Chambord

Chambord, HENRI CHARLES DIEUDONNÉ, COMTE DE, was born in Paris, 29th September 1820, seven months after the assassination of his father, the Duc de Berri (q.v.). On the day of his baptism with water brought by Châteauaubriand from the Jordan, the 'Child of Miracle' was presented by the Legitimists with the château of Chambord; hence in 1844 he dropped the title of Duc de Bordeaux for that by which he was most usually known. When Charles X. abdicated at the July revolution of 1830, he did so in favour of his little grandson; but the people insisted on the 'citizen king,' and the elder Bourbons were driven into exile. They fixed their court successively at Holyrood, Prague, and Götz, where the old king died in 1836, and the young count was trained in clerical and absolutist ideas by his aunt, the Duchesse d'Angoulême, and his tutor, the Duc de Damas. A good, dull, timid soul, whom D'Orsay likened to 'a palace with no room furnished but the chapel,' 'Henry V.' had three times a chance of regaining the crown of his ancestors—in 1848, 1870, and 1873, on which last occasion, three months after Thiers's overthrow, he paid an incognito visit to Versailles. Each time he fooled away his opportunities, always vanishing just when his presence was indispensable, and ever protesting that he would 'never abandon the white flag of Joan of Arc.' A fall from his horse (1841) had lamed him for life; his marriage (1846) with the Princess of Modena (1817-86) brought him no successor; and in keeping up a stately mimic court, in stag-hunting from a phaeton, in issuing manifestoes, in visiting innumerable churches, and in much travelling, he passed forty years of blameless inertia. His death, after long suffering, at his castle of Frohsdorf, in Lower Austria, 24th August 1883, was a relief at once to himself and to his adherents. The Comte de Paris inherited his claims. See BOURBON; and the Comte de Falloux' Mémoires d'un Royaliste (2 vols. Paris, 1888).