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Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France.
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- The Jacobin officer (1790–93)
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Louis-Philippe, (born October 6, 1773, Paris, France—died August 26, 1850, Claremont, Surrey, England), king of the French from 1830 to 1848; having based his rule on the support of the upper bourgeoisie, he ultimately fell from power because he could not win the allegiance of the new industrial classes.
Louis-Philippe was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe Joseph de Bourbon-Orléans, duc de Chartres, and Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. At first styled duc de Valois, he became duc de Chartres when his father inherited the title duc d’Orléans in 1785. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Louis-Philippe joined the group of progressive noble...
For a time the refugee Louis-Philippe taught at the college at Reichenau in the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), using the assumed name Chabaud de la Tour. The execution of Philippe Égalité in November 1793 made Louis-Philippe the duc d’Orléans, and he became the centre of the Orleanist intrigues. He refused to countenance any plan to set himself up as king in France, however, possibly because he was negotiating with the revolutionaries for the release of his two brothers, the duc de Montpensier and the comte de Beaujolais, who had been arrested at the same time as their father. Louis-Philippe traveled in Scandinavia for about a year (1795–96). He then sailed to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, where in February 1797 he was joined by his brothers. They spent more than two years in America, until, on hearing of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Coup of 18–19 Brumaire (November 9–10, 1799), Louis-Philippe decided to return to Europe. By the time he and his brothers reached England early in 1800, the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen, as the princes de Condé had done. Perhaps Louis XVIII mistrusted Philippe Égalité’s son too much to allow him any close contact with French troops, or perhaps Louis-Philippe himself merely preferred to remain with his brothers, who had both developed tuberculosis (Montpensier died in 1807, Beaujolais in 1808).
In 1809, after a long residence at Twickenham in Middlesex, England, Louis-Philippe went to join the Neapolitan royal family at Palermo in Sicily. On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.
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Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.
Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition, entertaining its most prominent deputies and journalists at the Palais Royal and giving open patronage to the opposition newspaper Le Constitutionnel as well as tacit support to the more radical and Orleanist organ Le National (founded in January 1830). He may have been aware of various plots against the regime, such as that of Jean-Paul Didier at Grenoble in 1816. Meanwhile, he sent his sons to be educated at the Collège Henri IV in Paris instead of employing private tutors as was customary among the nobility; he was a member of the Paris Philhellenic committee; and, above all, he was occupied in recovering and restoring the estates and property that had belonged to his family before the Revolution. Although the indemnity granted in 1825 to the émigrés for estates seized during the Revolution was opposed by his political friends, the duc d’Orléans was one of its principal beneficiaries, and it added several million francs to his fortune. Even so, he had to provide for six sons and three daughters. Thus, he was glad to help the baroness de Feuchères to win recognition at court in return for her services in persuading her lover, the last prince de Condé, to make Louis-Philippe’s son Henri, duc d’Aumale, his residuary legatee. Later, when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.
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King of the French 1773 – 1850. As the eldest child in the Orléans family at the end of the Ancien Régime and first prince of the blood, Louis Philippe, Duke of Valois, Chartres and then Orléans, succeeded his cousin Charles X to the French throne, the latter being the last reigning sovereign of the elder branch of the Bourbons. Full name.
Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 — 26 August 1850) nicknamed the Citizen King (French: le Roi Citoyen) was King of the French from 1830 until he was forced to abdicate following the French Revolution in 1848.
Aug 23, 2019 · Learn about the life of Louis-Philippe, who became king of the French after a popular uprising, but lost his crown in another revolt, on Biography.com.
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Aug 22, 2024 · The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France.
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Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (12 May 1725 – 18 November 1785), known as le Gros (the Fat), was a French royal of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. The First Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family.