Ferdinand-Philippe of Orleans

Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Eric Rosalino (Henri) of Orleans , born the September 3rd 1810 with Palermo and dead the July 13rd 1842 with Neuilly-sur-Seine, duke of Chartres then (1830) Duke of Orleans and royal prince of France , was the oldest son of Louis-Philippe I {{er}}, king of the French and Marie Amélie de Bourbon, princess of the Deux-Siciles.

Biography

Born with Palermo during the exile from his parents, it is fore-mentioned Ferdinand , uncommon first name in the house of Orleans, in homage to the king de Sicile, Ferdinand I {{er}}, its grandfather, and receives while being born the title from duke of Chartres.

The young prince, who is 3 years old at the time of the fall of, comes to France for the first time in 1814 and in 1817 settles definitively there. His/her father initially entrusts it to the care of a tutor, Mr. de Boismilon, then it places it at the college Henri-Iv in 1819, wanting that it receives a liberal education, on the foot of the most complete equality with the other pupils. It makes brilliant studies and follows the courses of the Polytechnic school. After a voyage in England and Scotland in 1819, it will join with Lunéville the 1er regiment of hussards, of which it has just been named Colonel by Charles X (1824).

A liberal and popular prince

In 1830, it is in garrison with Joigny during the Glorious Three. It makes raise the tricolor rosette to its regiment and brings it in all haste to the help of the insurgent Paris iens. Decree temporarily with Montrouge, and slackened soon, it enters the August 3rd Paris to the head of its regiment.

With the advent of the Monarchy of July, it takes the title of duke of Orleans and becomes royal Prince . His/her father makes it enter to the Council. Of ebullient temperament, the duke of Orleans sharply criticizes time wasted to listen to palaver the ministers (called familiarly babasses in the family circle) and has frequent fixings with the Doctrinaires, that he does not like and with respect to which he wants to be the interpreter of the feelings of revolutionary youth. This is why Casimir Perier requires, when it reaches the presidency of the Council in March 1831, that the duke of Orleans is excluded from the Council, to which it consequently ceases taking part.

In November 1831, the royal prince is sent, at the sides of the marshal Soult, to repress the working insurrection of Lyon. He discharges this difficult task without violence and manages to alleviate the oppositions quickly. He gains there an unquestionable popularity, which reinforces its attitude at the time of the epidemic of Choléra of 1832. He does not hesitate to go near the most contagious patients to the Hôtel-Dieu, taking real risks since Casimir Perier, who accompanies it, contracts as for him the disease and dies about it. To the eyes of the people and press, it passes consequently for a generous prince, sincerely concerned about the fate the most stripped of, and becomes a kind of icon for the dynastic opposition of Odilon Barrot, which sees in him the only prince able to reconcile the democratic aspirations of modern France and the monarchical legacy of the past.

A brilliant military career

In 1831, the duke of Orleans leaves with his young brother the duke Nemours, to go to make its first weapons under the marshal Gerard; this countryside hardly goes for but one military walk. Entered in Belgium in 1831, the princes hasten to visit the plain of Jemmapes, where their father fought in 1792.

The following year, the duke of Orleans returns to Belgium with the command of the brigade of avant-garde of the Armée with North. The November 20th 1832, it is in front of the citadel of Antwerp; it orders the trench in the night of the 29 with the November 30th. With the murderous attack of the glasses the St. Lawrence, he springs on the parapet in the middle of a hail of projectiles of any species to direct the action and to stimulate the courage of the soldiers.

In 1835, when the marshal Clauzel is returned in Algérie as general governor, the duke of Orleans requires of his father like a favor to accompany it to fight the emir Abd El-Kader. It takes part with the army of Clauzel in the Combat of Habrah, where it is wounded, in the catch of Mascara in December 1835, then of Tlemcen in January 1836. It returns to Paris very haloed of military glory.

With the autumn 1839, the duke of Orleans sets out again for Algeria to realize, with the marshal Valée, the taking possession by France of the interior part of the country, between Constantine and Algiers. Started from Constantine on October 16th, three days after the second birthday of the catch of the city, the famous ride gains Algiers the November 2nd while passing by Sétif and the procession of the Portes of Iron. Abd-el-Kader there sees a violation of the Traité of Tafna and starts the Holy war against the French. Thus engage a climbing which will lead to the total occupation of Algeria by France.

In March 1840, the duke of Orleans leaves once again for the Algérie, taking along with him the duke of Aumale, his young brother, of which it directs the first military work. With the combat of the Affroun, Oued' Ger, Wood of the Olive-trees, it is charged to direct the provisions of attack to the Prise with Teniah de Mouzaïa. He is recalled in France after this countryside.

This military past shining does nothing but increase the popularity and the prestige of the duke of Orleans, which also devotes its care to the enlarging of the military forces of the country and the physical and moral improvement of the soldiers. It organizes with Saint-Omer the hunters of Vincennes, become hunters of Orleans in 1836, and become again hunters of Vincennes to foot. It provides the foundations of a Histoire of the Regiments , undertaken by order of the Minister for the war, and partly writes that of two regiments which had been under its orders.

The marriage of the duke of Orleans

The marriage of the duke of Orleans had been one of the great political matters of the Monarchie of July. Without the revolution of 1830, he would have married the sister of the duke of Bordeaux, Miss (1819 - 1864). This project having naturally failed because of the fall of the elder branch and the “usurpation” (with the eyes of this one) of the branch junior, Louis-Philippe is literally obsessed, starting from 1835, singularly after the attack of Fieschi, by the matrimonial establishment of his/her oldest son, then in its twenty-fifth year.

It is also the moment when the Monarchie of July seeks new allies in Europe, which would enable him not to depend too exclusively on the England (See the article: Foreign policy of France under the monarchy of July). Talleyrand, which has just given up its embassy of London scrambled with the British Minister for the Foreign affairs, Palmerston, pushes in this direction.

It considers initially a bringing together with the Russia via the Wurtemberg. Indeed, the king Guillaume I {{er}} of Wurtemberg, widower of the large-duchess Katarina Pavlovna of Russia, has two girls to marry, the Marie princesses (born in 1816) and Sophie (born in 1818). But Guillaume Ier declines the proposal, refusal all the more humiliating that the Marie princess will marry in 1840 the count Alfred Neipperg.

Louis-Philippe considers then an alliance with the Austria which could offer the archduchess Marie-Therese, girl of the archduke Charles, born in 1816. The queen Marie-Amélie is very favorable to this marriage because it is itself girl of an archduchess of Austria, the queen Marie-Caroline of Naples. The Charles archduke is not opposed to such a marriage, but this one runs up on the other hand against two given adversaries: the prince de Metternich, which does not want to republish the error that it made by negotiating the marriage of the archduchess Marie-Louise with, and the archduchess Sophie, Bavarian princess, sister-in-law of the new emperor Ferdinand I {{er}}, who dominates the court of Vienna of her strong personality while waiting for that her son, the future François-Joseph, goes up on the imperial throne.

The ambassador from France to Vienna, the count of Holy-Aulaire, which was especially charged to prepare the ground for the Austrian marriage, does not dissimulate the difficulty of the business, without considering it however completely impossible. The new president of the Council, Thiers, dream to conclude it and appear, a such new Choiseul, like the craftsman of a spectacular inversion of alliances in Europe.

The duke of Orleans and his junior, the duke of Nemours, undertake a voyage in Europe the May 2nd 1836. Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amélie are afflicted because the royal prince refuses to shave the superb beard which it raises since romantic youth launched the fashion from there. At all events, two young people gain a great success with Berlin, then in Vienna, where they are May 29th with the June 11th. But, the marquis de Sémonville, “everyone comments on their gave the hand, but nobody tightened it. ” If the Charles archduke and his daughter like the royal prince definitely, Metternich and the Sophie archduchess make stopping: the step that Thiers, impatient to conclude, convinced Louis-Philippe to carry out, against the opinion of Holy-Aulaire who wanted that one limited oneself to a simple visit of family, is pushed back; to spare the susceptibility of the French, the official version is that the decision is left with the “feelings” of the Marie-Therese archduchess who would have made a negative answer. It does not remain any more with two young people but to return to France while passing by the Italy: with Thirty, they are received by the ex-empress Marie-Louise, duchess of Parma, which cannot retain its tears in front of the resemblance between the royal prince and fire duke of Reichstadt; with Milan, they remain in the archduke Rainier, viceroy of Lombardy-Venezia, where they learn the news from the attack of Alibaud, made the June 25th against Louis-Philippe.

After the refusal of the house of Austria, there remain nothing any more but two possible parties among the catholic princesses: the princess Janvière ( Januaria ) of Bragance, girl of the emperor Pierre I {{er}} of Brazil, and the infante Isabelle of Spain, girl of infant François-of-Paule, younger brother of Ferdinand VII. Both, born in 1821, is extremely young. First is isolated because of the distance, and the second because of its disgraced physique - it is thin and russet-red - and of its heavy family antecedents.

Among the Protestant German princesses, some parties are considered. Talleyrand, via his/her small-niece, the duchess of Dino, located the princess Louise de Hesse-Cassel. The Louise queen suggests the Marie-Alexandrine princess of Saxony-Altenbourg and the princess Victoire of Saxony-Cobourg-Gotha Ultimately, the choice goes on the princess Helene de Mecklembourg-Schwerin, girl of fire the hereditary prince Frederic de Mecklembourg-Schwerin (1778 - 1819) and of the Caroline princess of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach († 1816). For the duke of Orleans, it is a suitable alliance, but without glare, even if the princess is the niece of the king de Prusse, Frederic-Guillaume III.

The duke of Broglie is sent in Germany in the capacity as ambassador extraordinary in order to present the official request and to bring back the princess to France. One makes out virulent for the Maison of Orleans is published under anonymity by a prince of the Maison of Mecklembourg. This one is sulky the marriage, so that Helene is accompanied only by the third widowed wife by her father, Augusta de Hesse-Hombourg.

The marriage is celebrated the May 30th 1837 with the Château of Fontainebleau, because the archbishop of Paris, M {{gr.}} of Quélen, took pretext of the difference in religion to prohibit which it has place with Notre-Dame. The civil wedding proceeds in the gallery Henri II the May 30th 1837. The catholic ceremony, which M {{gr.}} Gallard chairs, bishop of Meaux, proceeds in the vault of Henri IV, while the ceremony Lutheran, celebrated by Pasteur Cuvier, takes place in the Louis-Philippe living room. The duke of Orleans has as witnesses the four vice-presidents of the Room of the pars - the baron Séguier, the count Portalis, the duke of Broglie, the count de Bastard -, the president and the four vice-presidents of the House of Commons - Dupin, Calmon, Delessert, Jacqueminot, Cunin-Gridaine -, three marshals - Soult, Mouton, Gerard -, the prince de Talleyrand, the duke of Choiseul and the count Bresson, minister of France with Berlin.

In the many assistance, one raises the absence of the foreign ambassadors, except for the baron de Werther, Minister for Prussia, the count Lehon, Minister for Belgium, and the person in charge of the Mecklembourg. Despite everything, the reception is very brilliant: “The Helene princess not being girl of king, observes the duchess of With a grid, it is the reception of Mrs. the duchess of Burgundy which was used as rule, and very passed to Its Majesty citizen as if Louis XIV had been present in the middle of the largest lords of France. Some believe that Louis-Philippe made in that a political fault. I do not think it. It gives on the contrary great pleasure with its partisans. The pump does not displease to them when these are the names which appear in it, in the place of those of the large lords whom they envied so much. Louis-Philippe is the man and the elected official of the middle-class, it knows it very well, but it is flattered glare of which he is surrounded. If he did not seek to regild this royalty that it gave him, its self-esteem would be wounded. Its partisans believe large lords when they see him making the large king. ”

The marriage is very happy. The duke and the duchess of Orleans have two children:

An enlightened prince and patron

The duke of Orleans is an enlightened amateur of literature, music and fine art. He shows a taste pronounced for the collection, “making his choice slowly, as a true amateur”, and shown a rare scholarship. Each year, it devotes 100  000 with 150  000 francs of its civil list to purchases of works of art or to cultural patronage. In its vast apartments of the Palate of Tileries, it gathers objects of the Moyen-âge and Renaissance, ceramics of Bernard Palissy, Majolique S and ceramics hispano-Moorishes, Chinese porcelains or Japan eases, pieces of furniture of Caffieri, Oeben, Riesener or Jacob. It is also impassioned for the painters of its generation and buys many paintings with Ary Scheffer and Newton Fielding, which had initiated it with the technique of the landscape between 1822 and 1830. It has works of Eugene Delacroix ( the Prisoner of Chillon , the Assassination of the bishop of Liege , Hamlet and Horatio with the cemetery ), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps ( the Defeat of Cimbres ), Eugene Lami, Ernest Meissonnier and Paul Delaroche. He also likes the landscapes of the painters of the school of Barbizon, in particular Camille Corot, Paul Huet and Theodore Rousseau. It orders from Dominique Ingres Antiochus and Stratonice (1833), buys in 1839 Oedipus and the sphinx and orders its portrait in to him 1840.

Itself endowed with talents of draftsman, it makes work of engraver amateur. One knows of him a dozen etchings and of Lithographie S. Among these last is a satirical part representing the character of GULLIVER deadened; Lilliputians arrive on all sides, with foot, with horse, in boat, diligence. A sign evokes the made alarmist proclamation on July 11th 1792 by the legislative Assemblée, which declared the fatherland in danger.

An untimely death

Of return of Plombières, where it had just led the duchess of Orleans, the royal prince prepared himself to leave for Saint-Omer, where it was to review part of the army of operation on the Marne, from which it came to receive the command as a chief, when it went the July 13rd 1842 to Neuilly to bid his farewell with his family. The horses of his barouche being carried, the prince wanted to spring car and broke the head on the paving stone; a few hours afterwards, it returned the last sigh. Alfred de Muset evokes this accident in his poem on July Thirteen (in the collection new Poésies ). Its accidental death deprives Louis-Philippe of a support which it missed in 1848.

Three statues of the duke of Orleans

Three statues of the duke of Orleans, are drawn up today with Have, Neuilly-sur-Seine and Saint-Omer.

Birth of the two statues

The death of Ferdinand-Philippe of Orleans plunged the population in the distress, and the funeral “ struck the opinion by their noble and imposing sadness ”. Did the king think of devoting to his heir a durable homage? The civil population of Algiers and the army of Africa preceded her desires. Their wish to open a subscription for the purpose of setting up on “ the principal place of Algiers a monument intended to perpetuate this memory and the image of S.A.R. ” was approved by the general governor, by decree of August 7th, 1842. Bugeaud created, under the presidency of the director of the Interior, a charged commission to collect the offerings and to adopt the various provisions, for erection on the place of Algiers of the bronze statue of fire prince. As of on September 29th, it had joined together 20.000 F. generals military commanders of divisions were not long in requesting the Minister for the War to know if their subordinates could bring their share. November 8th, 1842, the marshal Soult, Minister for the War, announced that an optional subscription was open in all the army corps and established a higher commission to centralize the gifts and to take care of covering. Charles Marochetti was in charge of the realization of the statue. November 29th, 1842, the Minister for the War took a new decree: the optional subscription was extended to the Navy. The funds collected would be used with erection of two equestrian statues to the effigy of the duke as Orleans.

The installation

The choice went initially for the Place of the Carousel to Paris. But in November 1844, Louis-Philippe decides, one does not know why (costs and difficulties in probably undertaking the restoration of the place), to establish the statue with the center of the Square Cour of the Louvre. The choice of the situation of the princely statue in Algiers did not pose so many difficulties: it would be about the place Royale (in the past place of the Government). The model of the statue finished, it was entrusted to the Soyer founder. Marochetti announced the successful cast iron of the two statues by letters of the August 21st and November 14th, 1844. After May 5th the foundations of the work, finished by the installation of the marble base took place on which was going to put back the pedestal. In Algiers, the pedestal is completed on August 1st, 1845, the statue arrives on September 19th and on October 4th she arrived on the royal place. Its Parisian binocular was in place since July 26th. The event was noticed. Chopin wrote Nohan with its Polish family: “ one raises it on the place of Louvre, it is out of Algerian bronze, just as the low-reliefs. It is a work of Marochetti, one of the best sculptors of Paris ”. October 28th, 1845, birthday day of the passage of the Doors of Iron, two works were inaugurated. In Algiers, the pedestal was deprived of plate. The Minister for the war had heard the remarks of the Count Guyot, director of the interior in Algeria: the Algerian civil population which had taken part so much in erection would not have admitted that the monument carried like only inscription “the army to the Duke of Orleans Prince Royal”. March 6th, 1846, Louis-Philippe approved a report/ratio which proposed to choose a new formula: “the army and civil population of Algeria at the Duke of Orleans, Prince Royal, 1842”. Bronze fixed the inscription. More of two thirds of the cost of the operation had been financed by private funds. The army and the civil population had testified which posthumous affection they dedicated to the memory of Prince Royal. The long advance of the statue since the workshop of Silk in Louvre had been greeted with emotion and meditation by a compact and various crowd. The of Algiers specimen caused similar demonstrations. From leaving the workshop Silk, it borrowed the Canal Saint Martin's day. Soldiers of the 74e regiment of line stopped the barge to cover the princely representation of some flowers of the camp of the Villette. It arrived at the Havre on July 4th.

Abandonment and rebirth of the two statues

The of Algiers population proved its unfailing attachment the shortly after the Révolution of 1848. The provisional government addressed to the new general governor Louis Eugene Cavaignac of the orders of removal of the statue of the place of the Government. But hardly one had drawn up, in these first days of March, the frames having to be used to support the bronze mass which the colonists ruèrent on the scaffolding and threw them to the sea. Much more, the militia spontaneously organized a service of faction of day as of night around the monument to prevent which it was not given following this profanation. During the dark days of the of Algiers commune, the statue orleanist still escaped any degradation. It was on the other hand inconceivable that the republican capacity let remain in the middle of Paris, the capital, a monument with the glory of the dynasty déchue. In the night from February 26th to 27th, the contractors of Louvre removed the statue. February 26th, the pedestal became an expiatory monument with the memory of the victims of the Revolution. The statue is dispatched in 1850 with the Château of Versailles to be set up without base in the court of the small Orangery. October 18th, 1971: a ministerial decree decided its transport with the castle of Have. Its Algerian binocular draws up today on a small place of Neuilly-sur-Seine, renamed Ferdinand-Philippe place of Orleans. The conclusion of the Accords of Evian rang the knell of sound insolente longevity. As of on July 4th, 1962, it was dismounted and stored with other banished memories of the French presence to the Camp Sirocco, close to the Cape Matifou. In August 1963, the City-of-Quebec cargo liner brought back it in Le Havre, from where it had left.

Other homages

  • the cenotaph of the prince carved by Henri de Triqueti, vault Saint-Ferdinand (Our-Lady-of-the-Compassion), Carries Shirt to Paris.

Anecdote

For the funeral service of the prince, one missed black fabric to paper Notre-Dame, the Visconti architect had the idea to use black paper.

References

Related articles

Sources

  • Guy Antonetti, Louis-Philippe , Paris, Bookstore Arthème Beech, 2002

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