Photograph of King Louis Philippe in his late 60's early 70's, c. 1840's.

Portrait of King Louis-Philippe by the German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter in 1841.

Portrait of Louis-Philippe as a young man by the German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter c. 1793-1810.

Portrait of Maria Amalia Teresa of Naples and Sicily, wife of Louis Philippe and Queen of the French by the French artist Franz Louis-Édouard Rioult c.1839.

Photo of Maria Amalia Teresa c. 1860's around the age of 80.

Portrait of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans (known as Philippe Égalité), Louis Philippe's father by the French painter Antoine François Callet.

Portrait of Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans, Louis Philippe's mother by the French painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

This is a bronze 10 cent coin of France minted in 1843 to be issued in the French colonies depicting Louis Philippe d'Orléans known as King Louis Philippe I of the House of Orléans The obverse depicts a portrait King Louis Philippe I laureated head left with the inscription King Louis Philippe I Roi Des Françaises (Louis Philippe I King of the French) with the inscription TIOLIER ET BARRE below the portrait denoting the engravers Nicolas-Pierre Tiolier and Jacques-Jean Barre. The reverse shows the denomination of 10 CENT.(Centemes) encircled by a laurel wreath with the date 1843 below. At the top is in French COLONIES FRANÇAISES (Colonies of France). There is a letter A to the right that denotes the Paris mint and a small icon to the right that shows a stylized stern of a ship which denotes the Workshop director (Paris): Albin-Etienne De Cambry. The coin was struck for use on the Marquesas Islands.

Jacques-Jean Barre was the father of a dynasty of talented and prolific French engravers. He is referred to as Jacques-Jean Barre in philatelic (stamps and related) publications and Jean-Jacques Barre in numismatic (money and related) publications. Jacques-Jean Barre was born on August 3, 1793 in Paris to Marie-Antoinette Mauroy (a lemonadier / served drinks in a bar) and Jacques Barre from Mantargis who had come to Paris to find his fortune and instead worked as a ravaudeur (darning or mending old clothes). A family of modest means, they could not afford to spend much on his education so at the age of twelve he was apprenticed for three years to one Master Hervieux, a carver, founder and gilder.

Unfortunately his father died leaving is wife and son nothing, and while the fifteen year old Jacques-Jean took whatever jobs he could find, they barely managed to survive. In dire circumstances, and seeing little other options, he accepted a proposal from a wealthy family to serve for five years in place of their son in the military in July of 1809, a practice not uncommon at the time. He was enlisted into a fire brigade in Paris where he was still able to complete his apprenticeship as a carver in his free time. He then took employment as a workman, and later an engraver, at the Monnaie de Paris where Pierre-Joseph Tiolier, the Graveur General des Monnies, took notice of his talent and took him on as a pupil in 1811. That same year he married Marguerite Louise de Nogaret, the daughter of a hosiery merchant, and together they would have six children.

Barre was released from his military obligations in 1814 and was able to work full time under Pierre-Joseph Tiolier as well as his son Nicolas-Pierre establishing himself as a respected artist of medals working at 14 rue des Marais-Saint-Germain. In 1817 Nicolas-Pierre replaced his father as Engraver General of Coins and he work together with Barre on important jobs which furthered his reputation as an engraver. In 1838, Nicolas-Pierre privately agreed to name Barre as his successor when he decided to retire on the stipulation that he purchase his equipment and tools. That day came in 1840 when Nicolas-Pierre resigned and sought to appointed Barre as his successor. However, there was reluctance to accept Tiolier's decision to appoint him, possibly because of the private contractual agreement they had made before and the stipulation put forth at that time.

Barre was instead appointed acting General Engraver on a trial basis on September 14, 1840. It did not take long for his work to empress King Louis-Philippe enough for him to be appointed to that position on a permanent basis in December of 1842. Unfortunately by this time Barre was exhausted and ill from his frantic work schedule which required him to hand over his duties to his own son Albert who was serving as Deputy Engraver General of coins. That same day, a royal decree awarded him with the unprecedented title of Honorary Engraver General of French Coins, and he would continue, when he was able, to work alongside his son Albert who had become his father's closest collaborator until his death on July 10, 1855.

Today he is best known as a highly prolific engraver of coins, medals and tokens but is also well known for creating the first series of French postal stamps which were printed in the Hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris until 1876. He also created the Great Seal of France and engraved bank notes as well as the first Swiss coinage which was first minted in Paris. His privy mark on coins was a greyhound head looking right. His son Désiré-Albert Barre succeeded him as general engraver and Jacques-Jean Barre's eldest son, Jean-Auguste Barre, a talented sculptor, and official portrait painter of the imperial family, succeeded his younger brother as engraver general after his death in 1878.

Commemorative medal depicting Jacques-Jean Barre with the reverse showing his name, birth date, and date that he passed away, by his sons Albert Désiré Barre and Jean Auguste Barre (top) Portrait of Jacques-Jean Barre at his desk with engraving tools (middle) The work desk of Jacques-Jean Barre at the Paris Mint.

Nicolas-Pierre Tiolier was born in Paris (on the Rue Baillette in the parish of Saint-Germanin-l'Auxerrols) on May 9, 1784. His mother was Marie-Marguerite Grosos and his father Pierre-Joseph Tiolier who served as the 15th Engraver-General of France, so you might say he was born to the profession. Not all the sons follow the father, but from a young age his parents exposed them all to the arts which Nicolas-Pierre readily took to and he eagerly learned the profession of his father and more. He was the pupil of his father as well as the gemstone engraver and medalist Romain-Vincent Jeuffroy and the sculptor Claude Dejoux. He also learned the craft of medal-sculpture and minting from those who both lived and worked at the mint with his father like the chemists Guyton de Morveau, Sivard de Beaulieu and the Inspector General Gengembre.

Nicolas-Pierre won the Prix de Rome for engraving, a French scholarship for art students, on June 25, 1805 which entitled him to live, study and work at the Villa Medici in Rome from 1806 to 1811. There he worked on, and showed at, the Salon of 1812 where he presented several engraved medals. After this he worked regularly on state projects, probably with the help of his father. In September of 1812 he was an auditor and by April 1814 was given the job of engraving the new coin type for Louis XVII, the great seal and the king's seal from design to completion. He then produced the coins of Charles X and Louis-Philippe d'Orleans.

The powers that be were impressed by his work and he earned the right to succeed his father on September 11, 1816 as the 16th Engraver General of Monies at the age of 32. Nicolas-Pierre Tiolier was not just an engraver but also a sculptor and took interest in all aspects of the minting process and new innovations in that field. He assisted Moreau with the broken ferrule, Thonnelier on the monetary press and the Chemists D,Arcet and Gay-Lussac on the wet test method for silver as well as assisting in monetary reforms, seeking to standardize the decimal principle and the recasting of copper currencies.

Tiolier married Adelaide-Sophie Cleret on March 27, 1817 and the couple had three children, two girls and a boy. He was well prepared to start a family as he had enough money to support them and held a fortune in real estate passed down to him by his father. Although he was busy in the mint and with his family, he also created art medals and sculptures which he exhibited at salons. Unfortunately his wife passed away suddenly on February 11, 1839 at the age of 43 which seems to have had a noticeable effect on his productivity and will continue working as he began looking to step away from his duties. He sought to appoint the man he had helped learn the trade and frequent collaborator Jacques-Jean Barre as his successor but the Committee on Coins and Medals sought to reapply the decree of 1791 that stipulated that the appointment of Engraver General of Coins was to be filled by a competition. After some objection he decided to simply appoint Barre as Interim Engraver General and retired in 1840.

Nicolas-Pierre Tiolier passed away on September 25, 1843 in one of his apartments he owned on the Grande Rue Verte. He had passed the job to Jacques-Jean Barre, his loyal and trusted collaborator whom he had mentored. A man of humble beginnings, the son of a Ravaudeur and Lemonadier, who mastered the trade as few had before him rose with Tiolier's help to the position of Engraver General, earned the unprecedented title of Honorary Engraver General of French Coins for life, founded a dynasty of engravers and became one of the most respected engravers to ever work in the Monnaie de Paris.

Portrait of Nicolas Pierre Tiolier by the French painter Francois-Edouard Picot 1805 (top) Portrait of Nicolas Pierre Tiolier by Swiss sculptor Jean-Etienne Chaponnière (bottom)

King Louis Philippe I of France, known before his accession as Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans, was the King of the French from August 9, 1830 to February 24, 1848, after the July Revolution which led to the abdication of his predecessor Charles X. He was born in the Palais Royal, the residence of the D'Orleans family in Paris, on October 6, 1773 to Louis Philippe, at the time the Duke of Chartres and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon who was a descendant of Louis XIV. Although her father, Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre, was the grandson of Louis XIV and his mistress Madam de Montespan thus illegitimate, the line was later legitimized. Her father was also very wealthy, possibly the wealthiest man in France, and since his son passed away before him, she became the sole heir to his fortune and many estates. In 1769, she married the Duke of Chartres, the future Duke d'Orléans, and this fortune passed, upon her death in 1821, into the possession of the House of Orléans.

The House of Orleans, a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, had a tenuous relationship with the senior branch as the Orleans would succeed to the throne if the elder branch died out and Louis Philippe's father was exiled from court, possibly due to distrust and the fear of treachery. Beginning in 1782, Louis Philippe received a liberal education by his tutor, the writer and educator Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis who had a brief affair with his father. She and his father were probably the source of his liberal and revolutionary sympathies as a young man during a time of upheaval and looming social change. Both he and his father were sympathetic towards the growing revolutionary movement and from October 1788 to October 1789, the Palais Royal served as a meeting-place for revolutionaries. He also joined the Jacobin club with the approval and support of his father.

During the uncertain and volatile time of the so called constitutional monarchy, after revolutionaries stormed the palace of Versailles and King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were moved to Tuileries Palace and held there as virtual prisoners, Louis-Philippe was summoned to take his place in the French military, as Colonel of the Chartes Dragoons, in June of 1791 to serve in the French revolutionary wars. A major result of the French revolution was the uncertainty it created among the other major European powers either looking to take advantage of the upheaval or to contain the spread of French revolutionary principles to their own domains.

The French, seeing the very real possibility of an invasion by these powers in support of King Louis XVI, war was declared on Prussia and Austria in 1792 and France went on the offensive. Louis Phillipe's regiment under the command of General Charles François Dumouriez was sent north to Flanders and it was there that he first saw action in battles in the Wallon region of the Austrian Netherlands at Boussu, Quaregnon and Quievrain were he was able to rally a unit of retreating soldiers earning him a promotion to brigadier.

After the Declaration of Pillnitz which affirmed the support of Prussia and the Habsburg / Austrian controlled Holy Roman Empire for King Louis XVI, Prussian and Austrian forces defended against French offensives, while their forces, under the command of the Duke of Brunswick, marched on Paris. Their advance was halted on September 20, 1792 at the Battle of Valmy, Named for the small northern village in Champagne-Ardenne where the battle took place. There Louis Philippe commanded a battery of artillery which was instrumental in driving back the enemy earning himself another commendation and a promotion to the rank of lieutenant-general. On the battlefield he was dismayed at the incompetence of the new administration and its inability to keep the troops supplied. In Paris he was dismayed by the more radical elements and policies of the new republic.

After the deposition and execution of Louis XVI, things got steadily worse. His commander General Dumouriez shared this dismay and they were both implicated in a plot to ally with the Austrians to restore the 1791 Constitution. The increasing chaos and the ever worsening reign of terror drove the two to flee France into exile. His father, who changed his name to Philippe Égalité (equality), was a supporter of the revolution and the elimination of absolute monarchy, voted for the execution of king Louis XVI and even condemned his son for for deserting France, was still arrested and tried for having "strong presumptions of complicity with the enemies of Liberty". This complicity was referring to his son and his relationship to the traitor General Dumouriez. For this crime he was quickly tried and was executed by guillotine on November 6, 1793.

The nineteen year old Louis Philippe was now an exile and a wanted man. He traveled under an assumed name until he reached Switzerland where he met up with the Countess of Genlis and his sister Adelaide, ending up in Zürich but the officials there insisted he leave. In order for them to preserve their neutrality they could not be seen to be protecting a wanted man. To protect his sister and former tutor he left them once they reached Zug and traveled to the Alps and the city of Basel where he sold all but one of his horses. He continued on from there, never staying in one place for long, until he reached Reichenau, a village on the Upper Rhine in what was then a part of the independent leagues of Grisons, or the "Grey Leagues". There he took a position in October 1793 as a teacher of geography, history, math and languages at a boy's boarding school under the name Monsieur Chabos. It is there where he heard of his fathers execution. This was the beginning of what would be a twenty one year exile from France.

In a few years time Louis Philippe left Reichenau to travel extensively. In 1795 he traveled to Scandinavia where he stayed for about a year in Finland, it is here he may have had a child with a woman named Beata Caisa Wahlborn. He then traveled to the United States where he stayed for four years visiting his brothers (who were also in exile) in Philadelphia. He and his brothers traveled throughout the U.S. territories including New York and Boston where he settled for a bit and took a job teaching French. In his travels in the U.S. he met important statesmen such as George Clinton, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. His travels in the U.S. had a profound influence of his political views.

He was in Boston when he learned that his mother had been exiled to Spain. He sought to return to Europe via Havana but was expelled by Spanish Authorities leading them to Nova Scotia where he met Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent. He became fast friends with Edward and other British royalty which led them to travel to England where he again took up the profession of teaching, this time mathematics and geography at the Great Ealing private school. In 1809 he proposed to Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily who was the niece of Marie Antoinette, whom his father had a role in executing. After some assurances she accepted and they were wed in Palermo on November 25, 1809.

After the fall of Napoleon and the Bourbon Restoration, Louis Philippe, now reconciled with the Bourbons and styled Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, returned to France where his cousin Louis XVIII was king. Once back in France Louis Philippe was able to recover much of his family's lost wealth. However Louis Philippe clashed with his cousin due to differences in politics and old grudges that remained between the two houses. Upon the death of Louis XVIII in 1824, hastened by obesity, gout and gangrene, he was succeeded by his brother Charles X with whom Louis Philippe had a much better relationship. However the Louis Philippe was opposed to the policies of the ultra-royalist faction leaders under Charles's reign leading him to be viewed as a threat to his rule.

By 1830 the reign of Charles had become very unpopular leading to clashes that lead to the July Revolution (Second French Revolution) and the Three Glorious Days. In the end, the Legitimists (supporters of Charles) lost and Charles X and his son, the Dauphin Louis Antoine, abdicated and left for Britain. Although Charles sought to have his ten year old grandson Henri the Duke of Bordeaux succeed him, the provisional government chose Louis Philippe who was known to be liberal and was already acting as regent to young Henri. Louis Philippe was crowned on August 9, 1830 and he assumed the title of King of the French instead of the King of France, noting that he was king of, and answerable to, the people and France was not his personal possession. This liberal constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe I would be referred to as the July Monarchy, thus the fears of the Bourbons were realized, the cadet house of the Orleans had displaced the senior House of Bourbon. The July Revolution set off other similar movements across Europe, some successful like the August uprising in Brussels that resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Belgium, others unsuccessful like the November Uprising in Poland.

He presented himself as unpretentious and in the early days he was very popular and called the "Citizen King." but his reign marked the triumph of the wealthy bourgeoisie and a return to influence of many former Napoleonic officials. Under his rule the working class saw little benefits, there was a rise in income inequality and a general depression in the industry and agriculture. Although the constitutional charter of 1814 was liberally revised, the new government was unresponsive to the economic needs and political desires of the lower classes. In foreign policy, Louis Philippe promoted Anglo-French friendship and supported colonial expansion. He supported Belgian independence and the Quadruple Alliance of 1834.

In the end Louis Philippe became increasingly unpopular and through his reign he was the target of seven assassination attempts. He was in a difficult situation where he was facing opposition on both sides, on one side the legitimists who sought a restoration of the Bourbons, on the other by the the liberal elements who sought another revolution to expel the monarchy and establish a republic. This culminated in the February Revolution of 1848 which led to Louis Philippe's abdication in favor of his nine year old grandson Prince Philippe of Orléans, Count of Paris, but a republic (the Second Republic) was establish instead with Louis Napoléon Bonaparte as President (later to become emperor Napoleon III). The king fled to England in disguise, in fear for his life, where he lived in Claremont as the Comte de Neuilly until his death on August 26, 1850.

On Louis Philippe, Victor Hugo in Les Misérables describes his situation, his contradictory nature, and his changes in fortunes in turbulent times:

"He had to bear in his own person the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution...In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old horse in order to obtain bread. At Reichenau, he gave lessons in mathematics, while his sister Adelaide did wool work and sewed. These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic....He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobins' club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: "Young man!"...Take away Louis Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the man is good. He is good at times even to the point of being admirable."

Louis-Philippe and His Sons Leaving the Chateau of Versailles on Horseback by Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, 1846