Charles X
Charles X (born October 9, 1757, Versailles, France—died November 6, 1836, Görz, Austrian Empire [now Gorizia, Italy]) was the king of France from 1824 to 1830. His reign dramatized the failure of the Bourbons, after their restoration, to reconcile the tradition of the monarchy by divine right with the democratic spirit produced in the wake of the French Revolution.
The fifth son of the dauphin Louis and Maria Josepha of Saxony, Charles was given the title of comte d’Artois. He spent his early life in scandalous dissipation; his service with the French army at the siege of Gibraltar in 1782 was undertaken for distraction rather than from serious concern with a military career. Eventually he abandoned his libertine lifestyle and directed his talents toward politics. In the events leading up to the French Revolution, he emerged as an opponent of concessions to the Third Estate.
Ordered by his brother Louis XVI to leave France soon after the fall of the Bastille (July 14, 1789), Charles went first to the Austrian Netherlands and then to Turin in Piedmont, thus becoming the first member of the royal family to go into exile, in which he was not joined by his brother the comte de Provence (later Louis XVIII) until 1791.
When the comte de Provence became titular king, he made Charles lieutenant general of the kingdom. Until the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Charles traveled to Austria, Prussia, Russia, and England. During this period he made an unsuccessful attempt to land in the Vendée to lead the royalist rising there. Upon returning to France in 1814, he became the leader of the ultras, the party of extreme reaction during Louis XVIII’s reign.
Upon Louis XVIII’s death in 1824, Charles became king as Charles X. His popularity waned as his reign passed through three reactionary ministries. During the first, former émigrés were compensated for their nationalized lands, largely at the expense of bourgeois holders of government bonds; greater power was granted to the clergy; and the death penalty was imposed for certain “sacrileges.”
The second government, though more moderate, lasted only from January 1828 to August 1829, when liberals joined with the extreme right to defeat it. Charles, losing patience and ignoring public opinion, called upon an extreme clericalist reactionary, the highly unpopular prince Jules de Polignac, to form a government. A formidable agitation sprang up, in response to which the king grew only more obstinate, and culminated in the July Revolution of 1830.
In March 1830, when liberals in the Chamber of Deputies objected to the Polignac ministry, Charles dissolved the Chamber. The May elections to the Chamber returned a majority unfavourable to the king. On July 26 he issued four ordinances which, through their repressive measures, provoked revolution by the Paris radicals. Unprepared for such an outbreak, Charles fled first to Versailles and then to Rambouillet, where he learned to his surprise that the insurrection could not be resisted. On August 1 he appointed Louis-Philippe, duc d’Orléans, lieutenant general of the kingdom and on August 2 abdicated in favour of his grandson, the duc de Bordeaux. However, Louis-Philippe gained the crown, and Charles withdrew to England and then to Scotland. He eventually established himself at Prague, where he resided until shortly before his death.