Louis-Philippe of France
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Categories: French monarchs | Knights of the Garter | 1773 births | 1850 deaths
Louis-Philippe of France (October 6, 1773–August 26, 1850) reigned as the "Orléanist" king of the French from 1830 to 1848. He was France's last king.
Born in Paris, Louis-Philippe was the son of Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans (known as "Philippe Égalité"), and a descendant of King Louis XIII.
During the early stages of the French Revolution, Louis-Philippe supported it, as his father did. He served under Gen. Charles François Dumouriez in the French Army of the North, which fought in the Austrian Netherlands, and served at the Battle of Jemappes in 1792. In April 1793, by which time Louis XVI had been guillotined, Dumouriez went over to the Austrians and Louis-Philippe went with him. He remained in exile from France for the remainder of the First Republic and the ensuing regime of Napoleon Bonaparte, travelling extensively, including in the United States where he stayed for four years in Philadelphia and in New York, and in Boston, where he taught French for a time and lived in lodgings over what is now the Union Oyster House, Boston's oldest restaurant. His visit to Cape Cod in 1797 coincided with the separation of the town of Eastham into two towns, one of which took the name of Orleans, possibly in his honor. He is also thought to have known Isaac Snow of Orleans, Massachusetts, who escaped to France from a British prison hulk during the American Revolution. His only sister, Princess Louise Marie Adelaide Eugènie d'Orléans, married in the U.S.
In 1809 Louis-Philippe married Princess Marie Amalie of Bourbon-Sicilies (1782–1866), daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. They had the following ten children:
- Ferdinand-Philippe, Duke of Orléans (b. 3 September 1810–d.1842)
- 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, duc de Nemours (b. 25 October 1814–d.1896) married Viktoria of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (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-Gotha (b.1818–d.1881).
- François d'Orléans, Prince de 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 d'Orleans Duke of Aumale (b. 16 June 1822–d.1897) married Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (b.1822–d.1869)
- Prince 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.
After the abdication of Napoleon, and the restoration of the monarchy under his cousin King Louis XVIII Louis-Philippe returned to live in France, claiming sympathy with the liberated citizens of the country. He openly sided with the liberal opposition; under Louis XVIII and then even more so under the reign of Louis's brother, King Charles X, the popularity of Louis-Philippe grew.
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King of the French
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In 1830, the July Revolution overthrew the repressive régime of Charles X. Charles abdicated in favour of his 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. Chambord was offered the throne again in the 1870s but declined over a dispute over the French tricolour.) Due to Louis-Philippe's Republican policies and his popularity with the masses, the Chamber of Deputies ignored the wishes of the Legitimists that Charles's grandson be accepted as king and instead proclaimed Louis-Philippe 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 King of France's designation did. Louis-Philippe repudiated the legitimist theory of the divine right of kings.
In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle (1812–1850), became the first queen of Belgium, when she married King Leopold I.
For a few years, Louis-Philippe ruled in an unpretentious fashion, avoiding the arrogance, pomp and lavish spending of his predecessors. Despite this outward appearance of simplicity, Louis-Philippe's 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 once again.
Abdication
On 24 February 1848, to general surprise, King Louis-Philippe abdicated in favour of his young grandson (his son and heir, Prince Ferdinand, having been killed in an accident some years earlier). Fearful of what had happened to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he quickly disguised himself and fled Paris. Riding in an ordinary cab under the name of "Mr Smith", he escaped to England. The National Assembly initially planned to accept his grandson as king. However, pulled along by the tide of public opinion, they accepted the Second Republic proclaimed in controversial circumstances at Paris City Hall. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte executed a coup d'état on December 2, 1851. In 1851 he declared himself president for life. Within a year, he named himself 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 was the valid monarch had its epilogue in the 1870s when, after the fall of the Empire, the National Assembly with the support of public opinion offered a reconstituted throne to the Legitimist pretender, "Henry V", the Comte de Chambord. As he was childless, the heir to his claim was (except in the view of the most extreme Legitimists) Louis-Phillippe's grandson, now called the Comte de Paris. So Chambord's death would unite the House of Bourbon and House of Orleans.
However Chambord, with infamous stubbornness, refused to accept the throne unless France abandoned the flag of the revolution, the Tricolore, and replace it with the fleur de lis, the flag of pre-revolutionary France. This the National Assembly was unwilling to do. A temporary Third Republic was established; many intended it to be disestablished and replaced by a constitutional monarchy when Chambord died and the more moderate Comte de Paris became the agreed claimant. However, Chambord lived longer than expected. By the time of his death in 1883 support for the monarchy had declined, with most people accepting the Third Republic as the form of government that "divides us least", in Adolphe Thiers's words. Thus France's monarchical tradition came to an end, though some did suggest a monarchical restoration under a later comte de Paris after the fall of the Vichy regime. Even though the royalist organisation, of the 1930s, in France, had supported the Vichy regime, with glee, and so in effect been enemies of Britain and America. Instead , the Third Republic was briefly resurrected before being replaced by the Fourth Republic in 1946.
Most French monarchists regard the descendants of Louis Philippe's grandson, who hold the title comte de Paris, as the rightful pretender to the French throne. A small minority of Legitimists however insist on a nobleman of Spanish birth, Don Luis-Alfonso de Borbon, Duke of Anjou (to his supporters, "Louis XX") as being the true Legitimist pretender; he is representative in the male line of Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the second grandson of Louis XIV, who renounced his right to the throne of France on becoming King of Spain.
Both sides even challenged each other in the French Republic's law courts, in 1897 and again almost a century later, in the latter case, with Henri, comte de Paris (d. 1999) challenging the right of the Spanish-born "pretender" to use the French royal title duc d'Anjou. The French courts disagreed with the comte de Paris and threw out his claim.
See also
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