Charles Philippe of France was born in 1757, the youngest son of the Dauphin Louis and his wife, the Dauphine Marie Josèphe, at the Palace of Versailles. Charles was created Count of Artois at birth by his grandfather, the reigning King Louis XV. As the youngest male in the family, Charles seemed unlikely ever to become king. His eldest brother, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, died unexpectedly in 1761, which moved Charles up one place in the line of succession. He was raised in early childhood by Madame de Marsan, the Governess of the Children of France.  At the death of his father in 1765, Charles’s oldest surviving brother, Louis Auguste, became the new Dauphin (the heir apparent to the French throne). Their mother Marie Josèphe, who never recovered from the loss of her husband, died in March 1767 from tuberculosis. This left Charles an orphan at the age of nine, along with his siblings Louis Auguste, Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence, Clotilde (“Madame Clotilde”), and Élisabeth, (“Madame Élisabeth”).  Louis XV fell ill on 27 April 1774 and died on 10 May of smallpox at the age of 64. His grandson Louis-Auguste succeeded him as King Louis XVI of France.  In November 1773, Charles married Marie Thérèse of Savoy. The marriage, unlike that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was consummated almost immediately.  In 1775, Marie Thérèse gave birth to a boy, Louis Antoine, who was created Duke of Angoulême by Louis XVI. Louis-Antoine was the first of the next generation of Bourbons, as the king and the Count of Provence had not fathered any children yet, causing the Parisian libellistes (pamphleteers who published scandalous leaflets about important figures in court and politics) to lampoon Louis XVI’s alleged impotence. Three years later, in 1778, Charles’ second son, Charles Ferdinand, was born and given the title of Duke of Berry.[9] In the same year Queen Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child, Marie Thérèse, quelling all rumours that she could not bear children.

Charles was thought of as the most attractive member of his family, bearing a strong resemblance to his grandfather Louis XV. His wife was considered quite ugly by most contemporaries, and he looked for company in numerous extramarital affairs. According to the Count of Hézecques, “few beauties were cruel to him.” Later, he embarked upon a lifelong love affair with the beautiful Louise de Polastron, the sister-in-law of Marie Antoinette’s closest companion, the Duchess of Polignac.  Charles also struck up a firm friendship with Marie Antoinette herself, whom he had first met upon her arrival in France in April 1770 when he was twelve. The closeness of the relationship was such that he was falsely accused by Parisian rumour mongers of having seduced her. As part of Marie Antoinette’s social set, Charles often appeared opposite her in the private theatre of her favourite royal retreat, the Petit Trianon. They were both said to be very talented amateur actors. Marie Antoinette played milkmaids, shepherdesses, and country ladies, whereas Charles played lovers, valets, and farmers.  A famous story concerning the two involves the construction of the Château de Bagatelle. In 1775, Charles purchased a small hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne. He soon had the existing house torn down with plans to rebuild. Marie Antoinette wagered her brother-in-law that the new château could not be completed within three months. Charles engaged the neoclassical architect François-Joseph Bélanger to design the building. He won his bet, with Bélanger completing the house in sixty-three days. It is estimated that the project, which came to include manicured gardens, cost over two million livres. Throughout the 1770s, Charles spent lavishly. He accumulated enormous debts, totalling 21 million livres. In the 1780s, King Louis XVI paid off the debts of both his brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois.  In 1781, Charles acted as a proxy for Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II at the christening of his godson, the Dauphin Louis Joseph.

Charles’s political awakening started with the first great crisis of the monarchy in 1786, when it became apparent that the kingdom was bankrupt from previous military endeavours (in particular the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence) and needed fiscal reform to survive. Charles supported the removal of the aristocracy’s financial privileges, but was opposed to any reduction in the social privileges enjoyed by either the Church or the nobility. He believed that France’s finances should be reformed without the monarchy being overthrown. In his own words, it was “time for repair, not demolition.”  King Louis XVI eventually convened the Estates General, which had not been assembled for over 150 years, to meet in May 1789 to ratify financial reforms. Along with his sister Élisabeth, Charles was the most conservative member of the family and opposed the demands of the Third Estate (representing the commoners) to increase their voting power. This prompted criticism from his brother, who accused him of being “plus royaliste que le roi” (“more royalist than the king”). In June 1789, the representatives of the Third Estate declared themselves a National Assembly intent on providing France with a new constitution.  In conjunction with the Baron de Breteuil, Charles had political alliances arranged to depose the liberal minister of finance, Jacques Necker. These plans backfired when Charles attempted to secure Necker’s dismissal on 11 July without Breteuil’s knowledge, much earlier than they had originally intended. It was the beginning of a decline in his political alliance with Breteuil, which ended in mutual loathing.  Necker’s dismissal provoked the storming of the Bastille on 14 July. At the insistence of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Charles and his family left France three days later, on 17 July, along with several other courtiers, including the Duchess of Polignac, the queen’s favourite. His flight has historically been largely attributed to personal fears for his own safety. However recent research indicates that the King approved in advance of his brother’s departure, seeing it as a means of ensuring that one close relative would be free to act as a spokesman for the monarchy after Louis himself had been removed from Versailles to Paris.

Charles and his family decided to seek refuge in Savoy, his wife’s native country, where they were joined by some members of the Condé family. Meanwhile in Paris, Louis XVI was struggling with the National Assembly, which was committed to radical reforms and had enacted the Constitution of 1791. In March 1791, the Assembly also enacted a regency bill that provided for the case of the king’s premature death. While his heir Louis-Charles was still a minor, the Count of Provence, the Duke of Orléans or, if either was unavailable, someone chosen by election should become regent, completely passing over the rights of Charles who, in the royal lineage, stood between the Count of Provence and the Duke of Orléans.  Charles meanwhile left Turin and moved to Trier, where his uncle, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, was the incumbent Archbishop-Elector. Charles prepared for a counter-revolutionary invasion of France, but a letter by Marie Antoinette postponed it until after the royal family had escaped from Paris and joined a concentration of regular troops under General de Bouillé at Montmédy. After the attempted flight was stopped at Varennes, Charles moved on to Koblenz, where he, the recently escaped Count of Provence and the Princes of Condé jointly declared their intention to invade France. The Count of Provence was sending dispatches to various European sovereigns for assistance, while Charles set up a court-in-exile in the Electorate of Trier. On 25 August, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which called on other European powers to intervene in France.  On New Year’s Day 1792, the National Assembly declared all emigrants traitors, repudiated their titles and confiscated their lands. This measure was followed by the suspension and eventually the abolition of the monarchy in September 1792. The royal family was imprisoned and the king and queen were eventually put to death in 1793. The young Dauphin died of illnesses and neglect in 1795.  When the French Revolutionary Wars broke out in 1792, Charles escaped to Great Britain, where King George III of Great Britain gave him a generous allowance. Charles lived in Edinburgh and London with his mistress Louise de Polastron His older brother, dubbed Louis XVIII after the death of his nephew in June 1795, relocated to Verona and then to Jelgava Palace, Mitau, where Charles’ son Louis Antoine married Louis XVI’s only surviving child, Marie Thérèse, on 10 June 1799. In 1802, Charles supported his brother with several thousand pounds. In 1807, Louis XVIII moved to Great Britain.

While the king retained the liberal charter, Charles patronised members of the ultra-royalists in parliament, such as Jules de Polignac, the writer François-René de Chateaubriand and Jean-Baptiste de Villèle. On several occasions, Charles voiced his disapproval of his brother’s liberal ministers and threatened to leave the country unless Louis XVIII dismissed them. Louis, in turn, feared that his brother’s and heir presumptive’s ultra-royalist tendencies would send the family into exile once more (which they did).  On 14 February 1820, Charles’s younger son, the Duke of Berry, was assassinated at the Paris Opera. This loss not only devastated the family but also put the continuation of the Bourbon dynasty in jeopardy, as the Duke of Angoulême’s marriage had not produced any children. Parliament debated the abolition of the Salic law, which excluded females from the succession and was long held inviolable. However, the Duke of Berry’s widow, Caroline of Naples and Sicily, was found to be pregnant and on 29 September 1820 gave birth to a son, Henry, Duke of Bordeaux. His birth was hailed as “God-given”, and the people of France bought for him the Château de Chambord in celebration of his birth. As a result, his granduncle, Louis XVIII, added the title Count of Chambord, hence Henry, Count of Chambord, the name by which he is usually known.

When it became apparent that a mob of 14,000 people was preparing to attack, the royal family left Rambouillet and, on 16 August, embarked for the United Kingdom on packet steamers provided by Louis Philippe. Informed by the British Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, that they needed to arrive in England as private citizens, all family members adopted pseudonyms; Charles X styled himself “Count of Ponthieu”. The Bourbons were greeted coldly by the English, who upon their arrival mockingly waved the newly adopted tri-colour flags at them.  Charles X was quickly followed to Britain by his creditors, who had lent him vast sums during his first exile and were yet to be paid back in full. However, the family was able to use money Charles’s wife had deposited in London.  The Bourbons were allowed to reside in Lulworth Castle in Dorset, but quickly moved to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, where the Duchess of Berry also lived at Regent Terrace  Charles’ relationship with his daughter-in-law proved uneasy, as the Duchess claimed the regency for her son Henry, whom the abdications of Rambouillet had left the legitimist pretender to the French throne. Charles at first denied her demands, but in December agreed to support her claim once she had landed in France. In 1831 the Duchess made her way from Britain by way of the Netherlands, Prussia and Austria to her family in Naples. Having gained little support, she arrived in Marseilles in April 1832, made her way to the Vendée, where she tried to instigate an uprising against the new regime, and was imprisoned, much to the embarrassment of her father-in-law. He was further dismayed when after her release the Duchess married the Count of Lucchesi Palli, a minor Neapolitan noble. In response to this morganatic match, Charles banned her from seeing her children.

At the invitation of Emperor Francis I of Austria, the Bourbons moved to Prague in winter 1832/33 and were given lodging at the Hradschin Palace by the Emperor. In September 1833, Bourbon legitimists gathered in Prague to celebrate the Duke of Bordeaux’s thirteenth birthday. They expected grand celebrations, but Charles X merely proclaimed his grandson’s majority. On the same day, after much cajoling by Chateaubriand, Charles agreed to a meeting with his daughter-in-law, which took place in Leoben on 13 October 1833. The children of the Duchess refused to meet her after they learned of her second marriage. Charles refused the various demands by the Duchess, but after protests from his other daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Angoulême, acquiesced. In the summer of 1834, he again allowed the Duchess of Berry to see her children.  Upon the death of Emperor Francis in March 1835, the Bourbons left Prague Castle, as the new Emperor Ferdinand wished to use it for coronation ceremonies. The Bourbons moved initially to Teplitz, and then, as Ferdinand wanted the continued use of Prague Castle, purchased Kirchberg Castle. Moving there was postponed due to an outbreak of cholera in the locality. In the meantime, Charles left for the warmer climate on Austria’s Mediterranean coast in October 1835. Upon his arrival at Görz (Gorizia) in the Kingdom of Illyria, he caught cholera and died on 6 November 1836. The townspeople draped their windows in black to mourn him. Charles was interred in the Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady, in the Franciscan Kostanjevica Monastery (now in Nova Gorica, Slovenia). His remains lie in a crypt with those of his family.