“Let’s not waste time. You’ll do it more easily when I’m dead. Let’s get it over with as soon as possible!” These were the last words spoken by Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, addressed to his executioner on the scaffold as the latter tried to remove his boots before guillotining him. The condemned man was a noble, related to the Bourbons, yet due to personal resentment, he turned against them, joining the most radical faction of the Revolution, changing his name to Philippe Equality, and voting in favor of the execution of King Louis XVI, who was his cousin. And yet, despite all this, he too lost his head eight months later, caught in the whirlwind of bloodshed.

Louis Philippe’s father bore the same name, was the Duke of Chartres, and was married to Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti. Together, they formed the most important marriage in French aristocracy, to the point that they were nicknamed Monsieur le Prince and Madame la Princesse. When he was born in the Palace of Saint-Cloud in 1747, Louis Philippe was not the firstborn, but his older sister had died two years earlier, and he inherited the Duchy of Montpensier. He had royal blood in his veins, as through his paternal line, he was the grandson of Françoise Marie de Bourbon, and through his maternal line, of Louise Françoise de Bourbon—both of whom were natural daughters of Louis XIV and his mistress, Madame de Montespan.

He was five years old when he inherited the title of Duke of Orléans from his recently deceased grandfather. Immediately, he was placed under the care of a tutor, the Count of Pons Saint-Maurice, who was assigned the duty of providing him with an education befitting his rank. He would officially receive the Duchy of Orléans in 1785, following his father’s passing, thus becoming the head of the dynasty—one of the wealthiest in France. He was also the Prince du Sang or Prince of the Blood, second in line to the throne only behind the Count of Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVI, who would eventually reign from 1824 to 1830 as Charles X.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Louis Philippe as a child, by Louis Tocqué. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Before dying, his father made a decision that may have saved his son’s life: after his wife contracted smallpox, he ordered that Louis Philippe and his younger sister, Bathilde, be inoculated by the Swiss doctor Théodore Tronchin, who was campaigning for vaccination in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and France. Their mother opposed the idea, as she had survived the disease without it, but in the end, nine-year-old Louis Philippe and six-year-old Bathilde became among the first French people to undergo this procedure. When they later attended the opera with their mother, having completed the process, they were applauded as if they had escaped certain death—such was the distrust toward vaccines in their early days.

Louis Philippe also had his young wife, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, vaccinated. They married in Versailles in 1769 when she was sixteen, after a planned marriage with the Polish princess Maria Kunigunde of Saxony fell through. She was the daughter of the Duke of Penthièvre, one of the ten wealthiest men in France, who provided a fabulous dowry of six million livres tournois (the French currency at the time) and an annual income of 240,000 (later increased to 400,000), along with lands, titles, residences, furniture, and more. Together, they had six children: their firstborn was stillborn in 1771, but then came Louis Philippe, Antoine Philippe, Louise Marie Adélaïde Eugénie, Françoise, and Louis Charles.

It was not a happy marriage. After the first few months, he resumed the libertine lifestyle he had led as a bachelor, fathering several illegitimate children, though he only recognized one: Victor Leclerc de Buffon, born in 1792, whose mother was Marguerite Françoise Bouvier de la Mothe de Cepoy, Countess of Buffon. She had been his mistress from 1784 to 1793. If you’re wondering, yes—she was related to the famous naturalist, as she had married his son. Marguerite remained by her lover’s side through the difficult revolutionary years, frequently visiting him in his prison cell.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon in a portrait by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

However, she was far from the only one. Earlier, in 1772, Louis Philippe had begun a relationship with Stéphanie Félicité, Countess of Genlis, one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, with whom he had a daughter named Pamela. They ended their affair the following year, but she remained in the family’s service and was even appointed as a tutor to one of their children. Another on the list was Grace Elliott, who had previously been the mistress of the future King George IV of England and led an adventurous life as a British agent during the French Revolution, helping many aristocrats escape, contributing to Robespierre’s downfall, and narrowly saving her own life—when she was finally imprisoned, the Reign of Terror ended just in time.

One of the things Louis Philippe received from his father-in-law was the promise of obtaining the rank of Grand Admiral. The young duke had shown an interest in the sea from an early age, studying for three years in the navy and embarking as a midshipman aboard the L’Alexandre in 1772. At the end of this period, he was named chef d’escadre, commanding the Solitaire, a ship of the line that was part of the Escadre d’évolution (training squadron). He participated in two military campaigns against the British and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1778. That year, a key event changed the course of his life: the Battle of Ushant.

During a clash with the Royal Navy, a communication error with his superior, the Count of Orvilliers, caused the squadron led by Louis Philippe aboard the Saint-Esprit (an eighty-gun ship) to miss an opportunity to break through an opening in the enemy line. He wasted time sending a boat to request confirmation, thereby squandering the chance to defeat Admiral Augustus Keppel’s fleet, which managed to escape. Louis Philippe returned to Paris boasting of victory, but soon, testimonies from his crew and other sailors spread, making him a laughingstock. He was forced to resign from his naval career and, in return, requested to be made a colonel of hussars in an army preparing to depart for America under the command of the Count of Rochambeau.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
The Battle of Ushant, by Théodore Gudin. Credit: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

To his surprise and misfortune, the king rejected him, and the humiliation was twofold. Until then, his life had not been very different from that of any other noble of his time: luxury, wealth, frivolity, privileges of birth… But from that moment on, resentment would determine his next steps. First, inspired by the British model, he adopted a liberal ideology and, with the help of his secretary, Charles-Louis Ducrest (the brother of his lover, Madame de Genlis), he wrote a memoir with proposals to improve the French economy, which aligned with those of Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.

Politically, he advocated for a parliamentary monarchy with a separation between Church and State, rejected servility, and approved the abolition of slavery… He even reached the rank of Grand Master of the Masonic lodge Grand Orient, which he had joined years earlier without showing much interest until then. It was around this time that he inherited the Palais Royal from his father, opening it to the public by installing shops and cafés under its arcades. According to legend, Louis XIV mocked him by saying, “Well, cousin! It looks like you’re opening a shop? Will we only see you on Sundays?” By then, his relationship with the monarch and his wife, Marie Antoinette, which had previously been very good, had significantly deteriorated.

In reality, the public nature of the Palais Royal was only to a certain extent. It remained private property, so the guards had no authority to enter, which was exploited by all the criminals in Paris. But also by conspirators, who were beginning to outline the revolutionary changes they planned to present at the Estates-General. Some claimed that this was the place where the Revolution was born, and indeed, Louis Philippe promoted the organization of assemblies, gradually winning popular support and maintaining good relations with the representatives of the Third Estate.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Current view of the Palais Royal. Credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

The Estates-General represented the three social estates. Two belonged to the privileged classes (clergy and nobility), and the third to the representatives of the cities (the people); since voting was done by estate, not individually, the interests of the first two always prevailed. When the king convened them in 1789, Louis Philippe was elected as a deputy for the nobility, but he sided with the fifty or so nobles—including the future consul Sieyès and the writer Choderlos de Laclos, author of Dangerous Liaisons—who supported the Third Estate’s proposals. He was nominated to preside over the Estates-General but declined, and when the monarch dissolved the institution, he joined those who founded the National Assembly in the tennis court, swearing to establish a constitution.

For a time, he supported Count Mirabeau, hoping to gain some favor from him. That did not happen, and his period of indecision led him to abstain during the Storming of the Bastille. Instead, he took part in the Women’s March on Versailles against the high price of bread—caused by scarcity—and the lack of rights, which led the most radical to break into the palace by force. Still, he was accused of being its promoter and of planning to assassinate Marie Antoinette, as the crowd was chanting in favor of the Orléans. Louis Philippe’s position was highly compromised, and his friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, recommended that he be sent to London as a diplomat until things calmed down.

Upon returning in 1790, he decided to stay away from politics, given the evidence that he had joined the Jacobin Club at its founding and the rumors that spoke of replacing the Bourbons with the Orléans on the throne—an intention he denied repeatedly. At the same time, he had fallen into some disrepute, and some considered his departure an act of cowardice; even so, he retained his deputy seat until the National Assembly dissolved in 1791. However, he believed that much of this discredit was due to his noble origins, which his peers had not forgotten. For this reason, he decided to change his name, following the advice of Pierre-Louis Manuel, a Parisian prosecutor close to Danton.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Opening of the Estates-General, May 5, 1789 (painting by Auguste Couder, 1839). Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The final push was given by the so-called September Massacres, which in the first instance in 1792 resulted in the deaths of one and a half thousand people in Paris alone (many of them priests and nuns) accused of being counter-revolutionaries. Thus, the Duke of Orléans renounced his surname and took the name Philippe Égalité, meaning Philip Equality, alluding to the three words that already symbolized the revolution: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). This was also due to the reputation for generosity he had earned among the poor, to whom he frequently distributed food, money, and shelter.

By that time, Louis XVI had already been arrested in Varennes while attempting to flee, and abdication was on the table. Since Louis-Philippe was, let us recall, a Prince du Sang, he could have been a candidate to replace him. However, he not only insisted on refusing but officially renounced the possibility. In the National Convention, he aligned himself with the Cordeliers, a club more radical than the Jacobins that represented the sans-culottes (the lowest social class, so named because they wore long trousers instead of culottes with stockings) and demanded a republic with universal suffrage. Aligned with them, he voted in favor of the king’s execution without the possibility of appeal.

He broke his word, as he had initially stated that he would vote against it. However, pressure from the Jacobins, among whom Marat and Robespierre were already prominent, and the fact that seventy-five votes were enough to approve the king’s fate, led him to change his mind. In the end, seven hundred twenty-one votes were cast in favor, against three hundred eighty-seven opposed, and Louis XVI lamented in surprise that one of them was his relative’s, since his mere absence would have annulled the vote by lowering the minimum required number of deputies.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Oath of the Tennis Court, painting by Jacques-Louis David, 1791. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

In any case, Louis-Philippe also opposed the amendment presented by Jean-Baptiste Mailhe to delay the sentence in the nation’s interest, which received the support of only two deputies and sealed the king’s fate. However, none of these actions were enough to dispel doubts about the reliability of the former Count of Orléans, as many continued to call him. In 1793, he would write from prison to his lawyer, Jean-Baptiste Lemaire: “Why do you call me Orléans, a name you know I have not signed with since the beginning of the Constituent Assembly, which rejected any title or name of land? Is there a decree ordering me to call myself Orléans?”

Perhaps his ideological stance was not shared by his entire family. His son, Louis-Philippe, a military officer, was considered suspect when his superior in the army, General Dumouriez, joined the Austrians to overthrow the revolutionary regime; the failure of that endeavor forced him to flee the country, while his father announced that he would never forgive him. But even his wife did not support him, especially given the emotional estrangement between them. Louise Marie Adélaïde, who had moved in with her father, was a fervent Catholic who was horrified by the aforementioned September Massacres and, despite being ill, was imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris.

In contrast, Bathilde d’Orléans, Louis-Philippe’s younger sister, had been repudiated at court after breaking with her husband, the Prince of Condé, a compulsively and incorrigibly unfaithful man, leading her to take a Navy officer as her lover and have a daughter with him. Later, she abandoned Christianity in favor of the occult sciences then in vogue (palmistry, astrology, mesmerism) and, refusing to accompany the prince into exile when the Revolution broke out, declared herself a republican and imitated her brother by changing her name to Citoyenne Vérité (Citizen Truth)… which did not prevent her from also ending up in prison.

Louis Philippe of Orleans Revolutionary
Louis Philippe I of Orleans, the son of Philippe Equality, photographed in 1840, when he was king of France. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

The Convention’s growing paranoia and his son’s flight to Austria led to Louis-Philippe the elder being accused of supporting the Girondins, the moderate wing of the republicans, who had by then fallen from grace after briefly holding executive power. Consequently, for his “complicity with the enemies of liberty”, he spent several months imprisoned in Marseille until he was ordered to return to Paris, where he was confined in the Conciergerie. A revolutionary tribunal, presided over by Martial Herman—the same judge who had sentenced Marie Antoinette and would later do the same with Danton, Hébert, and Desmoulins—tried him on November 6, 1793, finding him guilty; he was guillotined that very day, leading to the peculiar situation mentioned at the beginning.

Adélaïde survived that turbulent period. Nicknamed Veuve Égalité (Widow Equality), she was transferred to Belhomme’s asylum, considered a “prison for the rich,” and was released in 1796. The following year, a decree was passed expelling all the Bourbons, forcing her into exile in Spain. As for Bathilde, freed at the end of the Terror, she faced severe financial hardship and had to rent out part of her palace, the Élysée, before eventually also heading to Spain. Meanwhile, Louis-Philippe, the son, wandered across Europe until he was able to return to France in 1814, after the fall of the Napoleonic regime and during the reign of his cousin, Louis XVIII.

He himself would ascend the throne as a constitutional monarch after the Revolution of 1830, which overthrew Charles X. He would lose it with another revolution, that of 1848, becoming the last king of France (with the later exception of Emperor Napoleon III).

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on February 5, 2025: El aristócrata revolucionario que votó a favor de la muerte de Luis XVI, cambió su nombre por «Felipe Igualdad», y fue padre del último rey de Francia

SOURCES

Richard W. Elder, The Duc d’Orleans, patriot prince or revolutionary? An investigation into the Chatelet Inquiry of 1789-1790

Simon Schama, Citizens. A chronicle of the French Revolution

Hubert La Marle, Philippe-Égalité. «Grand Maître» de la Révolution

Adolphe Thiers, Historia de la Revolución Francesa, 1789-1815

Wikipedia, Luis Felipe II de Orleans

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