#king louis philippe

[victoriasdaily]

Request: Bruno Wolkowitch as Louis-Philippe I, King of France in "Entente Cordiale".

[encyclopedia-victoria-blog]

Queen Victoria with the King [Louis Philippe] by the Montpensier Summer House at Château d'Eu, 3 September 1843

Watercolour by Siméon Fort, c. 1843

(Royal Collection)

[encyclopedia-victoria-blog]

“The Leave-Taking, 7th September 1843”

Queen Victoria (yellow bonnet, center) and Prince Albert farewell King Louis Philippe of France aboard the yacht Victoria and Albert, 7 September 1843. Watercolour painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter c. 1843.

(Royal Collection)

[encyclopedia-victoria-blog]

“Louis-Philippe 1er. recvit la Visite de Victoria, Reine d'Angleterre” (c. 1843-49)

[Louis Philippe I receives the Visit of Victoria, Queen of England], French lithograph print by Nicolas Eustache Maurin.

Queen Victoria holds the hands of King Louis Philippe and Queen Marie Amélie of France with Prince Albert (left) and King Leopold of Belgium and his wife Louise of Orléans looking on. Leopold was the uncle of both Victoria and Albert, while Louise was the daughter of Louis Philippe.

(Royal Collection)

[drosera-nepenthes]

Possibly the most remarkable of all attempts at regicide was that made on the life of Louis Philippe of France in 1835. On July 28 of that year, Joseph Marie Fieschi, a Corsican adventurer, opposed to the régime to which Louis belonged, decided to kill the king. Knowing the uncertainty of aim at crucial moments, Fieschi determined to construct a gun that would shoot in all conceivable directions at once. So he built a weapon of his own pattern to accomplish his designs. It consisted of twenty-five rifle barrels inserted in a huge wooden stock so as to point outward, fanwise. In addition, some of the barrels were depressed, while others were raised. Having finished this infernal machine, Fieschi placed it in the window of a house in the Boulevard du Temple, knowing that the king would pass along that thoroughfare, on July 28, to commemorate his accession. Each barrel was loaded with four balls. Making a total of one hundred rifle balls aimed at the anointed head of the citizen king. When Louis passed. Fieschi applied a match, and a leaden hail rained upon the king. When his entourage recovered their respective senses, it was discovered that forty persons had been killed and many more wounded. Louis had escaped injury, although one of the bullets had grazed his sleeve, imbedding itself in the neck of one of the horses of his carriage. Three other attempts were made to kill Louis: by Alibaud in 1830, by Damiens in 1840, and by Lecomte and Henry in 1846.

The Royal Magazine, 1901

[gwydionmisha]

Re: Trump losing his shit over being mocked on Saturday Night Live and Mike Pence getting publicly booed at Hamilton.

 Let me tell you a story about King Louis Philippe of France.  Most Americans know next to nothing about what happened in France between the French revolution and WWI as we leave it out of most school curriculae, so I will quick explain first who Louis Philippe was.  There were a series of revolutionary governments followed by Napoleon.  They then briefly restored the Bourbon monarchy (the mainline descended from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), but there was another little Revolution (19th century French history is punctuated by revolutions and attempts at revolutions with various types of government tried in between), and they decided to try the Orleanist line, descended from Louis XIV's gay brother, Phillipe Duc D'Orleans) which also married back and forth into the mainline.  (How inbred were the French royal family?  Louis XIV's wife was his mother's niece and both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were descended from Phillipe.  Just saying.)  So anyway, they put Louis Philippe in power in 1830.  He was put in by the rich and was super conservative and also invaded Algeria, something that still causes all sorts of problems for both countries here in the 21st century.  Anyway, economic conditions in Europe deteriorated in the late 1840's and in 1848 there were a wave of Revolutions with varying success all over Europe.  One of those was in France and bounced Louis Philippe, but the thing I want to tell you is the reason I'll never forget him.

So he started out popular, because he favoured liberal (European 19th century liberal, not modern American liberal) policies and adopted a more bourgeois style instead of a monarchical one, but gradually he got more monarchical and autocratic and started endorsing policies that harmed workers. (Sound familiar at all?)  As his popularity declined, cartoonists started mocking him.  There was a really famous one of his face slowly morphing into a pear.  (Google Louis Philippe and poire and the image comes right up).  Like a who lot of thinned skinned autocrats, he could not handle even a hint of ridicule, so he had a law passed outlawing the use of his image in a mocking way, lampoons, etc., so the cartoonists just started drawing pears to stand in for the king in their cartoons.  So the king had images of pears outlawed.  No really.  Everyone back then thought it was ridiculous too. Outlawing free expression just pissed people off  because they were already angry about the Pear's autocratic ways, so ll over Paris and other places angry workers were to be found, people started doing graffiti in the shape of a pear's outline.

Looking at Trump and Pence screaming about how free speech is only for them and not for people who they don't like and/or who have less power than they do, all I keep thinking of is pears on walls all over Paris and a King made ridiculous by trying to outlaw them.

[ahumbleprofessor]

Over the weekend I found a neat book filled with political cartoons that lampoon dictators.

In this post are some of the greatest cartoons ever made, in which Honoré Daumier depicts the French King Louis Philippe as a pear. Philippe wasn’t popular in his day because he significantly favored the wealthy Bourgeoisie over the common man. 

The first cartoon above is based on a Charles Philipon drawing, very simple but extremely effective at desecrating the tyrant into a fruit.

The funniest part is that Philippe doesn’t honestly look much like a pair! This was supposed to be an exercise about how you can make anything look like anything else, but once the drawing was made the damage was done, and the association stuck.

Other artists turned to the pear as their tool of mockery and pear graffiti started appearing in the streets. Daumier joined into the fun too, and continued to satirize Philippe for the king’s entire reign.

This cartoon depicts the past, present, and future of Philippe as three faces on the same pear.

People initially expected Philippe to rule favorably towards the poor and working class, but it soon became clear where his priorities truly lay. The image portrays the changing public opinion of Philippe over time, and therefore Philippe’s reaction to the rising unrest among the population.

Daumier almost predicts that Philippe’s rule will fall eventually, as it did with the 1848 Revolution.

This cartoon plays with Christian Iconography. Usually a cloak sheltering people represents the christian icon of “The Virgin of Mercy”, in which Mary welcomes and protects the faithful.

Daumier portrays Philippe taking on this stance, but he instead shelters under HIS cloak the judges and politicians responsible for the military massacring of innocent civilians in a worker’s building in 1834 (they were looking for a sniper apparently).

It’s worth mentioning that at this point, we don’t even need to see Philippe’s face. Just a drawing of a giant pair wearing clothes is enough to invoke Philippe!

The lithograph above sadly has no pear, but it is one of Daumier’s most revered lithographs relating to Philippe’s reign. The cartoon portrays the aftermath of that 1834 massacre mentioned above with terrifying honesty. The corpses of unwitting people (and even a child under the slumped man in the center) lay bloody and wounded on the floor.

Although each of the above cartoons brilliantly jab at Philippe in their own unique ways, I think Daumier’s greatest achievement in lithography is Gargantua, seen above.

In this masterpiece, King Philippe devours the tax-money of the poor with his fruit-head and literally shits out handouts and favors to his rich friends.

I doubt anyone will ever create a more gloriously insulting caricature of a tyrant than this corrupt blob of stupidity.

For obvious reasons, this particular cartoon pissed Philippe off so much that he arrests and imprisons Daumier for six months. He also creates strict censorship laws and sends officers all over the country to destroy copies of the lithograph.

(this cartoon above is by Charles-Joseph Traviès de Villers, not Daumier)

Earlier this year I said that the cartoonist’s ultimate goal is “to use drawings to toy with our perception of the world”.

Daumier’s efforts at humiliating and critiquing Philippe by comparing his face to a pear is most certainly one of history’s most effective and amusing uses of cartooning in history.

The joke may be immature, but it dealt serious blows to the establishment, and in the process toyed with the public’s perception of their king. Even today you can’t tell the story of King Philippe without mentioning his fruity caricatures.

So if you ever find yourself thinking that being an artist is a useless pursuit, just remember the power of the pear.