Prince Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans (Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Joseph; 3 September 1810 – 13 July 1842) was the eldest son of King Louis Philippe I of France and Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily. He was born in exile in his mother's native Sicily while his parents were the Duke and Duchess of Orléans. Ferdinand Philippe was heir to the House of Orléans from birth. Following his father's succession as King of the French in 1830, he became the Prince Royal of France and Duke of Orléans. He died in 1842, never to succeed his father or see the collapse of the July Monarchy and subsequent exile of his family to the United Kingdom.
Early life
Born in Palermo in September 1810, during his parents' exile, he was given the title Duke of Chartres (and was called Chartres within the family circle). He was baptised Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Joseph and known as Ferdinand Philippe in honour of his grandfathers, Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Philippe Égalité. Despite having been born in exile, he held the rank of prince of the blood and was styled Serene Highness. As the eldest son, he was the heir to the title of Duke of Orléans, head of the House of Orléans (a cadet branch of the Bourbons of France descended from the only brother of Louis XIV).
The young prince first visited France in 1814 during the First Restoration, settling there more permanently in 1817. In 1819, his father put him in the care of a tutor, M. de Boismilon, at the Collège Henri-IV. Louis Philippe wished his son to receive a liberal education on a foundation of complete equality with his fellow students. Ferdinand Philippe was highly successful in his studies and took courses at the École polytechnique. After a trip to Great Britain (visiting both England and Scotland) in 1819, he went to Lunéville to join the 1st Hussar Regiment, of which he was made colonel by Charles X in 1824. In September 1824, King Charles X granted him the style "Royal Highness", a style maintained by Ferdinand Philippe at his father's accession to the throne six years later.
July Revolution In 1830, during the July Revolution, the young Duke of Chartres was on garrison duty at Joigny. He made his regiment wear the tricolor cockade and quickly led them to aid the uprising in Paris. He was temporarily stopped at Montrouge, and entered Paris on 3 August at the head of his regiment. When his father was offered the French throne by the Chamber of Deputies, Prince Ferdinand Philippe received the title of Duke of Orléans, Prince of Orléans, and also became Prince Royal, the heir apparent to the throne. Upon entering the Conseil (at his father's bidding), Ferdinand Philippe, who had something of a temper, criticised the time lost by ministers' prevarications and was frequently embroiled in skirmishes with the doctrinaires, to whom he wished to impart the sentiments of revolutionary youth. When Casimir Périer was nominated president of the Conseil in March 1831, he accepted the post only on condition that Ferdinand Philippe be excluded from the Conseil.
In November 1831, the young Duke of Orléans and Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult were sent to repress the Canut revolts. He acquitted himself of this difficult task without violence and managed to rapidly appease opponents of the July Monarchy, even gaining a certain popularity. During the cholera outbreak in 1832, he did not hesitate to take real risks in visiting the most sickly patients at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, accompanied by Casimir Périer (who caught the disease and died). In the eyes of the people and the press he was seen as a generous prince, sincerely preoccupied with the plight of the poor, and he became a sort of icon for the dynastic opposition of politician Odilon Barrot, who saw in him the only prince capable of reconciling modern France's democratic aspirations with the heritage of its monarchical past. On 2 March 1832 he was granted an annual income of 1 million francs under his father's new Civil List.
Military career
In 1831, under Marshal Étienne Maurice Gérard, Ferdinand Philippe and his younger brother Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, set out on their first campaign. When the princes entered Belgium in 1831, they eagerly visited the plain of Jemmapes, where their father had fought in 1792. The following year, Ferdinand Philippe returned to Belgium in command of the vanguard brigade of the Armée du Nord. On 20 November 1832 he was before the citadel of Antwerp, and commanded the trenches on the night of 29/30 November. During the attack on the Saint-Laurent Lunette, he launched himself onto the parapet amidst a hail of projectiles to lead the action and arouse his soldiers' courage.
In 1835, when Marshal Bertrand Clauzel was sent to Algeria as Governor General, the young Prince Royal asked his father for permission to accompany him, so he could fight the Emir Abd El-Kader. He participated with Clauzel's army in the Battle of Habrah, where he was wounded, and in the capture of Mascara in December 1835. He then participated in the taking of Tlemcen in January 1836. When he returned to Paris, it was with an aura of military glory, and he returned to Algeria in autumn 1839 to take possession of the country's interior (from Constantine to Algiers) for France alongside Marshal Sylvain Charles Valée. He left Constantine on 16 October, three days after the second anniversary of the town's capture, and reached Algiers on 2 November via Sétif and the Iron Gates pass. Abd-el-Kader saw this as a violation of the Treaty of Tafna and unleashed jihad upon the French. This led to an escalation in tension and, ultimately, Algeria's wholesale occupation by France. Ferdinand Philippe set out for Algeria a third time in March 1840, taking with him his younger brother the Duke of Aumale, tutoring him in his first military experience. Present at the battles of Affroun, Oued'Ger and Bois des Oliviers, he was put in charge of directing the attackers in the capture of Teniah de Mouzaïa. After this campaign he was recalled to France for good.
This brilliant military career increased his popularity and prestige. He also devoted himself to the improvement of the troops' living conditions and morale. At Saint-Omer he organised the chasseurs de Vincennes, who became the chasseurs d'Orléans in 1836, and re-formed the chasseurs à pied de Vincennes. He laid the foundations for a Histoire des Régiments, commissioned by order of the Minister of War, and began writing the service histories of the two regiments he had himself commanded.
Marriage negotiations
Ferdinand Philippe's marriage had long been one of the July Monarchy's major political affairs. Had it not been for the 1830 Revolution, he would have married the sister of Henri, Count of Chambord, Louise d'Artois (1819–1864). Her family called off the marriage plans when Ferdinand Philippe's branch of the family 'usurped' the throne. From 1835, after an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Fieschi and his co-conspirators, Ferdinand Philippe's father had been obsessed with the marital prospects of his son, then 25. Blanche-Joséphine Le Bascle d'Argenteuil noted, in her Souvenirs, that if the Prince Royal died young after having fathered a male heir, the July Monarchy would be faced with the prospect of a regency, in all its political uncertainty – thus, for her, the wisest course consisted of marrying off the King's third son, then the fourth, then the fifth, guaranteeing Louis Philippe descendants, all the while leaving several men around the throne who could take over from him if he died suddenly.
At this time the July Monarchy was searching for new allies in Continental Europe so they would not have to depend solely on the United Kingdom. Talleyrand, fresh from renouncing his embassy to London and close to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, pointed in this direction. The King at first envisaged a rapprochement with Russia via Württemberg. King Wilhelm I, widower of Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia, had two daughters of marriageable age, Princesses Marie (born 1816) and Sophie (born 1818). Wilhelm I's sister Catharina had already made an inauspicious French marriage alliance to Jérôme Bonaparte and so Wilhelm declined the proposition as humiliating. He later was to accept Marie's even more humiliating marriage to Count Alfred von Neipperg in 1840. Queen Louise wrote to her parents on Marie's marriage that "We see singular things. It was not at all probable that this daughter, who the king of Württemberg did not wish to give to Chartres for fear of his ending his days [in exile] in America, should end up marrying a miserable little Austrian officer without illustriousness and of very ordinary birth."cited by Guy Antonetti, Op. cit. (p. 756)
Louis Philippe next envisaged an alliance with Austria via the marriage of his son to Archduchess Maria Theresa (born 1816), daughter of Archduke Karl, Duke of Teschen (German: Herzog von Teschen). Queen Marie Amélie was highly favourable to such a match as she was herself a daughter of an Austrian archduchess (Maria Carolina of Austria), and Archduke Karl was not opposed to it. However, Karl faced determined opponents on two sides – Prince Metternich, who did not want to repeat his error in marrying Marie Louise to Napoleon, and Archduchess Sophie, a Bavarian princess and sister-in-law of the new Kaiser Ferdinand I, who dominated the Vienna court with her strong personality, and was awaiting her son Franz Joseph I's ascent to the imperial throne. France's ambassador to Vienna, the Count of Sainte-Aulaire, who had been put in charge of preparing the ground for an Austrian match, felt the possibility was difficult if not completely impossible. The new President of the Conseil, Adolphe Thiers, dreamed of concluding such a match and becoming a new Duke of Choiseul as the maker of a spectacular reversal in the alliances of Europe.