Louis Philippe I

Louis Philippe I
King of the French
In office 1830–1848
Preceded by	Charles X
Succeeded by	Second French Republic
Born	October 6, 1773 Paris, France
Died	August 26, 1850 Hersham, United Kingdom
Resting place	Royal Chapel of Dreux, France
Spouse(s)	Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily
Children	10
Religion	Roman Catholic

Louis Philippe I, more commonly Louis Philippe (1773-1850), was King of the French from 1830 until his overthrow in 1848. He was the penultimate monarch of France, and the last to bear the title of "King."

Styled Duke of Orléans after the death of his father in 1793 during the French Revolution, Louis Philippe became king in July 1830 as a result of the "July Revolution," in which the previous king, his distant cousin Charles X, was overthrown and went into exile. His reign, sometimes known for this reason as the "July Monarchy," has sometimes been described as a bourgeois monarchy, in that the king governed in accordance with the desires of the urban upper-middle class, even adopting their dress and mannerisms to a considerable degree. Though originally fairly popular thanks to his humane attitude and genuine commitment to the principles of constitutional monarchy, Louis Philippe and his ministers gradually lost support due to economic downturns and their unwillingness to further democratize the political system. Upon the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, the king agreed to abdicate the throne, and went into exile in Great Britain, where he died two years later.

Louis Philippe's abdication was followed by the proclamation of the Second French Republic in early 1848, which lasted only a few years before being replaced by the Second French Empire under Napoleon III.

Early Life

Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born on October 6, 1773, at the Palais Royal, a royal palace in Paris that had been in the hands of the House of Orléans since the 1660s. This house was a cadet, or junior, branch of the French royal family, the House of Bourbon. Louis Philippe's great-great-grandfather, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, was a younger brother of King Louis XIV, making Louis Philippe a distant cousin of Louis XVI, who would become king the year after his birth. The men of the Orléans family were legally classified as "Princes of the Blood" and thus at the very top of the French nobility.

Louis Philippe's own parents were Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres (styled the Duke of Orléans following the death of his own father in 1785), and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, herself a great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. He was the eldest of four children who survived to adulthood; his two brothers, Louis Antoine and Louis Charles, would die in exile during the Napoleonic Wars, while his sister, Louise Marie Adélaïde, would later become his closest political confidante.

The elder Louis Philippe, unlike the more traditionalist Bourbon monarchs, was very sympathetic towards the ideas of the Enlightenment, and already by the 1770s was an opponent of the system of absolute monarchy France then had; in the years before the French Revolution, this would make the House of Orléans a magnet for those demanding various kinds of reform. In accordance with this attitude, he had his four children educated not by an aristocratic tutor but by Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, a former mistress of his and a passionate admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Madame de Genlis gave the younger Louis Philippe and his siblings an experimental and strenuous education that included grueling physical exercise along with such subjects as math, literature, and philosophy. Compared to many others of their day, even among the upper French aristocracy, the Orléans children were considered especially well-educated and worldly.

The younger Louis Philippe bore no formal title until 1785, when his grandfather (also named Louis Philippe) died. His father then inherited the title of "Duke of Orléans," while he received the title "Duke of Chartres" (being only twelve years old at the time). At this time, despite his age, he was also appointed Colonel of the Chartres Dragoons, a regiment of mounted infantry, and would hold that post for the next several years.

Revolution

Louis Philippe was barely in his teens during the early stages of the French Revolution and thus was not intimately involved with their critical events (though, in keeping with the reformist tendencies of his family, he did take part in the symbolic destruction of a prison cell door in Mont Saint-Michel in 1788). He was in Paris, however, during the forced removal of the royal family from Versailles to Paris in October 1789, and watched the procession from the palace (it was also, coincidentally, his sixteenth birthday). His father, meanwhile, was openly supportive of the Revolution, championing the creation of the National Assembly and eventually changing his name to Philippe-Égalité ("Égalité" being French for "equality"). Under his influence, Louis Philippe also displayed strong sympathy for the Revolution during this time. In 1790, he joined the Jacobin Club, then known as "Society of the Friends of the Constitution" and popular among liberal members of the nobility.

As his military duties placed him at a garrison near the border with the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium), Louis Philippe was not present for most of the political drama of the Revolution in the capital, nor did he witness the royal family's attempted flight and recapture in June 1791. Following the latter event, though, a large proportion of the French army's officer corps deserted; as a result, by year's end, Louis Philippe was now the senior colonel in the entire army, despite still being only 18 years old. Following the outbreak of war with Austria in April 1792, he was placed in command of a brigade of cavalry and saw action in several major battles, including Valmy and Jemappes. Praised for his bravery under fire, he was promoted that autumn to lieutenant-general and attached to the staff of General Charles-François Dumouriez, commander of the French Army of the North.

Like many of the liberal nobles initially supportive of the Revolution, Louis Philippe, despite his ongoing military service, was increasingly alienated by its growing radicalism, including its anti-Christian tendencies and the decision to depose the king and declare a republic. A critical turning point for him seems to have been the National Convention's vote to execute Louis XVI in January 1793; his father, Philippe-Égalité, now a member of the Convention, actually voted in favor of execution, despite his son's pleas that he at least recuse himself. Disillusioned, Louis Philippe denounced the revolutionary excesses in a letter to his father that March, and shortly thereafter was approached by General Dumouriez about a plot to ally with the Austrians, march on Paris, and overthrow the government. Though Louis Philippe did not actively join in the conspiracy, which was soon discovered, the fact that he had known about it and failed to denounce it cast suspicion on him. In April 1793, both he and Dumouriez were forced to flee to the Austrian lines, beginning a period of exile for the young duke that would last more than twenty years.

Though Philippe-Égalité openly condemned his son's actions in the National Convention, he and the entire Orléans family came under suspicion following Louis Philippe's departure. He was placed under house arrest (as were his younger sons, Louis Antoine and Louis Charles), and as a member of the nobility, became a target of the Committee of Public Safety. On November 6, 1793, he was executed by guillotine in Paris. For the rest of his life, Louis Philippe felt himself responsible for his father's death.

Exile

The execution of his father, which he learned of soon afterwards, made Louis Philippe the new Duke of Orléans (though neither it nor any other titles of nobility were being recognized by the French Republic). Still only 20 years old, he and the rest of his family appeared to be shunned by all sides: the Jacobins and other supporters of the Revolution considered him a traitor, while those loyal to the Bourbon monarchy considered the House of Orléans partly responsible for the death of Louis XVI. At the time, he was in Switzerland, traveling under the assumed name of Monsieur Chabos. Placing his sixteen-year-old sister Adélaïde in a Swiss convent, he spent a year teaching (under his alias) math and languages at a boys' school in the village of Reichenau, but was eventually forced to leave due to a scandal over his impregnating a girl working there.

Still shunned by the various communities of French émigrés, Louis Philippe traveled through the German states and into Scandinavia, staying for a time in Finland (where he may have fathered another child) before backtracking to Denmark. By this time, the radical phase of the French Revolution had passed, and France was now in the hands of the Directory. In 1796, its agents located Louis Philippe in Denmark; hoping to clear away any members of the royal family who might serve as a focal point for counter-revolutionary efforts, they offered to release Louis Philippe's two younger brothers from prison if he would immediately emigrate to the United States. (Louis Philippe's mother, however, would remain in France, as a guarantee of her sons' good behavior.) Louis Philippe accepted, and arrived in Philadelphia in early 1797, joined shortly thereafter by his brothers.

The position of the Orléans brothers improved in America; it was safe for them to live under their own names, and the French émigré communities there, being a mix of royalists, moderate republicans, and radicals, were too diverse to shun them entirely. Louis Philippe traveled during this time to New York City and Boston, among other places, and met a number of prominent American statesmen, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. In late 1797, however, the Directory decided to expel his mother to Spain; now that she was no longer its potential hostage, Louis Philippe and his brothers made plans to return to Europe. After lengthy detours through Spanish Louisiana and Cuba, they arrived in Great Britain in January 1800. Befriending Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, a son of George III, Louis Philippe obtained a pension from the British government, and taught math and geography at the Great Ealing School outside London for the next eight years.

During this period of exile in Britain, the Orléans family also reconciled with its Bourbon cousins. Louis XVI's younger brothers, the Count of Provence--now King Louis XVIII--and the Count of Artois--the future King Charles X. Though Louis XVIII, as official head of the Bourbon family, was deeply resentful and suspicious of the House of Orléans, and shared the belief that they were partly to blame for his brother's death, the two families agreed to set aside their differences, at least publicly, for the sake of presenting a united front in the campaign to restore the French monarchy.

Marriage and Family

As head of the Orléans family, Louis Philippe was expected to marry and produce heirs (the more so as his two younger brothers died in 1807 and 1808 without issue). After his suit for the hand of Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of King George III, was rejected on account of his Catholicism, the duke turned to a distant Bourbon cousin: Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, the daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and a niece of Marie Antoinette. Given the stain on the Orléans name due to the execution of Louis XVI (and by extension, it was felt, his queen), there were some objections to the match from Maria Amalia's mother, but these were overcome, and the 36-year-old duke and the 27-year-old princess were wed in the Sicilian city of Palermo on November 25, 1809.

Shortly afterward, Louis Philippe attempted to travel to Spain to take part in the Peninsular War the British and Portuguese were waging against Napoleon's armies. The British rejected this, however, as the political implications of a man with a potential claim to the French throne being actively engaged in the conflict were too uncertain. Thereafter, the duke and his new wife settled in Palermo and remained there until 1814. During this time, they did indeed begin producing heirs, ultimately having ten children in all, of whom eight (five boys and three girls) survived to adulthood.

Early on, Louis Philippe was joined in Palermo by his sister, Adélaïde, who like him had been on the move a great deal since their previous departure in Switzerland. Intelligent and of strong character, Adélaïde now chose to move into her brother's household rather than seek marriage herself, and would remain by his side for the rest of her life, becoming close to Maria Amalia and the children as well. As time went on, she became especially important to Louis Philippe as a confidante and political adviser, and frequently was regarded as the real driving force within the House of Orléans. Historian Mike Duncan has said of the relationship between the siblings: "It eventually became impossible to tell where his thoughts ended and hers began."

The Restoration

The collapse of the Napoleonic Empire in 1813-14 renewed the potential for tension between the Bourbon and Orléans families. As a distant cousin and "prince of the blood," Louis Philippe had a claim to the French throne in case the elder Bourbon line should die out or become unavailable, and there were some who felt that he would do better as king than Louis XVIII. (This was an important reason for Louis' continuing coldness towards the duke.) However, Louis Philippe publicly stated that he would not seek the throne, and instead recognized Louis XVIII as the rightful monarch of France. After Napoleon's abdication and exile in April 1814, the duke and his family finally returned to Paris. In the interests of maintaining family unity, the king recognized Louis' title, making him officially "Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans," admitting him to the Chamber of Peers, the new upper house of the French legislature, and appointing him Lieutenant-General of the Realm. The family also received most of its properties back, including the Palais-Royal, the duke's birthplace and childhood home.