Angoulême

Angoulême, LOUIS ANTOINE DE BOURBON, DUC D', the eldest son of Charles X. of France, and Dauphin during his father's reign, was born at Versailles on 6th August 1775. At the Revolution he retired from France along with his father, and after some years of military studies at Turin, and abortive military operations at the head of a body of French émigrés in 1792, he joined the other royal exiles, and lived with them at Holyrood, on the Continent, and latterly in England. In 1799 he married his cousin, Marie Thérèse, the only daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, a woman with something of the spirit of her mother, 'the only man in the family,' in the words of Napoleon. On the recall of his uncle, Louis XVIII., he was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and when Napoleon returned from Elba, he made a weak attempt to oppose him, but he was soon deserted by his troops, and obliged to surrender. After the second restoration he was charged with the suppression of the disorders in the southern provinces, and in 1823 he led the French army of invasion into Spain. On the revolution in July 1830, he signed, along with his father, an abdication in favour of his nephew, the Duc de Bordeaux; and when the Chambers declared the family of Charles X. to have forfeited the throne, he accompanied him into exile, to Holyrood, to Prague, and to Götz, where he died, 3d June 1844.