Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, Dauphin of France

by Susan Flantzer  © Unofficial Royalty 2019

Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, Dauphin of France; Credit – Wikipedia

Louis-Antoine was the last Dauphin of France and was technically King of France for less than twenty minutes on August 2, 1830, after his father abdicated and before he also abdicated. After his father’s death, he was the Legitimist pretender to the French throne, and is sometimes known as King Louis XIX. He married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse of France, the only surviving child of the executed Louis XVI, King of France and Marie Antoinette.

Born on August 6, 1775, at the Palace of Versailles in France, Louis-Antoine was the eldest son and the eldest of the four children of Charles-Philippe of France, Count of Artois (the future Charles X, King of France) and Marie Thérèse of Savoy, daughter of Vittorio Amedeo III, King of Sardinia and Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain. Louis-Antoine was born during the reign of his paternal uncle Louis XVI, King of France who created his nephew Duke of Angoulême at birth.

Louis-Antoine had three younger siblings:

Louis-Antoine, on the left, with his mother and  siblings Sophie and Charles Ferdinand; Credit – Wikipedia

Louis Antoine and his younger brother Charles Ferdinand were educated by their governor Armand-Louis de Sérent, Marquis de Sérent in a household set up at the Château de Beauregard, a few miles from the Palace of Versailles, until the French Revolution began in 1789. After the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, Louis XVI insisted that his youngest brother Charles-Philippe and his family leave France to be sure that one close relative would be free to act as a spokesman for the monarchy.

On July 17, 1789, Charles-Philippe, his wife Maria Theresa, and their two sons left France for the safety of Maria Theresa’s home country, Savoy. Two years later, Charles Philippe’s elder brother Louis-Stanislas (the future King Louis XVIII) also fled France. Their eldest brother King Louis XVI unsuccessfully attempted to leave France with his family in 1791. After that, the fate of Louis XVI and his family was sealed. Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and his sister Élisabeth were all eventually executed by the guillotine and Louis XVI’s ten-year-old son Louis-Charles, who had become the titular King Louis XVII upon his father’s execution, died in prison from tuberculosis. Only Louis XVI’s daughter Marie-Thérèse, Louis-Antoine’s future wife, survived.

Louis-Antoine first lived in exile with his family in Savoy, then in Germany, and finally in England. During their time in exile, Louis-Antoine’s father Charles-Philippe traveled to the various courts of Europe to seek defenders for the French royal cause. In 1792, Louis Antoine joined the Army of Condé, the émigré army of his cousin Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé.

After the death of Louis-Charles, Louis XVI’s ten-year-old son, in 1795, Louis-Antoine’s uncle Louis-Stanislas, as Louis XVI’s elder surviving brother, became the titular King of France as Louis XVIII. Later in 1795, the 20-year-old Louis-Antoine led an unsuccessful royalist uprising in the Vendée, France.  In 1797, he joined his brother and uncle in the Duchy of Brunswick, where they hoped to join the Austrian Army. However, the defeat of Austria by France forced them to flee. The family took refuge in Mittau, Courland (now in Latvia) under the protection of Paul I, Emperor of All Russia where Louis-Stanislas was given a very large pension and the use of Jelgava Palace. At Jelgava Palace, Louis-Stanislas attempted to recreate the pomp and ceremony of the court of Versailles.

Marie-Thérèse of France, Louis-Antoine’s wife; Credit – Wikipedia

In 1795, Marie-Thérèse of France, the only surviving child of Louis XVI, had been exchanged for prominent French prisoners and released from her imprisonment. She was taken to Vienna, her mother’s birthplace, where her first cousin Franz II reigned as Holy Roman Emperor. In May 1799, Marie-Thérèse left Vienna to join her paternal uncle Louis-Stanislas in exile at Jelgava Palace.

With no children of his own, Louis-Stanislas wished his niece Marie-Thérèse to marry her first cousin Louis-Antoine for dynastic reasons. He convinced Marie-Thérèse to agree to the marriage by telling her the marriage would be what her parents wanted. The wedding took place on June 10, 1799, at Jelgava Palace. The couple had no children and the marriage was not a happy one. In April 1814, following Napoleon I’s overthrow, the French Senate restored the Bourbons to the French throne and Louis-Stanislas officially became King Louis XVIII. The family, including Louis-Antoine and his wife Marie-Thérèse, returned to France.

The French Royal Family in 1823 – left to right: Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême; Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême; Prince Henri de Bourbon; Charles-Philippe, Count of Artois; King Louis XVIII of France; Princess Louise-Marie-Thérèse d’Artois; Marie-Caroline, Duchess of Berry

When King Louis XVIII died on September 16, 1824, he was succeeded by his younger brother Charles-Philippe as King Charles X. As the eldest son of the King, Louis-Antoine was now heir to the throne and became Dauphin of France while his wife Marie-Thérèse became Dauphine. Within a few years, the anti-monarchist feeling was on the rise again. Charles X’s ultra-royalist sympathies alienated many members of the working and middle classes. This led to the July Revolution of 1830. On August 2, 1830, King Charles X was forced to abdicate the French throne. Louis-Antoine was technically been King of France for less than 20 minutes before he abdicated and is sometimes known as King Louis XIX. Charles X named his grandson Henri, Duke of Bordeaux, son of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, as his successor. However, this did not sit well with Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, the Orléanist claimant to the French throne. He took the throne on August 9, 1830, taking the title King of the French.

Once again, the former King Charles X, his son Louis-Antoine, and his niece and daughter-in-law Marie-Thérèse lived in exile. First, they lived in Edinburgh, Scotland where Louis-Antoine and Marie-Thérèse took up residence at 22 Regent Terrace near Holyrood Palace where the former Charles X lived. In 1832, the family moved to Prague Castle at the invitation of Marie-Thérèse’s cousin, now Franz I, Emperor of Austria as there was no more Holy Roman Empire. After Emperor Franz’s death in 1835, the exiles moved to the estate of Count Johann Baptist Coronini near Gorizia, which was in Austria but now in Italy.

The former King Charles X of France died from cholera on November 6, 1836, in Gorizia at the age of 79. Eight years later, Louis-Antoine, his son, died on June 3, 1844, aged 68, also in Gorizia. They were both buried at the Kostanjevica Monastery. The monastery had originally been in Gorizia but in 1947, the border between Italy and Yugoslavia was set just a few hundred meters westward from the monastery, and the monastery became part of the newly established town of Nova Gorica, then in Yugoslavia, now in Slovenia. Marie-Thérèse survived her husband by seven years, dying on October 19, 1851, at the Schloss Frohsdorf just outside Vienna, Austria, at the age of 72. She was also buried at the Kostanjevica Monastery.

Tombs of Louis-Antoine, Charles X and Marie-Thérèse; Credit – Wikipedia

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Works Cited

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