The Heartbroken Louis Philippe

Chapter 698: The Heartbroken Louis Philippe

Paris, Tuileries Palace.

France was being tormented to the brink of death by Potato Late Blight and Cholera, and now news of a great colonial rebellion had reached Paris.

Louis Philippe could not understand why anyone was dissatisfied with him. His own life was so simple: in the morning, only eight servants attended to him. Louis XVI, after all, had had sixteen.

(The tale about the sixteen servants was probably more slander than truth, since the French royal treasury had been severely strained at the time.)

Why didn't the French people celebrate his glorious achievements in expanding the nation's borders? Why weren't they proud of the Obelisk and statues towering over Place de la Concorde?

(Place de la Concorde was originally called Louis XV Square. During the French Revolution, it was renamed Place de la Révolution, also known as "Execution Square."

Louis XVI, Danton, and Robespierre—three men who had once held France's fate in their hands—all died at the hands of the same executioner, on the same square.

Later, when the House of Bourbon was restored, it renamed the square "Place de la Concorde.")

The Obelisk in Place de la Concorde had been a gift from Muhammad Ali, the governor of Egypt. As for the colossal statue, it had been given by the former governor of Texas, who was currently locked up in Arkham Prison.

Although Louis Philippe had tried his best to present himself as more "bourgeois," he actually loved naming lands and buildings after himself.

For example, he had named a newly built ballroom in the Palace of Fontainebleau the "Louis Philippe Gallery." But because his taste was so poor, high society often mocked it as the "Wild Boar Gallery." For a while, it even became a hot topic in Paris's salons.