#Louis Philippe I

[roehenstart]

Equestrian portrait of Louis-Philippe I (1773-1850). By Horace Vernet.

[classic-art-favourites]

King Louis-Philippe Escorted by His Sons Leaving Versailles on June 10, 1837 by Horace Vernet, 1846.

[cliozaur]

In this chapter, we encounter THAT famously long sentence spanning 760 words in original. Truly impressive.

We have already encountered Louis Philippe in the gamin digression, where he was portrayed as a pleasant and self-ironic man whose only flaw was his status as king. Hugo's perspective on him remains consistent. Although the 1830 Revolution didn't result in a Republic, it did bring forth a decent man as king. Given Hugo's critical stance towards monarchy, it's rather peculiar that he invests effort in highlighting Louis Philippe's humility, modesty, and unroyal demeanour. Probably, part of Louis Philippe's appeal to the French population was his experience, having endured exile with its attendant challenges — financial loss, loss of status, and his entire family needing to earn their livelihoods. He also possessed a revolutionary past, having been a member of the Jacobins' club and personally knowing Mirabeau and Danton.

Though not explicitly mentioned in the text, it's worth noting a point in Louis Philippe's later biography that parallels Hugo's own experiences — spending the last years of his life in exile in Great Britain. I suspect that Louis Philippe's futile fight to abolish the death penalty was also a point of resonance for Hugo. “One day, he said to the same witness to whom we have recently referred: “I won seven last night.” During the early years of his reign, the death penalty was as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold was a violence committed against the King. The Grève having disappeared with the elder branch, a bourgeois place of execution was instituted under the name of the Barrière-Saint-Jacques; “practical men” felt the necessity of a quasi-legitimate guillotine.”

However, at times, Hugo tends to exaggerate Louis Philippe's accomplishments, such as in the case of press freedom: “While he reigned the press was free, the tribune was free, conscience and speech were free.” Well, to some extent… No outright censorship was enforced, but a 1830 law of libel functioned as a form of censorship.

[royalty-nobility]

Portrait of of Louis Philippe I

Artist: Franz Xaver Winterhalter  (German, 1805–1873)

Title: Louis-Philippe I, King of the French (1773–1850)

Genre: Portrait

Date: 1841

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Department of Paintings of the Louvre

[nordleuchten]

i heard lafayette got drawn by his daughter or smth? it was like him laying on the couch, do you think you have that?

Dear Anon,

La Fayette’s daughter Anastasie had indeed quite a gift for painting and sketching. Most famous is probably her Le geôlier de la prison d'Olmütz - a sketch of one of the family's prison guards at Olmütz.

Christie’s - LOT 161 - Le geôlier de la prison d'Olmütz by Anastasie de La Fayette (07/21/2023).

I am not aware of any sketch by her that depicts La Fayette laying on a sofa. The only such piece that comes to my mind is this one:

Le Cauchemar is a political caricature published on February 23, 1832, as a response to the changing relationship between La Fayette and Louis Philippe I. It was done by Honoré Daumier, not Anastasie and based on the painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli from 1781.

Do you have any further detail on this drawing? A time period when the sketch was made for example or some more context? For right now, I do not know what sketch/painting of La Fayette you are referring to but maybe someone reading this has more information than I do. :-)

I am sorry that I was not able to help you but I hope you have/had a great day!

[bforbetterthanyou]

Descendants of the Tudors

[elliottandstuff50]

Louis Philippe I vs Charles X (It's King vs King.) During the July Revolution.

This is a revolution between Kings. First one is Louis Philippe I, and the Second one i is Charles X. The fight between the Kings of France.

[famousdeaths]

Louis Philippe I, nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France. As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartr...

Link: Louis Philippe I

[pitch-and-moan]

Infernal Human Machine

A body horror film about the attempted assassination of Louis Philippe I of France by Giuseppe Marco Fieschi. Fieschi is paid by his co-conspirators to built a gun array to fire a volley at the King during a parade, instead Fieschi figures out how to surgically modify himself into a living weapon, so that he can fire projectiles out of barrels he implants into his arms.

[navree]

"that you could be so cruel" ok correct me if i'm wrong but does penelope featherington not run a gossip rag that exist solely to publish unsubstantiated rumors about women she doesn't like for various reasons that have profoundly negative repercussions on those women (didn't the publication of marina's pregnancy lead to marina almost dying in her quest to terminate said pregnancy??????) and has in fact used that same rag to put not just colin's entire family but also specifically colin's sister, her best friend, through a significant amount of grief and strife that came as a direct result of that rag?

but colin's the cruel one? because she happened to eavesdrop on a conversation where he said he doesn't wanna date her? that's cruelty but all the other stuff isn't?

[potatosonnet]

No context FRev and 93

[roehenstart]

Portrait of Louis Philippe I (1725-1785), Duke of Orleans. By Alexander Roslin.

[classic-art-favourites]

Louis Philippe, King of the French by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1841.

[cliozaur]

Before focusing on the events surrounding one barricade, Hugo allows his readers to grasp the scale of the entire revolt. There were a great number of such barricades scattered all over Paris, in its various parts. It feels like taking a flight over the city and then abruptly plunging into this or that quarter.

The topic of arms and munition seems to be the most crucial. Just imagine: some people break into your house, confiscate all the arms if you have any, or they simply use your windows for firing. And such occurrences, along with the construction of barricades, were simultaneously unfolding on both banks of the Seine, in a third of Paris.

We even catch a glimpse of Hugo himself being caught between “the two fires”: for half an hour, poor Victor was hiding from the bullets behind two half-columns.

In the face-off with the National and Municipal Guards, the rioters transform the centre of Paris into a “colossal citadel.” More and more legions converge on the centre.

Hugo concludes this epic depiction with a scene of the tranquil Tuileries and finally zooms in on the solitary figure of Louis Philippe, who appears “perfectly serene.” The structure and dramaturgy of this chapter are impeccable! And very cinematic. I like when Hugo does this.

[royalty-nobility]

Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1725-1785) as Duke of Orléans

Artist: Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718–1793)

Title: The Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orléans

Date: c. 1770

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden

Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans

Louis Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (12 May 1725 – 18 November 1785), known as le Gros (the Fat), was a French royal of a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. The First Prince of the Blood after 1752, he was the most senior male at the French court after the immediate royal family. He was the father of Philippe Égalité. He greatly augmented the already huge wealth of the House of Orléans.

Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born at the Palace of Versailles. As the only son of Louis, Duke of Orléans, and his wife Johanna of Baden-Baden, he was titled Duke of Chartres at birth. He was one of two children; his younger sister Louise Marie d'Orléans died at Saint-Cloud in 1728 aged a year and eight months. Louis Philippe's father, who had been devoted to his wife, became a recluse and pious as he grew older.

[coquelicoq]

if you're wondering what the big deal is about the louis-philippe sentence in les misérables, it is, in the original french, 760 words long. the subject of the sentence doesn't appear until 95% of the way through, at word #711; the main verb is word #712. the sentence contains 91 commas and 49 semicolons and is almost entirely a list of laudatory adjectival phrases describing the erstwhile king of france. this is perhaps especially notable because les mis is, shall we say, not known for being particularly gung-ho about the monarchy.

this sentence copied and pasted into Word takes up more than one page single-spaced. in the 1800-page folio classique edition, it is fully two and a half of those 1800 pages. that means that les mis is 0.14% this single sentence. more of les mis is made up of this sentence than earth's atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide (0.04%). if the page count of les mis stayed the same but every sentence was the length of this one, les mis would consist of only 720 sentences total.

incidentally, guess who named hugo a peer of france 17 years before the publication of les mis?