A weird confluence yet occurs. I had been planning on posting this last
week, yet the Caps’ Stanley Cup victory over the Las Vegas Golden Knights was a
more pertinent and timely subject, whereas French kings who haven’t reigned
since 1848 were somewhat less so. Then,
in the interim, Netflix saw fit to send me Disc 2 of Season 2 of PBS
Masterpiece Victoria, featuring the improbably babacious Jenna Coleman as the
young Queen Victoria. Episode 2 of this set
chronicled the Queen’s quest to France to persuade French king Louis Phillippe
not to marry his son to the Spanish queen. Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901, LP from
1830 to 1848, so the period 1837-1848 was an overlapping period. Given that this segment takes place around
the time of the conception of her third child, Alice, born April 1843, it must have
been summer of 1842.
Louis Phillippe was played by Bruno Wolkovich, but he
looked a bit like Bryan Cranston. No
matter how faithfully the man portrays LBJ or other characters, I will always
fondly think of him as Walter White. “England
is not the danger. I AM THE DANGER”. Anyhow.
I would hope more substantial elements of my own life fitted together as
conveniently as Netflix rentals and blog entries, but that’s a matter for me to
take up with the Man Upstairs on my usual Sunday visits to the area’s Catholic
churches.
In addition, I’ve been reading Les Miserables (in English) and it’s been dredging up the July 1830
Revolution. This was the three day trouble which evicted Charles X and put in
Louis Phillippe. At the same time I
wondered whatever happened to Louis XVII.
Thanks to Wikipedia, here we go again…
Louis
XVI. Supporter of our cause of independence, L16
had the bad luck to be King when the Shit Went Down in 1789. However, it wasn’t until January 21, 1793
that he met the Guillotine in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Louis
XVII. Knowing about L16 and L18, I always wondered
why there was no L17. It was because
although he existed, he never reigned as king.
Born in 1785, he was 4 years old when the revolution broke out in 1789
and 8 when his father was executed. By
that time he was kept under guard nonstop and generally mistreated. He died of tuberculosis in 1795 at age 10,
most likely due to being kept in unsanitary conditions. Usually we think of princes and princesses
leading lives of utmost comfort, being spoiled and told they’re gods, etc., but
in his particular case he had the misfortune of growing up during a revolution,
among some pretty rough characters who really disliked the royalty. We don’t even know what he would have been
like as king. Truly tragic.
Anyhow.
Louis
XVIII (1814-1824). L16
had two sons, but both of them died before they could actually take the
throne. L18 was L16’s younger brother
and next in line by French rules of succession.
L16 was deposed by the Revolution, which was followed by the First Republic,
then the First Empire (Napoleon), finally winding down with Napoleon’s first
defeat in 1814. L18 had fled France and
bounced around from various palaces until 1814, when he came back to Paris with
the victorious Allied armies which had defeated Napoleon. The Allies wanted France to be a
constitutional monarchy and found L18 an acceptable candidate, as well as the
actual heir to throne, so they installed him.
Aside from Napoleon’s 100 day return with its dramatic conclusion at
Waterloo, after which Napoleon was more securely detained, L18 was the king
from 1814 to 1824.
He served without much drama or problem until his death in
1824. He never got along with his wife –
mutual disgust – and had no children. He
wasn’t particularly brilliant or skillful and had no notable redeeming
qualities, so as a monarch he was somewhat mediocre. Having said that, mainly Louis XVIII’s job
was to manage France so it neither invaded Europe again nor collapsed into
chaos, and as such he did it properly.
He was the last French king whose reign ended with his death.
Charles
X
(1824-1830). L18 died in 1824 without
children, so his younger brother Chuck – also L16’s brother - took over at that
time. His most notable accomplishment
was beginning the French invasion of Algeria, though that didn’t become
complete until 1875. He didn’t seem to
have much in the way of people skills or political savvy, so by 1830 he pissed
everyone off enough to cause the Three Days of July (27, 28, and 29), referred
to in Les Miserables. He was forced to abdicate and his cousin,
Louis Phillippe, took over as a constitutional monarch.
By the way. I’ve
been to Place de la Bastille and seen the July Column. All I knew about it is that it stood where
the infamous prison had been. Long
before Haussmann & his boss Napoleon III expanded the city to its current
20 arrondissement size in the 1860s, the inner rim of arrondissements would
place Bastille at the southeast edge of the city limits, straddling numbers 4,
11, and 12. The prison was demolished,
replaced first by a fountain (1793-1813) then by a huge plaster elephant,
described in Les Miserables. That stood until 1846. LP had the July Column erected in 1840,
meaning that between 1840 and 1846 both the column and the elephant were
there. Set the Delorean for 1843….
Louis
Phillippe (1830-1848). When
I lived in Paris, I was oblivious to this man.
When I returned last fall to Paris, I recognized him at Versailles and
the Louvre – in paintings, not in person (our personal encounter at the Louvre
was none other than Madame Macron herself, France’s First Lady). He took over from C10 and lasted until
another revolution, the famous 1848 revolutions which sprung up around Europe,
the Communist Manifesto being
released at that time. He’s got the
mutton chops, huge belly, and fancy pants of the mid-1800s – a French version
of the famous John Bull personification of England.
He was a colonel in the French army in the early
revolutionary period, apparently of strong bravery and good skill. Bravo!
But during the Terror (1793) he had to flee overseas. Thus began the Louis Phillippe Tour: Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, Finland,
then a 4 year US tour including Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, and meeting A’Ham
and G’Wash. Then off for a brief Cuban
jaunt, followed by 15 years in England from 1800 to 1815. With his cousin L18 on the throne he would
have been safe to return to France again.
With the July Revolution of 1830, LP took the throne. He tried to be unpretentious and humble, but
he identified too much with the bourgeois, and his policies favored them over
the poor. Ultimately France was caught
up in the same revolutionary fervor of 1848 which swept across Europe, with
socialism and communism finally expressly articulated in Marx’s Communist Manifesto. He discreetly abdicated and moved to England
to finish off his life in peace – having survived no less than seven assassination
attempts during his reign.
For those of you more intrigued, by all means check out
Episode 5 of Season 2 of PBS Masterpiece Victoria, which should give you a nice
show of interaction between Queen Victoria and Louis Phillippe. Nothing that would make Prince Albert
jealous, however…
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