ORLEANS, HOUSE OF. 



ORLEANS, HOUSE OP. 



590 



title of Louis XII. On big own death, without male issue, in 1515 

 [Louis XIL], his cousin Francis, count of AngoulSme, to whom he 

 had given his daughter Claude in marriage, ascended the throne under 

 the title of Francis I. ; and the royal succession thus devolved upon 

 the second branch of the house of Valois-Orleans or line of Valois- 

 Angoulduie, as it has been called which contributed five sovereigns 

 to France, namely, Francis I., Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., 

 and Henry III. 



The following table will show the descent of the first house of 

 Orleans : 



CHARLES V. LE SAGE >- 1380. 

 I 



CHARLES VI. + 1422. 



j 

 CHARLES VII. + 14CI. 



Lot-is XI. + 1483. 

 CHARLES VIII. + 1493. 



Louis, Duke of Orleans. + H07. 

 I 



I 



I 



Charles, Uukc of 

 Orleans. + 1465. 



LonsXII. 



Claude, married 

 to Francis I. 



John, Count of 

 Angouleme. + 1467. 



Charles, Count of 

 Angouleme.+ 1495. 



I 

 FRANCIS I. + 1547. 



IL The only prince of the second House of Orleans was Jean 

 Baptiste Qaston, the younger of the two sons of Henry IV. and Maria 

 de' Medici, who was born in 1603, created Duke of Orleans in 1626, 

 and died in 1660. Of a vain and unquiet, weak and heartless character, 

 his life was a series of troubles and disgraces, which wera caused prin- 

 cipally by his own misconduct. During the reign of his brother 

 Louis XIII., he was continually engaging in intrigues and conspiracies 

 against Cardinal Richelieu ; and, on their failure, purchased safety by 

 his owe humiliation and the base sacrifice of his unhappy accomplices. 

 In 1626 he countenanced a plot against the life of the cardinal; and, 

 on its detection, abandoned the Count de Chains, one of the prin- 

 cipal officers of his household, to the vengeance of the minister, who 

 caused him to be beheaded. Five years later, Gaston retired from 

 court on some new quarrel with Richelieu, increased the displeasure 

 of his brother by contracting a marriage with Marguerite, sister of the 

 Duke of Lorraine, and finally withdrew into exile at Brussels, leaving 

 his adherents again exposed to the persecution of the cardinal. At 

 length, he re-entered the kingdom in open arms against the royal 

 authority, but persevered in hostilities only until he was defeated at 

 the combat of Casteluaudary, in which his principal partisan, the Duke 

 of Montmorenci, was made prisoner : when he obtained pardon for 

 himself, without security for his captive friend, who was brought by 

 the relentless Richelieu to the block. Qaston indeed on this catastrophe 

 retired again in terror to Brussels ; but with his usual levity he was, 

 after some time, induced to abandon his Spanish protectors and 

 return to the court. Being entrusted with the command of an army 

 against the Spaniards, he formed, in 1636, in conjunction with the 

 Count de Soissons, another plot to assassinate the cardinal, caused the 

 failure of the design by hi* irresolution, and on its exposure, fled to 

 Bloii, but was soon after again reconciled with the court. The birth 

 of a son to Louis XIII., by giving an heir to the monarchy, diminished 

 the importance of the Duke of Orleans in the state ; and he fell into 

 comparative obscurity for some years, until, in 1642, it was discovered 

 that he bad entered into a treasonable treaty with Spain, for the sub- 

 version of the monarchy and the murder of the cardinal. The mean- 

 spirited duke saved his own life, according to his custom, by the most 

 abject submission, and by betraying his accomplices, among whom 

 the young Marquis de Cinq Mars, a favourite of Louis XIII. himself, 

 and Francois Auguste De Thou, son of the famous historian, wore the 

 principal victims. Qaston himself, on this occasion, did not escape 

 without the loss of the honours due to his birth. He was deprived of 

 his guards and his principal domains, and banished from the court. 

 But the death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII. shortly changed the 

 aspect of affairs ; and in the minority of his nephew, Louis XIV., the 

 Duke of Orleans wag called to the post of lieutenant-general of the 

 kingdom, under the regency of the quoen-mother, Anne of Austria. 

 He gained some credit iu the campaign of 1644 against the Spaniards, 

 and for a time supported the government of the regent and her 

 :iiui-ter Cardinal Mazarin. But the commotions of the 'Fronde' 

 ,-oon tempted the characteristic levity of Gaston ; and be allied him- 

 self against the court and Mazariu, successively with the Prince of 

 Condi and with the parliament of Paris. The latter body were moved 

 by his cabals, though Louis XIV. had now attained his majority, to 

 nppoint him anew lieutenant-general of the kingdom, as the same title 

 had been factiously conferred on the Duke de Mayenne hi the time of 

 the League. But the final triumph of Mazarin and the close of the civil 

 wars produced for Gaston the usual fruits of bin vacillation aud 

 perlidy, and in 1652 he was banished from the court to Blois, where 

 he passed the remaining eight years of hi* life in mortification and 

 contempt. 



Qaston had no male issue; but he was the father, by his first 

 marriage, with the heiress of Montpensier, of the princess who 

 inherited that title, and who figured so conspicuously in those strange 

 political scenes of her times, of which she has left her own memoirs. 



Louise de Montpensier, known among her contemporaries as 'La 

 Grande Mademoiselle,' merited that designation as much by her 

 aspiring character as her illustrious birth. She shone conspicuously 

 in that galaxy of high-born French women who, more distinguished 

 for their masculine spirit and wit than for the becoming virtues of 

 their sex, ruled the ascendant throughout the political storms of the 

 Fronde. While heroes and statesmen bartered their honour and policy 

 for the smiles of beauty, while fortresses were surrendered to fair 

 ladies' eyes, and treaties were made and broken with lovers' vows, these 

 female warriors and politicians openly appeared in the camp and the 

 council. Gaston of Orleans, in a style as much serious as burlesque, 

 addressed a letter to ' Mesdames the countesses, mare'chalea-de-camp in 

 the army of my daughter against Mazarin.' With more boldness than 

 her father, the Grande Mademoiselle showed her prowess by turning 

 the guns of the Bastile against the royal troops to cover the retreat of 

 the forces of Conde". " That discharge has killed her husband," said 

 Mazarin, in allusion to her well-known anxiety to espouse her cousin, 

 the young king Louis XIV., whose regard was for ever alienated from 

 her by this outrage. After having aspired to be queeu of Franco, and 

 haviug refused the hand of several other sovereigns, Mademoiselle de 

 Montpensier finished, at the mature age of forty-four years, by desiring 

 to raise a private nobleman, the Count de Lauzuu, to the rank of her 

 husband and the title of Duke of Montpensier. Louis XIV. first 

 granted and then unkindly retracted his consent to the union ; not- 

 withstanding which it was privately concluded in 1670, an offence for 

 which Lauzun suffered a ten years' inprisonment. After she had 

 obtained his release, by the sacrifice of her finest domains to a natural 

 son of the king, the princess found her marriage neither recognised at 

 court nor happy in itself; and she closed, in 1693, a life of strong 

 passions, embittered by the disappointment both of political ambition 

 and personal affection. 



III. The progenitor of the third and existing House of Orleans wa? 

 Philip, second son of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, who was born 

 in 1640; received the title of Duke of Orleans on the death of his 

 uncle Qaston iu 1660 ; and succeeded to the duchy of Moutpensier, by 

 the bequest of Li Grande Mademoiselle, in 1693. His career was by 

 no means distinguished ; but he is said to have had some taste for 

 letters, and he served with honour in several of the most glorious 

 campaigns of the reign of Louis XIV. He was twice married : first, 

 to his cousin Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., and, like 

 himself, a grandchild of Henri IV.; and, secondly, to Elizabeth of 

 Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Palatine. The circumstances which 

 attended the sudden death of his first wife, a princess celebrated for 

 personal graces, in the flower of her age, cast upon him the horrid 

 suspicion of having poisoned her; a charge however apparently as 

 unfounded in itself as the imputed crime was at variance with the 

 whole tenor of his character, which, though he was too much addicted 

 to the pleasures of sense, was mild and good-natured. By the Princess 

 Henrietta, Philip had two daughters, one of whom became the queen 

 of Charles II. of Spain, and the other, through her marriage with 

 Victor Amadous II. of Savoy, transmitted to the House of Sardinia, 

 after the extinction of the male line of Stuart, as much vain pretension 

 to the inheritance of their crown as could be conveyed by mere descent 

 iu opposition to constitutional law. By his second marriage Philip 

 had, besides a prince who died young, and a daughter, the son, 

 of his own name, who, on his death in 1701, succeeded him in his 

 titles. 



This was the celebrated Regent Orleans, of whom Voltaire has 

 declared that, " famed for his courage, his wit, and his pleasures, he 

 was born for society even more than for public affairs, and was one 

 of the most amiable men that ever existed." The severer judgment 

 of history has branded the memory of Philip II., duke of Orleans, with 

 the reproach of unbounded personal and political profligacy; and the 

 fatal example both of his private life and public administration 

 encouraged that corruption of morals iu France which, becoming 

 aggravated throughout the licentious reign of Louis XV., unquestion- 

 ably produced the worst excesses of the revolution. Nature had 

 endowed Philip II. of Orleans with great abilities, but his mind was 

 early tainted by the lessons of his tutor, the able and infamous Dubois, 

 who was afterwards, under his regency, a cardinal, his favourite, and 

 prime-minister. Philip was a proficient in many sciences and accom- 

 plishments; in the mathematics, in poetry, music, sculpture, and 

 painting. He had likewise in his youth displayed considerable talents 

 for war, aud some ambition to attain equal distinction in arts and 

 arms. He was wounded on several occasions, signalised himself at 

 the battles of Steinkerque aud Neerwinden, commanded the French 

 armies with courage and activity in Italy and Spain duriug the Suc- 

 cession War, and in the latter country established so much reputation 

 and influence that Louis XIV. is said to have suspected him of a design 

 to supplant Philip V. on the throne of that kingdom. This and other 

 causes of jealousy led Louis XIV., iu anticipation of his great-grandson's 

 minority, to meditate the exclusion of Philip of Orleans from the 

 regency ; but the death of the aged monarch prevented the completion 

 of this plan. The duke quietly possessed himself of the government ; 

 and grievous as were the vices of his administration, he was guilty of 

 no ambitious attempt to abuse the rights of the young king. His 

 frame was worn out by debauchery before he had quite completed his 

 fiftieth year, aud a sudden death terminated his career in 1723. He 



