Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1873-01-30
DYING IN EXILE.
A Story of Five French Crowned
Heads.
From the New York Herald

A Story of Five French Crowned
Heads.
From the New York Herald.
The "Man of December" having gone
out with the snow of January, it will
set people thinking about those "best
laid plans of mice and men" which
"gang aft a-glee." Royalty in France
since De Launy surrendered the Bastile
to the mob has been very unfortunate.
Indeed, since that day French kings
and emperors have done well to pro-
vide places of refuge for themselves on
foreign shores, where they might die
in peace in case of accident to the ma
chine of government.
The fate of Louis XVI. furnished
them with proper incentive to this
course; for kings as we'll as cemmoners
can sacrifice good deal to be spared
personal acquaintance with the guillo-
tine. Louis XVI. indeed once tried to
escape from France in disguise. He
made one nights journey from Paris
in coach, but was recognized and ar
rested at Varennes. He wanted to die
in exile; but they brought him back a
prisoner, to die year and a half later
on the scaffold. The people gazed at
the captive King in silence, which must
have been very difficult for Frenchmen.
But there was reason. Placards were
posted everywhere with the laconic in
scription: "Whoever applauds the
King shall be whipped; whoever in
suits the King shall be hanged" The
obliterating wave of the Revolution
soon flung one man on the rock of
power who had the ability to stay there
until the storm subsidized, and who then
ruled the new France after the .deluge
with the cold iron of his will and the
glittering steel OF his military genius.
The Citizen Consul became the Citizen
Emperor, and Napoleon .Bonapalte,
adored by the French and hated and
feared by all else, was the arbiter of
Europe. Then came the decadence.-
France could not fight all Europe for
ever. Knocked cut of time in 1914,
Napoleon was sent in exile to Elba.-
Again he rose to try conclusions
Waterloo was where the last terrific
round was fought, and the sound of the
great gladiator's fall awoke an echo
which reverberated as far as the rock
of st. Helena. There it died out, and
Napoleon 1. died an exile along with it.
This is No. 1. Here we may look back
to the line direct. The son of Louis
XVI, like his father, would not be
permitted to die in exile, so the poor
Dauphin, the phantom Louis XVII,
disappears from prison or dies there in.
795-blotted out anyhow. The son of
the Corsican, the young, sickly King of
Rome, is taken to Vienna after Water
loo, is made phantom duke, and pines
and dies in exile in the gloom of Schon-
brunu. This is No. 2. Louis XVIII.
who came into France when Napoleon
went to Elba, in 1914, ran into exile
again for 100 days, when Napoleon re-
turned in 1915, and the wayward fates,
on account of this thorough scare, per-
haps, allowed him to die inl France in
1924. He was the only French mon
arch of the century who got the chance
and he availed himself of it. Charles
x, who succeeded his brother, was
sent kiting after "the glorious days of
July" in 1880. He went to Holyrood, i,
in Scotland; then to the Castle OF Hrad-
chin, in Prague; and then to Goritz, far
away in Hlyria, where he died in peace
and piety in 1915. This is No. 8. All
this while "pear-headed" Louis Phil
ippe, the Citizen King, was working
his way along 184S in the odd manner
which has made him in his zenith and
hiseclipse always a conlicaI figure.
The year 1913 was shaking-up time
all over Europe, ard when tie bsrri-
cades were shaken off his head. Glad
that his head did not follow the crown.
he fed, and another of the "anointed''
was added to the list of GalIic sove
reigns whose light was snufed out in
exile. This is No. I. He died quietly
at Ciaremont, in England in 1850, about
twenty miles from ChiseIhurst, where
Napoleon III. died, in pain and exile,
yesterday morning. This lis No. o.
The two men who were their kingly or
imperial crowns for about eighteen
years each had many experiences in
common-early hardships, later luck,
and final disaster.
We cap, therefore, count up five
monarchical wrecks from France alone
in the nineteenth centIlry-three Ma
poleons, one Bourbon, and one Orlean-
list. Who shall be the next? Govern
ment by the people is denounced by
monarchists and imperialists alike as
unsafe; government by the anointed