10 June – Exiled royals adrift in post-revolutionary Europe

Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of Bourbon, Madame Royale, and Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, were married on 10 June 1799.

Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte was the eldest and only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, she shared the tragic fate of her family: the fall of the monarchy, years of humiliation in captivity, and ultimately, the execution of her parents during the Reign of Terror. Upon her release, she joined her surviving paternal relatives. These remnants of the royal family were effectively homeless, dependent on the hospitality of foreign monarchs.

Louis Antoine’s fate was not much happier. As the eldest son of Louis XVI’s younger brother (and thus Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte’s cousin), he fled with his family amid the chaos of the revolution. His adult years were spent in military service, interspersed with periods of enforced idleness as the family moved frequently from country to country and palace to palace.

After nearly two decades in exile, the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France in 1814–1830, interrupted only by Napoleon’s Hundred Days. The Restoration first brought their childless uncle Louis XVIII to the throne, followed by Louis Antoine’s father, Charles X. For a few years, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte and Louis Antoine held the titles of Dauphin and Dauphine of France. They had no children.

Following the July Revolution of 1830, their distant cousin Louis Philippe of Orléans seized the throne, forcing them into exile once more. None of them ever returned to France.