Even as the winds of revolution that led his brother and sister-in-law to the guillotine gusted over his country, King Charles X of France refused to go, reports The Guardian.
Staunchly Catholic and conservative, and convinced of his divine right to rule, it took three days of violent unrest known as the Trois Glorieuses in July 1830 for revolutionaries to force the country’s last Bourbon monarch into exile.
Charles X never saw France again. After spells in London, Edinburgh and Prague, he died after contracting cholera in the Adriatic resort of Gorizia where he was on holiday.
On Tuesday, an association of historians, royalists and descendants launched a campaign to have Charles X’s remains returned from a nearby monastery, now in Slovenia, where he lies along with members of his family.
“All we have left of him is this image of a reactionary monarch, blind to the realities of his era and the wishes of his subjects,” said Philippe Delorme, the honorary president of the association. “Yet the Restoration, despite its failings, was the first attempt at a parliamentary regime in France.”
Charles X was France’s penultimate monarch and believed the country should reform without overthrowing the monarchy, hence his celebrated device “time for repair, not demolition”.
He was the youngest of the royal heirs and, as the Comte d’Artois, was thought to have no chance of acceding to the throne. The most handsome of the Bourbon boys, he had many affairs and his closeness to his sister-in-law Marie Antoinette provoked gossip. Both shared a penchant for lavish spending and an ability to run up enormous debts.