ORLANDO FURIOSO ORLEANS. 



of the stewardship reverted to the crown ; but the 

 earl of Morton possessing the patronage of the 

 stewartry, he long retained the posts of steward and 

 fhcritl'. The superiority was afterwards purchased 

 from the earl by Sir Lawrence Dundtis for 60,000, 

 and it still continues in the family of his descendant, 

 lord Dundas. Population of the Orkneys in 1821, 

 27,179. 



ORLANDO FURIOSO. See Ariosto. 



ORLANDO INNAMORATO. See Boiardo. 



ORLEANAIS; before the revolution, a fertile 

 province of France. The Loire passes through and 

 divides it. Orleans, which gave name to the pro- 

 vince, was the capital. The forest of Orleans, in 

 this province, contains 94,000 acres. 



ORLEANS ; a city of France, lying on the Loire ; 

 previous to the French revolution, capital of the 

 government of Orleanais, at present, capital of the 

 department of the Loiret, with a population (1827) 

 of 40,340; lat. 47 54' N.; Ion. 1 55' E.; seventy- 

 five miles south-west of Paris. The houses are well 

 built, but the streets in general are narrow and 

 crooked. It has four handsome public squares, a 

 Gothic cathedral, a Hotel-de-ville, the Chatelet, a 

 splendid bridge over the Loire, of sixteen arches, 

 and other edifices worthy of notice. The manufac- 

 tures and trade of the place are still considerable, 

 but have much declined. Philip of Valois erected 

 it into a duchy and peerage in favour of his son, and 

 Orleans has since continued to give the title of 

 duke to a prince of the blood-royal. Charles VI. 

 conferred it on his younger brother, who became the 

 founder of the Valois-Orleans line. This line having 

 become extinct, the title was borne by the third son 

 of Henry IV., Gaston, who left no male heirs. Louis 

 XIV. conferred it on his brother, the founder of the 

 present line of Bourbon-Orleans. (See the succeed- 

 ing article.') Philip the Fair instituted a university 

 here in 1312, which formerly had great celebrity. 

 In 1428, the city sustained a siege against the Eng- 

 lish, and was relieved by the Maid of Orleans (see 

 Joan of Arc), whose statue, in bronze, stands in one 

 of the public squares. 



ORLEANS. Two houses of this name have occu- 

 pied the throne of France. 



1. On the death of Charles VIII. without issue, 

 in 1498, Louis, duke of Orleans, great grandson of, 

 their common ancestor Charles V., and grandson of 

 the first duke of Orleans, being the nearest heir, 

 ascended the throne under the title of Louis XII. 

 Henry III. (died 1589) was the last sovereign of this 

 house, or the Palais- Or leans branch. See France, 

 division Statistics. 



2. The reigning house, or that of Bourbon-Or- 

 leans, is descended from Philip, duke of Orleans, 

 son of Louis XIII., and younger brother of Louis 

 XIV. His son Philip II., duke of Orleans, was 

 regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. 

 His grandson, Louis Joseph Philip, who distin- 

 guished himself during the French revolution of 

 the eighteenth century, married Louisa, daughter 

 of the duke of Penthie'vre (son of the count of 

 Toulouse, a natural son of Louis XIV.), and 

 was beheaded in 1793. (See these articles.) His 

 only surviving son is Louis Philip I., king of the 

 French. 



ORLEANS, GASTON JEAN BAPTISTS DE FRANCE, 

 duke of; third son of Henry IV. and Mary of 

 Medici, born 1608, was involved, without glory, 

 and without success, in all the troubles that agitated 

 the reign of Louis XIII. and the minority of Louis 

 XIV., four times quitted the kingdom, and four times 

 returned with arms in his hands. His early educa- 

 tion was miserable, and was the cause of the feeble- 

 ness of character which he displayed through life 



although he had received from nature much more of 

 his father's spirit than Louis XIV. The jealousy 

 which the latter, particularly before his wife, Ann of 

 Austria, had borne him children, entertained of his 

 brother, was the first cause of that difference between 

 them, which the duke's vindictive temper never 

 allowed to be permanently healed. By his first 

 marriage, with Mary of Bourbon, heiress of the 

 house of Montpensier, he had a daughter, the author 

 of some interesting Memoirs. (See Montpensier) 

 To divert the duke from a second marriage, which 

 the jealous king feared, and which even Richelieu 

 esteemed hazardous, no efforts were spared to gratify 

 his passion for play, and for the arts. He continued 

 this life of dissipation until, in the dispute between 

 the queen mother and cardinal Richelieu, he took 

 part against the court. This dispute resulted in the 

 triumph of the cardinal. (See Richelieu, and Louis 

 XIII.'} The duke of Orleans was also obliged to 

 submit, and in his political conduct and life now 

 displayed that singular vacillation which led the 

 cardinal de Retz to say of him, that he engaged in 

 every thing because he wanted firmness to refuse 

 those who led him, and that he always came off with 

 disgrace because he wanted courage to persevere. 

 When the duke who, at one moment, full of 

 defiance, took arms against the court, and united 

 himself with the enemies of his brother, and at 

 another, full of humility, submitted to the king and 

 the cardinal sued for the hand of Mary, daughter 

 of the duke of Lorraine, new disputes broke out 

 between him and the king. The marriage was 

 secretly concluded, and was not made known until 

 two years afterwards to the king, who, by a decree 

 of the parliament of Paris, had it declared null. This 

 decision gave rise to a war of pens between the 

 jurists and the theologians. The duke continued to 

 take a part in all the troubles, and the validity of his 

 marriage was not acknowledged until after the death 

 of Louis XIII. During the disturbances of the 

 Fronde, the vacillating enemy of Richelieu could 

 not be a steady friend of Mazarin. He joined the 

 coadjutor De Retz, the soul of the Fronde, who soon 

 saw through the character of his fickle and feeble 

 confederate. After the termination of the troubles 

 (1648), the duke was banished to Blois, where he 

 died in 1660. See the Memoires of his daughter, 

 above-mentioned. 



ORLEANS, PHILIP, duke of, only brother of 

 Louis XIV., and founder of the house of Bourbon- 

 Orleans, now on the throne of France, was born in 

 1640. Mazarin, who superintended the education of 

 the two princes, had adopted the plan of the Eastern 

 courts, to render one of them manly and the other 

 effeminate. " Why," said he to Lamathe le Vayer, 

 the tutor of Philip, " why do you wish to make the 

 king's brother an able man ? If he is more learned 

 than the king, he will no longer know what blind 

 obedience is." While Louis was early accustomed 

 to play the king, his mother used to show the deli- 

 cate Philip to the courtiers in petticoats. In his 

 twenty-first year, he married Henrietta of England, 

 sister of Charles II. The great esteem which the 

 king showed for this princess excited the jealousy of 

 of his brother. Soon after her return from England, 

 whither the king had sent her to detach her brother 

 from the triple alliance, she died suddenly, and her 

 death was attributed to poison, to the administration 

 of which the duke was suspected of being accessory. 

 His jealousy seems not to have been unfounded, 

 according to the accounts contained in Ihe letters of 

 his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte, in which the 

 charge of his being an accomplice in the poisoning 

 is repelled. See the Memoires sur la Cour de Louis 

 et la Regence, extracted from her corresnon- 



