'Louis-Philippe I of France' (
6 October,
1773 –
26 August,
1850) was
King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the
July Monarchy. He was the last
king to rule
France.
Before the Revolution (1773–1789)
Louis-Philippe was born in
Paris to
Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Chartres (later
Duke of Orléans and also known as "''Philippe Égalité''") and
Louise Marie Adélaïde of
Bourbon-Penthièvre. He was the first of three sons and a daughter of the Orléans family, a family that was to have erratic fortunes for the next 60 years. The relationship between the
Orléans line and the
Bourbon elder line was linked through
Louis XIII. The elder line had a deep distrust of the intentions of the family which would succeed to the French throne should the Bourbons die out. Exiled from the royal court, the Orléans confined themselves to studies of the literature and sciences emerging from the Enlightenment.
Louis-Philippe was tutored by the
Countess of Genlis, beginning in
1782. Madame de Genlis instilled in him a fondness for liberal thought; it is probably during this period that Louis-Philippe picked up his slightly Voltairean brand of Catholicism. When Louis-Philippe's grandfather died in 1785, his father succeeded him as Duke of Orléans, and Louis-Philippe succeeded his father as Duke of Chartres.
In
1788, with the
Revolution looming, the young Louis-Philippe showed his liberal sympathies when he helped break down the door of a prison cell in
Mont Saint-Michel, during a visit there with Madame de Genlis. From October 1788 to October 1789 the ''
Palais-Royal'', the
Paris home of the Orléans family, was a meeting-place for the revolutionaries.
Silver five-franc coin featuring Louis Philippe from 1834. The obverse French inscription is ''LOUIS PHILIPPE I ROI DES FRANÇAIS'', or, in English, "Louis Philippe I, King of the French."
During the Revolution (1789–1793)
During the early stages of the Revolution, Louis-Philippe strongly supported the reformation of French society as a whole. However, his father Philippe's actions during the vote on the execution of
King Louis XVI changed the fortunes of the young Duke of Chartres and his family. As Philippe continued his support for the liberal factions of the Revolution, the royal family and the royal court became increasingly hostile towards the Orléans family. Dubbed "''Philippe Égalité''", he became an exemplar of liberal reform to the common people of Paris. Hundreds of medallions with Philippe's figure framed by the title 'Père du Peuple' (Father of the People) were minted and seen in the streets. But Philippe's actual position was weak, which became apparent as he was involved in several scandals in Paris. In October 1789, he went to England on the pretext of negotiating with the British government to set up an independent kingdom in the
Austrian Netherlands. He returned in July 1790. It is therefore easy to understand
Mirabeau's assessment of Philippe's political capacity: "if we need some sort of a puppet it might as well be that bastard as anyone else."
Louis-Philippe grew up in a period that changed Europe as a whole, and he involved himself completely in those changes (a trait of his which would remain when he became King). In his diary, he reports that he himself took the initiative to join the
Jacobin Club, a move that his father supported. In June 1791, Louis-Philippe got his first opportunity to become involved in the affairs of France. In 1785, he had been given the hereditary appointment of
Colonel of the 14th
Regiment of
Dragoons (''Chartres-Dragons''). With war on the horizon in 1791, all proprietary colonels were ordered to join their regiments. Louis-Philippe showed himself to be a model officer, and he demonstrated his personal bravery in two famous instances. First, three days after Louis XVI's
flight to Varennes, a quarrel between two local priests and one of the new "constitutional" vicars became heated, and a crowd surrounded the inn where the priests were staying, demanding blood. The young Colonel broke through the crowd and extricated the two priests, who then fled. At a river crossing on the same day, another crowd threatened to harm the priests. Louis-Philippe put himself between a peasant armed with a
carbine and the priests, saving their lives. The next day, Louis-Philippe dived into a river to save a drowning local engineer. For this action, he received a "
civic crown" from the local municipality. His regiment was moved north to
Flanders at the end of 1791 after the
declaration of Pillnitz.
Louis-Philippe served under his father's crony, the Duke of Biron, along with several officers who later gained distinction in Napoleon's Empire and afterwards. These included Colonel
Berthier and Lieutenant Colonel
Alexandre de Beauharnais (husband of the future
Empress Joséphine). Louis-Philippe saw the first exchanges of fire of the Revolutionary Wars at
Boussu and Quaragnon and a few days later fought at
Quiévrain near
Jemappes, where he was instrumental in rallying a unit of retreating soldiers. Biron wrote to War Minister
de Grave, praising the young colonel, who was then promoted to
brigadier, commanding a brigade of cavalry in Lückner's Army of the North.
In the Army of the North, Louis-Philippe served with four future Marshals of France:
Macdonald,
Mortier (who would later be killed in an assassination attempt on Louis-Philippe),
Davout, and
Oudinot.
Dumouriez was appointed to command the Army of the North in August 1792. Louis-Philippe commanded a division under him in the
Valmy campaign.
At Valmy, Louis-Philippe was ordered to place a battery of artillery on the crest of the hill of Valmy. The battle of Valmy was inconclusive, but the
Austrian-
Prussian army, short of supplies, was forced back across the
Rhine river. Once again, Louis-Philippe was praised in a letter by Dumouriez after the battle. Louis-Philippe was then recalled to Paris to give an account of the Battle at Valmy to the French government. There he had a rather trying interview with
Danton, Minister of Justice, which he later fondly re-told to his children. While in Paris, he was promoted to the rank of
lieutenant-general. In October he returned to the Army of the North, where Dumouriez had begun a march into
Belgium. Louis-Philippe again commanded a division. Dumouriez chose to attack an Austrian force in a strong position on the heights of Cuesmes and
Jemappes to the west of
Mons. Louis-Philippe's division sustained heavy casualties as it attacked through a wood, retreating in disorder. Louis-Philippe rallied a group of units, dubbing them "the battalion of Mons" and pushed forward along with other French units, finally overwhelming the outnumbered Austrians.
Events in Paris undermined the budding military career of Louis-Philippe. The incompetence of
Jean-Nicolas Pache, the new
Girondist appointee, left the Army of the North almost without supplies. Soon thousands of troops were deserting the army. Louis-Philippe was alienated by the more radical policies of the Republic, and he began to think of leaving France after the vote to execute
Louis XVI, in which his voted 'yes'. Dumouriez and Louis-Philippe met on
22 March,
1793 where Dumouriez urged his subordinate to join in his attempt to ally with the Austrians, march his army on Paris, and restore the Constitution of 1791.
Louis-Philippe was willing to stay in
France to fulfill his duties in the army. But he was implicated in Dumouriez's plot, and with the French government slowly falling into the
Terror, he decided to leave France to save his life,. On
4 April Dumouriez and Louis-Philippe left for the Austrian camp. They were intercepted by Lieutenant-Colonel
Davout, who had served at
Jemappes with Louis-Philippe. As Dumouriez ordered the Colonel back to the camp, some of his soldiers cried out against the General, now declared a traitor by the
National Convention. Shots rang out as they fled towards the Austrian camp. The next day, Dumouriez again tried to rally soldiers against the Convention; however, he found that the artillery had declared for the Republic, leaving him and Louis-Philippe with no choice but to go into exile. At the age of 19, Louis-Philippe left France; it was some 21 years before he again set foot on French soil.
Exile (1793–1815)
The reaction in
Paris to the involvement of Louis-Philippe in the treason of
Dumouriez inevitably resulted in misfortunes for the Orléans family. Philippe spoke in the
National Convention, condemning his son for his actions, asserting that he would not spare his son, much akin to the
Roman judge
Brutus and his sons. However, letters from Louis-Philippe to his father were discovered in transit and were read out to the
Convention. Philippe was then put under continuous surveillance. Shortly thereafter, the
Girondists moved to arrest Philippe and the two younger brothers of Louis-Philippe, the dukes of Beaujolais and Montpensier; the latter had been serving in Biron's Army of the North. The three were interned in Fort Saint-Jean.
While this was occurring, Louis-Philippe began a period in which he was forced to live in the shadows, avoiding both pro-Republican revolutionaries and
Legitimist French '' centers in various parts of Europe and also in the Austrian army. He first moved to
Switzerland under an assumed name, and met up with Madame de Genlis and his sister
Adélaïde at
Schaffhausen. From there they went to
Zürich, where the Swiss authorities decreed that to protect Swiss neutrality, Louis-Philippe would have to leave the city. They went to
Zug, where Louis-Philippe was discovered by a group of ''emigrés''. It became quite apparent that for the ladies to settle peacefully anywhere, they would have to separate from Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe then left with his faithful valet Baudoin for the heights of the
Alps, and then to
Basel, where he sold all but one of his horses. Now moving from town to town throughout Switzerland, he and Baudouin were found themselves very much exposed to all the distresses of extended travelling. They were refused entry to a
monastery by monks who believed them to be young vagabonds. Another time, he woke up after spending a night in a barn to find himself at the far end of a
musket, confronted by a man attempting to keep away thieves. Throughout this period, he never stayed in one place more than 48 hours. Finally, in October 1793, Louis-Philippe was appointed a teacher of
geography,
history,
mathematics, and modern languages at a boys' boarding school. The school, owned by a Monsieur Jost, was in Reichenau, a village on the upper Rhine, across from
Switzerland. His salary was 1,400 francs and he taught under the name "M. Chabos" . He had been at the school for a month when he heard the dreadful news from Paris.
His father was guillotined on
6 November 1793, after a sham trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. In Reichenau, Louis-Philippe was devastated. He felt in part responsible for his father's death because his letters to his father were the main incriminating evidence against him.
With the Revolution spiralling out of control, Louis-Philippe began to loathe his Jacobinical past. He found himself very much alone, with few friends to count on and great hostility in Europe toward the Orléans family. In early 1794, Louis-Philippe began to feel the need for companionship, courting Marianne Banzori, the cook of M. Jost, the Reichenau schoolmaster. After Louis-Philippe ended his academic career in late 1794, M. Jost discovered that Marianne was pregnant. Upset with Louis-Philippe, Jost sent Marianne to
Milan where the child was born in December 1794, and then placed in an orphanage.
After Louis-Philippe left Reichenau, he separated the now sixteen-year old Adélaïde from Madame de Genlis, who had fallen out with Louis-Philippe (now Duke of Orléans after the death of his father). Adélaïde went to live with her great-aunt the Princess of Conti at Fribourg, then to
Bavaria and finally to
Hungary. Later she went to her mother in
Spain.
Louis-Philippe travelled extensively. He visited
Scandinavia in
1795. For about a year, he stayed in
Muonio (Torne Valley), a remote town at the northern end of the
Gulf of Bothnia, living in the
rectory under the name Müller as a guest of the local
Lutheran priest. Here he met the priest's wife's sister, Beata Caisa Wahlbom, who was a housekeeper in the rectory. Not long after Louis-Philippe left Scandinavia, Beata Caisa Wahlbom gave birth to a son, whom she named Erik.
1835 cartoon by
Honoré Daumier: "Honest reward, decreed, in 1800, to Louis Philippe of Orleans, surgeon and immigrant, but always French, by the not very delicate savages of North America."
Louis-Philippe also visited the
United States for four years, staying in
Philadelphia,
New York City, and
Boston. In Boston, he taught French for a time and lived in lodgings over what is now the
Union Oyster House, Boston's oldest restaurant. During his time in the United States, Louis-Philippe met with American politicians and people of high society, including
Gearge Clinton,
John Jay,
Alexander Hamilton, and
President Washington. Washington is said to have had a good opinion of the exiled duke and his brothers. His visit to
Cape Cod in
1797 coincided with the division of the town of Eastham into two towns, one of which took the name of Orleans, possibly in his honour. During their sojourn, the Orléans princes travelled throughout the country, visiting as far south as
Nashville and as far north as
Maine. The brothers were even held in Philadelphia briefly during an outbreak of
yellow fever. He is also thought to have met
Isaac Snow of
Orleans, Massachusetts, who escaped to France from a British prison hulk during the
American Revolution. His sister Adélaïde married in the United States. In
1839, while reflecting on his visit to the United States, Louis-Philippe explained in a letter to
Guizot that his three years there had a large influence on his later political beliefs and judgements when he became king.
In Boston, Louis-Philippe learned of the
coup of 18 Fructidor (
4 September 1797) and the exile of his mother to Spain. He and his brothers then decided to return to Europe. They went to
New Orleans, planning to sail to
Havana and thence to Spain. This however was a troubled journey as Great Britain and Spain were then at war.
They sailed for Havana in an American corvette, but the ship was stopped in the
Gulf of Mexico by a British warship. The British seized the three brothers, but took them to Havana anyway. Unable to find passage to Europe, the three brothers spent a year in Cuba, until they were unexpectedly expelled by the Spanish authorities. They sailed via
the Bahamas to
Nova Scotia. There they were received by the
Duke of Kent, son of King
George III and later father of
Queen Victoria. Louis-Philippe struck up a lasting friendship with the British royal. Eventually, the brothers sailed back to New York, and in January
1800, they
arrived in England, where they stayed for the next fifteen years.
Restoration of the Bourbons (1815–1830)
After the abdication of Napoleon, and the
restoration of the monarchy under his cousin King
Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe returned to France. Louis-Philippe had reconciled the Orléans family with Louis XVIII in exile, and was once more to be found in the elaborate royal court. However, his resentment at the treatment of his family, the junior branch of the
House of Bourbon, under the
ancien régime caused friction between him and Louis XVIII. He openly sided with the
liberal opposition.
Louis-Philippe was on far friendlier terms with
Charles X, who succeeded Louis in
1824. Louis-Philippe dined and socialised often with him. However, his opposition to the policies of
Villèle and later
Jules de Polignac caused him to be a constant threat to the stability of Charles's government.
King of the French (1830–1848)
In
1830, the
July Revolution overthrew Charles X. Charles abdicated in favor of his 10-year-old grandson, the
Count of Chambord, whom monarchists regarded as the legitimate Bourbon king and called "Henry V". (Supporters of this grandson, the Bourbon
pretender, were called
Legitimists.) Due to Louis-Philippe's Republican policies and his popularity with the masses, the
Chamber of Deputies ignored the Legitimists, and passed over Chambord. Instead they proclaimed Louis-Philippe, who for eleven days had been acting as
regent, as the new French king. The new monarch took the
style of "King of the French", a constitutional innovation known as
popular monarchy which linked the monarch's title to a ''people'', not to a ''state'', as the previous designation ''King of France'' did. Louis-Philippe repudiated the legitimist theory of the
divine right of kings.
By his ordinance of 13 August 1830, soon after his accession to the throne, it was decided that the king's sister and his children would continue to bear the arms of Orléans, that Louis-Philippe's eldest son, as Prince Royal, would bear the title Duke of Orléans, that the younger sons would continue to have their existing titles, and that the sister and daughters of the king would only be styled "princesses of Orléans", not "of France".
In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle (1812–1850), became the first queen of
Belgium, when she married
Leopold I. Interestingly, Leopold I was titled "King of the Belgians" and not King of Belgium. Thus, Louis-Philippe's daughter, Princess Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle, held the very similar title of "Queen of the Belgians", just as her father was "King of the French".
In July 1835 Louis-Philippe survived an assassination attempt by
Giuseppe Mario Fieschi.
Louis-Phillippe ruled in an unpretentious fashion, avoiding the pomp and lavish spending of his predecessors. Despite this outward appearance of simplicity, his support came from the wealthy middle classes. At first, he was much loved and called the "Citizen King" and the "bourgeois monarch," but his popularity suffered as his government was perceived as increasingly conservative and monarchical. Under his management the conditions of the working classes deteriorated, and the income gap widened considerably. An economic crisis in 1847 led to the citizens of France revolting against their king again the following year.
Arms of Louis-Philippe.
Abdication and death (1848–1850)
A photograph of Louis-Philippe.
On
24 February 1848, during the
February 1848 Revolution, to general surprise, King Louis-Philippe abdicated in favor of his 9-year-old grandson,
Philippe. (His son and heir,
Prince Ferdinand, had died in an accident in
1842.) Fearful of what had happened to
Louis XVI, he quickly disguised himself and fled Paris. Riding in an ordinary cab under the name of "Mr. Smith", he escaped to
England. ''
The Times'' of
6 March 1848 reported that he was received at
Newhaven, East Sussex by the rector (Rev. Theyre Smith), the curate (Rev.
Frederick Spurrell) and the principal landowner (William Elphick), while his wife was attended by Lydia Elphick and Frances Gray (both daughters of John Gray of the
Gray and Dacre Brewery, West Ham, Essex), before travelling by train to London.
The National Assembly initially planned to accept young Philippe as king. The strong current of public opinion rejected that. On
26 February, the
Second Republic was proclaimed. Prince
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President in December; a few years later he declared himself
president for life and then Emperor
Napoleon III.
Louis-Philippe and his family lived in
England until his death on
26 August 1850, in
Claremont,
Surrey. He is buried with his wife, Amelia (
26 April 1782–
24 March 1866), at the
Chapelle Royale, the family necropolis he had built in 1816, in
Dreux, France.
The clash of the pretenders
The clashes of 1830 and 1848 between the
Legitimists and the
Orleanists over who the rightful monarch were resumed in the 1870s. After the fall of the Second Empire, a monarchist-dominated National Assembly offered a throne to the Legitimist pretender, "Henry V," the
Count of Chambord. As he was childless, his heir was (except to the most extreme Legitimists) Louis-Phillippe's grandson, the
Count of Paris. So Chambord's death would unite the House of Bourbon and House of Orléans.
However, Chambord refused to take the throne unless the
Tricolor flag of the revolution was replaced with the
fleur-de-lis flag of the ''ancien régime''. This the National Assembly was unwilling to do. A
Third Republic was established, though many intended for it to be temporary, to be abolished and replaced by a constitutional monarchy when Chambord died. However, Chambord lived longer than expected. By the time of his death in 1883, support for the monarchy had declined, and public opinion sided with a continuation of the Third Republic, as the form of government that "divides us least," in
Adolphe Thiers's words. Some suggested a monarchical restoration under a later comte de Paris after the fall of the
Vichy regime, even though the royalists had supported Vichy, but this did not occur.
Most French monarchists regard the descendants of Louis Philippe's grandson, who hold the title "Count of Paris" as the rightful
pretenders to the French throne. A small minority of Legitimists prefer Don
Luis-Alfonso de Borbon, Duke of Anjou (to his supporters, "Louis XX"). He is descended in the male line from
Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the second grandson of
Louis XIV, who renounced his right to the throne of France on becoming King of
Spain.
The two sides challenged each other in the French Republic's law courts in 1897 and again nearly a century later. In the latter case,
Henri, Count of Paris, challenged the right of the Spanish-born "pretender" to use the French royal title ''Duke of Anjou''. The French courts threw out his claim, arguing that the legal system had no jurisdiction over the matter.
Family and issue
In 1809 Louis-Philippe married Princess
Marie Amalie of Bourbon-Sicilies, daughter of King
Ferdinand I of the
Two Sicilies and
Marie Caroline of Austria.
They had the following ten children:
#
Ferdinand-Philippe,
Duke of Orléans (b.
3 September 1810–d. 1842) married Helena of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
#
Louise-Marie of Orléans (b.
3 April 1812–d. 1850) married
Leopold I of Belgium.
# Marie of Orléans (b.
12 April 1813–d. 1839) married Duke Alexander of Württemberg (b. 1804–d. 1881).
#
Louis Charles Philippe Raphael, Duke of Nemours (b.
25 October 1814–d. 1896) married
Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary (b. 1822–d. 1857).
# Francisca of Orléans (b.
28 March 1816–d. 1818)
#
Clémentine of Orléans (b.
3 June 1817–d. 1907) married
August of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary (b. 1818–d. 1881).
#
François, Prince of Joinville (b.
14 August 1818–d. 1900) married
Francisca of Brazil (b. 1824–d. 1898), daughter of
Pedro I of Brazil.
# Charles, Duke of Penthièvre (b.
1 January 1820–d. 1828)
#
Henri, Duke of Aumale (b.
16 June 1822–d. 1897) married Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (b. 1822–d. 1869).
#
Antoine, Duke of Montpensier (b.
31 July 1824–d. 1890), married
Luisa Fernanda of Spain (b. 1832–d. 1897) daughter of
Ferdinand VII of Spain and became a prince of Spain.
Ancestors
See also
★ In France, a museum is dedicated to king Louis-Philippe and his family
Louis-Philippe Museum of Eu castle in Normandy
★
Members of the French Royal Families
References
★
Citizen-King: The Life of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, , T.E.B., Howarth, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962,
External links
★
La Caricature Gallery: Caricatures of Louis-Philippe and others, published in ''La Caricature'' 1830–1835
★
Family d'Orléans Info
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