The Republican Federation (, FR) was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the progressive Orléanists rallied to the Republic. Founded in November 1903, the party competed with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique (Democratic Alliance). Later, most deputies of the Fédération républicaine and of Action libérale (which included Catholics rallied to the Republic) joined the Entente républicaine démocratique right-wing parliamentary group. From 1903 to World War I The Republican Federation was founded in November 1903 to gather the right-wing of the Moderate Republicans (also known as Opportunists) who opposed both Pierre Waldeck Rousseau's Bloc des gauches (Left-wing Block), his alliance with the Radical-Socialist Party and for some of them the defense of the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. These conservative Republicans were ideologically indebted to Jules Méline, Alexandre Ribot, Jean Casimir-Perier or Charles Dupuy. They represented the Republican bourgeoisie, closely connected to business circles and opposed to social reform. Furthermore, they were fond of a relative decentralisation, thus enrolling themselves in the legacy of the Girondins of the French Revolution. Just as the Democratic Republican Alliance, it was a party composed of notables, which rested upon local electoral committee, which merged in the National Assembly in one or several parliamentary groups. It never had many members (30,000 in 1926 and 18,000 in 1939). Interwar period After World War I, the Republican Federation participated during the 1919 legislative election within the Bloc national (National Block)'s electoral lists. The same year, the Action libérale populaire (Popular Liberal Action), an alliance of Catholics who had accepted the legality of the Republican regime, entered the Republican Federation by sitting within parliamentary grouping of the Entente républicaine démocratique (Arago group). The Republican Federation shifted more and more to the right during the interwar period and it is important to note that it cannot be simply labelled a Christian-democratic party (a label that is more rightly applied to the very small Popular Democratic Party). Its religious-right and ultranationalist wing were strengthened by the election victory of the centre-left in 1924 and the subsequent rise of the anti-parliamentary and nationalist leagues as well as by a generational shift in its leadership. At the same time, the party's smaller Christian-democratic and social Catholic left-wing received a boost from the arrival of the parliamentary Catholics of the Popular Liberal Action. However, the rift in political ethos was shown by the fact that these preferred