[1] See Arneth and Geffroy, _Corr. de Marie-Thérèse avec le comte de
Mercy-Argenteau_, vol. i., "Mercy to Maria Theresa, June 22nd, 1771,"
also i. 261, ii. 186, 352, 393. Marie Antoinette says (ii. 393): "...
à un caractère très faible, il joint une marche souterraine, et
quelquefois très basse."
[2] See his letters to Gustavus III. of Sweden in A. Geffroy,
_Gustave III et la cour de France_, vol. ii. appendix.
[3] Two pamphlets at least are ascribed to him: "Les Mannequins,
conte ou histoire, comme l'on voudra" (against Turgot; anon., Paris,
1776) and "Description historique d'un monstre symbolique pris vivant
sur les bords du lac Fagua, près de Santa-Fé, par les soins de
Francisco Xaveiro de Neunris" (against Calonne; Paris, 1784) (A.
Debidour in _La Grande Encyclopédie_).
[4] It has frequently been alleged that his relations with Mme de
Balbi, and indeed with women generally, were of a platonic nature. De
Reiset (_La Comtesse de Balbi_, pp. 152-161) produces evidence to
disprove this assertion.
[5] Antoine-Louis-François de Bésiade, comte, afterwards duc,
d'Avaray. In spite of his loyalty and devotion, the effect of his
influence on Louis XVIII. may be gathered from a letter of J. de
Maistre to Blacas, quoted by E. Daudet, _Hist. de l'émigration_, ii.
11: "celui qui n'a pu dans aucun pays aborder aucun homme politique
sans l'aliéner n'est pas fait pour les affaires."
[6] See Klinckowström, _Le Comte de Fersen et la cour de France_.
Fersen says (i. 7), "Monsieur ferait mieux seul, mais il est
entièrement subjugué par l'autre" (i.e. the comte d'Artois, who was
in turn under the influence of Calonne). See Daudet, _op. cit._ vol.
i.
[7] See E. Daudet, _La Conjuration de Pichegru_ (Paris, 1901).
[8] Pierre-Louis-Casimir, comte (afterwards duc) de Blacas d'Aulps,
was as rigidly royalist as d'Avaray, but more able. E. Daudet, _Hist.
de l'émigration_, i. 458, quotes a judgment of him by J. de Maistre:
"Il est né homme d état et ambassadeur."
[9] See account by Decazes in E. Daudet, _Louis XVIII. et le duc
Decazes_, pp. 48-49, and an interesting "secret and confidential"
letter of Castlereagh to Liverpool (July 8, 1815) in the unpublished
Foreign Office records: "The king sent for the duke and me this
evening to the Thuilleries.... We found him in a state of great
emotion and exaltation at the reception he had met with from his
subjects, which appears to have been even more animated than on his
former entrance. Indeed, during the long audience to which we were
admitted, it was almost impossible to converse, so loud were the
shouts of the people in the Thuilleries Gardens, which were full,
though it was then dark. Previous to the king's dismissing us, he
carried the duke and me to the open window. Candles were then
brought, which enabled the people to see the king with the duke by
his side. They ran from all parts of the Gardens, and formed a solid
mass of an immense extent, rending the air with acclamations. The
town is very generally illuminated, and I understand from men who
have traversed the principal streets that every demonstration of joy
was manifested by the inhabitants."
[10] It is as yet not proved that Blacas returned from his embassy in
response to a summons from the Ultras. But whether it was on his own
initiative or not, there can be no doubt as to the hopes which they
built on his arrival (see Daudet, _Louis XVIII. et le duc Decazes_).
LOUIS I. (1326-1382), called "the great," king of Hungary and Poland,
was the third son of Charles Robert, king of Hungary, and Elizabeth,
daughter of the Polish king, Ladislaus Lokietek. In 1342 he succeeded
his father as king of Hungary and was crowned at Székesfehérvár on the
21st of July with great enthusiasm. Though only sixteen he understood
Latin, German and Italian as well as his mother tongue. He owed his
relatively excellent education to the care of his mother, a woman of
profound political sagacity, who was his chief counsellor in diplomatic
affairs during the greater part of his long reign. Italian politics
first occupied his attention. As a ruler of a rising great power in
search of a seaboard he was the natural adversary of the Venetian
republic, which already aimed at making the Adriatic a purely Venetian
sea and resented the proximity of the Magyars in Dalmatia. The first
trial of strength began in 1345, when the city of Zara placed herself
under the protection of Hungary and was thereupon invested by the
Venetians. Louis fought a battle beneath the walls of Zara (July 1st,
1346), which has been immortalized by Tintoretto, but was defeated and
compelled to abandon the city to the republic. The struggle was renewed
eleven years later when Louis, having formed, with infinite trouble, a
league of all the enemies of Venice, including the emperor, the
Habsburgs, Genoa and other Italian towns, attacked his maritime rival
with such vigour that she sued for peace, and by the treaty of Zara
(February 18th, 1358) ceded most of the Dalmatian towns and renounced
the title of duke of Dalmatia and Croatia, hitherto borne by the doge.
Far more important than the treaty itself was the consequent voluntary
submission of the independent republic of Ragusa to the suzerainty of
the crown of St Stephen the same year, Louis, in return for an annual
tribute of 500 ducats and a fleet, undertaking to defend Ragusa against
all her enemies. Still more glorious for Hungary was Louis's third war
with Venice (1378-1381), when he was again aided by the Genoese. At an
early stage of the contest Venice was so hardly pressed that she offered
to do homage to Hungary for all her possessions. But her immense
resources enabled her to rally her forces, and peace was finally
concluded between all the powers concerned at the congress of Turin
(1381), Venice virtually surrendering Dalmatia to Louis and undertaking
to pay him an annual tribute of 7000 ducats. The persistent hostility of
Venice is partially attributable to her constant fear lest Louis should
inherit the crown of Naples and thus threaten her trade and her
sea-power from two sides simultaneously. Louis's younger brother Andrew
had wedded Joanna, granddaughter and heiress of old King Robert of
Naples, on whose death, in 1343, she reigned in her own right, refused
her consort any share in the government, and is very strongly suspected
of having secured his removal by assassination on the night of the 19th
of September 1345. She then married Prince Louis of Taranto, and strong
in the double support of the papal court at Avignon and of the Venetian
republic (both of whom were opposed to Magyar aggrandisement in Italy)
questioned the right of Louis to the two Sicilies, which he claimed as
the next heir of his murdered brother. In 1347, and again in 1350, Louis
occupied Naples and craved permission to be crowned king, but the papal
see was inexorable and he was compelled to withdraw. The matter was not
decided till 1378 when Joanna, having made the mistake of recognizing
the antipope Clement VII., was promptly deposed and excommunicated in
favour of Prince Charles of Durazzo, who had been brought up at the
Hungarian court. Louis, always inexhaustible in expedients, determined
to indemnify himself in the north for his disappointments in the south.
With the Habsburgs, Hungary's natural rivals in the west, Louis
generally maintained friendly relations. From 1358 to 1368, however, the
restless ambition of Rudolph, duke of Austria, who acquired Tirol and
raised Vienna to the first rank among the cities of Europe, caused Louis
great uneasiness. But Louis always preferred arbitration to war, and
the peace congresses of Nagyszombat (1360) and of Pressburg (1360)
summoned by him adjusted all the outstanding differences between the
central European powers. Louis's diplomacy, moreover, was materially
assisted by his lifelong alliance with his uncle, the childless Casimir
the Great of Poland, who had appointed him his successor; and on
Casimir's death Louis was solemnly crowned king of Poland at Cracow
(Nov. 17, 1370). This personal union of the two countries was more
glorious than profitable. Louis could give little attention to his
unruly Polish subjects and was never very happy among them. Immovably
entrenched behind their privileges, they rendered him only the minimum
of service; but he compelled their representatives, assembled at Kassa,
to recognize his daughter Maria and her affianced husband, Count
Sigismund of Brandenburg, as their future king and queen by locking the
gates of the city and allowing none to leave it till they had consented
to his wishes (1374). Louis is the first European monarch who came into
collision with the Turks. He seems to have arrested their triumphant
career (c. 1372), and the fine church erected by him at Maria-Zell is a
lasting memorial of his victories. From the first he took a just view of
the Turkish peril, but the peculiar local and religious difficulties of
the whole situation in the Balkans prevented him from dealing with it
effectually (see HUNGARY, _History_). Louis died suddenly at Nagyszombat
on the 10th of September 1382. He left two daughters Maria and Jadwiga
(the latter he destined for the throne of Hungary) under the
guardianship of his widow, the daughter of the valiant ban of Bosnia,
Stephen Kotromaníc, whom he married in 1353, and who was in every way
worthy of him.
See _Rationes Collectorum Pontif. in Hungaria, 1281-1375_ (Budapest,
1887); Dano Gruber, _The Struggle of Louis I. with the Venetians for
Dalmatia_ (Croat.) (Agram, 1903); Antal Pór, _Life of Louis the Great_
(Hung.) (Budapest, 1892); and _History of the Hungarian Nation_
(Hung.) (vol. 3, Budapest, 1895). (R. N. B.)
LOUIS II. (1506-1526), king of Hungary and Bohemia, was the only son of
Wladislaus II., king of Hungary and Bohemia, and the French princess
Anne of Candale. Prematurely born at Buda on the 1st of July 1506, it
required all the resources of medical science to keep the sickly child
alive, yet he developed so precociously that at the age of thirteen he
was well bearded and moustached, while at eighteen his hair was silvery
white. His parts were good and he could speak and write six languages at
a very early age, but the zeal of his guardians and tutors to make a man
of him betimes nearly ruined his feeble constitution, while the riotous
life led by him and his young consort, Maria of Austria, whom he wedded
on the 13th of January 1522, speedily disqualified him for affairs, so
that at last he became an object of ridicule at his own court. He was
crowned king of Hungary on the 4th of June 1508, and king of Bohemia on
the 11th of May 1509, and was declared of age when he succeeded his
father on the 11th of December 1521. But during the greater part of his
reign he was the puppet of the magnates and kept in such penury that he
was often obliged to pawn his jewels to get proper food and clothing.
His guardians, Cardinal Bakócz and Count George of Brandenburg-Anspach,
shamefully neglected him, squandered the royal revenues and distracted
the whole kingdom with their endless dissensions. Matters grew even
worse on the death of Bakócz, when the magnates István Báthory, János
Zapolya and István Verböczy fought each other furiously, and used the
diets as their tools. Added to these troubles was the ever-present
Turkish peril, which became acute after the king, with insensate levity,
arrested the Ottoman envoy Berham in 1521 and refused to unite with
Suleiman in a league against the Habsburgs. Nevertheless in the last
extremity Louis showed more of manhood than any of his counsellors. It
was he who restored something like order by intervening between the
magnates and the gentry at the diet of 1525. It was he who collected in
his camp at Tolna the army of 25,000 men which perished utterly on the
fatal field of Mohács on the 29th of August 1526. He was drowned in the
swollen stream of Csele on his flight from the field, being the second
prince of the house of Jagiello who laid down his life for Hungary.
See _Rerum Hungaricarum libri_ (vol. 2, ed. Ferencz Toldy, Budapest,
1867); and József Podhradczky, _King Louis_ (Hung.) (Budapest, 1860).
(R. N. B.)
LOUIS, the name of three kings of Naples, members of the house of Anjou.
LOUIS I., duke of Anjou and count of Maine (1339-1384), was the second
son of John II., king of France, and was born at Vincennes on the 23rd
of July 1339. Having been given the duchy of Anjou in 1356 he led a wing
of the French army at the battle of Poitiers and was sent to England as
a hostage after the conclusion of the treaty of Brétigny in 1360, but he
broke his parole in 1363 and so brought about King John's return into
captivity. He took part in the war against England which was renewed in
1369, uniting the rival houses of Foix and Armagnac in the common cause,
and in other ways rendering good service to his brother, King Charles V.
Anjou's entrance into the troubled politics of Italy was one result of
the papal schism which opened in 1378. Anxious to secure the support of
France, the antipope Clement VII. persuaded the queen of Naples, Joanna
I., to name Louis as her heir, and about the same time the death of
Charles V. (September 1380) placed the duke in the position of regent of
France. Neglecting France to prosecute his ambitions in Italy, he
collected money and marched on Naples; but although helped by Amadeus
VI., count of Savoy, he was unable to drive his rival, Charles, duke of
Durazzo, from Naples. His army was destroyed by disease and Louis
himself died at Biseglia, near Bari, on the 20th of September 1384,
leaving two sons, his successor, Louis II., and Charles, duke of
Calabria.
LOUIS II., duke of Anjou (1377-1417), born at Toulon on the 7th of
October 1377, took up the struggle for Naples after his father's death
and was crowned king by Clement VII. in 1389. After carrying on the
contest for some years his enemies prevailed and he was compelled to
take refuge in France, where he took part in the intestine strife which
was desolating that kingdom. A few years later he made other attempts to
secure the kingdom of Naples, which was now in the possession of
Ladislas, a son of his father's foeman, Charles of Durazzo, and he
gained a victory at Roccoserra in May 1411. Soon, however, he was again
driven back to France, and after sharing anew in the civil wars of his
country he died at Angers on the 29th of April 1417. His wife was
Yolande, a daughter of John I., king of Aragon, and his son was his
successor, Louis III.
LOUIS III., duke of Anjou (1403-1434), born on the 25th of September
1403, made in his turn an attempt to conquer Naples. This was in 1420,
and he had met with considerable success in his task when he died at
Cosenza on the 15th of November 1434. In 1424 Louis received from King
Charles VII. the duchy of Touraine.
Another titular king of Naples of this name was Louis, a son of Philip,
prince of Taranto. In 1346 he became the husband of Joanna I., queen of
Naples, and in 1352 he was crowned king. After making an attempt to
conquer Sicily he died on the 26th of May 1362.
LOUIS (893-911), surnamed the "Child," king of the Franks, son of the
emperor Arnulf, was born at Ottingen, designated by Arnulf as his
successor in Germany in 897, and crowned on the 4th of February 900.
Although he never received the imperial crown, he is sometimes referred
to as the emperor Louis IV. His chief adviser was Hatto I., archbishop
of Mainz; and during his reign the kingdom was ravaged by Hungarians and
torn with internal strife. He appears to have passed his time in
journeys from place to place, and in 910 was the nominal leader of an
expedition against the Hungarians which was defeated near Augsburg.
Louis, who was the last of the German Carolingians, died in August or
September 911 and was buried at Regensburg.
See Regino von Prüm, "Chronicon," in the _Monumenta Germaniae
historica. Scriptores_, Band i. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826); E.
Dümmler, _Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reichs_ (Leipzig, 1887-1888);
O. Dietrich, _Beiträge zur Geschichte Arnolfs von Kärnthen und Ludwigs
des Kindes_ (Berlin, 1890); and E. Mühlbacher, _Die Regesten des
Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern_ (Innsbruck, 1881). (A. W. H.*)
LOUIS OF NASSAU (1538-1574), son of William, count of Nassau, and
Juliana von Stolberg, and younger brother of William the Silent, took an
active part in the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish domination.
He was one of the leaders of the league of nobles who signed the
document known as "the Compromise" in 1566, and a little later was a
member of the deputation who presented the petition of grievances called
"the Request" to the regent, Margaret of Parma. It was on this occasion
that the appellation of "the Beggars" (_les Gueux_) was first given to
the opponents of King Philip's policy. On the arrival of Alva at
Brussels, Count Louis, with his brother William, withdrew from the
Netherlands and raised a body of troops in defence of the patriot cause.
In the spring of 1568 Louis invaded Friesland, and at Heiligerlee, on
the 23rd of May, completely defeated a Spanish force under Count
Aremberg, who was killed. Alva then advanced to meet the invaders with a
large army, and at Jemmingen (July 21), with very slight loss,
annihilated the levies of Louis, who himself escaped by swimming from
the field across an estuary of the Ems. He now joined the army of his
brother William, which had in October to beat a hasty retreat before
Alva's superior skill. Then Louis, in company with his brothers William
and Henry, made his way across the French frontier to the camp of the
Huguenot leader, Admiral Coligny. Louis took an active part in the
campaign and fought heroically at Jarnac and Moncontour. In 1572 Louis,
not deterred by previous disaster, raised a small force in France, and,
suddenly entering Hainaut, captured Mons (May 23). Here he was besieged
by Don Frederick of Toledo, Alva's natural son, who blockaded all
approach to the town. William made an attempt to relieve his brother,
but failed, and Mons had to surrender (September 17). Louis, who was
sick with fever, withdrew to his ancestral home, Dillenburg, to recruit
his health, and then once more to devote his energies to the raising of
money and troops for another invasion of the Netherlands. In the hope of
drawing away the Spaniards from the siege of Leiden by a diversion in
the south, Louis, with his brothers John and Henry, at the head of a
force of mixed nationalities and little discipline, crossed the frontier
near Maastricht, and advanced as far as the Mookerheide near Nijmwegen.
Here he was attacked by a body of Spanish veterans under an experienced
leader, Sancho d'Avila, and speedily routed. In the disorderly flight
both Louis and his younger brother Henry, refusing to abandon the field,
lost their lives. Their bodies were never recovered. Thus perished at
the age of thirty-six one of the most chivalrous and gifted of a gallant
band of brothers, four of whom laid down their lives in their country's
cause.
See P. J. Blok, _Lodewijk von Nassau, 1538-1574_ (The Hague, 1689),
and the _Cambridge Modern History_, vol. iii. chs. vi. and vii., and
bibliography (1904); also A. J. Van der Aa, _Biographisch woordenboek
der Nederlanden_ (22 vols., Haarlem, 1852-1878).
LOUIS, JOSEPH DOMINIQUE, BARON (1755-1837), French statesman and
financier, was born at Toul (Meurthe) on the 13th of November 1755. At
the outbreak of the Revolution the abbé Louis (he had early taken
orders) had already some reputation as a financial expert. He was in
favour of the constitutional movement, and on the great festival of
federation (July 14, 1790) he assisted Talleyrand, then bishop of Autun,
to celebrate mass at the altar erected in the Champ de Mars. In 1792,
however, he emigrated to England, where he spent his time studying
English institutions and especially the financial system of Pitt.
Returning to France on the establishment of the Consulate he served
successively in the ministry of war, the council of state, and in the
finance department in Holland and in Paris. Made a baron of the empire
in 1809 he nevertheless supported the Bourbon restoration and was
minister of finance in 1814-1815. Baron Louis was deputy from 1815 to
1824 and from 1827 to 1832. He resumed the portfolio of finance in 1815,
which he held also in the Decazes ministry of 1818; he was the first
minister of finance under the government of Louis Philippe, and held the
same portfolio in 1831-1832. In 1832 he was made a peer of France and he
died on the 26th of August 1837.
LOUIS PHILIPPE I., king of the French (1773-1850), was the eldest son of
Louis Philip Joseph, duke of Orleans (known during the Revolution as
Philippe Egalité) and of Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon, daughter of
the duc de Penthièvre, and was born at the Palais Royal in Paris on the
6th of October 1773. On his father's side he was descended from the
brother of Louis XIV., on his mother's from the count of Toulouse,
"legitimated" son of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. The legend that
he was a supposititious child, really the son of an Italian police
constable named Chiapponi, is dealt with elsewhere (see MARIA STELLA,
countess of Newborough). The god-parents of the duke of Valois, as he
was entitled till 1785, were Louis XVI. and Queen Marie Antoinette; his
governess was the famous Madame de Genlis, to whose influence he
doubtless owed many of the qualities which later distinguished him: his
wide, if superficial knowledge, his orderliness, and perhaps his
parsimony. Known since 1785 as the duc de Chartres, he was sixteen at
the outbreak of the Revolution, into which--like his father--he threw
himself with ardour. In 1790 he joined the Jacobin Club, in which the
moderate elements still predominated, and was assiduous in attendance at
the debates of the National Assembly. He thus became a _persona grata_
with the party in power; he was already a colonel of dragoons, and in
1792 he was given a command in the army of the North. As a
lieutenant-general, at the age of eighteen, he was present at the
cannonade of Valmy (Sept. 20) and played a conspicuous part in the
victory of Jemappes (Nov. 6).
The republic had meanwhile been proclaimed, and the duc de Chartres, who
like his father had taken the name of _Egalité_, posed as its zealous
adherent. Fortunately for him, he was too young to be elected deputy to
the Convention, and while his father was voting for the death of Louis
XVI. he was serving under Dumouriez in Holland. He shared in the
disastrous day of Neerwinden (March 18, 1793); was an accomplice of
Dumouriez in the plot to march on Paris and overthrow the republic, and
on the 5th of April escaped with him from the enraged soldiers into the
Austrian lines. He was destined not to return to France for twenty
years. He went first, with his sister Madame Adelaide, to Switzerland
where he obtained a situation for a few months as professor in the
college of Reichenau under an assumed name,[1] mainly in order to escape
from the fury of the _émigrés_. The execution of his father in November
1793 had made him duke of Orleans, and he now became the centre of the
intrigues of the Orleanist party. In 1795 he was at Hamburg with
Dumouriez, who still hoped to make him king. With characteristic caution
Louis Philippe refused to commit himself by any overt pretensions, and
announced his intention of going to America; but in the hope that
something might happen in France to his advantage, he postponed his
departure, travelling instead through the Scandinavian countries as far
north as Lapland. But in 1796, the Directory having offered to release
his mother and his two brothers, who had been kept in prison since the
Terror, on condition that he went to America, he set sail for the United
States, and in October settled in Philadelphia, where in February 1797
he was joined by his brothers the duc de Montpensier and the comte de
Beaujolais. Two years were spent by them in travels in New England, the
region of the Great Lakes, and of the Mississippi; then the news of the
_coup d'état_ of 18 Brumaire decided them to return to Europe. They
returned in 1800, only to find Napoleon Bonaparte's power firmly
established. Immediately on his arrival, in February 1800, the duke of
Orleans, at the suggestion of Dumouriez, sought an interview with the
comte d'Artois, through whose instrumentality he was reconciled with the
exiled king Louis XVIII., who bestowed upon his brothers the order of
the Saint Esprit. The duke, however, refused to join the army of Condé
and to fight against France, an attitude in which he persisted
throughout, while maintaining his loyalty to the king.[2] He settled
with his brothers at Twickenham, near London, where he lived till
1807--for the most part in studious retirement.
On the 18th of May 1807 the duc de Montpensier died at Christchurch in
Hampshire, where he had been taken for change of air, of consumption.
The comte de Beaujolais was ill of the same disease and in 1808 the duke
took him to Malta, where he died on the 29th of May. The duke now, in
response to an invitation from King Ferdinand IV., visited Palermo
where, on the 25th of November 1809 he married Princess Maria Amelia,
the king's daughter. He remained in Sicily until the news of Napoleon's
abdication recalled him to France. He was cordially received by Louis
XVIII.; his military rank was confirmed, he was named colonel-general of
hussars, and such of the vast Orleans estates as had not been sold were
restored to him by royal ordinance. The object may have been, as M.
Debidour suggests, to compromise him with the revolutionary parties and
to bind him to the throne; but it is more probable that it was no more
than an expression of the good will which the king had shown him ever
since 1800. The immediate effect was to make him enormously rich, his
wealth being increased by his natural aptitude for business until, after
the death of his mother in 1821, his fortune was reckoned at some
£8,000,000.
Meanwhile, in the heated atmosphere of the reaction, his sympathy with
the Liberal opposition brought him again under suspicion. His attitude
in the House of Peers in the autumn of 1815 cost him a two years' exile
to Twickenham; he courted popularity by having his children educated _en
bourgeois_ at the public schools; and the Palais Royal became the
rendezvous of all the leaders of that middle-class opinion by which he
was ultimately to be raised to the throne.
His opportunity came with the revolution of 1830. During the three "July
days" the duke kept himself discreetly in the background, retiring first
to Neuilly, then to Raincy. Meanwhile, Thiers issued a proclamation
pointing out that a Republic would embroil France with all Europe, while
the duke of Orleans, who was "a prince devoted to the principles of the
Revolution" and had "carried the tricolour under fire" would be a
"citizen king" such as the country desired. This view was that of the
rump of the chamber still sitting at the Palais Bourbon, and a
deputation headed by Thiers and Laffitte waited upon the duke to invite
him to place himself at the head of affairs. He returned with them to
Paris on the 30th, and was elected by the deputies lieutenant-general of
the realm. The next day, wrapped in a tricolour scarf and preceded by a
drummer, he went on foot to the Hôtel de Ville--the headquarters of the
republican party--where he was publicly embraced by Lafayette as a
symbol that the republicans acknowledged the impossibility of realizing
their own ideals and were prepared to accept a monarchy based on the
popular will. Hitherto, in letters to Charles X., he had protested the
loyalty of his intentions,[3] and the king now nominated him
lieutenant-general and then, abdicating in favour of his grandson the
comte de Chambord appointed him regent. On the 7th of August, however,
the Chamber by a large majority declared Charles X. deposed, and
proclaimed Louis Philippe "King of the French, by the grace of God and
the will of the people."
The career of Louis Philippe as King of the French is dealt with
elsewhere (see FRANCE: _History_). Here it must suffice to note
something of his personal attitude towards affairs and the general
effects which this produced. For the trappings of authority he cared
little. To conciliate the revolutionary passion for equality he was
content to veil his kingship for a while under a middle-class disguise.
He erased the royal lilies from the panels of his carriages; and the
Palais Royal, like the White House at Washington, stood open to all and
sundry who cared to come and shake hands with the head of the state.
This pose served to keep the democrats of the capital in a good temper,
and so leave him free to consolidate the somewhat unstable foundation of
his throne and to persuade his European fellow-sovereigns to acknowledge
in him not a revolutionary but a conservative force. But when once his
position at home and abroad had been established, it became increasingly
clear that he possessed all the Bourbon tenaciousness of personal power.
When a "party of Resistance" came into office with Casimir-Périer in
March 1831, the speech from the throne proclaimed that "France has
desired that the monarchy should become national, it does not desire
that it should be powerless"; and the migration of the royal family to
the Tuileries symbolized the right of the king not only to reign but to
rule. Republican and Socialist agitation, culminating in a series of
dangerous risings, strengthened the position of the king as defender of
middle-class interest; and since the middle classes constituted the
_pays légal_ which alone was represented in Parliament, he came to
regard his position as unassailable, especially after the suppression of
the risings under Blanqui and Barbès in 1839. Little by little his
policy, always supported by a majority in a house of representatives
elected by a corrupt and narrow franchise, became more reactionary and
purely dynastic. His position in France seeming to be unassailable, he
sought to strengthen it in Europe by family alliances. The fact that his
daughter Louise was the consort of Leopold I., king of the Belgians, had
brought him into intimate and cordial relations with the English court,
which did much to cement the _entente cordiale_ with Great Britain.
Broken in 1840 during the affair of Mehemet Ali (q.v.) the entente was
patched up in 1841 by the Straits Convention and re-cemented by visits
paid by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to the Château d'Eu in 1843 and
1845 and of Louis Philippe to Windsor in 1844, only to be irretrievably
wrecked by the affair of the "Spanish marriages," a deliberate attempt
to revive the traditional Bourbon policy of French predominance in
Spain. If in this matter Louis Philippe had seemed to sacrifice the
international position of France to dynastic interests, his attempt to
re-establish it by allying himself with the reactionary monarchies
against the Liberals of Switzerland finally alienated from him the
French Liberal opinion on which his authority was based. When, in
February 1848, Paris rose against him, he found that he was practically
isolated in France.
Charles X., after abdicating, had made a dignified exit from France,
marching to the coast surrounded by the cavalry, infantry and artillery
of his Guard. Louis Philippe was less happily situated. Escaping with
the queen from the Tuileries by a back entrance, he made his way with
her in disguise to Honfleur, where the royal couple found refuge in a
gardener's cottage. They were ultimately smuggled out of the country by
the British consul at Havre as Mr and Mrs Smith,[4] arriving at Newhaven
"unprovided with anything but the clothes they wore." They settled at
Claremont, placed at their disposal by Queen Victoria, under the
_incognito_ of count and countess of Neuilly. Here on the 26th of August
1850, Louis Philippe died.
The character of Louis Philippe is admirably traced by Queen Victoria in
a memorandum of May 2, 1855, in which she compares him with Napoleon
III. She speaks of his "vast knowledge upon all and every subject," and
"his great activity of mind." He was, unlike Napoleon, "_thoroughly
French_ in character, possessing all the liveliness and talkativeness of
that people." But she also speaks of the "tricks and over-reachings"
practised by him, "who in great as well as in small things took a
pleasure in being cleverer and more cunning than others, often when
there was no advantage to be gained by it, and which was,
unfortunately, strikingly displayed in the transactions connected with
the Spanish marriages, which led to the king's downfall, and ruined him
in the eyes of all Europe" (_Letters_, pop. ed., iii. 122).
Louis Philippe had eight children. His eldest son, the popular Ferdinand
Philippe, duke of Orleans (b. 1810), who had married Princess Helena of
Mecklenburg, was killed in a carriage accident on the 13th of July 1842,
leaving two sons, the comte de Paris and the duc de Chartres. The other
children were Louise, consort of Leopold I., king of the Belgians;
Marie, who married Prince Alexander of Württemberg and died in 1839;
Louis Charles, duc de Nemours; Clementine, married to the duke of
Coburg-Kohary; François Ferdinand, prince de Joinville; Henri Eugène,
duc d'Aumale (q.v.); Antoine Philippe, duc de Montpensier, who married
the Infanta, younger sister of Queen Isabella of Spain.
AUTHORITIES.--F. A. Gruyer, _La Jeunesse du roi Louis-Philippe,
d'après les pourtraits et des tableaux_ (Paris, 1909), édition de
luxe, with beautiful reproductions of portraits, miniatures, &c.;
Marquis de Flers, _Louis-Philippe, vie anecdotique, 1773-1850_ (Paris,
1891); E. Daudet, _Hist. de l'émigration_ (3 vols., Paris, 1886-1890).
Of general works on Louis Philippe's reign may be mentioned Louis
Blanc, _Hist. de Dix Ans, 1830-1840_ (5 vols., Paris, 1841-1844), from
the republican point of view; J. O. d'Haussonville, _Hist. de la
politique extérieure de la monarchie de juillet, 1830-1848_ (2 vols.,
Paris, 1850); V. de Nouvion, _Hist. de Louis-Philippe_ (4 vols.,
Paris, 1857-1861); F. Guizot, _France under Louis Philippe, 1841-1847_
(Eng. trans., 1865); Karl Hillebrand, _Geschichte Frankreichs von der
Thronbesteigung Louis Philippes, 1830-1841_ (2 vols., Gotha,
1877-1879); V. du Bled, _Hist. de la monarchie de juillet_ (2 vols.,
Paris, 1887); P. Thureau-Dangin, _Hist. de la monarchie de juillet_
(Paris, 1887, &c.); A. Malet, "La France sous la monarchie de
juillet," in Lavisse and Rambaud's _Hist. Générale_, vol. x. ch. x.
(Paris, 1898); G. Weill, _La France sous la monarchie de juillet_
(Paris, 1902); Émile Bourgeois, "The Orleans Monarchy," ch. xv. of
vol. x., and "The Fall of Constitutionalism in France," ch. ii. of
vol. xi. of the _Cambridge Modern History_ (Cambridge, 1907 and 1909).
Further works will be found in the bibliographies attached by M.
Bourgeois to his chapters (vol. x. p. 844, vol. xi. p. 874; the latter
including works on the revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic). To
the list of published correspondence and memoirs there mentioned may
be added the _Chronique_ of the duchesse de Dino (Paris, 1909).
Louis Philippe himself published the _Journal du duc de Chartres,
1790-1791; Mon Journal, événements de 1815_ (2 vols., 1849);
_Discours, allocutions et réponses de S. M. Louis-Philippe,
1830-1846_; and after his death was issued his _Correspondance,
mémoire et discours inédits_ (Paris, 1863). (W. A. P.)