February 9, 2011 • 29 mins
The story of the House of Bourbon is pretty complicated. Luckily, Deblina and Sarah are here to examine the web of people and events leading to the fall of the House. Tune in and learn more about Henri, comte de Chambord, the last French Bourbon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalkoateboarding, and we are
going to be continuing our Bourbon series today, actually finishing
(00:21):
the French portion of it. We have a little Spanish
stuff coming your way, but we're nearing the end, so
enjoy these last couple. Um. So we left off last
talking about Madame de Pompadour and the ominous quote a
pre new le Deluge after us the deluge, and um,
fortunately for us, I guess the Deluge has been pretty
(00:43):
thoroughly covered already on this podcast, not by the two
of us, but by Candis and Jane. They did episodes
on how the French Revolution worked and did Marie Antoinette
really say let them eat cake? So I think a
lot of you are already pretty familiar on the events
of seventeen eighty nine to seventeen ninety nine, what we
(01:04):
think of as the main French Revolution, even though we're
going to find out there are many more revolutions in
France over the next few decades. Yeah, they did not
quite a bit, they did, um, but just long story short,
in case you haven't listened to uh the episode on
how the French Revolution worked. The Bourbons were overthrown, obviously,
(01:25):
the king and Queen were executed. The reign of terror
really prolonged and intensified the violence. It's it's probably what
you're thinking of if you're thinking of the French Revolution.
After that, the Directory was established, and then finally in
seventeen ninety nine, the Consulate was established, which essentially marked
the beginning of Napoleon's dictatorship. So that's kind of where
(01:46):
we're picking up. By eighteen o four, Napoleon was the
emperor and all the surviving Bourbons, or most of them
at least, were emigrats. They had left France long ago,
but they were really active emigrans. And since this is
their series after all, we're going to track them through
their revolutionary flights, throughout Napoleon's rule, through their own restoration
(02:08):
and their eventual fall. And in the course of that
we're going to take a look at the life of
their last son, who was this strange little man who
the legitimates um really placed their hopes on for restoration
of the monarchy, and he was the last French Bourbon. Yeah,
his name was Henri de Dolnay d'atoi and he was
the Comte de Chamboard, variously known as King Henry the
(02:31):
Fifth or depending on how you're looking at things, Henry
the pretender um. But long before the Conte de Chambourd
was even born, France had another pretender. This guy was
a lot more successful because he actually did become king,
and that was Louis the eighteenth, and he was the
younger brother of Louis the sixteenth. So just to give
(02:53):
you a little family history here, actually think I might
do a blog post of like a family tree or
some things that follow along that would be helpful, because
it's really confusing. It is. There's a lot of people,
a lot of Louise, a lot that's going on. Anyways, though,
the executed Louis the sixteenth was actually one of several brothers,
and his next oldest brother was Louis Donis Laus Xavier,
(03:17):
who was the Conte Provence, and during the revolution he
stayed behind in France pretty well into the heat of things.
He didn't leave until June, which was pretty risky of him.
The next youngest brother, though, was Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois,
and he left really early on. Louis the sixteenth, you know,
(03:39):
knew that he had certain family interests to protect and
ordered his youngest brother out of France immediately after the
fall of the Bastille. So um, even though Louis. There's
a point of all this is, even though Louis the
sixteenth and his ten year old son died during the revolution,
there's still a fair number of Bourbons hanging round and
(04:00):
they're okay, they're secure, they're safely out of France, and
they just need an opening after after they've been deposed
from their throne, after Napoleon has been in power, they
just need an opening to get back. But unfortunately for them,
Napoleon is making that return look pretty unlikely. But on
the bright side, Louis Stanislaw Xavier, the Comte de Provence,
(04:22):
he has some time though. He promotes the royal cause
throughout Europe, and he refuses to abdicate and accept a
pension from Napoleon. So he sticks to his guns. He
isn't going to accept just being a rich guy. Yeah,
he considers himself Louis the eighteenth. He wants to be
king again, so he finally does get his opening as
Napoleon starts to slip from power in eighteen thirteen. At
(04:46):
that point, Louis the eighteenth puts out a manifesto stating
that he'd restore Bourbon power but also recognize some changes
from the Revolution. So he's trying to kind of make
peace here, find a middle ground. Yeah, he's he's saying,
I'm not going to be Louis the fourteenth, y'all, I
except that the Revolution happened, and I'll be as modern
of a monarch as a monarch can be. And it
(05:07):
works for him. He's restored to the throne on May three,
eighteen fourteen, and he starts to set up a constitutional
monarchy as opposed to an absolute monarchy, which we discussed
before in previous podcasts. Um, but guess who escapes from
Elba at that point, Yeah, Napoleon's back in town and
you have to imagine this would be pretty disheartening for
Louis the eighteen, who has been in exile for so long.
(05:29):
But when Napoleon back, the king is forced to flee
France yet again. Um. The Polay doesn't last very long, though,
He's only there for what's called the hundred days that
you can get a pretty good idea of how long
um and Louis returns to France after Napoleon's defeated at
Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. So the Bourbons are back, this
(05:52):
is the second restoration, but they are solidly back in
power now. It's still a very unsettled time for them, though.
The king is kind of between two radical groups. So
we're gonna kind of explain those two and really simplify
it for you here. On one hand, there were the Liberals,
and they did not want the Bourbons as kings at all.
(06:13):
On the other hand, there were the ultras or the
ultra royal East, and of these the king's brother, the
Comte de'artois, was the leader. So they were the extreme
kind of right wing of the royalist movement. They were
the larger landowners, the aristocracy, the clericalists, the former emigres,
and they'd like to do away with some of the
concessions made since the restoration. Yeah, so they weren't straight
(06:37):
like let's get back to absolute monarchy how it used
to be, but they definitely have their own interests in
mind and throw into this minx, which this already sounds
like it would be difficult enough to balance these two groups.
Throw into this mix the supporters of the Bourbon families,
Pesky or Leon cousins, who are the genealogically could debt
(07:00):
branch of the Bourbon family. They are descendants of Louis
the younger brother, if you if you want to get
strictly family tree on it. But there there are lots
of them for one thing, and they're always kind of
causing trouble and they're a big threat to King Louis.
And the main reason behind that is because the Bourbon
(07:21):
line is running pretty low on children. There aren't many
of them left. Yeah. Louie himself has no kids, but
his brother, the Comte Atoire, has two sons. The eldest
of these sons has been married to the surviving daughter
of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette for decades. They
have no kids and it seems unlikely at this point
that they ever will. The younger of the two sons,
(07:43):
Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berry, has only daughters, but he
there's still some hope with him though he sort of
he could have more kids. There's potential. We know the
old French law though, so the daughters can't inherit. That
keeps on coming up in these episodes. It's kind of
how the Bourbons get or in the first place. But um, yeah,
the Duke de Berry, he's the hope for the Bourbons.
(08:05):
The hope is that he will have sons eventually. And
that's certainly what this liberal saddler named Louvel is thinking. Um,
a bit of a crazy guy is thinking when in
eighteen twenty he stabs, assassinates the Duke de Berry outside
of the opera and it's a terribly violent and kind
(08:27):
of extraordinary death. He stabs him in the back. The
blade goes straight through the Duke's body and hits the
metals on his chest. He survives, though he's not killed immediately.
He survives, and he's carried back inside of the opera house,
and you know, his his uncle, the king is called.
All the important ministers, the officers of state, the royal family,
(08:49):
they're all in this opera house where they're the dancers
and the flower girls and all of that business and
kind of show at that point, definitely, and the Archbishop
Paris even consecrates the hall for this royal heir to
to die in it in a suitable manner, which makes
it so the building can't be an opera house anymore.
(09:11):
But the Duke de Berry does die and France is
in deep mourning. It looks like there's no future for
the Bourbons beyond these few surviving men. Uh, there are
no sons to replace him? Or are there? Are there? Yes,
there's a surprise. The Duke's widow is pregnant, and in
September eight on red Do Done Dutoi the God Given.
(09:36):
You might remember that Moniker also given to another Bourbon
before Louis the fourteen is born. Some try to start
rumors that he's a change lane, but no one really
goes for it. Um. People are pretty actually excited about this. Yeah,
if you're into the monarchy, you're definitely excited about the
birth of his boy. He's the new hope for the Bourbons,
(09:56):
and he gets the title the Duke de Bordeaux and
he starts out of life in a pretty big way.
He's baptized in water from the river Jordan's been brought
all the way to frame and he's presented to crowds
at the Tuileri and people even raise money for him
to purchase this extremely elaborate Chateau de Chambourd, which makes
(10:18):
him the Comte de Chamboard, which is the title he
uses for most of his life. Um. They just want
this future king to have a palace that's suitable for
a king, and it certainly is. It's a palace that
Francis the First had really developed. It had four forty
rooms and to this day it's Europe's largest enclosed forest
(10:38):
park and it has France's longest wall, which is twenty
miles long. So it comes to fame. Indeed, fun trivia
fact for you. Um So, this little baby, the Comte
de Chambourd, seems like he's got things lining up pretty
well for him. It appears to be a bright future
at that point. But in eighteen twenty, the year of
(11:00):
Chambor's birth and his father's assassination, this also marks kind
of the end of moderate Bourbon rule because the Ultras
are starting to make a little headway. They're not so
middle ground anymore. Yeah, and things really only get worse
in eighteen twenty four, when Louis the eighteenth dies and
(11:21):
his brother, the Comte de Atois becomes King Charles the tenth,
and we know he is the leader of the ultras,
so we can imagine where what kind of politics he has,
and they're not exactly in line with the rest of
France at this point. Um. But the little Comte de
Chambard he features in his grandfather's coronation ceremony, he's still
(11:42):
popular with the people. He comes riding in and the
silver coach and wears a suit covered in little embroidered
silver lilies. And he's a really cute little kid. He's
blue eyed. He has been taught to smile at everyone.
He's popular, but like we said, grandfather, not so much
so the now in power ultras. They don't appeal to
(12:03):
the liberals or moderates at all. Charles the tenth rotates
through three different kinds of governments and by the time
he publishes restrictive ordinances in July eight thirty, the people
have kind of had enough, yeah, And those are the
July ordinances, and they restricted suffrage, they restricted freedom of
the press. So he had been chipping away at things
(12:24):
for the past few years, but this was really the
last straw for a lot of people. I mean it
was the last straw, right. So there are protests, demonstrations,
three days of fighting, and this is what we now
know as the July Revolution. So Charles the Tenth abdicates
his eldest son, who is childless as we mentioned, and
(12:44):
he really has no interest to rule anyway. He abdicates
twenty minutes later, so he's king. He wants to make
no secret that he has no interest in ruling France. Yeah,
so this leaves the young contecham board Charles the tenth
grandson to pickly king technically King Henry the Fifth and
Charles the tenth sort of promising too little, too late.
(13:06):
He hasn't realized that maybe this would have been a
good situation to set up earlier. He thinks maybe he
can combine family interests and make his rival cousin Louis Philippe,
who's the Duke Doleon Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, essentially
act as regent for his young grandson. So you still
have the Bourbon king, but the the Orleans family has
(13:29):
the power essentially. But Louis Philippe is not going to
go for this at this point, when he's so close,
he accepts the crown for himself and by August nine
he is King of the French and we should we
should note that title. He's not the king of France.
He's king of the French. Uh. It's supposed to sort
(13:50):
of signify that he's king of the people, the citizens,
and uh, he's really considered a bourgeois sort of monarch,
even though he's definitely is blue blood it as anyone.
I read a few interesting things in a lecture given
um at Yale by Professor John Merriman. Supposedly Louis Philippe
did things like visited Kentucky and sipped on bourbon, and
(14:12):
he carried an umbrella, which was considered very middle class.
I guess if you were noble, you'd have somebody somebody
carry it for you and you out of the rain. Anyways. Um,
so yeah, Louis Philippe definitely a different kind of king.
But it's still a constitutional monarchy. So for the Bourbons,
though that's technically it, they're never restored to the French throne. Um.
(14:35):
Like we said, we'll talk about the Spanish Bourbons on
the other side of this. But um, but we're still
not really done with shampboard. We want to tell you
a little more about him. Why didn't he become king
and how did France end up with a third Republic instead?
Of him since he was around. Yeah, he's the last Bourbon,
so we're gonna go to the end with him. So
after Louis Philippe sees the throne, Chambord of course had
(14:59):
to flee the country with his grandfather and they went
to Scotland. And it's kind of a sad story if
you consider that he's he's just ten years old at
this point, but nobody tells him that they are fleeing
the country, that they're no longer in power, and because
the rules of the court are so rigid, everyone is
calling him king and they're treating him like he's king.
(15:21):
So he's really excited. He thinks, finally I'm king, and
he and his sister blow kisses to the people from
the carriage while they're leaving France forever potentially definitely a
little tragic there. It definitely was the court at that point.
They moved to Prague, um no clear date of return.
(15:42):
So he's brought up still as a Bourbon, though he's
brought up to cherish his heritage, to hate the Revolution,
and unfortunately not to learn a whole lot else. Besides that,
his French history was extremely romantic, so not necessarily true
um in all respects, and it was all the good
stuff basically none of the bad. And he ended up
(16:04):
with this idea of, I guess, a perfect regime that
never really existed. Yeah, his idea of his ancestors was
just not not anywhere close to the reality. And in
his late teens he also goes through this sort of
macab phase. He is very devout, and his religious devotion
ultimately turns off his confessor a little bit. Even a
(16:26):
confessor thinks he's going a little too far with it
for a potential king at some point, and so the
boy is sent abroad, you know, they think that will
help lighten him up a little bit. And he's received
in all these foreign courts as king, which is something
that I think Louis Philippe must have not much cared
for since he was king of the French Um. But
(16:48):
Schaumbor is not well educated, and so his appearances in
all of these courts is a little funny. He's up too,
So that's probably the best word to describe him. Yeah,
people in foreign courts actually don't know what to make
of him quite They they wonder is he is he
playing a game? Is he you know, having a joke
(17:08):
as of some sort, and it's only later that it
becomes clear that he's actually a little bit of a
joke himself. Yeah, he gives such simple replies to questions
that they think surely, you know, they're waiting for him
to be kidding a smile or something. I just I
can definitely imagine this kind of scene going down. But
one thing that doesn't help his later reputation is he
(17:30):
has a horse riding accident when he's still pretty young
and breaks his leg. It really limits the amount of
exercise he can do, and he puts on quite a
bit of weight throughout the rest of his life. He's
already not a particularly tall fellow. He goes bald. You know,
nothing wrong with any of that, but his appearance is
not working in his favor for this pretender who's trying
(17:53):
to reclaim his throne. He's not particularly dashing. Yeah, quite
a quite a way is away from our green gallant
that we started the series with exactly Still, though, becoming
king is his dream, believe it or not, and he
seems like he's only waiting for the right opportunity to
kind of slip in there. But when the July monarchy
(18:13):
of his cousin Louis Philippe is overturned, and Louis Philippe
is actually ousted from power during the Revolution of Shamboard
doesn't really step up to the plate. He doesn't do
anything to really take advantage of that opportunity. He's just
married the daughter of the Duke of Medina, and he
has considerable resources and potential for support, especially she brought
(18:34):
a lot of money into their alliance for right, so
he could be the replacement for Louis Philippe. But he
sort of waffles at that point. Yeah, he does, and
he's not quite willing to fight his way into Paris.
And there's another air hanging about, of course, Louis Napoleon,
who's the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. And while sham Boy
(18:58):
is waffling, trying to just what he's going to do,
backing out at the last minute, this other heir, Louis Napoleon,
is growing a lot more popular, and I think it's interesting.
I read two obituaries and they each took really different
opinions on on this waffling. One was from the Times
of London and it really looked down on this as cowardice.
(19:20):
I mean they were quite clear. They considered Chambord coward
for not claiming his right, and that's going to of
the initial reaction you have. I think, let's just go
for it. Uh. The obituary in the New York Times
they took a different opinion, and it was more like,
after seeing so much blood shed, Chambord decided that if
he was going to win back his right, he would
(19:42):
do it peacefully. So I can see that. I can
see that too. I mean, here's somebody who most of
his family has been killed in revolutions. You can see
why he'd be hesitant to bring his country to war again. Yeah.
I mean, ultimately, perhaps it was some combination of the two,
very likely really of him, but I guess we can't
know that now. Soon enough, the more tenacious Bonaparte Air
(20:05):
had in fact established himself as the leader of the
Second Empire and became Napoleon the Third. So for Schampboard,
it's just back to the gambling table. In life abroad,
he spends most of his time playing cards and telling
anti Semitic jokes with his entourage and just not really
doing much serious. Yeah. He likes the easy life for sure,
and remarkably though you would expect somebody like this would
(20:30):
just stay at the cards and gambling as long as
he had the resources to do so. But remarkably, for
this guy who did hardly anything to make his dream
of becoming king happen, he gets a second chance to
become king. Twenty years later in eighteen seventy I mean,
go figure, the Second Empire collapses in yet another revolution.
(20:50):
We told you they were going to be a lot
of these. Um. That revolution was followed by the Paris
Commune in eighteen seventy one. So again there's chaotic, violent
in France and an opening for a new leader. And
by this point those Chamboy is about fifty years old,
he's middle aged, he's childless, um, but he's still keen
(21:12):
on the idea of becoming king. I mean, it's enough
to rouse them from his card table, I guess. So
when a royal majority is elected to the National Assembly
in eighteen seventy, restoration really seems possible for him, and
so he finally he actually acts. This time on October nine,
eighteen seventy, after Napoleon the Thirds fall, Shamboard issues a
(21:32):
proclamation inviting all of France to reunite under the Bourbons.
At this point, he's pretty he's conciliatory. He he doesn't
want to be the old regime, but he claims that
he'll also work to restore the church to what it
was once in France. And that's a position that could
prove to be quite popular at the time, because there
were waves of revivals in the eighteen seventies. So it's
(21:54):
a conservative position, but one that people might actually go for.
And eventually champ Or even finally comes to Paris, which
is the city that he's obviously hardly spent any time in,
and he tours the city because he doesn't know it well.
He goes to places like Notre Dame and Sant Chappelle,
and in just a side note here, he is really
(22:15):
interested in his ancestors. It makes sense for a guy
like this, but he supposedly kept what he thought were
the bones of Marie Antoinette with him at all time.
I guess that played into his maccab teen years a
little too. It just seems so odd to think of
a king. You're about to try to be king of
the country and you know so little about it. You're
(22:36):
going to see like all the big sites, right, like
where I would go. But it turns out that although
Shamboard put a certain face forward in the beginning, he
wasn't necessarily as open to change as you would think.
He started actually putting out these publications that probably alienated
a lot of his supporters at that time. Yeah, they
made him seem more absolutist than ever one was from
(22:57):
eighteen seventy two missy day one for UM eighteen seventy three,
manifest a Program Politique and del Institutions du regents in
eighteen seventy four. But it really, I mean, if legitimates
and oilinists at the beginning seemed like maybe they could compromise,
it didn't seem like that could happen anymore. He did
(23:19):
seem really absolutist, like he wasn't going to be a
modern king. And interestingly, though his undoing turns out to
be his rigid stance on the French flag. His advisors
tell him that he can he can maybe make it,
even even now, even with all of these sort of
absolutist ideas he's putting forth, he could maybe become king
(23:42):
if he agrees to keep the tricolure, which is of
course the flag of the Revolution. It's the Bourbon white
flag flanked by the red and blue of Paris. But
he tells his advisors that he would not become the
quote legitimate king of the Revolution because I mean, for him,
it's the flag that killed his family. He's not going
(24:02):
to be king behind that flag. So royalists, you know,
desperate to work with this guy anyway they can, suggests
that okay, he could be king with his Bourbon white
Bourbon flag with the Fleur de lis during his lifetime,
but then after his death he would be succeeded by
his Orlean cousin, and then the flag would revert to
(24:26):
the red, white and blue French flag of the Revolution.
He says that quote without my principles, I am just
a fat man with a big limp. And that's again
according to Professor Merriman, he can't stand behind that. It's
just against how he feels. He's not going to be
king and have the flag he doesn't believe in. So
(24:47):
in June seventy four, the motion to restore the Bourbons
is defeated because he takes this stand, and it's defeated
by a vote of two d seventy two to seventy
nine quite handled. Um. January three, eighteen seventy five, the
Republic is formally adopted by one vote, So that's the
(25:09):
end of the Bourbon cause for sure. But it's interesting though,
because a lot of people think that this Republic will
be temporary, the Third republic Um. A lot of the
monarchists planned to to wait it out, weighed out the
life of Schamboard, who is, after all, middle aged, not
the healthiest guy in the world. Maybe when he finally
(25:31):
dies they can put in his less conservative cousin, but
he lives until eighteen eighty three, and by that point
nobody really wants a king anyways. The Republic seems to
be working out better than most things have in the
past few years, and it ends up blasting until the
spring of nineteen forty when it's ultimately toppled by the
(25:53):
Vichy regime. So that's that's how the Third Republic is established.
It's interesting that it partly comes down to the decisions
of this strange little guy who's into gambling and can't
really let his history go and his stubbornness over a flag,
which seems so simple. But then again, I guess, like
you said, it did represent a whole lot to him.
(26:13):
So if you visit his chateau today you can see
his obviously never used coronation outfits and souvenirs. So apparently
he thought there was hope. Still wasn't willing to march
into Paris, but was willing to commission a coronation outfit. Apparently. Um,
I think it's interesting. Apparently there are still royalists left
in France today, probably not very many, but I heard
(26:36):
about a year ago now a story on Morning Edition
about people mourning the death of Louis the sixteenth and
hoping that hundreds of years, two hundred years after the fact,
France would still have a king again. Um, it's interesting.
I think there are a lot of potential pretenders. Obviously
no serious pretenders, but it's a lot of descendants to
(26:59):
choose for um. But it was interesting. In the in
the Morning Edition program, the common theme seemed to be
that Louis the sixt was such a good king, which
you can't bring him back. Yeah, I mean it was
seemed more to be I think they called it like
a protest against modern world, rather than uh sort of
support of any particular person or potential pretender. You've got
(27:23):
to have a cause them. You gotta have a pretender
if you're going to be talking about bringing back the monarchy.
Maybe so, maybe so. I guess their idea was that
only a king could represent all the people, like a
president can only represent his particular political party. One way
of looking at it, I guess. But either way, the
springs the story of the French Bourbons at least to
(27:43):
a close. And as we promised that we're gonna take
a look at the Spanish Bourbon. So we'll do that
down the road. Um, but it's been kind of a
long ride, it has, and we have one more stop
along the way, brings us to listener mail. So this
message is from Chelsea, and she wrote, Dear Sarah and Dablina,
(28:05):
as a French English translator who've had to sit through
hours of French history classes, and I'm really enjoying your
series in the Bourbon. I'm sharing some photos with you.
When I was living in France a couple of years ago,
I lived right next to a suburb called Saint Germain
on Lay, where there is an ancient chateau where Louis
the fourteenth was born. To me, it is very impressive,
(28:25):
but I guess when you're King of France. It's just
not big enough since he had to go and build Versai.
And she sent some very nice photos. She wrote under
the Vichy government, the Nazis operated from the chateau and
there are still two massive concrete monkers outside the chateau
that were built by the Nazis. They're really ugly and
kind of a blot on an otherwise lovely play. So um, yeah,
(28:47):
if you check this photo out, I'm sure you could
search for it online. It is pretty interesting, this juxtaposition. Um.
But anyways, thank you Chelsea for sharing your photos and
your thoughts on the burd been theories. And we'll see
all next time with our our conclusion, our Spanish conclusion
to this very long series. But if you want to
(29:09):
learn a little bit more about how royal families and
royalty work, I think we've pointed you to this one before.
If he didn't get chicken out yet, to visit our
homepage and type in royalty at www dot how stuff
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
(29:30):
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The how stuff works.
iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalkoateboarding, and we are
going to be continuing our Bourbon series today, actually finishing
(00:21):
the French portion of it. We have a little Spanish
stuff coming your way, but we're nearing the end, so
enjoy these last couple. Um. So we left off last
talking about Madame de Pompadour and the ominous quote a
pre new le Deluge after us the deluge, and um,
fortunately for us, I guess the Deluge has been pretty
(00:43):
thoroughly covered already on this podcast, not by the two
of us, but by Candis and Jane. They did episodes
on how the French Revolution worked and did Marie Antoinette
really say let them eat cake? So I think a
lot of you are already pretty familiar on the events
of seventeen eighty nine to seventeen ninety nine, what we
(01:04):
think of as the main French Revolution, even though we're
going to find out there are many more revolutions in
France over the next few decades. Yeah, they did not
quite a bit, they did, um, but just long story short,
in case you haven't listened to uh the episode on
how the French Revolution worked. The Bourbons were overthrown, obviously,
(01:25):
the king and Queen were executed. The reign of terror
really prolonged and intensified the violence. It's it's probably what
you're thinking of if you're thinking of the French Revolution.
After that, the Directory was established, and then finally in
seventeen ninety nine, the Consulate was established, which essentially marked
the beginning of Napoleon's dictatorship. So that's kind of where
(01:46):
we're picking up. By eighteen o four, Napoleon was the
emperor and all the surviving Bourbons, or most of them
at least, were emigrats. They had left France long ago,
but they were really active emigrans. And since this is
their series after all, we're going to track them through
their revolutionary flights, throughout Napoleon's rule, through their own restoration
(02:08):
and their eventual fall. And in the course of that
we're going to take a look at the life of
their last son, who was this strange little man who
the legitimates um really placed their hopes on for restoration
of the monarchy, and he was the last French Bourbon. Yeah,
his name was Henri de Dolnay d'atoi and he was
the Comte de Chamboard, variously known as King Henry the
(02:31):
Fifth or depending on how you're looking at things, Henry
the pretender um. But long before the Conte de Chambourd
was even born, France had another pretender. This guy was
a lot more successful because he actually did become king,
and that was Louis the eighteenth, and he was the
younger brother of Louis the sixteenth. So just to give
(02:53):
you a little family history here, actually think I might
do a blog post of like a family tree or
some things that follow along that would be helpful, because
it's really confusing. It is. There's a lot of people,
a lot of Louise, a lot that's going on. Anyways, though,
the executed Louis the sixteenth was actually one of several brothers,
and his next oldest brother was Louis Donis Laus Xavier,
(03:17):
who was the Conte Provence, and during the revolution he
stayed behind in France pretty well into the heat of things.
He didn't leave until June, which was pretty risky of him.
The next youngest brother, though, was Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois,
and he left really early on. Louis the sixteenth, you know,
(03:39):
knew that he had certain family interests to protect and
ordered his youngest brother out of France immediately after the
fall of the Bastille. So um, even though Louis. There's
a point of all this is, even though Louis the
sixteenth and his ten year old son died during the revolution,
there's still a fair number of Bourbons hanging round and
(04:00):
they're okay, they're secure, they're safely out of France, and
they just need an opening after after they've been deposed
from their throne, after Napoleon has been in power, they
just need an opening to get back. But unfortunately for them,
Napoleon is making that return look pretty unlikely. But on
the bright side, Louis Stanislaw Xavier, the Comte de Provence,
(04:22):
he has some time though. He promotes the royal cause
throughout Europe, and he refuses to abdicate and accept a
pension from Napoleon. So he sticks to his guns. He
isn't going to accept just being a rich guy. Yeah,
he considers himself Louis the eighteenth. He wants to be
king again, so he finally does get his opening as
Napoleon starts to slip from power in eighteen thirteen. At
(04:46):
that point, Louis the eighteenth puts out a manifesto stating
that he'd restore Bourbon power but also recognize some changes
from the Revolution. So he's trying to kind of make
peace here, find a middle ground. Yeah, he's he's saying,
I'm not going to be Louis the fourteenth, y'all, I
except that the Revolution happened, and I'll be as modern
of a monarch as a monarch can be. And it
(05:07):
works for him. He's restored to the throne on May three,
eighteen fourteen, and he starts to set up a constitutional
monarchy as opposed to an absolute monarchy, which we discussed
before in previous podcasts. Um, but guess who escapes from
Elba at that point, Yeah, Napoleon's back in town and
you have to imagine this would be pretty disheartening for
Louis the eighteen, who has been in exile for so long.
(05:29):
But when Napoleon back, the king is forced to flee
France yet again. Um. The Polay doesn't last very long, though,
He's only there for what's called the hundred days that
you can get a pretty good idea of how long
um and Louis returns to France after Napoleon's defeated at
Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. So the Bourbons are back, this
(05:52):
is the second restoration, but they are solidly back in
power now. It's still a very unsettled time for them, though.
The king is kind of between two radical groups. So
we're gonna kind of explain those two and really simplify
it for you here. On one hand, there were the Liberals,
and they did not want the Bourbons as kings at all.
(06:13):
On the other hand, there were the ultras or the
ultra royal East, and of these the king's brother, the
Comte de'artois, was the leader. So they were the extreme
kind of right wing of the royalist movement. They were
the larger landowners, the aristocracy, the clericalists, the former emigres,
and they'd like to do away with some of the
concessions made since the restoration. Yeah, so they weren't straight
(06:37):
like let's get back to absolute monarchy how it used
to be, but they definitely have their own interests in
mind and throw into this minx, which this already sounds
like it would be difficult enough to balance these two groups.
Throw into this mix the supporters of the Bourbon families,
Pesky or Leon cousins, who are the genealogically could debt
(07:00):
branch of the Bourbon family. They are descendants of Louis
the younger brother, if you if you want to get
strictly family tree on it. But there there are lots
of them for one thing, and they're always kind of
causing trouble and they're a big threat to King Louis.
And the main reason behind that is because the Bourbon
(07:21):
line is running pretty low on children. There aren't many
of them left. Yeah. Louie himself has no kids, but
his brother, the Comte Atoire, has two sons. The eldest
of these sons has been married to the surviving daughter
of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette for decades. They
have no kids and it seems unlikely at this point
that they ever will. The younger of the two sons,
(07:43):
Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berry, has only daughters, but he
there's still some hope with him though he sort of
he could have more kids. There's potential. We know the
old French law though, so the daughters can't inherit. That
keeps on coming up in these episodes. It's kind of
how the Bourbons get or in the first place. But um, yeah,
the Duke de Berry, he's the hope for the Bourbons.
(08:05):
The hope is that he will have sons eventually. And
that's certainly what this liberal saddler named Louvel is thinking. Um,
a bit of a crazy guy is thinking when in
eighteen twenty he stabs, assassinates the Duke de Berry outside
of the opera and it's a terribly violent and kind
(08:27):
of extraordinary death. He stabs him in the back. The
blade goes straight through the Duke's body and hits the
metals on his chest. He survives, though he's not killed immediately.
He survives, and he's carried back inside of the opera house,
and you know, his his uncle, the king is called.
All the important ministers, the officers of state, the royal family,
(08:49):
they're all in this opera house where they're the dancers
and the flower girls and all of that business and
kind of show at that point, definitely, and the Archbishop
Paris even consecrates the hall for this royal heir to
to die in it in a suitable manner, which makes
it so the building can't be an opera house anymore.
(09:11):
But the Duke de Berry does die and France is
in deep mourning. It looks like there's no future for
the Bourbons beyond these few surviving men. Uh, there are
no sons to replace him? Or are there? Are there? Yes,
there's a surprise. The Duke's widow is pregnant, and in
September eight on red Do Done Dutoi the God Given.
(09:36):
You might remember that Moniker also given to another Bourbon
before Louis the fourteen is born. Some try to start
rumors that he's a change lane, but no one really
goes for it. Um. People are pretty actually excited about this. Yeah,
if you're into the monarchy, you're definitely excited about the
birth of his boy. He's the new hope for the Bourbons,
(09:56):
and he gets the title the Duke de Bordeaux and
he starts out of life in a pretty big way.
He's baptized in water from the river Jordan's been brought
all the way to frame and he's presented to crowds
at the Tuileri and people even raise money for him
to purchase this extremely elaborate Chateau de Chambourd, which makes
(10:18):
him the Comte de Chamboard, which is the title he
uses for most of his life. Um. They just want
this future king to have a palace that's suitable for
a king, and it certainly is. It's a palace that
Francis the First had really developed. It had four forty
rooms and to this day it's Europe's largest enclosed forest
(10:38):
park and it has France's longest wall, which is twenty
miles long. So it comes to fame. Indeed, fun trivia
fact for you. Um So, this little baby, the Comte
de Chambourd, seems like he's got things lining up pretty
well for him. It appears to be a bright future
at that point. But in eighteen twenty, the year of
(11:00):
Chambor's birth and his father's assassination, this also marks kind
of the end of moderate Bourbon rule because the Ultras
are starting to make a little headway. They're not so
middle ground anymore. Yeah, and things really only get worse
in eighteen twenty four, when Louis the eighteenth dies and
(11:21):
his brother, the Comte de Atois becomes King Charles the tenth,
and we know he is the leader of the ultras,
so we can imagine where what kind of politics he has,
and they're not exactly in line with the rest of
France at this point. Um. But the little Comte de
Chambard he features in his grandfather's coronation ceremony, he's still
(11:42):
popular with the people. He comes riding in and the
silver coach and wears a suit covered in little embroidered
silver lilies. And he's a really cute little kid. He's
blue eyed. He has been taught to smile at everyone.
He's popular, but like we said, grandfather, not so much
so the now in power ultras. They don't appeal to
(12:03):
the liberals or moderates at all. Charles the tenth rotates
through three different kinds of governments and by the time
he publishes restrictive ordinances in July eight thirty, the people
have kind of had enough, yeah, And those are the
July ordinances, and they restricted suffrage, they restricted freedom of
the press. So he had been chipping away at things
(12:24):
for the past few years, but this was really the
last straw for a lot of people. I mean it
was the last straw, right. So there are protests, demonstrations,
three days of fighting, and this is what we now
know as the July Revolution. So Charles the Tenth abdicates
his eldest son, who is childless as we mentioned, and
(12:44):
he really has no interest to rule anyway. He abdicates
twenty minutes later, so he's king. He wants to make
no secret that he has no interest in ruling France. Yeah,
so this leaves the young contecham board Charles the tenth
grandson to pickly king technically King Henry the Fifth and
Charles the tenth sort of promising too little, too late.
(13:06):
He hasn't realized that maybe this would have been a
good situation to set up earlier. He thinks maybe he
can combine family interests and make his rival cousin Louis Philippe,
who's the Duke Doleon Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, essentially
act as regent for his young grandson. So you still
have the Bourbon king, but the the Orleans family has
(13:29):
the power essentially. But Louis Philippe is not going to
go for this at this point, when he's so close,
he accepts the crown for himself and by August nine
he is King of the French and we should we
should note that title. He's not the king of France.
He's king of the French. Uh. It's supposed to sort
(13:50):
of signify that he's king of the people, the citizens,
and uh, he's really considered a bourgeois sort of monarch,
even though he's definitely is blue blood it as anyone.
I read a few interesting things in a lecture given
um at Yale by Professor John Merriman. Supposedly Louis Philippe
did things like visited Kentucky and sipped on bourbon, and
(14:12):
he carried an umbrella, which was considered very middle class.
I guess if you were noble, you'd have somebody somebody
carry it for you and you out of the rain. Anyways. Um,
so yeah, Louis Philippe definitely a different kind of king.
But it's still a constitutional monarchy. So for the Bourbons,
though that's technically it, they're never restored to the French throne. Um.
(14:35):
Like we said, we'll talk about the Spanish Bourbons on
the other side of this. But um, but we're still
not really done with shampboard. We want to tell you
a little more about him. Why didn't he become king
and how did France end up with a third Republic instead?
Of him since he was around. Yeah, he's the last Bourbon,
so we're gonna go to the end with him. So
after Louis Philippe sees the throne, Chambord of course had
(14:59):
to flee the country with his grandfather and they went
to Scotland. And it's kind of a sad story if
you consider that he's he's just ten years old at
this point, but nobody tells him that they are fleeing
the country, that they're no longer in power, and because
the rules of the court are so rigid, everyone is
calling him king and they're treating him like he's king.
(15:21):
So he's really excited. He thinks, finally I'm king, and
he and his sister blow kisses to the people from
the carriage while they're leaving France forever potentially definitely a
little tragic there. It definitely was the court at that point.
They moved to Prague, um no clear date of return.
(15:42):
So he's brought up still as a Bourbon, though he's
brought up to cherish his heritage, to hate the Revolution,
and unfortunately not to learn a whole lot else. Besides that,
his French history was extremely romantic, so not necessarily true
um in all respects, and it was all the good
stuff basically none of the bad. And he ended up
(16:04):
with this idea of, I guess, a perfect regime that
never really existed. Yeah, his idea of his ancestors was
just not not anywhere close to the reality. And in
his late teens he also goes through this sort of
macab phase. He is very devout, and his religious devotion
ultimately turns off his confessor a little bit. Even a
(16:26):
confessor thinks he's going a little too far with it
for a potential king at some point, and so the
boy is sent abroad, you know, they think that will
help lighten him up a little bit. And he's received
in all these foreign courts as king, which is something
that I think Louis Philippe must have not much cared
for since he was king of the French Um. But
(16:48):
Schaumbor is not well educated, and so his appearances in
all of these courts is a little funny. He's up too,
So that's probably the best word to describe him. Yeah,
people in foreign courts actually don't know what to make
of him quite They they wonder is he is he
playing a game? Is he you know, having a joke
(17:08):
as of some sort, and it's only later that it
becomes clear that he's actually a little bit of a
joke himself. Yeah, he gives such simple replies to questions
that they think surely, you know, they're waiting for him
to be kidding a smile or something. I just I
can definitely imagine this kind of scene going down. But
one thing that doesn't help his later reputation is he
(17:30):
has a horse riding accident when he's still pretty young
and breaks his leg. It really limits the amount of
exercise he can do, and he puts on quite a
bit of weight throughout the rest of his life. He's
already not a particularly tall fellow. He goes bald. You know,
nothing wrong with any of that, but his appearance is
not working in his favor for this pretender who's trying
(17:53):
to reclaim his throne. He's not particularly dashing. Yeah, quite
a quite a way is away from our green gallant
that we started the series with exactly Still, though, becoming
king is his dream, believe it or not, and he
seems like he's only waiting for the right opportunity to
kind of slip in there. But when the July monarchy
(18:13):
of his cousin Louis Philippe is overturned, and Louis Philippe
is actually ousted from power during the Revolution of Shamboard
doesn't really step up to the plate. He doesn't do
anything to really take advantage of that opportunity. He's just
married the daughter of the Duke of Medina, and he
has considerable resources and potential for support, especially she brought
(18:34):
a lot of money into their alliance for right, so
he could be the replacement for Louis Philippe. But he
sort of waffles at that point. Yeah, he does, and
he's not quite willing to fight his way into Paris.
And there's another air hanging about, of course, Louis Napoleon,
who's the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. And while sham Boy
(18:58):
is waffling, trying to just what he's going to do,
backing out at the last minute, this other heir, Louis Napoleon,
is growing a lot more popular, and I think it's interesting.
I read two obituaries and they each took really different
opinions on on this waffling. One was from the Times
of London and it really looked down on this as cowardice.
(19:20):
I mean they were quite clear. They considered Chambord coward
for not claiming his right, and that's going to of
the initial reaction you have. I think, let's just go
for it. Uh. The obituary in the New York Times
they took a different opinion, and it was more like,
after seeing so much blood shed, Chambord decided that if
he was going to win back his right, he would
(19:42):
do it peacefully. So I can see that. I can
see that too. I mean, here's somebody who most of
his family has been killed in revolutions. You can see
why he'd be hesitant to bring his country to war again. Yeah.
I mean, ultimately, perhaps it was some combination of the two,
very likely really of him, but I guess we can't
know that now. Soon enough, the more tenacious Bonaparte Air
(20:05):
had in fact established himself as the leader of the
Second Empire and became Napoleon the Third. So for Schampboard,
it's just back to the gambling table. In life abroad,
he spends most of his time playing cards and telling
anti Semitic jokes with his entourage and just not really
doing much serious. Yeah. He likes the easy life for sure,
and remarkably though you would expect somebody like this would
(20:30):
just stay at the cards and gambling as long as
he had the resources to do so. But remarkably, for
this guy who did hardly anything to make his dream
of becoming king happen, he gets a second chance to
become king. Twenty years later in eighteen seventy I mean,
go figure, the Second Empire collapses in yet another revolution.
(20:50):
We told you they were going to be a lot
of these. Um. That revolution was followed by the Paris
Commune in eighteen seventy one. So again there's chaotic, violent
in France and an opening for a new leader. And
by this point those Chamboy is about fifty years old,
he's middle aged, he's childless, um, but he's still keen
(21:12):
on the idea of becoming king. I mean, it's enough
to rouse them from his card table, I guess. So
when a royal majority is elected to the National Assembly
in eighteen seventy, restoration really seems possible for him, and
so he finally he actually acts. This time on October nine,
eighteen seventy, after Napoleon the Thirds fall, Shamboard issues a
(21:32):
proclamation inviting all of France to reunite under the Bourbons.
At this point, he's pretty he's conciliatory. He he doesn't
want to be the old regime, but he claims that
he'll also work to restore the church to what it
was once in France. And that's a position that could
prove to be quite popular at the time, because there
were waves of revivals in the eighteen seventies. So it's
(21:54):
a conservative position, but one that people might actually go for.
And eventually champ Or even finally comes to Paris, which
is the city that he's obviously hardly spent any time in,
and he tours the city because he doesn't know it well.
He goes to places like Notre Dame and Sant Chappelle,
and in just a side note here, he is really
(22:15):
interested in his ancestors. It makes sense for a guy
like this, but he supposedly kept what he thought were
the bones of Marie Antoinette with him at all time.
I guess that played into his maccab teen years a
little too. It just seems so odd to think of
a king. You're about to try to be king of
the country and you know so little about it. You're
(22:36):
going to see like all the big sites, right, like
where I would go. But it turns out that although
Shamboard put a certain face forward in the beginning, he
wasn't necessarily as open to change as you would think.
He started actually putting out these publications that probably alienated
a lot of his supporters at that time. Yeah, they
made him seem more absolutist than ever one was from
(22:57):
eighteen seventy two missy day one for UM eighteen seventy three,
manifest a Program Politique and del Institutions du regents in
eighteen seventy four. But it really, I mean, if legitimates
and oilinists at the beginning seemed like maybe they could compromise,
it didn't seem like that could happen anymore. He did
(23:19):
seem really absolutist, like he wasn't going to be a
modern king. And interestingly, though his undoing turns out to
be his rigid stance on the French flag. His advisors
tell him that he can he can maybe make it,
even even now, even with all of these sort of
absolutist ideas he's putting forth, he could maybe become king
(23:42):
if he agrees to keep the tricolure, which is of
course the flag of the Revolution. It's the Bourbon white
flag flanked by the red and blue of Paris. But
he tells his advisors that he would not become the
quote legitimate king of the Revolution because I mean, for him,
it's the flag that killed his family. He's not going
(24:02):
to be king behind that flag. So royalists, you know,
desperate to work with this guy anyway they can, suggests
that okay, he could be king with his Bourbon white
Bourbon flag with the Fleur de lis during his lifetime,
but then after his death he would be succeeded by
his Orlean cousin, and then the flag would revert to
(24:26):
the red, white and blue French flag of the Revolution.
He says that quote without my principles, I am just
a fat man with a big limp. And that's again
according to Professor Merriman, he can't stand behind that. It's
just against how he feels. He's not going to be
king and have the flag he doesn't believe in. So
(24:47):
in June seventy four, the motion to restore the Bourbons
is defeated because he takes this stand, and it's defeated
by a vote of two d seventy two to seventy
nine quite handled. Um. January three, eighteen seventy five, the
Republic is formally adopted by one vote, So that's the
(25:09):
end of the Bourbon cause for sure. But it's interesting though,
because a lot of people think that this Republic will
be temporary, the Third republic Um. A lot of the
monarchists planned to to wait it out, weighed out the
life of Schamboard, who is, after all, middle aged, not
the healthiest guy in the world. Maybe when he finally
(25:31):
dies they can put in his less conservative cousin, but
he lives until eighteen eighty three, and by that point
nobody really wants a king anyways. The Republic seems to
be working out better than most things have in the
past few years, and it ends up blasting until the
spring of nineteen forty when it's ultimately toppled by the
(25:53):
Vichy regime. So that's that's how the Third Republic is established.
It's interesting that it partly comes down to the decisions
of this strange little guy who's into gambling and can't
really let his history go and his stubbornness over a flag,
which seems so simple. But then again, I guess, like
you said, it did represent a whole lot to him.
(26:13):
So if you visit his chateau today you can see
his obviously never used coronation outfits and souvenirs. So apparently
he thought there was hope. Still wasn't willing to march
into Paris, but was willing to commission a coronation outfit. Apparently. Um,
I think it's interesting. Apparently there are still royalists left
in France today, probably not very many, but I heard
(26:36):
about a year ago now a story on Morning Edition
about people mourning the death of Louis the sixteenth and
hoping that hundreds of years, two hundred years after the fact,
France would still have a king again. Um, it's interesting.
I think there are a lot of potential pretenders. Obviously
no serious pretenders, but it's a lot of descendants to
(26:59):
choose for um. But it was interesting. In the in
the Morning Edition program, the common theme seemed to be
that Louis the sixt was such a good king, which
you can't bring him back. Yeah, I mean it was
seemed more to be I think they called it like
a protest against modern world, rather than uh sort of
support of any particular person or potential pretender. You've got
(27:23):
to have a cause them. You gotta have a pretender
if you're going to be talking about bringing back the monarchy.
Maybe so, maybe so. I guess their idea was that
only a king could represent all the people, like a
president can only represent his particular political party. One way
of looking at it, I guess. But either way, the
springs the story of the French Bourbons at least to
(27:43):
a close. And as we promised that we're gonna take
a look at the Spanish Bourbon. So we'll do that
down the road. Um, but it's been kind of a
long ride, it has, and we have one more stop
along the way, brings us to listener mail. So this
message is from Chelsea, and she wrote, Dear Sarah and Dablina,
(28:05):
as a French English translator who've had to sit through
hours of French history classes, and I'm really enjoying your
series in the Bourbon. I'm sharing some photos with you.
When I was living in France a couple of years ago,
I lived right next to a suburb called Saint Germain
on Lay, where there is an ancient chateau where Louis
the fourteenth was born. To me, it is very impressive,
(28:25):
but I guess when you're King of France. It's just
not big enough since he had to go and build Versai.
And she sent some very nice photos. She wrote under
the Vichy government, the Nazis operated from the chateau and
there are still two massive concrete monkers outside the chateau
that were built by the Nazis. They're really ugly and
kind of a blot on an otherwise lovely play. So um, yeah,
(28:47):
if you check this photo out, I'm sure you could
search for it online. It is pretty interesting, this juxtaposition. Um.
But anyways, thank you Chelsea for sharing your photos and
your thoughts on the burd been theories. And we'll see
all next time with our our conclusion, our Spanish conclusion
to this very long series. But if you want to
(29:09):
learn a little bit more about how royal families and
royalty work, I think we've pointed you to this one before.
If he didn't get chicken out yet, to visit our
homepage and type in royalty at www dot how stuff
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
(29:30):
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The how stuff works.
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