LOUIS XVIII., brother of Louis XVI., and called Monsieur during his brother’s reign, flew from Paris and joined the Emigrants along with his brother, Count d’Artois, and took up arms, which he was compelled to forego, to wander from one foreign Court to another and find refuge at last in England; on Napoleon’s departure for Elba he returned to France and was installed on the throne as Louis le Desire, but by the reappearance of the former on the scene he was obliged to seek refuge in Belgium, to return for good after the battle of Waterloo, July 9, 1815, with Talleyrand for minister and Fouche as minister of police; he reigned but a few years, his constitution being much enfeebled by a disease (1755-1824).

LOUIS NAPOLEON (Napoleon III.), nephew of the first emperor, born at Paris, brought up at Augsburg and in Switzerland; became head of the family in 1832; he began a Bonapartist propaganda, and set himself to recover the throne of France; an abortive attempt in 1836 ended in a short exile in America and London, and a second at Boulogne in 1840 landed him in the fortress of Ham under sentence of perpetual imprisonment; escaping in 1846 he spent two years in England, returning to France after the Revolution of 1848; elected to the Constituent Assembly and the same year to the Presidency he assumed the headship of the Republic, and posed as the protector of popular liberties and national prosperity; struggles with the Assembly followed; he won the favour of the army, filled the most important posts with his friends, dissolved the Constitution in 1851 (Dec. 2), was immediately re-elected President for ten years, and a year later assumed the title of Emperor; he married the Spanish Countess Eugenie in 1853, and exerted himself by public works, exhibitions, courting of the clergy, gagging of the press, and so on to strengthen his hold on the populace; in the Crimean War (1854-56) and the Lombardy campaign (1859) he was supported by Britain; in 1860 he annexed Savoy and Nice; ten years later suspecting the enthusiasm of the army, he plunged into war with Germany to rekindle its ardour, on a protest arising from the scheme to put Leopold of Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne; France was unprepared, disaster followed disaster; the Emperor surrendered to the Germans at Sedan, Sept. 2, 1870; a prisoner till the close of the war, he came to England in 1871 and resided with the Empress at Chislehurst till his death (1808-1873).

LOUIS PHILIPPE, king of the French from 1830 till 1848, born at Paris, eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, renounced his titles along with his father, and joined the National Guard and the Jacobins at the Revolution as M. Egalite; after the defeat of Neerwinden 1793, where he commanded the centre, he fled to Austria and Switzerland and supported himself by teaching; after three years in the United States he came to London in 1800, and on the fall of Napoleon repaired to Paris and recovered his estates; he gained popularity