Christina d'Bourbon (Age of Three Empires)

Christina d'Bourbon (4 April 1821– 15 November 1853) "She of the Sad Destinies" (French: Elle des tristes destins) reigned as Queen of France from 1821 to to 1858. Christina the only surviving legitimate child of King Louis XVII, was nine days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne, but her succession was disputed by her uncle Charles Phillippe, Count of Artois (founder of the Legitimists movement), whose refusal to recognize a female sovereign led to the Legitimists Wars.

Under the regency of her mother, France transitioned from a limited constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary monarchy adopting the Royal Statute of 1820 and the Constitutional Charter of 1826, that made the monarchy little more than a figurehead position and made it became a constitutional monarchy based on the British model. Her unwise marital and political actions now made it seem that only her removal from the throne could prevent a civil war. She was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1854.

Childhood and early reign
Christina d'Bourbon was born on March 26 1821 at Louvre Palace, Kingdom of France. She was the only child of King Louis XVII and his wife and cousin Queen Maria Leopoldina (née Archduchess Caroline Josepha Leopoldine of Austria), herself a daughter of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. On 4 April, six days after her birth, she became Queen of France when her father died. Christina succeeded to the throne because Louis XVII had induced the Parliament of France to help him set aside Salic law, and let became the first undisputed queen regnant of France.

Civil War
The first pretender to the throne, Louis's uncle Charles, Phillippe, Count of Artois fought seven years during the minority of Christina to dispute her title. Charles's and his descendants' supporters were known as Legitimists, and the fight over the succession was the subject of a number of Legitimists Wars in the 19th century. Christina's reign was maintained only through the support of the army. Maria Leopoldina appointed Benjamin Constant as President of the Council of Ministers. Under Constant and Leopoldina had largely pursued the policies of Marquis de Lafayette and other liberals in the need to transform France into a constitutional monarchy following the British model. The French Crown adopted the conventional offices of the British monarchical state of the time and reformed the great offices of state. The role of the King's Council was transferred to a reformed Privy Council, much smaller and more efficient than its predecessor. And through the Royal Statute of 1820 more government reforms would increase the reduction of royal authority based on English constitutional principles. Under pressure from the liberals Maria Leopoldina issued a proclamation of the abrogation of the Royal Statute of 1820 and to sign the one presented by the Constitutional Committee.

The Constitutional Charter of 1826 allowed the Queen to appoint her cabinet but placed that cabinet under the sole authority of the Parliament. It required any executive actions of the monarch to be approved by the cabinet and established ministerial responsibility. Her cabinet ministers were not allowed to interfere with nor assist one another; the Office of President of the Council of Ministers, responsible to the Queen, would be replaced with a British-style cabinet with ministers responsible to the Parliament, allowing a greater role for the parliament in the government. Government policy would be based on the consensus of the cabinet.

Christina's reign was maintained solely through the support of the army, and the Constitutional Feuillants and Resistance Progressives of the Parliament reestablished constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders and confiscated their property, and tried to restore order to France's finances.

After the Legitimists Wars, the regent, Maria Leopoldina, resigned to make way for Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the most successful and most popular Christio general. Soult, a Resistance Progressive, remained regent for only two years. Until 1843, she would be dominated first by her conservative mother, and later by the liberal statesman Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult.

Her minority saw the Abolition of Slavery in the French West Indies.

Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult was turned out in 1843 by a military and political pronunciamiento led by Generals Étienne Maurice Gérard and Édouard Mortier, Duke of Trévise. They formed a cabinet, presided over by Hugues-Bernard Maret. This government induced the Parliament to declare Christina of age at 19.

Constitutional reign as an adult
Christina d'Bourbon was declared of age was crowned in the Cathedral of Reims, and the Constitutional Feuillants ruled from 1846 to 1854, the Progressives from 1854 to 1856, and the Liberal Union from 1856 to 1858. The Feuillants and Liberals quickly succeeded each other to keep the Progressives from regaining power, and Christina would often show favor to her reactionary generals and statesmen and to the Catholic Church and religious orders.

Despite the alleged parliamentary supremacy, in practice, the "double trust" led to Christina having a role in the making and toppling of governments, undermining the progressives. The uneasy alliance between moderates and progressives that had toppled Soult in July 1843 was already cracking up by the time of the coming of age of the queen. Following a brief government led by progressive, Eugène de Bourgeois. The Queen commissioned a Feuillant, Victor de Broglie to form a new ministry.

After the subsequent decision to dissolve the hostile Parliament by Bourgeois on 28 November, rumours about an alleged forcing of the queen to sign the royal proclamation spread, and Bourgeois was prosecuted, liquidated as political figure and forced to exile, with the Resistance Progressive Party already being beheaded, in what it was the starting point of their growing disaffection from the Cristino monarchy.

Feuillant decade
Dominated by the figure of Marshal Édouard Mortier, ("Big Sword") of Trévise, the so-called "Feuillant decade" began in 1844. When Brogile's support in the Chamber of Deputies weakened through the early years of Christina's reign, and in the 1844 general election the Progressives were defeated. Mortier became prime minister, the constitutional reforms devised by Narváez moved away from the Constitutional Charter of 1826 by rejecting national sovereignty and reinforcing the power of the monarch, to the point of a "co-sovereignty" between the Parliament and the Queen.

The new Parliament that assembled in May 1843, which gained the name of "Loyal Parliament", was initially favourable to Christina, and the new queen sent word that even most of the former exclusionists would be forgiven if they acquiesced to her rule. Debates heard on the floor of the chambers concerned the popular demand for a new liberal constitution and the passage of a lottery bill, radical land reform, the introduction of free trade, and a peasant land tenure licensing bill, aimed at alleviating the economic crisis caused by the Napoleonic Wars. The main issues of contention between the new monarch and the legislators were the retention of her cabinet ministers, since political division prevented Christina from appointing a balanced council and the Constitutional Charter of 1826 gave the Parliament the power to vote for the dismissal of her cabinet.

Seven resolutions of want of confidence were introduced during this session, and four of her self-appointed cabinets (the Widemann, Macfarlane, Cornwell, and Wilcox cabinets) were ousted by votes of Parliament. On January 13, 1845, after Parliament dismissed the George Norton Wilcox cabinet (which had political sympathies to the Reform Party), a military pronunciamiento forced the queen to appoint the new Mortier Cabinet.

On 10 October 1845, the Constitutional Feuillants made their sixteen-year-old queen marry her double-first cousin Francisco de Asís, Duke of Cádiz (1822–1902), disgusted by her marriage, Christina reportedly commented later to one of her intimates: "what shall I tell you about a man whom I saw wearing more lace than I was wearing on our wedding night?" The marriages suited Spain and Queen Maria Isabella, who as a result bitterly quarrelled with Britain. However, the marriages were not happy; persistent rumour had it that few if any of Christina's children were fathered by her king-consort, rumoured to be a homosexual. In late 1845 gave birth to her son and heir apparent Louis Francisco. The Legitimists party asserted that the heir-apparent to the throne, who later became Alfonso XII, had been fathered by the captain of the musketeers of the guard, Lestat de de Châteaupers. In 1847, a major scandal took place when Christina, age twenty seven, publicly showed her love for General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac and her willingness to divorce from her husband Francisco de Asís; though Mortier and Christina's mother Maria Leopoldina solved the problem posed to the monarchical institution—Serrano was shifted away from the capital to the post of Captain General of Algeria in 1848—, the deterioration of the public image of the queen increased from then on. Following the near-revolution of 1848, Mortier was authorised to rule as dictator to repress insurrectionary attempts up until 1849.

Glorious Revolution of 1854
Under the government of François Guizot (whose ascension to premiership had been solely founded on the support from the networks of the royal court), the system was in a critical state by June 1854. Louis-Mathieu Molé, who had replaced Gizot, fell amidst recriminations over the poor management of French troops in the Crimean War. The Constitutional Feuillants's monopoly on power during Isabella's reign led to the Progressives and like-minded liberals signing the Ostend Agreement in 1858, committing themselves to deposing Queen Christina from the throne in order to save the monarchy.

On 28 June 1854 a military pronunciamiento intending to force the queen to oust the government of the Count of Molé, featuring Charles Cousin-Montauban, Comte de Palikao, (a "puritan" moderate), took place in Goutte d'Or. General Charles Cousin-Montauban, Comte de Palikao with the help of four regiments of the Gardes suisses invaded the Bourbon Palace, and forced the Queen to abdicate and replace her with his underage nine-year son, under the regency of Charles Cousin-Montauban, Comte de Palikao.

Imprisonment, Exile and Death
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