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LOUIS XVII. 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 



943 



80th September. If that assembly committed errors, they were 

 errors of judgment, for the majority were certainly sincere in wishing 

 to maintain the kingly office, which they thought compatible with 

 democratic institutions. Through a mistaken delicacy however they 

 committed a very serious blunder before they parted ; for they 

 resolvtd that no member of that assembly should be eligible to the 

 next assembly of the representatives of the nation, which became 

 known by the name of the legislative assembly, and which was com- 

 posed of much worse materials. The majority in the legislative 

 assembly were men hostile to the monarchical principle altogether ; 

 they were divided between Girondins and Jacobins. They began by 

 sequestrating the property of the emigrants ; they issued intolerant 

 decrees against the priests who would not swear to the constitution, 

 and by theee means obliged them to run away from France ; they 

 treated the king with marked disrespect, dismissed his guards, pro- 

 voked the war against Austria and Prussia, encouraged republican 

 manifestations in various parts of the country, and even in the army, 

 established extraordinary courts to judge the emigrants and other 

 people disaffected to the new order of things (the word "incivisme" 

 was invented to designate this new offence), and issued an enormous 

 quantity of paper money, which quickly becoming depreciated, added 

 to the general misery. 



The king endeavoured, by the use of his "veto," to check this 

 headlong career. An insurrection, in June 1792, was the consequence ; 

 the palace of the Tuileries was assailed and entered by the mob, 

 which treated the royal family with the greatest insolence, threatened 

 their lives, and obliged the king to put on a red cap and show himself 

 at the window to the crowds below. A second insurrection, better 

 organised, with the avowed object of abolishing the kingly office, was 

 supported by a party in the legislative assembly. The mob again 

 attacked the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and after a desperate 

 defence by the Swiss guards, entered it, and massacred all the inmates. 

 The king and royal family had time to escape and take refuge in the 

 hall of the legislative assembly. The assembly deposed the king, sent 

 him and his family prisoners to the Temple, proclaimed a republic, 

 and convoked a national convention to exercise the sovereignty in the 

 name of the people. In September the massacres of the political 

 prisoners began ; the cry of "aristocrat" became a sentence of death 

 against any obnoxious person. On the 21st of September the national 

 convention opened its session, and shortly after prepared to bring the 

 king to trial. The principal heads of accusation were, his attempt to 

 dissolve the states-general in 1789, his escape to Yarenues, and other 

 acta previous to his accepting the constitution of 1791. Since his 

 acceptance of it there was no charge that could be substantiated 

 against him except the exercise of the prerogatives given to him by 

 the constitution, such as the "veto," and changing his ministers. 

 The rest were mere insinuations and surmises of having bribed 

 deputies, corresponded with the hostile powers, &c. The trial was 

 opened in December. The Girondins and the Jacobins united against 

 Louis, and he was found guilty of "treason and conspiring against 

 the nation." The sentence was pronounced on the 16th January 

 1793. Of 721 members present who voted in the convention, 366 

 voted for death unconditionally. 288 voted for imprisonment and 

 banishment, and the rest voted for death, but with a respite, hoping 

 thereby to save his life. The majority which sent Louis to the 

 scaffold was only five. 



On the 21st of January 1793 Louis XVI. was taken in a coach to 

 the Place Louis XV. where the guillotine was fixed. He appeared 

 .-il- nt and resigned, and engrossed by religious thoughts. Having 

 ascended the scaffold, he attempted to address the people, but Berruyer, 

 the commander of the national guards, ordered the drums to beat. 

 Louis then gave up the attempt, took off his coat and cravat, and laid 

 his head on the block. He was beheaded at ten o'clock in the 

 morning. His consort Marie Antoinette was tried, condemned, and 

 beheaded in the following October. The character of that unfortunate 

 princess has been rescued from unmerited obloquy and the malignity 

 of her enemies by Madame Campon in her 'Me'moires sur la Vie 

 privee de Marie Antoinette,' London, 1823. Louis left one son, styled 

 Louis XVII., and one daughter, who married her cousin the Duke of 

 Angouldme. 



LOUIS XVII., Due de Normandie, second son of Louis XVI., 

 styled Dauphin after hia elder brother's death in 1789, remained in 

 prioon in the Temple after the death of his parents, and there he died 

 of disease, in consequence of ill-treatment and privation, on the 9th 

 of June 1795. He was then ten years of age. He had been styled 

 Loui XVII. by the royalists after his father's death. 



LOUIS XVIII. (Stanislas Xavier), Count of (Provence, born in 

 1755, wa also styled 'Monsieur' during the life of his brother 

 Louia XVI., who, just before his death, wrote to him, appointing him 

 regent of France. After the death of his nephew Louis XVII. in 

 1795, he assumed the title of King of France and of Navarre, although 

 he was then an exile, and he was acknowledged as king by the royalist 

 emigrants, who composed a small court around his person. He had 

 shown his liberal disposition in favour of rational reforms in France in 

 the first period of the Revolution, but the violence of the Jacobins 

 obliged him to emigrate in 1791. He lived for some time at Verona, 

 in the Venetian territories, which he was obliged to quit when Bona- 

 parte invaded Italy in 179C. He resided successively iu various parts 



woo. DIV. vol. HI. 



of Germany, and at last settled at Warsaw, but in 1803 removed to 

 Mittau in Courland, under the protection of Russia, By the peace of 

 Tilsit (1807) he was obliged to leave the Continent, and he repaired to 

 England, where he fixed his residence at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire 

 till 1814, when events in France opened the way for his return to 

 the throne of hia ancestors. He landed at Calais in April of that 

 year, and proceeded to St. Ouen, from whence he issued a proclama- 

 tion acknowledging himself as a constitutional, and not an absolute 

 king; promising the speedy publication of a charter, a total oblivion 

 of all the past, and guaranteeing all the possessors of what was called 

 national property. On the 4th of June he laid before both the senate 

 and legislative body a charter which he had drawn up with the assist- 

 ance of his ministers, and which was unanimously accepted, and became 

 the fundamental law of the kingdom. 



Louis was sincere in his professions, but he was surrounded by 

 disappointed emigrants and old royalists, whose imprudence injured 

 him in the public opinion ; whilst on the other side he had against 

 him the Bonapartists, a formidable body, including the greater part 

 of the army. A conspiracy was hatched against Louis, Bonaparte 

 returned from Elba, and Louis, forsaken by all, retired to Ghent 

 [BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON L] The battle of Waterloo (June 1815) 

 opened again to Louis the way to Paris ; but this time he appeared as 

 an insulted and betrayed monarch. Those officers who, in spite of 

 their oaths to Louis, had barefacedly favoured Bonaparte's usurpation, 

 were tried and found guilty of treason j some were shot, and others 

 exiled. The new Chamber of Deputies, which was elected under the 

 excitement of this second restoration, proved ultra-royalist in principle, 

 and went further than the sovereign. They banished all those who 

 had voted in the convention for the death of Louis XVI., as well as 

 those who had accepted office under Napoleon after hia return from 

 Elba. Meantime sanguinary reactions took place iu various parts of 

 France, especially in the south, where the old animosity of the Catho- 

 lics against the Protestants was revived by political feuds. At last 

 Louis himself saw the danger to which the violence of his pretended 

 friends exposed him, and he dissolved the Chamber, which was styled 

 ' La Chambre Introuvable.' In the new elections the moderate con- 

 stitutional party regained the ascendancy, and the king in 1818 

 appointed a liberal ministry, at the head of which was Count Decazes. 

 But the assassination of his nephew, the Duo de Berry [BERRY, JEAN, 

 Doc DE], by a fanatical republican, in February 1820, again alarmed 

 the court, and restored the influence of the ultra-royalists. Decazes 

 was dismissed, and Villele was placed at the head of the ministry. 

 The law of election was altered, the newspapers were placed under a 

 censorship, and other measures of a retrograde nature were adopted. 

 No open violation of the constitution however was committed. In 

 1823 Louis, in concert with the Northern powers, sent an army into 

 Spain under his nephew the Due d'Angouleme, to rescue Ferdinand 

 from what he termed his state of thraldom. [FERDINAND VII.] The 

 expedition was successful ; it restored Ferdinand to the plenitude of 

 his power, but it did not succeed in restoring to Spain order and good 

 government. In September 1824, Louis XVIII. died, having been a 

 long time ill and unable to walk : he retained to the last his mental 

 faculties and his self-possession. He left no issue, and was succeeded 

 by his brother Charles X. 



Louis had a tolerably cultivated mind, considerable abilities, and a 

 pleasing address : his ideas were, for a Bourbon, enlightened and 

 liberal, and in ordinary and settled times he would have proved a 

 very respectable constitutional king ; as it was, he managed to steer 

 safely between extreme opposite parties, and in a most critical period. 

 He published in 1823 the account of his emigration, ' Relation d'uu 

 Voyage de Paris h Bruxelles et Coblenz," which is curious. 



LOUIS PHILIPPE, King of the French, Due d' Organs and Chartres, 

 and Count de Neuilly, was the eldest son of Louis Philippe Joseph, 

 Due d'Orl^ans, the Philippe Egalit^ of the Convention [ORLEANS, 

 HOUSE OP], and Louise Marie de Bourbon, daughter of the Due de 

 Penthievre. 



Louis Philippe himself was born at Paris, October 6th, 1773. His 

 youth was marked by many acts of benevolence, and the judicious 

 training of Madame de Genlis was well calculated to draw out the 

 good qualities of those who were brought up under her charge. In 

 his infancy he bore the title of Duo de Valois and afterwards of 

 Chartres. In 1791 the young Due de Chartres, having been nominated 

 to the colonelcy of the 14th regiment of dragoons, assumed the com- 

 mand of that corps. It is said that almost his first act of authority 

 was the rescue from the fury of the mob of two priests, who had 

 refused to take the oath at that time exacted by the government from 

 all ecclesiastics. On this occasion ho showed great tact and presence 

 of mind, and he subsequently received the honour of a civic crown 

 from the municipality of Vend6tne for rescuing M. de Siret, an 

 engineer of that place, from drowning. By these means he became 

 popular among the French people. In August 1791 the young duke 

 quitted Vend6me in command of his regiment for Valenciennes. 

 Whilst he was stationed there, war was proclaimed against Austria, and 

 in the April following he entered on his first campaign. He fought 

 his first battle at Valmy on the 20th of September, and on the 6th of 

 November was again engaged under Dumourier at Jenappes. At this 

 period the Revolution was rapidly advancing to a crisis at Paris. 

 A decree of banishment had been passed (October 1792) against 



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