DUKE OF ORLEANS: It is ever with some regret that we see enrolled among the number of illustrious personages those who, devoid of talents and of virtue, have been able only to acquire celebrity by guilt; especially when inheriting exalted rank, they rendered themselves particularly distinguished by the meanness of their sentiments, and the depravity of their conduct. It is, however, not an useless example, to present to the world a prince the victim of his immorality; and who, from the height of grandeur and of fortune, perished by his own misdeeds. Louis Joseph Philip d'Orleans, the first prince of the blood royal of France, was born at Saint Cloud, in the year 1747. Known, during the life time of his father, by the title of the Duke de Chartres, he signalized himself by an inconsiderate love of pleasure, from which the most degrading attachments resulted. Ready to embrace the specious paradoxes by which misconduct has been known, particularly in this age, to assume a philosophical appearance, he displayed at an early hour the most absolute contempt for public opinion. Nevertheless, a robust frame, agreeable manners, considerable address in bodily exercises, and perhaps even the laxity of his principles, gave him a title to that distinction which an advantageous exterior easily obtains, and which would not have been denied to him, had he known how to support it by displaying a semblance even of that intre pedity which we are desirous of seeing in princes. But being anxious to merit by a naval campaign the reversion of the post of grand admiral, which the Duke de Penthievre, his father-in-law, then possessed, the conduct he manifested at the battle of Ouessant, in 1778, became a constant source of ridicule and disgrace. The object of the raillery of the people and of the epigrams of the court, he regarded as the most cutting reproach his nomination to the post of commandant-general of the hussars, which was given to him in recompence for his services at sea. Dissatisfied with the court, the Duke of Orleans appeared solicitous of humiliating it, by a line of conduct unworthy of his birth. We behold him transforming the palace of his ancestors into a place of traffic and licentiousness, delivering himself up to speculations of shameful cupidity, despising in the education of the princes, his children, all established principles and customs, and even decency itself, seeking, by an aerostatical ascension, a glory ill-suited to his rank; an attempt in which the malignity of the public did not permit him happily to succeed. Either through excess of indulgence, or disgust, the court appeared indifferent to his proceedings; but by opposing in the parliamentary assemblies the ediets of the council, he compelled Louis XVI. to banish him, and the people, seduced by specious appearances, thought they beheld in him the defender of their rights. Nevertheless, though he had greatly incurred the displeasure of the king, upon the death of the Duke of Orleans, in 1787, the house and the honours attributed to the first prince of the blood, were bestowed upon him. But this debased noble FRANCE.] DUKE OF ORLEANS. man, far from being sensible of this act of forbearance in his sovereign, sought only to take advantage of circumstances, which soon presented to him an ample field for the projects of revenge which he had nourished against his family. It is said, that on hearing he was surnamed at Versailles, le Bourbeux Bourbon, he exclaimed, si je suis dans la bourbé je la laverai avec des flots de sang. Upon the assembling of the states general, he exerted himself to the utmost to fill that assembly with his creatures and his partizans. He caused himself to be appointed a deputy of a city under his influence, and when the third estate separated from the other two orders, he hastened to unite himself with such of the nobility as were attached to that party. At that period, his adherents did not scruple openly to disclose their intention of appointing him lieutenant-general of the kingdom, after having pronounced the interdiction of Louis XVI. Formally accused, by a series of charges made by the magistrates of the Châtelet, of being the author of the insurrection of the sixth of October, he was acquitted by the assembly, but not in the opinion of the public, and again banished by the king. But when, after a residence of eight months in England, he obtained of the unfortunate but feeble monarch, the permission of returning to France, he carried into execution those projects which his absence had only suspended. He displayed at first his patriotism in preferring the title of Citizen of France, to the quality of prince of the blood; and soon became the slave of a faction of which he was flattered by being the chief, dissipated his treasure to court the favour of the populace, caused himself to be elected a member of the convention, changed his name into that of Egalité, and put the seal to the indignation of the public and to his atrocities, by voting openly for the death of his benefactor, his relative, and the head of his family, in the person of the king. A little time after, those whom the Duke of Orleans regarded as his instruments, while he in fact was serviceable to them, resolved upon his destruction, because he had ceased to be useful. They caused him to be arrested, brought him in his turn before the revolutionary tribunal, where, the victim of his own irregularities, he was tried and condemned by his accomplices. The sentence was carried into effect at Paris, on the sixth of November, 1793, in the midst of the shouts and insults of that populace whom his gold had seduced. He was then forty-six. His features, which had been regular in his youth, were then nearly disfigured by the usual concomitants of a debauched life. He was ignorant, credulous, and evidently beneath the part which he presumed to perform. It is said that he was easy of access, and indulgent to his servants. He displayed some firmness in his last moments; but what at that period must have been the bitter reflections of a prince, the deplorable example of the consequences of ambition, and of the subversion of every principle of morality! : |