Henri, comte de Chambord

Encyclopedia : H : HE : HEN : Henri, comte de Chambord

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French Monarchy-
Capetian Dynasty
(House of Bourbon>Bourbon branch)

Henry IV Sister    Catherine of Navarre, Duchess of Lorraine Children Louis XIII Elisabeth, Queen of Spain Christine Marie, Duchess of Savoy Nicholas Henry    Gaston, Duke of Orléans Henriette-Marie, Queen of England and Scotland Louis XIII Children Louis XIV Philippe, Duke of Orléans Louis XIV Children    Louis, the Grand Dauphin Marie-Anne Marie-Therese    Philippe-Charles, Duc d'Anjou    Louis-François, Duc d'Anjou Grandchildren    Louis, Duke of Burgundy King Philip V of Spain Charles, Duke of Berry Great Grandchildren    Louis, Duke of Brittany Louis XV Louis XV Children Louise-Elisabeth, Duchess of Parma Louis, Dauphin Madame Marie Adélaïde Madame Victoire Grandchildren Clotilde, Queen of Sardinia Louis XVI Louis XVIII Charles X Madame Élisabeth Louis XVI Children Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Duchess of Angouleme Louis-Joseph, Dauphin Louis (XVII) Sophie-Beatrix Louis (XVII) Louis XVIII Charles X Children Louis (XIX), Duke of Angoulême Charles, Duke of Berry Grandchildren Henry (V), comte de Chambord Louise, Duchess of Parma

Henri Charles Ferdinand Marie Dieudonné d'Artois, comte de Chambord (September 29, 1820 – August 24, 1883) was the grandson of King Charles X of France. From 1830 until his death he was one of several claimants to the French throne.

Henri was the posthumous son of Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry by his wife Princess Maria Carolina of the Two Sicilies, daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies.

Birth and youth

He was born September 29, 1820, in the pavillon de Marsan, part of the Tuileries Palace which still survives in the Louvre in Paris. Henri's father the duc de Berry had been assassinated several months before his birth. At the actual moment of Henri's birth, no member of the French court was present in the room; this enabled the supporters of the duc d'Orléans to claim that Henri was not in fact a French prince.

From his birth Henri was known as the duc de Bordeaux. Because of his surprising birth when the senior line of the Bourbon dynasty appeared about to become extinct, he was known as the "Miracle Baby."

On August 2, 1830, in response to the July Revolution, Henri's grandfather Charles X abdicated, and twenty minutes later Charles' elder son the Dauphin also abdicated. Henri was immediately proclaimed Henri V, King of France and Navarre. However, the National Assembly instead decreed that the throne should pass to a distant cousin, the duc d'Orléans, who became Louis-Philippe, King of the French.

Exile

Henri and his family left France and went into exile, August 16, 1830. While some French monarchists recognized him as their sovereign, others disputed the validity of the abdications of his grandfather and uncle. Still others recognised the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. With the death of his grandfather in 1836, and his uncle in 1844, Henri became the genealogically senior claimant to the French throne. His supporters were called Legitimists to distinguish them from the Orléanists, the supporters of the family of Louis-Philippe.

Henri, who took as his title of pretension comte de Chambord (from the Château de Chambord), continued to make his claim throughout the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire of Napoleon III. In November 1846 Chambord married Archduchess Marie Therese of Austria-Este, daughter of Duke Francis IV of Modena and Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy. Her maternal grandparents were Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia and Maria Theresa of Austria-Este; the couple had no children.

Hope

In the early 1870s, as the Second Empire collapsed following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the royalists became a majority in the National Assembly. The Orléanists agreed to support Chambord's claim to the throne, with the hope that at his death he would be succeeded by their own claimant. However, Henri insisted that he would only accept the crown on condition that France abandon its tricolour flag and return to the use of the white fleur-de-lis flag. Even a compromise, where by the fleur-de-lis would be Chambord's personal standard, while the tricolour would remain the national flag, was rejected.

Defeat

A temporary Third Republic was established, to wait for Henri's death and his replacement by the Comte de Paris. But by the time this occurred in 1883, public opinion had swung behind the Republic as the form of government which, in the words of the former President Adolphe Thiers, 'divides us least'. Thus Henri could be mockingly hailed by republicans such as Georges Clemenceau as "the French Washington" — the one man without whom the Republic could not have been founded.

Henri died August 24, 1883 at his residence in Frohsdorf, Austria. He was buried in his grandfather Charles X's crypt at the monastery of Castagnavizza in Gorizia, Italy, now on the Slovenian side of the border in Nova Gorica.

At his death, Henri's wife and some of his supporters believed that he was succeeded as rightful king of France and Navarre by his distant cousin the Infante Juan of Spain, conde de Montizon (the senior male of the House of Bourbon). Other supporters of Henri transferred their allegiance to the Orléanist claimant, Philippe, Comte de Paris.

His personal property was left to his late sister's son Robert I, Duke of Parma. Among other things, this meant the castle of Chambord.

External links

• [The Birth of the duc de Bordeaux]