Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, count de Chambord | Legitimist claimant, Bourbon dynasty, French monarchy | Britannica (original) (raw)

Quick Facts

In full:

Henri-charles-ferdinand-marie Dieudonné D’artois, Count De Chambord

Died:

Aug. 24, 1883, Frohsdorf, Austria

Also Known As:

Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie Dieudonné d’Artois

Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, count de Chambord (born Sept. 29, 1820, Paris, France—died Aug. 24, 1883, Frohsdorf, Austria) was the last heir of the elder branch of the Bourbons and, as Henry V, pretender to the French throne from 1830.

The posthumous son of the assassinated Charles-Ferdinand, Duke de Berry, and grandson of King Charles X, he was forced to flee France in 1830 when his cousin Louis-Philippe seized the throne. He spent most of his young life in Austria, where he nourished a hatred for the French Revolution and constitutionalism.

Chambord was relatively inactive during the July Monarchy (1830–48), the Second Republic (1848–52), and the early stages of the Second Empire. Apparently the antipapal policies of Napoleon III provoked him to revive his Legitimist claim to the monarchy (in rivalry alike with Bonapartist and with Orleanist claims).

On Oct. 9, 1870, after Napoleon’s fall, Chambord issued a proclamation inviting all of France to reunite under the Bourbons. The elections of 1870 returned only a minority of committed Republicans and, for a time, restoration seemed a real possibility. He was, however, hostile to the glories of the revolutionary past (as evidenced later in three publications, Mes idées [1872], Manifestes et programmes politiques, 1848–73 [1873], and De l’institution d’une régence [1874]), and his instinctive intransigence led him to declare that he would not become “legitimate king of the Revolution.” These views undermined even the support of the royalist-inclining president of the republic, Marshal Patrice de Mac-Mahon. A motion to restore the Bourbon monarchy was defeated in June 1874 in the National Assembly by a vote of 272 to 79, and on January 30 of the following year the republic was formally adopted by a slim margin of one vote. Chambord, who had come very near to fulfilling his claims, lived out the remainder of his life in exile.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.