Rev., XXXIV. 3. Our travellers … occasionally take part with … Bourbonists.
1862. Standard, 13 Dec., 5/5. The Bourbonists were mostly mounted, and carried a white banner with a fleur de lys, and the words, ‘Viva Francesco Secondo.’
