Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members alongside Frith and Hodgkinson.

An inherent anti-commercial attitude kept them at arm's length from the mainstream music business, enabling them to experiment at will. Critic Myles Boisen^[1] writes, "their sound was so mercurial and daring that they had few imitators, even though they inspired many on both sides of the Atlantic with a blend of spontaneity, intricate structures, philosophy, and humor that has endured and transcended the 'progressive' tag."

While it was generally thought that Henry Cow took their name from 20th-century American composer Henry Cowell, this has been repeatedly denied by band members.^[2][3] According to Hodgkinson, the name "Henry Cow" was "in the air" in 1968, and it seemed like a good name for the band. It had no connection to anything.^[4][5]

History[link]

Early years[link]

Fred Frith met Tim Hodgkinson, a fellow student, in a blues club at Cambridge University in May 1968. Recognizing their mutual open-minded approach to music the two began performing together, playing a variety of musical styles, including "dada blues" and "neo-Hiroshima". Henry Cow's first concert was supporting Pink Floyd at the Architects' Ball at Homerton College, Cambridge on 12 June 1968.^[6]

In October 1968 Henry Cow expanded when they were joined by Andy Powell (bass guitar), Dave Atwood (drums) and Rob Brooks (rhythm guitar). They performed with this line-up until December that year when Frith, Hodgkinson and Powell split off from the rest of the group and became a trio. Powell at the time was studying music at King's College under Roger Smalley, the resident composer. Smalley was influential in Henry Cow's early development. He exposed them to a variety of new music from bands and musicians like Soft Machine, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. Smalley also introduced them to the idea of writing long and complex musical pieces for rock groups.^[7] It was at this time that Henry Cow began writing music to challenge their collective ability to play, then using it to improve on themselves.^[8][9]

As a trio, with Frith on bass guitar, Powell on drums and Hodgkinson playing an organ that Frith and Powell had persuaded him to learn, Henry Cow performed a number of gigs on the university calendar, including the annual Architects' Ball, the Midsummer Common Festival and on the roof of a 14-storey building in Cambridge. In April 1969 Powell left and the band reverted to a duo again, with Frith playing violin and Hodgkinson on keyboards and reeds. In October 1969 philosopher Galen Strawson auditioned for the band. Later, Frith and Hodgkinson persuaded bassist John Greaves to join the band, and with the services of a couple of temporary drummers and then Sean Jenkins, Henry Cow performed as a quartet for the next eight months. In May 1971 Martin Ditcham replaced Jenkins on drums, and with this line-up they played at several events, including the Glastonbury Festival alongside Gong in June 1971.

Ditcham left in July 1971 and it was not until September that year that the drummer's seat was filled again, this time by Chris Cutler. Responding to one of Cutler's adverts in Melody Maker, the band invited him to a rehearsal,^[7] and it was only when Cutler joined that Henry Cow settled into a permanent core of Frith, Hodgkinson, Cutler and Greaves. The band then relocated to London where they began an aggressive rehearsal schedule.

After having entered John Peel's "Rockortunity Knocks" contest in 1971, Henry Cow recorded a John Peel session for BBC Radio 1 in February 1972. They later went on to record another session in October that year and a further three sessions between 1973 and 1975.

In April 1972 Henry Cow wrote and performed the music for Robert Walker's production of Euripides' The Bacchae. This involved an intense and demanding three-week period of concentrated work that changed the band completely. It was during this time that Geoff Leigh on woodwinds joined and Henry Cow became a quintet.

In July 1972, the band performed at the Edinburgh Festival and wrote and performed music for a ballet with artist Ray Smith and the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was Smith who later did the "paint sock" art work on three of Henry Cow's LP covers.

Back in London, they started to organise a series of concerts and events under the names Cabaret Voltaire and Explorers' Club at Kensington Town Hall with invited guests, including Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin, David Toop, Lady June and Ray Smith.^[6] Improvisers Bailey and Coxhill became "enthusiastic supporters" of Henry Cow and attended many of their concerts; Frith later stated that he was "strongly affected by their critical engagement and encouragement".^[10] For the first time, Henry Cow started getting some attention from the rock press and the then emerging Virgin Records label. After much negotiations and deliberation, Henry Cow signed a contract with Virgin in May 1973.

Unrest[link]

Within two weeks of signing the contract, Henry Cow began recording their debut album Legend (also known as Leg End) at Virgin's Manor Studios in Oxfordshire. It took three weeks of hard work, but at the end they knew how to handle the studio themselves, which would prove to be invaluable later in their career. The track "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", sung by the whole group, was Henry Cow's first overt political statement.

To promote its new signing, Virgin organised a UK tour for Henry Cow and Faust, who had also just signed to the label. During this tour, Henry Cow began preparing music for an unorthodox and provocative play, based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Some of this music was used on their next record Unrest.

In November 1973, members of the band participated in a live-in-the-studio performance of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for the BBC.^[11] It is available on Oldfield's Elements DVD.

During a tour of the Netherlands in December 1973, Geoff Leigh left the group. Looking for more unusual instruments to draw them further away from standard rock and jazz, Henry Cow asked classically trained Lindsay Cooper (oboe, bassoon) to join. With hardly any time to rehearse, and Cooper having just had all four wisdom teeth extracted, they returned to The Manor in early 1974 to begin recording Unrest. It was during this time that they became acquainted with Slapp Happy, a quirky avant-pop trio of Peter Blegvad (guitar), Anthony Moore (keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals), who had just completed their first LP for Virgin.

Recording Unrest was another intense experience, and the strongest period of collective learning since The Bacchae. They only had enough material to fill one side of the LP, and so were forced to spend a good deal of time developing the studio composition process that produced Side 2. The recording session brought out a lot of tensions in the band, these being reflected in the music, but in the end they were pleased with the result and this re-united the group.

In May 1974 they were on tour again around England and Europe with Captain Beefheart. It was during this tour that Henry Cow woke up to the reality of what was happening to them: they were becoming a rock band, playing the same thing night after night. Life was no longer a challenge and they were becoming complacent. After some serious thinking they decided to ask Lindsay Cooper to leave and fulfil their last outstanding concert obligations (a tour of the Netherlands) as a quartet. Without Cooper they were forced to abandon much of their learned material and worked up a 35–40 minute piece unlike anything else they had done before (this later became "Living in the Heart of the Beast" on In Praise of Learning).

In November 1974, Slapp Happy invited Henry Cow to be their band on their second LP for Virgin. The result was Desperate Straights, an almost entirely Slapp Happy-composed album that surprised everyone, considering how dissimilar the two groups were. The success of this venture prompted a merger of the two bands.

In early 1975 the merged group began rehearsing for In Praise of Learning in a freezing gymnasium. It was an arduous and extremely demanding time, something Slapp Happy were not prepared for, and it soon became apparent that the merger might not work. Nevertheless, they still went to The Manor and made In Praise of Learning together. But it was only after they started rehearsing with a view to performing live together that it became clear that their approaches were incompatible. The merger ended in April 1975, when Anthony Moore quit and Peter Blegvad was asked to leave. However, Dagmar Krause, whose contribution had added another dimension to Henry Cow's sound, elected to remain, which effectively spelled the end of Slapp Happy as a band.

Having made guest appearances on both the Henry Cow/Slapp Happy albums, Lindsay Cooper rejoined in April 1975 and Henry Cow became a sextet. In May 1975 they embarked on a brief concert tour with Robert Wyatt to launch In Praise of Learning and Wyatt's new album, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. This was followed by what became the most rigorous working schedule of Henry Cow's career: two years of almost continuous touring in Western Europe.

Europe[link]

Henry Cow's music was challenging and uncompromising and this often led to them being accused of deliberately making their music inaccessible.^[7] As a result they were virtually ignored in their own country. Even Virgin Records, who had started dropping experimental groups in favour of commercial ones, was now showing little to no interest in Henry Cow. This led to the group having to continuously make decisions as to whether to continue or not (there certainly were no economic inducements). Cutler said, "We had to make what amounted to political decisions about the organization of the group and its relation to the commercial structures, and this was bound to be reflected in the music too."^[12] Henry Cow's anti-capitalist stance^[13] was brought on partly out of necessity rather than choice. They began working outside the music industry and doing everything for themselves. They abandoned agencies and managers and stopped looking for approval from the music press. Henry Cow quickly became self-sufficient and self-reliant.

Virtual exiles from their own country, they made mainland Europe their second home where they (and their music) were well received. After a concert in Rome in July 1975, Henry Cow remained behind with their truck/bus/mobile home and began meeting local musicians, including progressive rock band Stormy Six, and the PCI (Italian Communist Party). The PCI offered them concerts at Festa dell'Unità (large open-air fairs that run every summer all over Italy), and they joined Stormy Six's L'Orchestra, a musicians' co-operative in Milan. Each contact they made led to more contacts and soon doors opened for Henry Cow all over Europe.

While rehearsing for an upcoming tour of Scandinavia in March 1976, John Greaves left the band to start working on the Kew. Rhone. project with Peter Blegvad, and Dagmar Krause withdrew due to ill-health. Committed to the tour, Henry Cow had to perform as a quartet (Hodgkinson, Frith, Cooper and Cutler) and adjust their music accordingly. They took the radical option and abandoned composed material completely in favour of pure improvisation.

In May 1976 Henry Cow compiled a double LP Henry Cow Concerts for a new Norwegian underground label Compendium (re-released later on the budget Virgin sub-label Caroline). For the first time, they did everything themselves: the mastering, cover design, cutting, pressing and manufacturing. The album included an excerpt from one of several concerts performed with guest artist Robert Wyatt in 1975.

Henry Cow began auditioning for a bass player and found Georgie Born, a classically trained cellist and improviser. Even though she had never played bass guitar before,^[14] she joined the band in June 1976 and tuned her bass in 5^ths like a cello with a lower C.^[15] In the interim, the band's compositions, including a new Hodgkinson epic with the working title of "Erk Gah", grew more complex.

Henry Cow returned to London in early 1977 where they merged with the entire Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong to form The Orckestra. They played their first concert at the Moving Left Revue at The Roundhouse in London and then at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. The Orckestra later went on to tour in France, Italy and Scandinavia (extracts from some of these performances were released in 2006 on a CD-single included in the Henry Cow Box). At more or less the same time they set up Music for Socialism and its May Festival. It had been three years since Henry Cow had performed more than one concert a year in their own country. In an attempt to break the apathy that seemed to be discouraging anyone from wanting to put them on, they tried to organise a small alternative tour themselves, but abandoned it after 11 concerts when they started losing money: clearly nothing had changed.

Their contract with Virgin Records had now become a burden to both Henry Cow and Virgin: none of Henry Cow's records were licensed or distributed in the countries in which they spent all their time playing, and Henry Cow were not making any money for Virgin. Henry Cow needed to record again but Virgin refused to give them studio time at The Manor. When Henry Cow referred to the contract ("one month at a first class studio"), Virgin Records (in October 1977) agreed to cancel it.

By now Krause's health had deteriorated to such an extent that touring became impossible for her and she decided to leave the group, although she agreed to sing on Henry Cow's next album. The recording of this album was to begin at Sunrise studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland in January 1978. However, a group meeting one week before threw into question the material planned for it, the aforementioned "Erk Gah" in particular. Cutler and Frith hurriedly wrote a set of songs which, along with some of the planned material was duly recorded. On returning to London, another meeting was convened to question the predominance of songs on the album. The group agreed that the songs would be released separately by Cutler and Frith, while the instrumentals would be released later by Henry Cow. This decision, however, spelled the end of the band. Cutler, Frith and Krause released the songs, with four extra tracks recorded at David Vorhaus's Kaleidophon Studio in London, as Hopes and Fears under the name Art Bears, crediting the rest of Henry Cow as guests. Later that year Henry Cow returned to Sunrise, by then without Dagmar Krause and Georgie Born, to record their last album, Western Culture, an instrumental.

Rock in Opposition[link]

Henry Cow agreed to disband as a permanent group, but did not announce the fact immediately. They continued for another six months, creating a new set of material (recorded later to complete Western Culture) and revisited for the last time, all the places that had supported them over the years.

In March 1978 Henry Cow invited four European groups, Stormy Six (Italy), Samla Mammas Manna (Sweden), Univers Zero (Belgium) and Etron Fou Leloublan (France) to come to London and perform in a festival Henry Cow had organised called Rock in Opposition or RIO. Throughout Europe, Henry Cow had encountered many "progressive" groups refusing to bow to the hegemony of American and British rock music. Instead they drew on non-American music sources, such as local folk music and 20th century "classical" or "art music", and often sang in their own languages. As was the case with Henry Cow, these groups struggled to survive: record companies were not interested in their music. Although these groups and Henry Cow were musically diverse, what they had in common was: (1) their independence and opposition to the established Rock business; and (2) a determination to pursue their own work regardless.

After the festival, RIO was formalised as an organisation with a charter whose aim was to represent and promote its members. RIO thus became a collective of bands united in their opposition to the music industry and the pressures to compromise their music.

Henry Cow's last concert was held in Milan on 25 July 1978. A final performance scheduled at the Annual World Youth Festival in Cuba never materialised.^[8] In August they returned to the Sunrise studios to compete Western Culture after which the band officially announced their break-up in the press, stating that "… although the group as a commodity, as a name, ceases to exist the work of the group will go on …"^[2]

Western Culture was released on Henry Cow's own Broadcast label. Shortly afterwards, Chris Cutler launched Recommended Records, his own independent label and non-commercial record distribution network.

Legacy[link]

The legacy of Henry Cow and its work continues to live on long after its demise. It was a groundbreaking group that launched the careers of many of its members, and they have kept in touch, collaborating in numerous projects over the years, including (to name a few):

• Art Bears
  • Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause (1978–1981)
• Rags (Lindsay Cooper solo album)
  • Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Georgie Born and others (1979–1980)
• The Last Nightingale (benefit album for the striking miners in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike)
  • Lindsay Cooper, Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and others (1984)
• News from Babel
  • Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Georgie Born, Dagmar Krause, Robert Wyatt and others (1983–1986)
• Duck and Cover (commission from the Berlin Jazz Festival)
  • Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Dagmar Krause and others (1983–1984)
• Each in Our Own Thoughts (Tim Hodgkinson solo album)
  • Tim Hodgkinson, Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Dagmar Krause and others (1993) – the track "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine" was a Henry Cow piece performed by the group between 1976 and 1978 (as "Erk Gah") but never recorded
• Live improvisitions
  • Fred Frith and Chris Cutler (1979–2009)
  • Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson (1990)
• The Artaud Beats
  • Chris Cutler, John Greaves, Geoff Leigh and others (2009–present)

In spite of these collaborations, Henry Cow have never reunited. Frith remarked in a 1998 interview, "Forget it! We're all much too busy."^[16] The closest to a reunion occurred in 1993 when Hodgkinson, Cutler, Cooper and Krause came together to record "Hold to the Zero Burn, Imagine" (formerly known as "Erk Gah") for Hodgkinson's solo album, Each in Our Own Thoughts. Then in December 2006, Cutler, Frith and Hodgkinson performed together at The Stone in New York City, only their second concert performance since Henry Cow broke up in 1978.^[17][18] The first was in London in 1986.

Music[link]

Henry Cow's music included elaborately scored pieces (often with complex time signatures), tape manipulations, "flat-out free improvisation" and songs.^[19] It incorporated elements of jazz, rock, contemporary classical music and the avant-garde. Dagmar Krause's vocals added another dimension to their sound, giving it a dramatic, almost Brechtian flair. Music journalists at the time often underestimated the formal compositional element of their music,^[8] while others simply dismissed it as being "inaccessible".^[7]

Their music was often experimental, making classification all but impossible. However, the following styles (amongst others) are often associated with Henry Cow:

• progressive rock
• art rock
• avant-rock
• experimental rock
• chamber rock
• free improvisation
• Rock in Opposition (strictly not a style of music but rather a collection of like-minded musicians)

John Kelman wrote at All About Jazz that "Henry Cow represented a new kind of classical chamber music; one where spontaneity was a partial component, and the instrumentation used created textures that defied those looking for tradition and convention."^[19] Edward Macan in his 1997 book Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture described Henry Cow's music as "highly eclectic" and said that their pieces often included "furious atonal instrumental passages with no discernable melodic contour or key center, impossibly complex shifting meters alternating with freely ametric sections with no definable beat or regular recurring rhythms, and jagged, sprechstimme-like vocal lines that blur the line between song and speech."^[12]

Henry Cow's music was challenging, not only to the listener, but also to the band themselves. They often composed pieces to challenge their own capabilities. Some of their music was scored beyond the conventional ranges of their music instruments necessitating that they "reinvent their instruments", learn how to play them in completely new ways.^[8][9] And yet their music may not have been as good as it could have been. Henry Cow conducted their affairs as a committee, having regular, minuted meetings with no decisions being made unless approved by the group. This included their music. Band members brought their ideas to the table and sometimes they ended up being changed as a result of the collective process. It is impossible to say if these changes were for the better or if they dampened the composer's personal visions.

Henry Cow was very much a live band, yet of the original six albums they made, only one, Henry Cow Concerts gave a glimpse of their live performances. In January 2009 Recommended Records released The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, a nine-CD plus one-DVD collection of over 10 hours of previously unreleased and mostly live recordings made between 1972 and 1978, over four hours of which was improvised. This offered, "for the first time," according to All About Jazz, "a comprehensive account of Henry Cow's breadth and depth."^[19]

Members[link]

Source: The Canterbury Website Henry Cow Chronology.^[6]

• Fred Frith (1968–1978) – guitar, violin, bass guitar, piano, xylophone
• Tim Hodgkinson (1968–1978) – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet
• David Atwood (1968)^§ – drums
• Rob Brooks (1968)^§ – rhythm guitar
• Joss Grahame (1968)^§ – bass guitar
• Andy Spooner (1968)^§ – harmonica
• Andy Powell (1968–1969)^§ – bass guitar, drums
• John Greaves (1969–1976) – bass guitar, piano
• Sean Jenkins (1969–1971)^§ – drums
• Martin Ditcham (1971)^§ – drums
• Chris Cutler (1971–1978) – drums, percussion
• Geoff Leigh (1972–1973) – saxophones, flute, clarinet
• Lindsay Cooper (1974–1978) – bassoon, oboe, recorder, piano
• Peter Blegvad (1975) – guitar
• Anthony Moore (1975) – keyboards
• Dagmar Krause (1975–1977) – vocals
• Georgie Born (1976–1978) – cello, bass guitar

^§ Did not appear on any Henry Cow recordings.

Complete works[link]

The complete works of Henry Cow is obtained by combining the two Henry Cow box sets released by Recommended Records, the Henry Cow Box (2006) and The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009).

• Box 1: The Road: Volumes 1–5
  • Volume 1: Beginnings
  • Volume 2: 1974–5
  • Volume 3: Hamburg
  • Volume 4–5: Trondheim (double CD)
  • Henry Cow Concerts (double CD)
• Box 2: The Road: Volumes 6–10
  • Volume 6: Stockholm & Göteborg
  • Volume 7: Later and Post-Virgin
  • Volume 8: Bremen
  • Volume 9: Late
  • Volume 10: Vevey (DVD)
• Box 3: The Studio: Volumes 1–5
  • Legend
  • Unrest
  • Desperate Straights
  • In Praise of Learning
  • Western Culture
• Bonus CDs
  • "Unreleased Orckestra Extract" – a 3-inch CD-single by The Orckestra given to subscribers of the Henry Cow Box.
  • A Cow Cabinet of Curiosities – a CD given to subscribers of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set.

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Cutler, Chris; Hodgkinson, Tim (1981). The Henry Cow Book. Third Step Printworks. ISBN 0-9508870-0-5. 
• Cutler, Chris (1984). File Under Popular: Theoretical and Critical Writings on Music. November Books. ISBN 0-946423-01-6. 
• Cutler, Chris, ed. (2006). Henry Cow Concerts (CD booklet accompanying the 2006 reissue of Henry Cow Concerts). Recommended Records.
• Cutler, Chris, ed. (2009). The Road: Volumes 1–5 (book from The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set). Recommended Records.
• Cutler, Chris, ed. (2009). The Road: Volumes 6–10 (book from The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set). Recommended Records.

External links[link]

• Henry Cow at Allmusic.
• Perfect Sound Forever. Henry Cow biography.
• The Canterbury Website. Henry Cow biography.
• The Canterbury Website. Henry Cow lyrics.
• Collapso–Canterbury Music Family Tree. Henry Cow family tree.
• The Canterbury Website. Interview with Henry Cow (April 1975).
• Perfect Sound Forever. Interview with Chris Cutler (March 1997).
• BBC Radio 1. John Peel sessions.
• Chris Cutler homepage.
• Fred Frith homepage.
• Tim Hodgkinson homepage.
• Tim Hodgkinson myspace.
• Unofficial Henry Cow Site at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
• PUNKCAST#1086 Video clip of Frith-Cutler-Hodgkinson performance, NYC December 16, 2006. (Realplayer) (mp4).
• "On Chris Cutler". Article by Patrick Wright published in The Guardian, November 1995 – includes an in-depth look at Henry Cow.

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2012)

Louis Philippe I
King of the French
Reign	9 August 1830 – 24 February 1848
Predecessor	Charles X as King of France
Successor	Title abolished, Second French Republic established
Spouse	Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily
Issue
Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans Louise, Queen of the Belgians Marie, Duchess Alexander of Württemberg Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours Princess Françoise of Orléans Clémentine, Princess of Kohary Prince François, Prince of Joinville Prince Charles, Duke of Penthièvre Prince Henri, Duke of Aumale Prince Antoine, Duke of Montpensier
Full name
Louis Philippe d'Orléans
House	House of Orléans
Father	Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Mother	Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon
Born	(1773-10-06)6 October 1773 Palais-Royal, Paris, France
Died	26 August 1850(1850-08-26) (aged 76) Claremont, Surrey, England
Religion	Roman Catholic

Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile. He was proclaimed king in 1830 after King Charles X was forced to abdicate. Louis Philippe himself was forced to abdicate in 1848 and lived out his life in exile in England. He was the last king to rule France, although Emperor Napoleon III would serve as its last monarch.

Before the Revolution (1773–1789)[link]

Early life[link]

Louis Philippe d'Orléans was born on the Palais-Royal, the Orléans family residence in Paris, to Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Chartres, who became Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (also known as "Philippe Égalité" during the French Revolution), and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, he was a prince du sang.

Louis Philippe was the eldest of three sons and a daughter, a family that was to have erratic fortunes from the beginning of the French Revolution to the Bourbon Restoration.

The elder branch of the House of Bourbon, to which the kings belonged, deeply distrusted the intentions of the cadet branch, which would succeed to the throne of France should the senior branch die out. Louis Philippe's father was exiled from the royal court, and the Orléans confined themselves to studies of the literature and sciences emerging from the Enlightenment.

Education[link]

Louis Philippe was tutored by the Countess of Genlis, beginning in 1782. She instilled in him a fondness for liberal thought; it is probably during this period that Louis Philippe picked up his slightly Voltairean^{[clarification needed]} brand of Catholicism. When Louis Philippe's grandfather died in 1785, his father succeeded him as Duke of Orléans and Louis Philippe succeeded his father as Duke of Chartres.

In 1788, with the Revolution looming, the young Louis Philippe showed his liberal sympathies when he helped break down the door of a prison cell in Mont Saint-Michel, during a visit there with the Countess of Genlis. From October 1788 to October 1789, the Palais-Royal was a meeting-place for the revolutionaries.

Revolution (1789–1793)[link]

Louis Philippe grew up in a period that changed Europe as a whole and, following his father's strong support for the Revolution, he involved himself completely in those changes. In his diary, he reports that he himself took the initiative to join the Jacobin Club, a move that his father supported.

Military service[link]

In June 1791, Louis Philippe got his first opportunity to become involved in the affairs of France. In 1785, he had been given the hereditary appointment of Colonel of the 14th Regiment of Dragoons.

With war on the horizon in 1791, all proprietary colonels were ordered to join their regiments. Louis Philippe showed himself to be a model officer, and he demonstrated his personal bravery in two famous instances. First, three days after Louis XVI's flight to Varennes, a quarrel between two local priests and one of the new constitutional vicars became heated, and a crowd surrounded the inn where the priests were staying, demanding blood. The young Colonel broke through the crowd and extricated the two priests, who then fled. At a river crossing on the same day, another crowd threatened to harm the priests. Louis Philippe put himself between a peasant armed with a carbine and the priests, saving their lives. The next day, Louis Philippe dived into a river to save a drowning local engineer. For this action, he received a civic crown from the local municipality. His regiment was moved north to Flanders at the end of 1791 after the Declaration of Pillnitz.

Louis Philippe served under his father's crony, the Duke of Biron, along with several officers who later gained distinction in Napoleon's empire and afterwards. These included Colonel Berthier and Lieutenant Colonel Alexandre de Beauharnais (husband of the future Empress Joséphine). Louis Philippe saw the first exchanges of fire of the Revolutionary Wars at Boussu and Quaragnon and a few days later fought at Quiévrain near Jemappes, where he was instrumental in rallying a unit of retreating soldiers. Biron wrote to War Minister de Grave, praising the young colonel, who was then promoted to brigadier, commanding a brigade of cavalry in Lückner's Army of the North.

In the Army of the North, Louis Philippe served with four future Marshals of France: Macdonald, Mortier (who would later be killed in an assassination attempt on Louis Philippe), Davout, and Oudinot. Dumouriez was appointed to command the Army of the North in August 1792. Louis Philippe commanded a division under him in the Valmy campaign.

At Valmy, Louis Philippe was ordered to place a battery of artillery on the crest of the hill of Valmy. The battle of Valmy was inconclusive, but the Austrian-Prussian army, short of supplies, was forced back across the Rhine. Once again, Louis Philippe was praised in a letter by Dumouriez after the battle. Louis Philippe was then recalled to Paris to give an account of the Battle at Valmy to the French government. There he had a rather trying interview with Danton, Minister of Justice, which he later fondly re-told to his children.

While in Paris, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general. In October he returned to the Army of the North, where Dumouriez had begun a march into Belgium. Louis Philippe again commanded a division. Dumouriez chose to attack an Austrian force in a strong position on the heights of Cuesmes and Jemappes to the west of Mons. Louis Philippe's division sustained heavy casualties as it attacked through a wood, retreating in disorder. Louis Philippe rallied a group of units, dubbing them "the battalion of Mons" and pushed forward along with other French units, finally overwhelming the outnumbered Austrians.

Events in Paris undermined the budding military career of Louis Philippe. The incompetence of Jean-Nicolas Pache, the new Girondist appointee, left the Army of the North almost without supplies. Soon thousands of troops were deserting the army. Louis Philippe was alienated by the more radical policies of the Republic. After the National Convention decided to put the deposed King to death – Louis Philippe's father – by then known as Philippe Égalité – voted in favour of that act, Louis Philippe began to consider leaving France.

Louis Philippe was willing to stay in France to fulfill his duties in the army, but he was implicated in the plot Dumouriez had planned to ally with the Austrians, march his army on Paris, and restore the Constitution of 1791. Dumouriez had met with Louis Philippe on 22 March 1793 and urged his subordinate to join in the attempt.

With the French government falling into the Reign of Terror, he decided to leave France to save his life. On 4 April, Dumouriez and Louis Philippe left for the Austrian camp. They were intercepted by Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Nicolas Davout, who had served at Jemappes with Louis Philippe. As Dumouriez ordered the Colonel back to the camp, some of his soldiers cried out against the General, now declared a traitor by the National Convention. Shots rang out as they fled towards the Austrian camp. The next day, Dumouriez again tried to rally soldiers against the Convention; however, he found that the artillery had declared for the Republic, leaving him and Louis Philippe with no choice but to go into exile. At the age of nineteen, Louis Philippe left France; it was some twenty-one years before he again set foot on French soil.

Exile (1793–1815)[link]

The reaction in Paris to Louis Philippe's involvement in Dumouriez's treason inevitably resulted in misfortunes for the Orléans family. Philippe Égalité spoke in the National Convention, condemning his son for his actions, asserting that he would not spare his son, much akin to the Roman consul Brutus and his sons. However, letters from Louis Philippe to his father were discovered in transit and were read out to the Convention. Philippe Égalité was then put under continuous surveillance. Shortly thereafter, the Girondists moved to arrest him and the two younger brothers of Louis Philippe, Louis-Charles and Antoine Philippe; the latter had been serving in the Army of Italy. The three were interned in Fort Saint-Jean in Marseille.

Meanwhile, Louis Philippe was forced to live in the shadows, avoiding both pro-Republican revolutionaries and Legitimist French émigré centres in various parts of Europe and also in the Austrian army. He first moved to Switzerland under an assumed name, and met up with the Countess of Genlis and his sister Adélaïde at Schaffhausen. From there they went to Zürich, where the Swiss authorities decreed that to protect Swiss neutrality, Louis Philippe would have to leave the city. They went to Zug, where Louis Philippe was discovered by a group of émigrés.

It became quite apparent that for the ladies to settle peacefully anywhere, they would have to separate from Louis Philippe. He then left with his faithful valet Baudouin for the heights of the Alps, and then to Basel, where he sold all but one of his horses. Now moving from town to town throughout Switzerland, he and Baudouin found themselves very much exposed to all the distresses of extended travelling. They were refused entry to a monastery by monks who believed them to be young vagabonds. Another time, he woke up after spending a night in a barn to find himself at the far end of a musket, confronted by a man attempting to keep away thieves.

Throughout this period, he never stayed in one place more than 48 hours. Finally, in October 1793, Louis Philippe was appointed a teacher of geography, history, mathematics, and modern languages at a boys' boarding school. The school, owned by a Monsieur Jost, was in Reichenau, a village on the upper Rhine, across from Switzerland. His salary was 1,400 francs and he taught under the name Monsieur Chabos. He had been at the school for a month when he heard the news from Paris: his father had been guillotined on 6 November 1793 after a trial before the revolutionary Tribunal.

Travels[link]

In early 1794, Louis Philippe began courting Marianne Banzori, the cook of the Reichenau schoolmaster. In late 1794, Jost discovered that Marianne was pregnant. This ended Louis Philippe's academic career and Jost sent Marianne to Milan where the child was born in December 1794, and then placed in an orphanage.

After Louis Philippe left Reichenau, he separated the now sixteen-year-old Adélaïde from the Countess of Genlis, who had fallen out with Louis Philippe. Adélaïde went to live with her great-aunt the Princess of Conti at Fribourg, then to Bavaria and Hungary and, finally, to her mother who was exiled in Spain.

Louis Philippe travelled extensively. He visited Scandinavia in 1795 and then moved on to Finland. For about a year, he stayed in Muonio (in the valley of Tornio river), a remote village at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, living in the rectory under the name Müller as a guest of the local Lutheran vicar. Here he met the vicar's wife's sister, Beata Caisa Wahlbom, who was a housekeeper in the rectory. The 22-year-old single sympathetic world-experienced prince charmed the 28-year-old inexperienced girl and she fell in love with him. Not long after Louis Philippe left Scandinavia, Beata Caisa Wahlbom gave birth to a son, whom she named Erik.

Louis Philippe also visited the United States for four years, staying in Philadelphia (where his brothers Antoine and Louis Charles were in exile), New York City (where he most likely stayed at the Somerindyck family estate on Broadway and 75th Street with other exiled princes), and Boston. In Boston, he taught French for a time and lived in lodgings over what is now the Union Oyster House, Boston's oldest restaurant. During his time in the United States, Louis Philippe met with American politicians and people of high society, including George Clinton, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington.

His visit to Cape Cod in 1797 coincided with the division of the town of Eastham into two towns, one of which took the name of Orleans, possibly in his honour. During their sojourn, the Orléans princes travelled throughout the country, visiting as far south as Nashville and as far north as Maine. The brothers were even held in Philadelphia briefly during an outbreak of yellow fever. Louis Philippe is also thought to have met Isaac Snow of Orleans, Massachusetts, who had escaped to France from a British prison hulk during the American Revolution. In 1839, while reflecting on his visit to the United States, Louis Philippe explained in a letter to Guizot that his three years there had a large influence on his later political beliefs and judgments when he became king.

In Boston, Louis Philippe learned of the coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797) and of the exile of his mother to Spain. He and his brothers then decided to return to Europe. They went to New Orleans, planning to sail to Havana and thence to Spain. This, however, was a troubled journey, as Spain and Great Britain were then at war. While in Louisiana in 1798, they were entertained by Julian Poydras in the town of Point Coupee.^[1]

They sailed for Havana in an American corvette, but the ship was stopped in the Gulf of Mexico by a British warship. The British seized the three brothers, but took them to Havana anyway. Unable to find passage to Europe, the three brothers spent a year in Cuba, until they were unexpectedly expelled by the Spanish authorities. They sailed via the Bahamas to Nova Scotia where they were received by the Duke of Kent, son of King George III and later father of Queen Victoria. Louis Philippe struck up a lasting friendship with the British royal. Eventually, the brothers sailed back to New York, and, in January 1800, they arrived in England, where they stayed for the next fifteen years.

Marriage[link]

In 1809, Louis Philippe married Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. They had the following ten children:

Name	Picture	Birth	Death	Notes
Prince Ferdinand d'Orléans		3 September 1810	13 July 1842	Married Duchess Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, had issue.
Louise d'Orléans		3 April 1812	11 October 1850	Married Leopold I of Belgium, had issue.
Princess Marie d'Orléans		12 April 1813	6 January 1839	Married Duke Alexander of Württemberg, had issue.
Prince Louis d'Orléans		25 October 1814	26 June 1896	Married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had issue.
Françoise Louise Caroline d'Orléans		26 March 1816	20 May 1818	Died aged two. Baptised on 20 July 1816, with Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor as her godfather.
Princess Clémentine d'Orléans		6 March 1817	16 February 1907	Married Prince August of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had issue.
Prince François d'Orléans		14 August 1818	16 June 1900	Married Princess Francisca of Brazil, had issue.
Prince Charles d'Orléans		1 January 1820	25 July 1828	Died aged eight.
Prince Henri d'Orléans		16 January 1822	7 May 1897	Married Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, had issue.
Prince Antoine d'Orléans		31 July 1824	4 February 1890	Married Infanta Luisa Fernanda of Spain, had issue.

Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830)[link]

After the abdication of Napoleon, Louis Philippe, known as Louis Philippe III, Duke of Orléans, returned to France during the reign of his cousin Louis XVIII, at the time of the Bourbon Restoration. Louis Philippe had reconciled the Orléans family with Louis XVIII in exile, and was once more to be found in the elaborate royal court. However, his resentment at the treatment of his family, the cadet branch of the House of Bourbon under the Ancien Régime, caused friction between him and Louis XVIII, and he openly sided with the liberal opposition.

Louis Philippe was on far friendlier terms with Louis XVIII's brother and successor, Charles X, who acceded to the throne in 1824, and with whom he socialised. However, his opposition to the policies of Villèle and later of Jules de Polignac caused him to be viewed as a constant threat to the stability of Charles' government. This soon proved to be to his advantage.

King of the French (1830–1848)[link]

In 1830, the July Revolution overthrew Charles X, who abdicated in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri, Duke of Bordeaux, and, naming Louis Philippe Lieutenant général du royaume, charged him to announce to the popularly elected Chamber of Deputies his desire to have his grandson succeed him. Louis Philippe did not do this, in order to increase his own chances of succession. As a consequence, because the chamber was aware of Louis Philippe's liberal policies and of his popularity with the masses, they proclaimed Louis Philippe, who for eleven days had been acting as the regent for his small cousin, as the new French king, displacing the senior branch of the House of Bourbon.

Charles X and his family, including his grandson, went into exile in Britain. The young ex-king, the Duke of Bordeaux, who, in exile, took the title of comte de Chambord, later became the pretender to the throne of France and was supported by the Legitimists.

Arms of Louis Philippe.

Upon his accession to the throne, Louis Philippe assumed the title of King of the French – a title already adopted by Louis XVI in the short-lived Constitution of 1791. Linking the monarchy to a people instead of a territory (as the previous designation King of France and of Navarre) was aimed at undercutting the legitimist claims of Charles X and his family.

By an ordinance he signed on 13 August 1830,^[2] the new king defined the manner in which his children, as well as his "beloved" sister, would continue to bear the surname "d'Orléans" and the arms of Orléans, declared that his eldest son, as Prince Royal (not Dauphin), would bear the title Duke of Orléans, that the younger sons would continue to have their previous titles, and that his sister and daughters would only be styled Princesses of Orléans, not of France.

In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie, married the first ruler of Belgium, Leopold I, King of the Belgians. Their children included Leopold II of Belgium and Empress Carlota of Mexico.

In July 1835, Louis Philippe survived an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Mario Fieschi on the boulevard du Temple in Paris.

In 1842, his son and heir, Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans, died in a carriage accident.

The famous 1831 caricature of Louis Philippe turning into a pear would mirror the deterioration of his popularity. (Honoré Daumier, after Charles Philipon who was jailed for the original.)

Louis Philippe ruled in an unpretentious fashion, avoiding the pomp and lavish spending of his predecessors. Despite this outward appearance of simplicity, his support came from the wealthy bourgeoisie. At first, he was much loved and called the "Citizen King" and the "bourgeois monarch," but his popularity suffered as his government was perceived as increasingly conservative and monarchical, despite his decision of having Napoleon's remains returned to France. Under his management, the conditions of the working classes deteriorated, and the income gap widened considerably. An economic crisis in 1847 led to the 1848 Revolutions, and Louis Philippe's abdication. The dissonance between his positive early reputation and his late unpopularity was epitomized by Victor Hugo in Les Miserable as an oxymoron describing his reign as "Prince Equality", in which Hugo states that:^[3]

[Louis Philippe had to] bear in his own person the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to have that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power ... He had been proscribed, a wanderer, poor. He had lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old horse in order to obtain bread. At Reichenau, he gave lessons in mathematics, while his sister Adelaide did wool work and sewed. These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. He had, with his own hands, demolished the iron cage of Mont-Saint-Michel, built by Louis XI, and used by Louis XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobins' club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: "Young man!"

What is there against him? That throne. Take away Louis Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the man is good. He is good at times even to the point of being admirable. Often, in the midst of his gravest souvenirs, after a day of conflict with the whole diplomacy of the continent, he returned at night to his apartments, and there, exhausted with fatigue, overwhelmed with sleep, what did he do? He took a death sentence and passed the night in revising a criminal suit, considering it something to hold his own against Europe, but that it was a still greater matter to rescue a man from the executioner.

—Victor Hugo

Abdication and death (1848–1850)[link]

Abdication of Louis Philippe, in favor of his grandson, the comte de Paris, dated 24 February 1848

On 24 February 1848, during the February 1848 Revolution, King Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his nine-year-old grandson, Philippe, comte de Paris. Fearful of what had happened to Louis XVI, Louis Philippe quickly left Paris under disguise. Riding in an ordinary cab under the name of "Mr. Smith", he fled to England. According to The Times of 6 March 1848, the King and Queen were received at Newhaven, East Sussex before travelling by train to London.

The National Assembly of France initially planned to accept young Philippe as king, but the strong current of public opinion rejected that. On 26 February, the Second Republic was proclaimed. Prince Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was elected President on 10 December of the same year; on 2 December 1851, he declared himself president for life and then Emperor Napoleon III in 1852.

Louis Philippe and his family remained in exile in England in Claremont, Surrey, where he died on 26 August 1850. In 1876, his remains and those of his wife were taken to France and buried at the Chapelle royale de Dreux, the Orléans family necropolis his mother had built in 1816, and which he had enlarged and embellished after her death.

The clash of the pretenders[link]

Louis Phillipe in 1842.

The clashes of 1830 and 1848 between the Legitimists and the Orleanists over who was the rightful monarch were resumed in the 1870s. After the fall of the Second Empire, a monarchist-dominated National Assembly offered a throne to the Legitimist pretender, Henri de France, comte de Chambord, as Henri V. As he was childless, his heir was (except to the most extreme Legitimists) Louis Philippe's grandson, Philippe d'Orléans, comte de Paris. Thus the comte de Chambord's death would have united the House of Bourbon and House of Orléans.

However, the comte de Chambord refused to take the throne unless the Tricolor flag of the Revolution was replaced with the fleur-de-lis flag of the Ancien Régime. This the National Assembly was unwilling to do. The Third Republic was established, though many intended for it to be temporary, and replaced by a constitutional monarchy after the death of the comte de Chambord. However, the comte de Chambord lived longer than expected. By the time of his death in 1883, support for the monarchy had declined, and public opinion sided with a continuation of the Third Republic, as the form of government that, according to Adolphe Thiers, "divides us least". Some suggested a monarchical restoration under a later comte de Paris after the fall of the Vichy regime but this did not occur.

Most French monarchists regard the descendants of Louis Philippe's grandson, who hold the title Count of Paris, as the rightful pretenders to the French throne; others, the Legitimists, consider Don Luis-Alfonso de Borbón, Duke of Anjou (to his supporters, "Louis XX") to be the rightful heir. He is descended in the male line from Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the second grandson of the Sun-King, Louis XIV. Philippe (King Philip V of Spain), however, had renounced his rights to the throne of France to prevent the much-feared union of France and Spain.

The two sides challenged each other in the French Republic's law courts in 1897 and again nearly a century later. In the latter case, Henri, comte de Paris, duc de France, challenged the right of the Spanish-born "pretender" to use the title Duke of Anjou. The French courts threw out his claim, arguing that the legal system had no jurisdiction over the matter.

Titles and styles[link]

• 6 October 1773 – 18 November 1785 His Serene Highness The Duke of Valois
• 18 November 1785 – 6 November 1793 His Serene Highness The Duke of Chartres
• 6 November 1793 – 21 September 1824 His Serene Highness The Duke of Orléans
• 21 September 1824 – 9 August 1830 His Royal Highness The Duke of Orléans
• 9 August 1830 – 24 February 1848 His Majesty The King
• 24 February 1848 – 26 August 1850 His Majesty King Louis Philippe

Ancestors[link]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louis-Philippe of France

• In France, a museum is dedicated to king Louis Philippe and his family Louis-Philippe Museum of Château d'Eu in Normandy The Lafitte Family.* Members of the French Royal Families

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Aston, Nigel. "Orleanism, 1780–1830," History Today, Oct 1988, Vol. 38 Issue 10, pp 41–47
• Beik, Paul. Louis Philippe and the July Monarchy (1965)
• Collingham, H.A.C. The July Monarchy: A Political History of France, 1830–1848 (Longman, 1988)
• Howarth, T.E.B. Citizen-King: The Life of Louis Philippe, King of the French (1962).
• Newman, Edgar Leon, and Robert Lawrence Simpson. Historical Dictionary of France from the 1815 Restoration to the Second Empire (Greenwood Press, 1987) online edition

External links[link]

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Louis Philippe I.

• La Caricature Gallery: Caricatures of Louis Philippe and others, published in La Caricature 1830–1835

v t e Princes of Orléans 1st generation Jean Gaston, Duke of Valois^ 2nd generation Philippe Charles, Duke of Valois^ · Alexandre Louis, Duke of Valois^ · Philippe, Duke of Orléans^ 3rd generation Louis, Duke of Orléans^ 4th generation Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans^ 5th generation Philippe, Duke of Orléans^ 6th generation Louis Philippe, King of the French^  · Antoine, Duke of Montpensier^ · Louis Charles, Count of Beaujolais^ 7th generation Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans · Louis, Duke of Nemours · François, Prince of Joinville · Charles, Duke of Penthièvre^ · Henri, Duke of Aumale · Antoine, Duke of Montpensier 8th generation Philippe, Count of Paris  · Robert, Duke of Chartres · Gaston, Count of Eu · Ferdinand, Duke of Alençon · Pierre, Duke of Penthièvre  · Louis Philippe, Prince of Condé  · François Louis, Duke of Guise  · Prince Fernando  · Prince Felipe  · Infante Antonio, Duke of Galliera · Prince Luis 9th generation Philippe, Duke of Orléans  · Prince Charles  · Prince Jacques · Ferdinand, Duke of Montpensier · Prince Robert · Prince Henri · Jean, Duke of Guise · Emmanuel, Duke of Vendôme · Alfonso, Duke of Galliera · Prince Luis Fernando 10th generation Prince Henri, Count of Paris · Charles Philippe, Duke of Nemours · Álvaro, Duke of Galliera · Prince Alonso · Prince Ataúlfo 11th generation Henri, Count of Paris, Duke of France  · François, Duke of Orléans  · Michel, Count of Évreux · Jacques, Duke of Orléans  · Thibaut, Count of La Marche 12th generation François, Count of Clermont · Jean, Duke of Vendôme · Eudes, Duke of Angoulême · Charles Philippe, Duke of Anjou · Prince François  · Charles Louis, Duke of Chartres · Foulques, Duke of Aumale · Robert, Count of La Marche · Prince Louis Philippe · 13th generation Prince Gaston · Prince Pierre · Prince Philippe  · Prince Constantin ^ never styled Prince of Orléans