Louis Philippe Makers of History Series

Excerpt

Chapter I.

1669-1793

The origin of the House of Orleans is involved in some obscurity. The city of Orleans, from which the duke takes his title, was the Aurelium of imperial Rome. The first Duke of Orleans with whom history makes us familiar was Philip, the only brother of Louis XIV. Louis XIII., the son and heir of Henry IV., married Anne of Austria. Two children were born to them, Louis and Philippe. The first became the world-renowned monarch, Louis XIV. His brother, known in history as Monsieur, enjoyed the title and the princely revenues of the dukedom of Orleans.

Monsieur married, as his first wife, the beautiful Henrietta Stuart, daughter of the unfortunate Charles I. of England. Her mother was Henrietta of France, the daughter of Henry IV., and sister of Louis XIII. She died in the bloom of youth and beauty, of poison, after the most cruel sufferings, on the 27th of June, 1669. Philippe took as his second wife Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of the Elector Charles of Bavaria. By this marriage he left a son, Philippe, who not only inherited his father's almost boundless wealth and princely titles, but who attained wide-spread notoriety, not to say renown, as the regent of France, after the death of Louis XIV., and during the minority of Louis XV. The regent was a man of indomitable force of will. During his long regency he swayed the sceptre of a tyrant; and the ear of Europe was poisoned with the story of his debaucheries.

He married a legitimated daughter of Louis XIV., Marie Françoise de Blois, a haughty, capricious beauty. His scandalous immoralities alienated his duchess from him, and no happiness was to be found amidst the splendors of their home. Dying suddenly, at the age of fifty-one, his son Louis succeeded him in the vast opulence, the titles, and the power of the dukedom of Orleans. The following list of his titles may give some idea of the grandeur to which these ancient nobles were born. Louis de Valois, De Chartres, De Nemours, and De Montpensier, First Prince of the blood, First Peer of France, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Colonel-general of the French and Foreign Infantry, Governor of Dauphiny, and Grand Master of the Orders of Nôtre Dame, of Mount Carmel, and of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Born, as this young man was, in the palace of splendor, and surrounded by every allurement to voluptuous indulgence, two domestic calamities opened his eyes to the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and led him to enter those paths of piety where his soul found true repose. The death of his father, cut down suddenly in the midst of his godless revelry, and the decease of his beloved wife, Auguste Marie Jeanne, a princess of Baden, in her twenty-second year, so impressed him with the uncertainty of all terrestrial good, and left his home and his heart so desolate, that he retired to the Abbey of St. Geneviève, and devoted the remainder of his days to study, to prayer, and to active works of Christian usefulness....