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Phillippe VIII
Phillippe as Duke of Orléans, unknown date
King of the French (more...)
Reign	10 November 1919 – 19 February 1937
Proclamation	19 October 1919
Predecessor	Philippe Pétain (as Executive Chief)
Successor	Henri, Count of Paris
Head of the House of Orléans
Reign	8 September 1894 – 28 March 1948
Predecessor	Prince Philippe, Count of Paris
Successor	Henri VI
Born	(1869-02-06)6 February 1869 York House, Twickenham, England
Died	28 March 1948(1948-03-28) (aged 79) Palais-Royal, Paris
Spouse	Archduchess Maria Dorothea of Austria (m. 1896; separated 1914)
Full name French: Louis Philippe Robert d'Orléans
House	Orléans
Father	Prince Philippe, Count of Paris
Mother	Infanta Maria Isabel of Spain

Phillippe VIII (French: Louis Phillippe Robert; 6 February 1869 - 28 March 1948) was King of the French from 1919 until his abdication in 1937. Born in exile to the grandson of Louis Phillippe I, Phillippe was proclaimed King as a result of the dissolution of the Third French Republic. He was the first King of France to legally rule since his great-grandfather in 1848, and the first monarch of France to legally rule since 1870 with the abdication of Napoleon III. Before his accession, he was the Duke of Orléans and the head of the House of Orléans following the death of his father in 1894.

Biography

Early life

Phillippe was born in Tickenham, England to Prince Phillippe, Count of Paris and Princess Marie Isabelle of Orléans, who were first cousins once removed. Members of the House of Orléans were banned from the national territory of France by the law of 26 May 1848. At the age of two, Phillippe, his parents and his older sister Amélie returned to France after the laws of exile were repealed. His father, the Count of Paris, regained ownership of the castles of Amboise, Eu and Randan. Phillippe spent his childhood both in these castles and in the Hôtel Matignon. Phillippe was known to roam the countryside around Eu, frequenting lumberjacks and peasants. Xavier Marmier, a regular guest of the family, introduced Phillippe to botany and zoology at an early age, two sciences that would later define his later life.

Because the Count of Chambord, the last legitimate descendant of Louis XV through the male line, had no children, Phillippe was seen, both by the Orléanists and a large portion of the legitimists, as the legitimate King of France. After the Count of Chambord's death in 1883, the young prince was recognized as 'Dauphin' by those royalists who pledged allegiance to his father.

Renewed exile

Phillippe's father organized a luxurious ceremony in the Hôtel Matignon to mark the occasion of the engagement of his eldest daughter, and Phillippe's sister, Princess Amélie, to Charles, Crown Prince of Portugal. This ceremony outraged the republican movement in the nascent third republic, who presented another exile bill to the National Assembly, which received the support of the Freycinet government. On 23 June 1886, a new law of exile was declared that banned all pretenders to the French throne and their eldest son from French territory, and barred all other French royals from army lists. With the rest of his family, Phillippe left France at Le Tréport to return to England once more.

Military training

Before the passing of the exile law, Phillippe planned to enter the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr. However, expelled from France and thus no longer able to follow a military career in his country, Phillippe enrolled in the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst some time after his arrival in England. By personal order of Queen Victoria, he was entered into the academy without competition, and because he was the eldest son of a head of the royal household. Phillippe had little talent when it came to book studies, but excelled in the arts of geography, topography and natural sciences. He passed his examinations and obtained the rank of second lieutenant in the British army in 1887. Once his training concluded, Phillippe enlisted in the British colonial army and was incorporated into an elite corps, the King Royal Rifles. He was assigned to the Himalayas under the order of Lord Frederick Roberts. In his service, he 'discovered' North India, Sikkim and Nepal. In the exploration of these 'wild regions', he was joined by his first cousin, Prince Henri of Orléans, who together developed a great passion for hunting and {w{wp|trophy collecting}}. In 1889, The Duke of Orléans was later posted back to England, but he did not enjoy garrison life and his father,, finding his training incomplete, asked him to join the Swiss Military Academy to take courses under the supervision of his personal mentor, Colonel de Parseval.

Attempted return

Around the same time, the collapse of the support for General Boulanger posed a great threat to the Count of Paris, who was a supporter of the general. Phillippe was noted as being entirely unaffected by the Boulanger affair by royalists. When the Duke reached the age of 21 in 1890, which obliged him to do his military service in France, Arthur Meyer, director of the conservative newspaper Le Gaulois, and the Duke of Luynes, proposed to the young Duke that he should return illegally to France to officially ask the Republic for permission to carry out his service. Phillippe immediately accepted the proposal without asking his father's permission first.

On 2 February, he came to Paris and presented himself at the recruitment office at the town hall of the 7th arrondissement, and then at the ministry of war to be drafted. Each time however, he was refused by the administration. That same evening, he was arrested in the residence of the Duke of Luynes. It was finally at this moment that the outraged Count of Paris was informed by telegram of his son's adventure, though he did not publicly show his displeasure. While awaiting trial, Phillippe was served luxurious meals. The republican press quickly reproduced the menus and, aware of the negative effect that such preferential treatment would have on his image, the prince publicly declared that he only asked for a "soldier's bowl", which evoked feelings of camaraderie in the soldiery. The expression immediately gained him the respect of the French military, and the prince earned the popular nickname "Prince Bowl", which would follow him for the rest of his life. Anatole France would later dub Phillippe "trublion", from the Ancient Greek word of the same meaning as 'bowl'.

The Duke was sentenced to two years in prison for illegally returning to his country. He served his sentence in Clairvaux prison on 25 February, but he received privileged treatment, where the prison administration provided him with a two-room furnished apartment and a personal guard. He received many visits from women, including his mother but also the dancer Émilienne d'Alençon and the singer Nellie Melba, with whom he had affairs. After four months, he was pardoned by President Sadi Carnot, who "judged that the ridicule had lasted long enough", and eh was deported to the border on 4 June 1890. His gambit strengthened the position of the royalist movement in France, but not enough to threaten the Third Republic. Phillippe would return to exile once again, but remained close to the French nobility who came to see him, such as the Count of Gramont. He nevertheless stepped foot on French soil (Djibouti, and according to Jacques Chastenet, returned to France in 1899 for a brief time, "hiding in a friendly castle".

Travels and discoveries

Following Phillippe's third exile, the Duke resumed his travels. With his father, he traveled to the United States to visit the battlefields where his father had fought in the {wp|American Civil War}}. The two princes travelled to Quebec to explore the former territory of New France.

Just as soon as he returned to England, the Duke went hunting in the Caucasus, near the obrder with Persia. In the years 1892 to 1893, he explored Somalia and Ethiopia. He passed through Djibouti, then a nascent colony of France in December 1892. The prince was amused by the embarrassment of the civil servant in place who, in order to warn the French government of his presence on French soil, had to ask him to send a missive to himself in the nearest English port (Berbera), because there was no post in the town of Obock yet. Phillippe had planned this illegal incursion from Aden (a first atempt had failed the previous month after it was leaked). The Duke and his travelling companion, Boris Czetwertyński, travelled to the Harrar, Shoa and Ogaden rivers and then to the vicinity of lakes Rudolf and Stephanie. In these regions, the two royals hunted and amassed a large number of animal remains, which Phillipe collected with the idea of turning them into a museum. Phillippe also made important scientific discoveries. In Ethiopia, he visited countries still unknown to Europeans, and identified a subspecies of elephant which was named in his honor (Loxodonta africana Orleansi)

Each time he returned to Europe, he stayed in his mother's residence, the Villamanrique de la Condesa in Andalusia. e divided his time between the connections he maintained with the women of the village and the hunts he organized with his father in the Quadalquivir Marshes. He made ornithological observations that would later be useful to him during his expeditions in Africa and the Arctic.

Pretender to the throne

Head of the House of Orléans

Phillippe's father died on 8 September 1894, and Phillippe succeeded his father in his headship of the House of Orléans. The prince inherited his family's massive fortune, which made is easier for him to finance the expeditions he organized around the world. Aware of his duties as a pretender however, the Duke decided to marry in order to ensure an heir to the dynasty he represented. In 1896, he married a granddaughter of Princess Clementine of Orléans, the Archduchess Maria Dorothea of Austria. Phillippe later learned that the princess was infertile and incapable of conceiving a child, greatly damaging their relationship. Phillippe and Maria's marriage for a time ended the Duke's great expeditions, but not his travels. Aboard the yacht Maroussia, the Duke and his wife travelled the Mediterrannean from 1897 and for several years. They regularly stayed at the Orleans Palace in Palermo, where they received many visits, such as that of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his consort. As the years went by and the prospect of ever being parents faded away, the relationship of the couple deteriorated. Tired of his condition as an exile, the Duke resumed his distant expeditions, while the archduchess gradually returned to live with her family at Alcsuth Castle in Hungary.

Affairs in French politics

Although the Duke took very little personal interests in the fulfillment of his political duties as pretender, he still made efforts to, regardless. When the Dreyfus Affair quickly took over French politics, the staunchly conservative Phillippe joined the anti-Dreyfusards in 1898, which further alienated liberal public opinion of him. He founded the Royalist Youth around the same time, who's presidency was entrusted to Paul Bézine. Phillippe believed in the instability caused by the Dreyfusard controversy and the attempted coup d'etat organized by Paul Déroulède that he could ascend the throne, but his hopes were quickly dashed and his political interventions were ignored. His opposition to the Religious congregation laws of 1901 had no consequences.

Action française

Dissatisfied with the inability for his movement, the Royalist Youth to establish a monarchist movement in France, the Duke dissolved it. Seven years later, Phillippe met with Charles Maurras, a French royalist and leader of the French monarchist and reactionary party Action française. Maurras as leader of Action française took hold of the French monarchist movement for thirty years and reduced previous royalist currents irrelevant. Phillippe left the reality of the political leadership of the royalist movement to Maurras, so he could devote himself fully to his expeditions.

Further explorations

Far North

In 1904, Phillippe left to visit Norway and Spitsbergen aboard the Maroussia. Then, wishing to continue his expeditions in the Arctic Ocean, he acquired a larger vessel, the Belgica, with which he led three campaigns between 1905 and 1909. In the company of Dr. Joseph Récamier Jr, the cartoonist Édouard Mérite and an oceanographer, he visited the east coast of Greenland and had the pleasure of discovering still unknown lands that he named Île de France and Terre de Duc d'Orléans. Phillippe then went to Iceland, where he visited the site of the traditional parliament, the {wp|Althingi}}. Thanks to the accounts of these expeditions, the Duke obtained the gold medals of the Belgian and French geographical society. He brought back to York House a number of other hunting trophies that he decided to store in a museum. In 1907, he moved his taxidermy collections to a new home in Wood Norton, Worcestershire. The same here, he left for the far north with the project of sailing along the northern coast of Siberia, from the Kara Sea to the Bering Strait. This new expedition, recounted in La Revanche de la banquise, was failure for the Duke, who did not reach further than Novaya Zemlya. In 1991, the Duke left for the northern regions for the last time. From the Faroe Islands, he brought back more animal remains, prompting him to expand his museum in Norton Wood.

Central Asia and Brussels

From 1912, Phillippe resumed his overland expeditions, mostly for hunting but also on occassion for science. He left for Turkestan in the Russian Empire and the Caucasus. The following year, he traveled to Argentina and Chile. Upon his return to Europe, he chose to leave England and settle in Belgium. Near Brussels, he settled in the residence of Putdaël, where he had a large annex built there to house his hunting collection.

World War I

Breakdown of marriage

While his expeditions were being carried out, the Duke went to the Habsburgs to be reunited with his wife, with whom he wished to reconcile and resume his life together. But Maria refused to reconcile. When the First World War broke out, she decided to stay in Austria-Hungary, a country at war with which she was, for the Orleanists, the titular queen. The Duke was so hurt by this attitude that he considered it a betrayal. He never forgave his wife for her choice. They did not legally separate until after the war.

Attempted service

During the First World War, Phillippe sought to participate in combat on the side of the Triple Entente: but neither France, the United Kingdom, Russia or even the United States allowed him to enlist in their army. In France, {{wp|Charles Maurras} was personally involved in assisting the Duke with his efforts, who quoted his sister in saying "What a king he would have made us! The French have passed by a beloved king, they would have done follies with them [...] You had to see him in 1914 and 1915 when he wanted to serve in the French armies".

At the beginning of August 1914, Phillippe returned to Emperor Franz Joseph I his insignia of Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

It was only Italy that was open to the prospect of the Duke's service. A fractured femur, however, prevented his plans to join the Italian army, and the opportunity was never given to him again. Gravely disappointed by these rejections, Phillippe returned to settle in England, where he spent the rest of the war. His only satisfaction was the ability to make his boat, the Belgica, available to Great Britain in order to supply its Russian ally through Arkhangelsk and the Arctic estuaries.

On 15 October 1915, following the entrance of Bulgaria into the war against the Entente, the Duke stripped his cousin, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, of his status as a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit.

Accession to the French throne

The ensuing and rapid collapse of the French Republic's government to a worker's revolution and the failure of the Spring Offensive reinvigorated the Duke's aspirations for the French throne. Sections of the illiberal right in France broke off from the "Scared Union" to form their own rival government to the French government. Charles Maurras and his Action francaise became a key figure in this splinter faction. The emergency government of Philippe Pétain, a dedicated Republican and Chief of Staff, was blamed for his failures on the front with Germany. Rising anti-semitism, perpetrated by the rightist elements in the country, found itself directed at the unpopular government of Petain and the ruling Democratic Republican Alliance. The conservative Royalist government, therefore, became a key faction in the French Civil War after the January Revolution in 1919. Initially, the Duke did not make efforts or comments on the civil war in France. However, following the capitulation of the French emergency government to the Royalists, Maurras and the Royalists invited Phillippe to France.

Phillippe immediately accepted the offer, and departed from England to the Hôtel Matignon. A few weeks after his arrival in the country, the royalist government proclaimed him King of the French on 19 October 1919, though it would not be until 10 November 1919 that he was coronated in a hasty ceremony. Phillippe's reputation as a dedicated French patriot and educated traveler greatly helped his popularity in the eyes of the French people. Under the influence of Charles Maurras, the Kingdom of France adopted a staunchly anti-communist and nationalist approach to governance. While Phillippe was de-jure an absolute monarch, Maurras made no pretense of limitations in his status as head of government, and he was recognized as the true ruling force in the country. Under the pretext of 'national stability', Maurras' government banned opposition parties and all socialist parties, de-facto establishing a one-party state. Damaging the newly Christened Phillippe VII's reputation was the support that the German and Austrian governments gave to the French Action, as a staunchly anti-communist movement. These accusations followed the reign of Phillippe for the rest of his life.

Early reign

Following the end of the French Civil War in 1920, Phillippe settled in the Palais-Royal near Paris, the ancestral palace where the Dukes of Orleans had resided since the reign of Louis XIV. Phillippe chose to mark the Palace as the official royal residence- as the previous residence of the monarchy, the Tulleries Palace, was burned down by the Paris Commune in 1871. The nascent King invited his family to settle in France; of which his sisters, brother and cousin and brother-in-law, the Duke of Guise. Suspecting that he would never have children, Phillippe declared in his will that the Duke of Guise and his descendants would succeed him as King upon his death.

Although the reigning royalist government positioned Phillippe as an active force in French politics and a dedicated and determined king, in practice Phillippe took very little personal interest in his functionary as King of France. Charles forbade Phillippe from travelling abroad, believing that his expeditions posed a serious hazard to the King. Phillippe would later come to resent his stay in the Palais-Royal, recalling his time posted in the British garrison.

Abroad, Phillippe became a distinctively unifying force between the Entente and the Central Powers, who both supported Phillippe's government in its capacity as an anti-communist bulwark in Western Europe. France formed controversial ties to the German Empire during this time under Maurras's leadership.

Palace coup

The integralist and authoritarian government of Maurras grew unpopular after the Pope issued a papal condemnation of Action française, which greatly damaged the standing of the Royalist regime among its traditional supporters- usually rural Catholics. The radical policies of Action Française, which included the rejection of the French Revolution and a return to the absolutism of Louis XVI and his predecessors gravely diminished its popularity in the eyes of the French public.

Following Phillippe's informing of the Papal condemnation, he, along with elements of the French government opposed to Maurras, overthrew the Action Française-led government and banned the party, which was already developing in a fascist direction. Aware that his position as King was now tentative, Phillippe chose, in the manner of his ancestor, Louis Phillippe I, and partially his predecessor Napoleon III, to return France to a more democratic style of governance. Having no interests in the actual affairs of governance in his capacity as the French monarch, Phillippe reversed the ban on opposition parties; tolerating the foundation of new liberal parties.

The constitution of 1927, inspired by the Charter of 1830, re-introduced the tricolor to France, and made Phillippe a ceremonial monarch.

Later reign

Phillippe resumed his expeditions abroad following the coup, where he made himself known once again through his travels to Egypt and Northern Africa. At home, the liberal government reversed the policy of French reconciliation with Germany, instead opting to staunchly align the country with Britain and the United States. Despite this, the country still kept significant financial and economic ties with Germany. Phillippe made further expeditions to France's colonial holdings in West Africa. His last expedition, taken in 1934, resulted in his infection with pneumonia, which he survived- but which resulted in his barment from any further expeditions (although he was, by that point in time, getting old).

Abdication

The Berlin Stock Market Crash of 1936 resulted in the economic collapse of France and its plunging into a great depression. Phillippe, who spend exorbitant amounts of money from the French treasury on his expeditions, began to be seen in the eyes of the French people not as a great explorer and scholar, but as an irresponsible and privileged reactionary, who had suppressed the rights of his subjects. The Revolution of 1937 culminated in his abdication from the throne and his retirement from politics, where he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Henri d'Orléans.