ANOTHER WAY IN WHICH THE PAST STEPPED IN

MEMORIES OF PRINCELY REBELS MADE THE DUKE OF ORLEANS THE NATURAL ADVERSARY OF THE KING  

Rebellions ended tragically for the poor...

The Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Breughel the Elder, toward 1567 /  zoom

...but threatened rulers only if a royal's leadership legitimized them,* which could draw in discontent as a whole.

*Not in France only. In Russia toward 1770 over 20 revolts were headed by men stating that they were the slain tsar Paul I. That of Pugachev threatened the throne.

• The Duke of Alençon rebelled against his brother Henri III (in 1575), extorted concessions and remained leader of the opposition until his death (in 1584).

      Prince Hercule-François, Duke of Alençon, anonymous, 1572 / zoom 

• Louis XIII's mother, queen Marie de Medici, escaped from the château where he had virtually imprisoned her* and rebelled against him twice (in 1620).

*After his coup d'état (of 1617)

Marie escapes from Blois château (in 1619), by Maurice Leloir in Théodore Cahu's "Richelieu," 1901

They finally made peace, because she was less dangerous with a degree of power in Paris than making trouble in the provinces.  

• Gaston d'Orleans, Marie's younger son and Louis XIII's brother, rebelled five times (between 1626 and 1642). He always backed out, betraying his supporters while leaving memories of threat.

        

              Portrait of Gaston, Duke of Orleans by Anthony van Dyck / zoom

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu

The Countess of Montmorency pleads for her son, who had followed Gaston's revolt in 1632. Louis XIII and Richelieu pay no attention, and the rebel will be decapitated.

• He was a leader of five years of civil war (in 1648-1653). It ended the independence of elites as a whole, but its effects were devastating.*

*Even the royals suffered: The queen of England (the widow of beheaded Charles I) stayed in bed because of the cold and little king Louis slept in torn sheets. As for the poor, I remember an account of a mother and her two children dead of starvation on pont Neuf.

• Louis XIV was 12 when partisans of nobles broke into the Louvre to check on his presence: He never forgot his terror as he pretended to sleep.   

Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil ("The Sun King") by Gustave Toudouze, 1931

• As fighting raged outside the walls of the Bastille fortress, Gaston's daughter ordered its cannoneers to bombard the royal troops: For that story, please click.

 Episode of the Fronde by the Walls of the Bastille, anonymous / zoom with analysis (in French) 

       Internet, no source named

# # #

So Philip Duke Anjou, the king's younger brother, was raised to  be incapable of opposition: "A child would not have more blind obedience to his parents than that of Monsieur for the King."

-- The Princess Palatine, his second wife, in Monsieur, brother of the king, 1953 (in French),

source of the information here

• "Monsieur," as second royal sons were called, was trained to subservience,  dressed as a girl and an encouraged to be gay.

 Philip looks like a pretty woman.

The Duke of Lorraine, his great love, wears a knot that is red, a color reserved to royals.

-- Marion Chalvignac, antiquarian, personal communication

• Yet he turned out to be a more courageous combattant and better military leader than the king:

Monsieur at the Battle of Cassel by Joseph Parracel, 1677 / zoom

• He supplied and paid his troops rather than let them pillage, built a hospital for the poor and instead of hunting animals, let them wander in his park.

• The soldiers adored him and his popularity in Paris was an implicit reproach to Louis, who relegated him to his chateau and the intrigues of his "mignons" (cutie-pies).

• He contested the king only once. When Louis reneged on his promise of a governor's post to his son as part of the deal for marrying his daughter, cries of their dispute resonated throughout the palace. *

*At Marly, an intimate residence to which the king would retire with chosen courtiers.

Philip died of a stroke that night.

# # #

His descendants too were kept at arm's length.

That explains why his great-grandson 

let Palais-Royal become the Revolution's cradle.

*    *    *

Next,

The oasis where modern times began