Louis-Philippe: A Portrait
‘The poor King was thoroughly French in character, possessing all the liveliness and talkativeness of that people.’ So wrote Queen Victoria about the King of the French. Joanna Richardson offers her portrait of the man at the head of the July Monarchy, whose reign lasted from 1830 until 1848.
'They will never do me justice till after my I death’, said Louis-Philippe, not long before he died. ‘He was not perhaps a hero’, wrote one of his biographers, ‘but he was honourable as men go, and curiously likeable, as even his enemies were inclined to testify.’
On October 6th, it will be two hundred years since he was born. It is, perhaps, the moment to recall him.
Louis-Philippe was born at the Palais-Royal, in Paris. He was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe-Joseph de Bourbon-Orleans, Due de Chartres, and Adelaide de Bourbon-Penthievre. The infant bore the title of Due de Valois; in time he was educated by Mme de Genlis.
When he was twelve, his father became Due d’Orleans, and Louis-Philippe found himself Due de Chartres, titular colonel of a regiment of dragoons, and titular governor of Poitou. Four years later, in 1789, the Revolution burst upon France, and in 1790 he joined the Jacobins.
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