Louis Philippe I

France state institutions Monarchy and royalism 1773–1850 → Died in exile

The "Citizen King" raised by the July Revolution and toppled by the February Revolution of 1848, the last king of France

Born in the Palais-Royal in Paris in 1773, the eldest son of the Duke of Orléans, he fought in the French Revolutionary Wars as Duke of Chartres and was a lieutenant general at nineteen, but broke with the Republic over the execution of Louis XVI and fled to Switzerland in 1793 after being linked to a royalist plot. After twenty-one years of exile he returned under the Bourbon Restoration, and when the July Revolution of 1830 forced out Charles X he was proclaimed King of the French. His reign was dominated by wealthy bankers and industrialists, and from 1840 to 1848 he followed conservative policies under Guizot's influence. His popularity faded as the economy deteriorated in 1847; on 24 February 1848 he abdicated in favour of his nine-year-old grandson, the Count of Paris, fled to England and died at Claremont in Surrey in 1850.

Also known as: Citizen King