For many of us, Louis XVI is the last king of France, but it is not so. It is indeed in the XIXand century that royalty has definitively disappeared from the French political landscape. Did this last king meet the same fate as Louis XVI?
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While King Charles X had been in power since 1824, a revolution called the “July Revolution” broke out on July 27, 1830. For three days, the people of Paris rose up and the fighting claimed many victims. Baptized the “Three Glorious Ones”, this insurrectional movement (reported by Victor-Hugo in his book Wretched, with the character of Gavroche), pushes Charles X and his family to flee Paris. Louis-Philippe Ier succeeds him. This is how the July Monarchy began.
Louis-Philippe Ier“king of the French”
Following the conservative monarchy of Restorationbetween 1814 and 1830, this monarchy is said to be liberal, the French monarch renouncing the notion ofelected by divine right. Louis-Philippe 1ersuccessor to Charles X, ascended the throne in 1830. He was the first and only king of the House of Orleans.
Louis-Philippe Ier was not proclaimed “King of France”, but “King of the French” by the Chamber of Deputies. A way of linking the monarchy to a people, and no longer to a country. Less traditionalist than his predecessors, he gives another image of royalty in France. He is even nicknamed the “bourgeois king” or the “citizen king”.
Louis-Philippe Ierthe last king of France
Louis-Philippe Ier don’t know it yet, but he will be the last king of France. During the first years of his reign, his simplicity and modesty, which contrasted with the customs of his predecessors, made him appreciated. It initiates profound social, political and economic changes that will promote Industrial Revolution. But between 1846 and 1848, a serious economic crisis affected France and anger raged. On February 22, 1848, the people let their anger burst out, and this was the starting point of a new revolution.
On February 24, 1848, Louis-Philippe Ier abdicates in favor of his grandson, Louis-Philippe II, and flees. His grandson will never ascend the throne, and this is the beginning of the IIand Republic. Not wanting to suffer the same fate as Louis XVILouis-Philippe 1er escapes from France with the assumed name of Monsieur Smith and goes into exile in England where he is welcomed by the queen victoria.
Never again will a king reign in France.
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