HOW FRANCE BECAME A REPUBLIC

FAST FORWARD: THE LAST KING OF FRANCE TURNS HIS BACK ON THE PUBLIC  

          Claude Abron

Statue of Louis-Philippe at the Chapelle royale in Dreux 

(a small town an hour from Paris)

When Charles X, head of the Bourbon senior branch, is overthrown in 1830, the leader of the junior branch, Louis-Philippe, becomes king. In 1848 he is toppled himself. 

Neither he nor his family rest at Saint Denis, but have a separate mausoleum (shown above). The reason concerns his father, the Duke of Orleans, "Equality Philip." His story explains not the demise of a particular ruler or dynasty, but of the monarchy itself: Philip of Spades / narration (in French) At the start of the Revolution, Philip hoped to become constitutional ruler: Please click. He took the name "Equality Philip" to be elected deputy. He then found himself faced by the need to vote publicly for or against the death of the king. He promised his family that he would vote No. Then, terrified at the hurricane he had helped unleash, he voted "Yes" to the guillotining of Louis XVI, his cousin. His vote is remembered as decisive. In fact "Yes" won not by one vote but by 12, but legends erase details to emphasize the essential, here the prince's cowardice. When his son, the future king Louis-Philippe, was implicated in a general's disgrace and fled abroad, Equality Philip was guillotined himself (in November 1793)  Zoom His last words: "Let's get on with it." Like almost all nobles, he died bravely. He was careless, weak and easy to manipulate. "They have gotten all they could from Your Highness, and they're doing just as I am with this lemon from which I've squeezed all the juice," said the acquaintance with whom Philip was dining at the time of his arrest, who pressed a lemon over his fish and threw it away.   A bon vivant who twice fell deeply in love, an excellent father, a master concerned with the well-being of his servants, a millionaire whose charity was usually disinterested, a person who was optimistic and naïve: Napoleon said of him before burning his papers, "He was not an evil man." -- Indecisive Philip in "Choderlos de L'Enclos," 1985, by Georges Poisson  (in French). # # # The government of France took various forms until the 1870's, when a return to monarchy was expected (please read on). But royalists were divided: The traditional landowning nobility backed the heir of the Bourbon senior branch (Henri V, the count Chambord). As he was in his 50's and had no heirs, the candidate of the junior branch would succeed him. That candidate was Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale. whom bankers and industrialists favored. Their interests and those of the nobles clashed.  Plus, he was Philip Equality's grandson.  The Duke of  Aumale A monarchy would have evolved like other industrialized societies, with free, obligatory elementary schooling and universal male suffrage. And it might have repressed strikes less fiercely than the Republic: Charles X and Louis-Philippe lost power rather than use full force against their people, and Louis XVI did not use it at all.   Although his circle called the Republic "the whore," the duke bequeathed it his Chantilly château and an art collection second only to that of the Louvre. And he had the grace of the old nobility: "We talk, he converses."  He would not have been a bad choice.  Their world gone, the traditionalists might have accepted the duke had he not been the regicide's descendant.  But the searing memory made them finally agree that "The Republic is the form of government  which divides us least... on condition of being conservative."  -- Adolphe Thiers, founder of the Third Republic So France became a republic — by default.  *     *     *  Next, French Presidents, heirs of kings