Louis-Philippe, 24 February 1848
Louis-Philippe Study, Château Royal d'Amboise. ©Mark Playle
On 24 February 1848 news came from Paris that King Louis-Philippe had abdicated.
Amboise was staunchly monarchist and had been ever since Charles VII acquired its Château in 1434. French kings called this area home for a hundred years until Francis I moved into the Louvre in Paris.
Not only had Louis-Philippe been their king for eighteen years, Amboise felt an affinity with him. When he inherited the Royal Château from his mother, he embarked on a programme of renovations intending to use it as a holiday home for his large extended family.
An ardent defender of French heritage, he endorsed the classification of historical monuments. First on the list was this Chateau.
His wife, Queen Maria-Amalia, was furious when he abdicated. 'Sir, you are giving way to a riot; you are allowing yourself to be frightened!'
She and Louis-Philippe had been together for almost fifty years.
The Queen was not French. She didn't experience Robespierre's Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. Her husband had. His father, the duke of Orleans, was guillotined the same year as Louis-Philippe's cousin, King Louis XVI.
He knew many of the seventeen thousand who met the same fate so had very good reason to be frightened.
Louis-Philippe was a good man. The writer, Victor Hugo, a committed Republican, said: 'Take away Louis-Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the man is good...'
Good he may be, but snooty Parisians missed the splendour of sovereignty. Louis-Philippe walked the streets with a rolled umbrella. They looked down on his bourgeois way of life. He was not the image of France they wanted presented to the world.
However, that day, the mob in Paris was not out for his blood, they were out for that of Guizot, the king's hated prime minister. When he banned meetings of a Party in opposition to his government, its members circumvented the law by holding political banquets to agitate for reform.
When Guizot banned the banquet planned for 22 February 1848, all hell broke loose.
The King and Queen, travelling as Mr and Mrs Smith, made their way to England where Queen Victoria made them welcome.
The King died there two years later but was buried in the Chapel Royal St. Louis, Domaine royal de Dreux near Paris.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art). Photography by Mark.
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Pamela Shields
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