CHAMBORD, Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieudonné d'Artois, Duke of Bordeaux, Count of. - Head of the senior branch of the House of Bourbon and pretender to the throne of France, b. in Paris on 29 Sept. 1820, d. at Frohsdorf on 24 Aug. 1883. His father, the duke of Berry, heir to the throne of France, had been assassinated in Feb. 1820, and so the infant Henry was called "the child of the miracle." He changed the title of duke of Bordeaux to that of count of C. in 1821, when he was given the castle of the same name. After the abdication of his grandfather Charles X because of the revolution of 2 Aug. 1830, Louis Philippe duke of Orléans, son of Philippe "Égalité," refused to have him recognized as king by the insurgent people of Paris, and so the child too had to depart for that exile in England and Austria, from which he never returned.
By order of Charles X, he was educated according to the rigidly conservative and absolutist tradition, and he soon became the center of attraction of all the legitimist currents of Europe, to the point of becoming their most authoritative exponent. After the death of Charles X, and once the conflicts with the supporters of his uncle Louis, count of Angoulême, had been overcome, he was recognized by all French legitimists under the name of Henry V, in opposition to the Orleanist party. On 7 Nov. 1846 Henry of C. married the Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria-Este, by whom he had no children. The upheavals of 1848 and the related political events increasingly alienated the count's mind from the principles of liberty and popular sovereignty; and the intransigent circular dictated at Wiesbaden on 30 Aug. 1850, aimed at rejecting the idea of a restoration by plebiscite, foreclosed any possibility of his return to the throne. He invited his followers to abstain from any collaboration in public life during the Second Empire, showing himself from as early as 1856, together with the duke of Nemours, averse even to the possible acceptance of the tricolor banner. Most devoted to the Pontiff and to the Holy See, a supporter and defender of the temporal power (1866), he sympathized with all those who rushed to enlist in the papal ranks, and first among them with the heroic de Charette, to whom he was also bound by ties of kinship. In 1871, indeed, he did not hesitate to declare that, as soon as he had ascended the throne, he would forthwith reclaim the temporal rights of Pius IX. At that time a restoration of the monarchy in France appeared almost imminent. After the fall of Napoleon III, Henry of C. had been able to set foot again on his native soil (1 July 1871), but he refused to bring himself to replace the white lily banner with the tricolor, even though he had then, in Aug. 1873, come to a reconciliation with the Orleanists, in the sense that Henry V would again be king of France, and Philip II of Orléans, count of Paris, his heir to the throne. The reaffirmation of his principles and the refusal of any compromise concerning the banner once the restoration had taken place (letter of 27 Oct. 1873 sent from Salzburg to Chesnelong) caused every possibility of a monarchical restoration to founder. Further negotiations conducted at Versailles with Mac Mahon did not, again because of C.'s intransigence, have a favorable outcome: the National Assembly thus definitively proclaimed the Republic on 25 Febr. 1875. All that was left to Henry of C. then was to retire definitively to Frohsdorf in Austria, where he died, leaving the memory of a most religious, generous and upright man.
Bibliography4 works
Paolo Dalla Torre