CHARLES X, Comm D'ARTOIS, King of France: b. Versailles, 9 Oct. 1757; d. Austria, 6 Nov. 1836; grandson of Louis XV. He was the youngest son of the Dauphin and brother of Louis XVI. He spent a dissipated youth, and left France in 1789, after the first popular insurrection and destruction of the Bas tile. After Louis XVI had accepted the con stitution of 1791, he invited Charles to return to France, but he refused, and the Legislative Assembly, after stopping his allowance on the civil list, confiscated his property in 1792. He afterward assumed the command of a body of émigrés, and acted in concert with the Austrian and Prussian armies on the Rhine. At a later period he made a descent on the coast of Brittany, but despairing of success, withdrew to England, and for several years found an asylum in the palace of Holyrood at Edinburgh. After the downfall of Napoleon he entered France with the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and issued a judicious proclama tion, promising the reign of law and an entire oblivion of the past. In 1824 he succeeded his brother, Louis XVIII, under the title of Charles X, and gained a momentary popularity by the abolition of the censorship of the press, but reactionary measures soon followed, and the spirit of disaffection was so widely spread that a collision with the popular party became inevitable. Charles X endeavored to gain the
start by a coup d'flat, and issued his celebrated ordonnances putting an end to the freedom of the press, decreeing a new method of election and setting aside a recent election to the Chamber. The revolutionary movement tri umphed, and he was ignominiously driven from the throne in 1830. After formally abdicating in favor of his grandson, the Duc de Bor deaux, he revisited England, resumed his resi dence for a short time at Holyrood and finally settled at Goritz in Styria. He was the last sovereign of the elder line of the house of Bourbon, a typical member of the family, in capable of learning and incapable of forgetting. See Loireux, du regne de Charles X' (1834).