NEMOURS, LOUIS CHARLES PHILIPPE RAPHAEL, DUC DE (1814-1896), second son of the duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, was born on Oct. 25, 1814. In 1830 he became a chevalier of the order of the Saint Esprit and entered the chamber of peers. As early as 1825 his name was mentioned for the throne of Greece, and in 1831 he was elected king of the Belgians, but Louis Philippe declined the honour for his son. In Feb. 1831 he accompanied the French army which entered Belgium to support the new kingdom against Holland, and took part in the siege of Antwerp. He accompanied the Algerian expeditions against the town of Constantine in the autumn of 1836, and again in 1837, taking it by assault on Oct.
13. He sailed a third time for Algeria in 1841, and served under General Bugeaud. On his return to France he became commandant of the camp of Compiegne. He had been employed on missions to England in 1835, 1838 and 1845, and to Berlin and Vienna in 1836. His marriage in 184o with Victoria, daughter of Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, was marked by a check to Louis Philippe's government in the form of a refusal to bestow the marriage dowry proposed by Thiers in the chamber of deputies. The death of his elder brother, Ferdinand, duke of Orleans, in 1842 gave him a position of greater importance as the natural regent in the case of the accession of his nephew, the young count of Paris, but he was not popular. On the outbreak of the revolu tion of 1848 he held the Tuileries long enough to cover the king's retreat, but took no active measures against the mob. He fol
lowed his sister-in-law, the duchess of Orleans, and her two sons to the chamber of deputies, but was separated from them by the rioters, and only escaped in the uniform of a national guard. He then settled with his parents in England. His chief aim was a reconciliation between the two branches of the house of Bourbon, as indispensable to the re-establishment of the French monarchy in any form. These wishes were frustrated on the one hand by the attitude of the comte de Chambord, and on the other by the determination of the duchess of Orleans to maintain the pre tensions of the count of Paris. Lengthy negotiations ended in 1857 with a letter, written by Nemours, in which he insisted that Chambord should adhere to the tricolour flag and to the principles of constitutional government.
Nemours had lived at Bushey House after the death of Queen Marie Amelie in 1866. In 1871 the exile imposed on the French princes was withdrawn, but he only returned to Paris after their disabilities were also removed. In March 1872 he was restored to his rank in the army as general of division, and placed in the first section of the general staff. In 1881 new decrees against the princes of the blood led to his withdrawal from Parisian society. He died at Versailles on June 26, 1896, the duchess having died at Claremont on Nov. 10, 1857.
See R. Bazin, Le Dec de Nemours (1907) ; Paul Histoire de la monarchic de juillet (4 vols., 1884, etc.).