| Philippe | |
|---|---|
| Duke of Orléans | |
 |
|
| Spouse | Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon |
| Issue | |
| Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, King of the
French Louis Antoine Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Montpensier Louise Marie Adélaïde Eugénie d'Orléans Louis Charles d'Orléans, Count of Beaujolais |
|
| Full name | |
| Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans | |
| Father | Louis Philipppe d'Orléans |
| Mother | Louise Henriette de Bourbon |
| Born | 13 April 1747 Château de Saint Cloud, Saint-Cloud, France |
| Died | 6 November 1793 (aged 46) Paris, France |
Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans (Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans, duc d'Orléans) (Château de Saint-Cloud, France, 13 April 1747, – Paris, 6 November 1793), was a member of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, the ruling dynasty of France. He actively supported the French Revolution and adopted the name Philippe Égalité, but was nonetheless guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
His son Louis-Philippe became King of the French after the July Revolution of 1830. Following his career, the term Orléanist came to be attached to the movement in France that favoured constitutional monarchy.
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Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans was the son of Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres, and Louise Henriette de Bourbon. At the time of his birth, his grandfather Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans was still alive, and his father being the Duke of Chartres, he received the title Duke of Montpensier. He was born at the Château de Saint Cloud, one of the residences of the Duke of Orléans a few miles west of Paris.
Louis Philippe Joseph, known as Philippe, was a descendant of Louis XIV; by his mother who was a granddaughter of Louise-Françoise de Bourbon (Louis XIV's eldest legitimised daughter with Madame de Montespan); by his father who was a grandson of Françoise-Marie de Bourbon.
His older sister born in 1745 had died when six months old, and; when he was three, his parents had another daughter:
At his grandfather's death in 1752, Philippe d'Orléans became Duke of Chartres and in 1769, he married Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon (1753–1821), daughter and heiress of his cousin the, Duke of Penthiêvre, a grand Admiral of France and the richest man in the country at the time.
Since it was certain that his wife would become the richest woman in France upon the death of her father, Louis Philippe was determined to play a political role at court equal to that of his great-grandfather Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who had been the Regent of France during the minority of King Louis XV.[1]
As Duke of Chartres he opposed the plans of René de Maupeou in 1771, when Maupeou successfully upheld royal interests in a confrontation with the Parlement de Paris, and was promptly exiled to his country estate of Villers-Cotterêts in the former Picardy province, now in the modern Aisne department in northern France. When Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, Philippe was still a suspect in the eyes of the court; Marie Antoinette hated him for what she viewed as treachery, hypocrisy and selfishness, and he, in turn, scorned her.
On 6 June 1769, Louis Philippe married Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon at the Chapel of the Palace of Versailles. Louise Marie Adélaïde brought to the already vastly wealthy House of Orléans a considerable dowry of six million livres[2 ], an annual income of 240,000 livres (later increased to 400,000 livres), as well as lands, titles, residences and furniture.
Excepting their first child, a stillborn daughter, they had five children:
The Duke was a well-known womaniser and, like his ancestors Louis XIV of France and Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, had several illegitimate children.
He recognised a son he had with Marguerite Françoise Bouvier de la Mothe de Cépoy, comtesse de Buffon:
During the first few months of their marriage, the couple appeared devoted to each other, but the duke went back to the life of libertinage he had led before his marriage. It is during the summer of 1772, a few months after his wife had given birth to a stillborn daughter, that began Philippe’s secret liaison with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Albin, comtesse de Genlis, the niece of Madame de Montesson, the Morganatic wife of Philippe’s father. Passionate at first, the liaison cooled within a few months and, by the spring of 1773, was reported to be “dead”[3]. After the romantic affair was over, Félicité remained in the service of Marie-Adélaïde at the Palais-Royal, a trusted friend to both Marie-Adélaïde and Philippe. They both appreciated her intelligence and, in July 1779, she became the governess of the couple twin daughters born in 1777[4].
It was the custom in the French royal and noble families to “turn the boys over to the men” when they were seven years old. In 1782, the young Louis-Philippe was already nine and in dire need of discipline. The Duke of Chartres could not think of a man better qualified to “turn his sons over to” than… Mme de Genlis. This is how, nine years after their passionate liaison had ended and turned into deep friendship, Félicité became the “gouverneur” of the Duke and Duchess of Chartres’ children. Teacher and pupils left the Palais-Royal and went to live in a house built specially for them on the grounds of the Bellechasse convent (couvent des Dames de Bellechasse) in Paris[4],[5].
It is alleged that Lady Edward FitzGerald, born Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms, also known as Pamela, was a natural daughter of the Duke of Orléans and the Countess of Genlis.
In 1778, he served in the squadron of the Count of Orvilliers and was present in the naval battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778. He then was removed from the navy due in part to the queen's hatred of him, and also to his own incompetence and alleged cowardice. As compensation, he was given the honorary post of colonel-general of hussars.
After his disgrace, Louis Philippe retreated to a life of luxury. He often visited Great Britain, and became an intimate of the Prince of Wales. In France, he made anglomanie fashionable, with an admiration for anything British, from liberalism to jockeys. He was also the Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Orient de France from 1771-1793, though he did not attend a meeting of the Grand Orient until 1777, and he later distanced himself from Freemasonry in a letter dated January 1793, and the Grand Orient vacated his position on 13 December 1793.[6] He also made himself very popular in Paris by his large gifts to the poor during times of famine. To appear egalitarian, he opened up the gardens of the Palais Royal to the public and allowed shops in the palace's arcades.
In November 1785, upon his father's death, Philippe, the new Duke of Orléans, became the head of the House of Orléans, one of the wealthiest families of France, and Premier Prince du Sang, addressed as Monsieur le Prince, the most important personage of the kingdom after the king's immediate family, and, as such, next in line to the throne should the main Bourbon line die out.
From his father, he also inherited the titles of:
At the Assembly of Notables in 1787, he showed his liberal ideas in a bold manner, leading to suspicions that he was plotting to displace Louis XVI. In November, he again showed his liberalism during the lit de justice, which Étienne de Loménie de Brienne had made the king hold. For this transgression, he was again exiled to Villers-Cotterêts.
The approaching convocation of the Estates-General made his friends very active on his behalf; he circulated in every bailliage the pamphlets which the Abbé Sieyès had drawn up at his request. He was elected in three districts, by the nobility of Paris, Villers-Cotterêts and Crépy-en-Valois. In the Second Estate he headed the liberal minority under the guidance of Adrien Duport, and led the minority of forty-seven noblemen who seceded from their own estate (June 1789) and joined the Third Estate.
One of the greatest impacts Philippe left on the Revolution was that of the way he spread his political ideologies. As a man of great wealth, he used his money to spread his liberal ideas across the nation. His administration invented a form of political advertisement that people today may take for granted. He also surrounded himself with people to assist in the writing and spreading of the pamphlets, as well as hiring representatives to sit in for him at assemblies across France.
He hired people, such as the marquis Ducrest, whose family took over control of Philippe's political advisory service. Once Philippe gave control to the people around him, his movement lost some of his original intentions. While it initially started to spread the word of anti-Bourbon liberalism, the movement began to see people looking to gain personal profit and political power, which was something of little interest to the rich, quiet man. The movement, though somewhat altered by differing motives, still retained some of Louis Philippe's original beliefs. This became apparent when the Instructions and Deliberations were released by his administration. Though not written by Louis Philippe himself, the writings held values that were very close to his heart; the closest being that of the freedom to travel when and where he pleased.
Louis Philippe's political impact forever changed the way republican societies view government. Almost all politicians in countries with a democratic republic treat the time leading up to an election as he did. In today’s politics, most campaigns require a great deal of financial backing, as well as propaganda and advertising. Though his political activities may seem trivial to people today, Louis Philippe had a great influence on today’s politics.
The part Philippe d'Orléans played during the summer of 1789 is one of the most debated points in the history of the French Revolution. The royal court accused him of being at the bottom of every popular movement, and saw the "gold of Orléans" as the cause of the Réveillon riot and the storming of the Bastille (mirroring the subsequent belief held by the Jacobins that everything opposing them relied on the "gold of Pitt the Younger"). His hatred of Marie Antoinette, his previous disgrace at court, and his liberalism (alongside his friendship with Duport and Choderlos de Laclos), all seem to point towards his involvement. The Duke is also alleged to have deliberately withheld grain from the people of Paris , being a direct cause of the 5 October March on Versailles[7]. The Duke is also thought to have lied about his whereabouts when the Palace at Versailles was stormed in the early hours of the morning on the 6th of October, having stated he was at the General Assembly in Paris, yet several witness (including the Marquise de la Tour du Pin) saw him lead the bloodthirsty mob to a staircase leading to the Queen's bedroom, protected by Swiss Guard. The mob cried "Long live our King d'Orléans" during the raid.[8]
Grace Elliott, who was one of Philippe's mistresses at the time, attested to the fact that during the riot of 14 July[2 ], the duke was on a fishing excursion, and that he was rudely treated by the king the next day when the duke went to offer his cousin his services. Supposedly, the duke was so disgusted by the accusation that he was seeking the crown, that he wanted to go to the United States. His favourite lover, the Countess of Buffon, however, would not go with him, so he decided to remain in Paris.
The marquis de La Fayette, apparently jealous of Philippe's popularity, persuaded the king to send the duke to Britain on a mission, and he accordingly remained in England from October 1789 to July 1790. On 7 July 1790, he took his seat in the National Constituent Assembly. On 2 October, both he and Honoré Mirabeau were declared by the Assembly entirely free of any complicity in the events of 5-6 October 1789.
Philippe d'Orléans subsequently tried to keep himself distant from the political world, but he was still suspect to the King and subject to pressures from his partisans to replace Louis XVI. His lack of political aspirations could be proven by noting that he did not attempt to obtain any leading position after the King's flight to Varennes in June 1791. In fact, Louis Philippe attempted to reconcile with the King in January 1792, but was rejected, and refused to aid the King any further.
In the summer of 1792, he was present for a short time with the Army of the North, together with his two sons, the Duke of Chartres, future King of the French, and the Duke of Montpensier, but had returned to Paris before the insurrection of 10 August.
After the fall of the monarchy, he underwent personal risk in saving suspects to the revolutionary regime - in particular, and at the request of Grace Elliott, he saved the life of Louis René Quentin de Richebourg de Champcenetz, the governor of the Tuileries Palace, who was his personal enemy. He accepted the appellation Citoyen Égalité conferred on him by the Commune. He was elected twentieth and last deputy for Paris to the National Convention, where he again had no notable contribution other than voting in the king's trial - he voted in favour of the death sentence for Louis XVI.
This compliance to republican rules did not save him from suspicion, which was especially aroused by the friendship of his eldest son, the Duke of Chartres, with Charles François Dumouriez. When the news of the desertion of Chartres and Dumouriez reached Paris, all the Bourbons left in France, including Philippe-Égalité, were arrested on 5 April 1793. First imprisoned in Paris, he was later transferred to the Fort Saint-Jean in Marseille, then brought back to Paris in October, during the Reign of Terror, the second phase of which had begun the preceding June with the arrestation of the Girondists (Girondins).
As a member of the House of Bourbon, Louis Philippe was shortlisted for a trial, and effectively tried and guillotined in the space of one day on 6 November 1793. Accounts of his incarceration and execution mention his exceptional courage.
Philippe d'Orléans was buried in the Madeleine cemetery (closed in 1794), in Paris, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and hundreds executed on the Place de la Révolution during the Terror had been buried. His remains were never found.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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