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The relationship between the Bourbons and the Orléans family improved in 1824 with the death of Louis XVIII and the succession of his brother, the Count of Artois, as King Charles X. Though Charles was in fact much more of an ultra-royalist than Louis had been, and had no tolerance at all for the liberal opposition, he strongly desired genuine unity and reconciliation within the broader royal family, and openly welcomed the duke at court, even allowing him to style himself as "His Royal Highness" (a favor Louis had refused). Charles' increasingly antagonistic relationship with the liberal majority in the Chamber of Deputies, however, placed Orléans in a difficult position, and by the spring of 1830, he was worried that the king was undermining the stability of his own reign.
The relationship between the Bourbons and the Orléans family improved in 1824 with the death of Louis XVIII and the succession of his brother, the Count of Artois, as King Charles X. Though Charles was in fact much more of an ultra-royalist than Louis had been, and had no tolerance at all for the liberal opposition, he strongly desired genuine unity and reconciliation within the broader royal family, and openly welcomed the duke at court, even allowing him to style himself as "His Royal Highness" (a favor Louis had refused). Charles' increasingly antagonistic relationship with the liberal majority in the Chamber of Deputies, however, placed Orléans in a difficult position, and by the spring of 1830, he was worried that the king was undermining the stability of his own reign.
==King of the French==
===The July Revolution===
The growing sense of a brewing constitutional crisis during the run-up to the legislative elections of July 1830 kept the potential of an Orléanist monarchy alive to many political observers in France. In June, the elderly statesman [[Talleyrand|Charles Maurice de Talleyrand]] called on the duke and his sister Adélaïde and, referencing rumors that Orléans might marry his son to Charles X's daughter, said, "The elder branch is finished. Be careful not to give your son to [the king's daughter]. Alone you may succeed; linked to them, you'll be chased out as well."
Following disappointing election results in mid-July, Charles X and his ultra-royalist ministers responded with a series of ordinances restricting the franchise and suspending freedom of the press. In response, angry mobs assembled in Paris on July 26 and began attacking symbols of Bourbon authority as well as the soldiers sent in to restore order. By evening on the 29th, after intense and often bloody street fighting, Charles' troops had been forced to retreat, leaving the capital (the king himself was at his palace of Saint-Cloud, outside the city) in the hands of a liberal provisional government. Its leaders, including Jacques Laffitte and Adolphe Thiers, had concluded that peace could not be restored in France as long as Charles X remained on the throne, and that to declare a republic might result in foreign intervention; given his liberal policies and reputation, the Duke of Orléans must therefore be made king in Charles' place. On July 30, Thiers visited Orléans' country estate at Neuilly, a few miles outside Paris, to convince the duke to accept the position of Lieutenant-General of the Realm, as a prelude to replacing his cousin as king.
Uncertain of what outcome the events in Paris would take, or of how he might be regarded by the revolutionaries there, Orléans himself had retreated to a more distant property, but his wife, Maria Amalia, and his sister Adélaïde were still there to receive Thiers. In response to Thiers' plea that the duke put himself at the head of the Revolution, Adélaïde, who seems to have independently decided that the Bourbon monarchy was destined to fall, accepted on her brother's behalf, and declared that she would go to Paris at once, to be followed by her brother. This led Thiers to remark, "Today, Madame, you have gained the crown for your house."<ref>Dyson, C. C: ''The life of Marie Amélie last queen of the French, 1782–1866. With some account of the principal personages at the courts of Naples and France in her time, and of the careers of her sons and daughters'' (1910)</ref> A second delegation returned to Neuilly that evening to meet the duke in person and make a more formal offer, which he accepted and returned to the Palais-Royal in Paris with his family.
==References==
==References==