General Notes

Louis Philippe, called the Citizen King (1773-1850), king of France (1830-48).
He was the son of Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans (called Philippe
Égalité), and was born in Paris.
Louis Philippe belonged to the house of Bourbon-Orléans, a branch of the
French royal family stemming from Philippe I, duc d'Orléans, the brother of
King Louis XIV. From his birth until 1785 Louis Philippe was known as the duc
de Valois and subsequently as the duc de Chartres until 1793, when his father
was guillotined, and he succeeded him as duc d'Orléans. Like his father, he
was in sympathy with the French Revolution, the upheaval in France that
resulted in the establishment of the First Republic, and in 1790 he joined the
Jacobins, members of a French radical political club. Two years later, at the
age of 18, he was given a command in the revolutionary army and, as a colonel,
fought at the battles of Valmy and Jemappes. After the defeat of the French
army by the Austrians at the Battle of Neerwinden, Holland, in 1793, Louis
Philippe was implicated with his superior officer, the French general Charles
François Dumouriez, in a plot against the republic, and he fled to
Switzerland.
After the execution of his father by the French Revolutionary Tribunal, Louis
Philippe became the central figure about whom his supporters, the Orléanist
party, rallied; he did not actively enter into the intrigues for restoring the
monarchy, however, and during the regime of the Directory and that of
Napoleon, Louis Philippe remained outside France, traveling in Scandinavia,
the United States (where he lived for four years in Philadelphia), and
England. He also visited Sicily at the invitation of Ferdinand I, king of the
Two Sicilies, and in 1809 he married the king's daughter Maria Amelia.
In 1814, after the abdication of Napoleon, he returned to France and was
welcomed by King Louis XVIII, who restored to him the Orléans estates. By the
late 1820s, however, under the autocratic rule of Louis XVIII's brother and
successor, Charles X, the last of the Bourbon monarchs, the French middle and
lower classes were growing restive. Louis Philippe was by this time the
favorite of those Republican leaders who feared to arouse the opposition of
all Europe by establishing a republic, and hoped that Louis Philippe would
govern according to popular will. In 1830, by the July Revolution that
overthrew Charles X and the Bourbon dynasty in France, Louis Philippe was
proclaimed king by the Chamber of Deputies.
At first Louis Philippe was content to rule as a "citizen king" and to
conciliate the Republicans who had helped bring him to power; he also
dispensed with many royal privileges. Gradually, however, while remaining a
constitutional monarch, he became more authoritarian, seeking not only to
establish the Bourbon-Orléans dynasty in France but also to consolidate his
position among the sovereigns of Europe. He arranged for the marriage of his
daughter Louise to Léopold I, king of the Belgians.
The last years of his reign were marked by corruption in domestic affairs and
by lethargy in foreign affairs. Louis Philippe, having tried to win the favor
of both the democratic and authoritarian elements, was at last deserted by
both sides and was deposed by the Revolution of 1848, which led to the
formation in France of the Second Republic (1848-52) and the rise of Louis
Napoleon, later Napoleon III, emperor of France. After his abdication Louis
Philippe lived with his family in England.