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 ORLEANS 699 1415, fought bravely at Agincourt, was wound- ed, taken prisoner, and carried to England, where during his captivity of 25 years he com- posed a series of miscellaneous poems. He was permitted to return to France in 1440, on condition of paying a ransom of 200,000 gold crowns and not bearing arms against England. He now married Mary of Cleves, who 22 years later bore him a son who was afterward Louis XII. On the death of his uncle Filippo Vis- conti, after a fruitless attempt to take posses- sion of the duchy of Milan, he obtained the county of Asti, his mother's dowry. Toward the close of his life he became involved in polit- ical intrigues against Louis XL, but the mon- arch treated him with contempt, and the duke is said to have died of grief in consequence. His poems were brought to light in 1734: by the abb6 Sallier. The best manuscript copy of them is in the British museum. The English portion of them was printed for the Roxburghe club (4to, London, 1827). III. Jean Baptist* Gas- ton, the youngest son of Henry IV. and brother of Louis XIII., born at Fontainebleau, April 25, 1608, died in Blois, Feb. 2, 1660. He was first known under the title of duke of Anjou, and early showed signs of opposition to his brother's minister Richelieu, shared in all the conspiracies against him, and on every occasion was frightened into submission and the betray- al of his friends. He consented to marry Mile, de Montpensier, the richest heiress in France, whom he had previously refused ; she bore him an only daughter, afterward greatly celebrated under the title of Mademoiselle, and died sud- denly. He and his mother, and nearly all the courtiers, were utterly worsted by Richelieu in the imbroglio known as the journee des dupes, October, 1630. The next year, his mother having fled to Brussels, he issued a threatening manifesto against the minister, repaired to the court of Charles III. of Lorraine, whose sister he secretly married notwithstanding the pro- hibition of his brother, and then, joining his mother, entered into a new plot which ended in open rebellion. The governor of Languedoc, Henri de Montmorency, was persuaded to take part in it, but was deserted by Gaston at the battle of Oastelnaudary, in September, 1632. Gaston submitted to terms dictated by Riche- lieu, but soon escaped again to Brussels, where he made his marriage known. The minister, taking advantage of this avowal, made the duke of Lorraine pay for his brother-in-law's revolt, and caused his duchy to be forcibly occupied in 1634, the king in person taking the city of Bar- le-duc. Gaston was spared, as " being of the royal blood of France, which must be respected, " but received orders to retire to Blois. In 1636 he was privy to, if not an accomplice in, a plan for the assassination of Richelieu. In ] 642 he shared in the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, and negotiated personally with Spain ; but the se- cret having been divulged and Cinq-Mars ar- rested, he gave evidence which sent his accom- plice to the scaffold. He evinced some personal bravery in 1644-'6 at the head of the French army in Flanders ; but during the war of the Fronde he served and betrayed by turns the king, the princes, the parliament, and the popu- lar party. He was finally exiled to Blois. He left Memoires de ce qui s^est passe deplus remar- quable en France de 1608 d 1635 (Amsterdam, 1683). IV. Philippe n., regent of France during the minority of Louis XV., born at St. Cloud, Aug. 2, 1674, died in Paris, Dec. 2, 1723. He was the second duke of the second house of Orleans-Bourbon, and the son of Philippe I., brother of Louis XIV., by his second wife, Elisabeth Charlotte of Bavaria. Until his fa- ther's death in 1701 he bore the name of duke of Chartres. He was highly gifted and accom- plished ; but from his sub-preceptor, the abbe Dubois, he learned infidelity and immorality. By his advice he married in 1692 Mile, de Blois, natural daughter of Louis XIV. by Mme. de Montespan, a union no less distasteful to his parents than to himself. He distinguished him- self at the siege of Mons in 1691, and in the taking of Namur in 1692, and was wounded at the battle of Steenkerk. In 1693, at Neer- winden, leading the light cavalry, he displayed such skill and bravery that the jealousy of Louis XIV. obliged him to leave the army. His forced inactivity led him into dissipation, but he devoted a portion of his time to painting and natural philosophy. After the death of Charles II. of Spain, he signed, in conjunction with his father, a protest against the late sov- ereign's will, which ignored their rights to the Spanish crown in case the elder Bourbon line should become extinct. In 1706 the king ap- pointed him commander of the French army in Italy, but placed him in fact under the con- trol of Marshal Marsin, who, opposed by Prince Eugene, lost the battle of Turin, Philippe try- ing in vain by skilful manoeuvres to retrieve the fortune of the day. In 1707 in Spain he subdued the provinces of Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia, took Le>ida, which 60 years before had frustrated the efforts of the great Conde, successfully conducted several expedi- tions in 1708, and was received with great hon- ors in Madrid. Suspected of aspiring to the crown of Spain, he was recalled to France, was obliged to make a formal renunciation of all his claims or pretensions to the Spanish throne, and forbidden to appear again at Ver- sailles. Once more exiled from active life, he devoted much of his time and money to chemical experiments, and was charged with poisoning the dauphin, the duke and duch- ess of Burgundy, and their second son, in order to open his way to the throne. He repelled the accusation, and insisted upon a trial, his chemist at the same time offering to surrender himself ; but Louis XIV. gave him no oppor- tunity of publicly establishing his innocence, though Philippe vindicated his good name after- ward by the paternal care which he bestowed upon the infant king, then the only bar be- tween him and the throne. After the death