IV.
It is a historic tradition amongst people from the highest antiquity, that the throne wears out royal races, and that whilst the reigning branches grow enervated by the possession of empire, younger branches become stronger and greater, by nourishing the ambition of becoming more powerful, and inspiring more closely to the people an air less corrupt than that which pervades courts. Thus, whilst primogeniture gives power to the elder, the people confer popularity on the juniors.
This singularity of a handsomer and more popular family than the reigning family, increasing near the throne, and having a dangerous rivalry with the throne in the mind of the nation, had always existed in the house of Orleans, since the time of Louis XIV. If this equivocal situation gave to the princes of this family some virtues, it gave them also corresponding vices. More intelligent and more ambitious than the king's sons, they were also more restless. The very restraint in which the policy of the reigning house kept them, condemned their idea or their courage to inaction, and forced them to misapply, in irregularities or indolence, the faculties with which nature had endowed them, and the immense fortune for which they had no other occupation: too great for citizens, too dangerous at the head of armies or in affairs, they had no place either amongst the people or at court; and thus they assumed it in opinion.
The Regent, a very superior man, long kept down by the inferiority of his part, had been the most brilliant example of all the virtues and all the vices of the blood of Orleans. Since the Regent, the princes endowed, like himself, with natural wit and courage, had felt the glory of great actions in their early youth. They had then again fallen back into obscurity, pleasures or devotion, by the jealousy of the reigning house. At the first show of brilliancy attached to their name, it had been darkened. Guilty by their very merit, their name urged them on to glory; and as soon as they proved themselves deserving, it was forbidden to them. These princes were destined to transmit with their family honours that impatience of a change of government which allows them to be men.
Louis-Philippe Joseph, Duc d'Orleans, was born at the precise epoch, when his rank, fortune, and character were to throw him into a current of new ideas, which his family passions called on him to favour, and into which, once drawn, it would be impossible for him to pause except at the throne or the scaffold. He was twenty when the first symptoms of the Revolution manifested themselves.
He was handsome, like all his race. Slender figure, firm step, smiling countenance, piercing glance, limbs made supple by all bodily exercises, with a heart disposed to love, and a splendid horseman, that great accomplishment of princes; a condescension void of familiarity, a ready eloquence, unquestionable courage, liberal to the arts, even to extravagance; those faults which are only due to the luxuries of the age, all marked him out as a popular favourite. He took every advantage of it; and, perhaps, his early intoxication with it somewhat affected his natural good sense. The love of the people appeared to him a means of avenging himself for the contempt in which the court neglected him. In his mind he braved the king of Versailles, feeling himself king of Paris.
He had married a princess of a race as beloved by the people; the only daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre. Lovely, amiable, and virtuous, she brought to her husband as dowry, with the vast fortune of the Duc de Penthièvre, that amount of consideration and public esteem which belonged to her house. The first political act of the Duc d'Orleans was a bold resistance to the wishes of the court, at the period of the exile of the parliaments. Exiled himself in his chateau of Villars-Cotterêts, the esteem and interest of the people followed him. The applauses of France sweetened the disgrace of the court. He believed that he comprehended the part of a great citizen in a free country; he desired to do so. He forgot too easily, in the atmosphere of adulation which surrounded him, that a man is not a great citizen only to please the people, but to defend—serve—and frequently to resist them.
Returned to Paris, he was desirous of joining the prestige of glory of arms to the civic crowns, with which his name was already decorated. He solicited of the court the dignity of grand-admiral of France, the survivorship of which belonged to him, after the Duc de Penthièvre, his father-in-law. He was refused. He embarked as a volunteer on board the fleet, commanded by the Comte d'Orvilliers, and was at the battle of Ouessant on the 17th of July, 1778. The results of this fight, when victory remained without conquest, in consequence of a false manœuvre, were imputed to the weakness of Duc d'Orleans, who wished to check the pursuit of the enemy. This dishonouring report, invented and disseminated by court hatred, soured the resentments of the young prince, but could not hide the brilliancy of his courage, which he displayed in caprices unworthy of his rank. At St. Cloud he sprang into the first balloon that carried aerial navigators into space. Calumny followed him even there, and a report was spread that he had burst the balloon with a thrust of his sword, in order to compel his companions to descend. Then arose between the court and himself a continual struggle of boldness on the one hand and slander on the other. The king treated him, however, with the indulgence which virtue testifies for youth's follies. The Comte d'Artois took him as the constant companion of his pleasures. The queen, who liked the Comte d'Artois, feared for him the contagion of the disorders and amours of the Duc d'Orleans. She hated equally in this young prince the favourite of the people of Paris and the corrupter of the Comte d'Artois. She made the king purchase the almost royal palace of St. Cloud, the favourite seat of the Duc d'Orleans. Infamous insinuations against him were incessantly transpiring from the half confidences of courtiers. He was accused of having induced courtezans to poison the blood of the Prince de Lamballe, his brother-in-law, and of having enervated him in debauches, in order that he might be the sole heir of the immense property of the house of Penthièvre. This crime was the pure invention of malice.
Thus persecuted by the animosity of the court, the Duc d'Orleans was more and more driven to retirement. In his frequent visits to England he formed a close intimacy with the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, who took for his friends all the enemies of his father; playing with sedition, dishonoured by debts, of scandalous life, prolonging beyond the usual term those excesses of princes—horses, pleasure of the table, gaming, women; abetting the intrigues of Fox, Sheridan and Burke, and prefacing his advent to royal power by all the audacity of a refractory son and a factious citizen.
The Duc d'Orleans thus tasted of the joys of liberty in a London life. He brought back to France habits of insolence against the court, a taste for popular disturbances, contempt for his own rank, familiarity with the multitude, a citizen's life in a palace, and that simple style of dress, which by abandoning the uniform of the French nobility, and blending attire generally, soon destroyed all inequalities of costume amongst citizens.