Henri, comte de Chambord

Infobox_French Royalty
name=Henry V
title=King of France and Navarre (disputed)


caption=
reign=2 August 1830 - 9 August 1830
3 June 1844 – 24 August 1883
reign-type=Reign
Pretendence
coronation=
full name=Henri-Charles
predecessor=Louis XIX
successor=Louis-Philippe I
As Legitimist Claimant: Juan, Count of Montizón
spouse=Maria Theresia of Austria-Este
issue=
royal house=House of Bourbon
royal anthem =
father=Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry
mother=Caroline of the Two Sicilies
date of birth=29 September 1820
place of birth=Tuileries Palace, France
date of death=24 August, 1883
place of death=Frohsdorf, Austrian Empire
place of burial=Gorizia, Nova Gorica|

Henri V of France and Navarre (Henri Charles Ferdinand Marie Dieudonné d'Artois de France – September 29, 1820 – August 24, 1883), best known by his title comte de Chambord was Duke of Bordeaux and Count of Chambord, was disputedly King of France and Navarre from 2 August to 9, 1830 and afterwards the Legitimist Pretender to the throne of France from 1844 to 1883.

Henri was the posthumous son of Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry, younger son of King Charles X of France, by his wife, Princess Caroline Ferdinande Louise of the Two Sicilies, daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies. As the grandson of the king, Henri was a Petit-Fils de France.

Birth and youth

He was born September 29, 1820, in the pavillon de Marsan, part of the Tuileries Palace which still survives in the Louvre in Paris. Henri's father, the duc de Berry, had been assassinated seven months before his birth. At the actual moment of Henri's birth, no member of the French court was present in the room; this enabled the supporters of the duc d'Orléans to later claim that Henri was not in fact a French prince.

At birth, Henri was given the title of duc de Bordeaux. Because of his posthumous birth when the senior line of the Bourbon dynasty appeared about to become extinct, he was popularly known as the Dieudonné or "God-given" baby. Royalists called him "the miracle child".

On 2 August, 1830, in response to the July Revolution, Henri's grandfather Charles X abdicated, and twenty minutes later Charles' elder son the Dauphin also abdicated in favor of the young duc de Bordeaux. Henri was immediately proclaimed Henri V, King of France and NavarreFact|date=July 2008. However, after a fictive reign of only seven days, the National Assembly decreed that the throne should pass to the Regent, his distant cousin, the duc d'Orléans, who became Louis-Philippe, King of the French on August 9.

Exile

Henri and his family left France and went into exile, August 16, 1830. While some French monarchists recognized him as their sovereign, others disputed the validity of the abdications of his grandfather and uncle. Still others recognised the "July Monarchy" of Louis-Philippe. With the death of his grandfather in 1836, and his uncle in 1844, Henri became the genealogically senior claimant to the French throne. His supporters were called "Legitimists" to distinguish them from the "Orléanists", the supporters of the family of Louis-Philippe.

Henri, who preferred the "courtesy" title of comte de Chambord (from the château de Chambord, which had been presented to him by the nation, and which was the only significant piece of personal property he was allowed to retain ownership of upon his exile), continued to make his claim throughout the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire of Napoléon III. In November 1846 the comte de Chambord married his second cousin Archduchess Marie Thérèse of Austria-Este, daughter of Duke Francis IV of Modena and Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy. Her maternal grandparents were Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia and Maria Theresa of Austria-Este; the couple had no children.

Hope

In the early 1870s, as the Second Empire collapsed following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War at the battle of Sedan, on 1 September 1870, the royalists became a majority in the National Assembly. The Orléanists agreed to support the comte de Chambord's claim to the throne, with the hope that at his death he would be succeeded by their own claimant, the nine-year-old Count of Paris, Philippe d'Orléans. Henri was then pretender for both legitimists and Orléanists and the restoration of Monarchy in France seemed to be a close possibility. However, Henri insisted that he would only accept the crown on condition that France abandon its tricolour flag and return to the use of the white fleur-de-lis flag. Even a compromise, whereby the fleur-de-lis would be the new king's personal standard, and the tricolour would remain the national flag, was rejected.

Defeat

A temporary Third Republic was established, to wait for Henri's death and his replacement by the more liberal comte de Paris. But by the time this occurred in 1883, public opinion had swung behind the Republic as the form of government which, in the words of the former President Adolphe Thiers, "divides us least". Thus, Henri could be mockingly hailed by republicans such as Georges Clemenceau as "the French Washington" — the one man without whom the Republic could not have been founded.

Henri died August 24, 1883 at his residence in Frohsdorf, Austria. He was buried in his grandfather Charles X's crypt at the monastery of Castagnavizza in Gorizia, Italy, now on the Slovenian side of the border in Nova Gorica.

At his death, Henri's wife and some of his supporters accepted the senior male of the House of Bourbon, Henri's distant cousin and brother-in-law, Juan, Count of Montizón as the rightful heir to the Kingdoms of France and Navarre. Other supporters of Henri transferred their allegiance to the Orléanist claimant, Philippe, comte de Paris.

His personal property, including the château de Chambord, was left to his late sister's son Robert I, Duke of Parma.

Ancestors

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1= 1. Henri, comte de Chambord
2= 2. Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry
3= 3. Princess Carolina Ferdinanda Luisa of the Two Sicilies
4= 4. Charles X of France
5= 5. Princess Marie Thérèse of Savoy
6= 6. Francis I of the Two Sicilies
7= 7. Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria
8= 8. Louis, Dauphin of France
9= 9. Princess Marie-Josèphe of Saxony
10= 10. Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia
11= 11. María Antonieta of Spain
12= 12. Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies
13= 13. Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria
14= 14. Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
15= 15. Maria Louisa of Spain
16= 16. Louis XV of France
17= 17. Maria Leszczyńska
18= 18. Augustus III of Poland
19= 19. Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria
20= 20. Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia
21= 21. Landgravine Polyxene Christine of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rothenburg
22= 22. Philip V of Spain
23= 23. Elisabeth of Parma
24= 24. Charles III of Spain
25= 25. Princess Maria Amalia of Saxony
26= 26. Francis III Stephen, Duke of Lorraine
27= 27. Maria Theresa of Austria
28= 28. Francis III Stephen, Duke of Lorraine (= 26)
29= 29. Maria Theresa of Austria (= 27)
30= 30. Charles III of Spain (= 24)
31= 31. Princess Maria Amalia of Saxony (= 25)

ee also

* List of shortest reigning monarchs of all time

External links

* [http://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/birth_bordeaux.htm The Birth of the Duc de Bordeaux]