against the Liberals of Switzerland finally alienated from him the
French Liberal opinion on which his authority was based. When, in
February 1848, Paris rose against him, he found that he was practically
isolated in France.
Charles X., after abdicating, had made a dignified exit from France,
marching to the coast surrounded by the cavalry, infantry and artillery
of his Guard. Louis Philippe was less happily situated. Escaping with
the queen from the Tuileries by a back entrance, he made his way with
her in disguise to Honfleur, where the royal couple found refuge in a
gardener's cottage. They were ultimately smuggled out of the country by
the British consul at Havre as Mr and Mrs Smith,[4] arriving at Newhaven
"unprovided with anything but the clothes they wore." They settled at
Claremont, placed at their disposal by Queen Victoria, under the
_incognito_ of count and countess of Neuilly. Here on the 26th of August
1850, Louis Philippe died.
The character of Louis Philippe is admirably traced by Queen Victoria in
a memorandum of May 2, 1855, in which she compares him with Napoleon
III. She speaks of his "vast knowledge upon all and every subject," and
"his great activity of mind." He was, unlike Napoleon, "_thoroughly
French_ in character, possessing all the liveliness and talkativeness of
that people." But she also speaks of the "tricks and over-reachings"
practised by him, "who in great as well as in small things took a
pleasure in being cleverer and more cunning than others, often when
there was no advantage to be gained by it, and which was,
unfortunately, strikingly displayed in the transactions connected with
the Spanish marriages, which led to the king's downfall, and ruined him
in the eyes of all Europe" (_Letters_, pop. ed., iii. 122).
Louis Philippe had eight children. His eldest son, the popular Ferdinand
Philippe, duke of Orleans (b. 1810), who had married Princess Helena of
Mecklenburg, was killed in a carriage accident on the 13th of July 1842,
leaving two sons, the comte de Paris and the duc de Chartres. The other
children were Louise, consort of Leopold I., king of the Belgians;
Marie, who married Prince Alexander of Württemberg and died in 1839;
Louis Charles, duc de Nemours; Clementine, married to the duke of
Coburg-Kohary; François Ferdinand, prince de Joinville; Henri Eugène,
duc d'Aumale (q.v.); Antoine Philippe, duc de Montpensier, who married
the Infanta, younger sister of Queen Isabella of Spain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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