Comte de Chambord

In 1830, Charles abdicated in favour of his grandson, whose supporters proclaimed him Henry V. However parliament instead decreed that the throne should go to a distant relative, the duc d'Orléans, who became Louis-Philippe, King of the French.

The Comte de Chambord (initially called also the duc de Bordeaux) remained the Legitimist[?] claimant to the throne under the July Monarchy[?] of Louis-Philippe, the Second Republic[?] and the Empire of Napoleon III. In the early 1870s, as the Empire collapsed following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Chambord was offered the throne by the French National Assembly. However he set one demand, that France abandon its tricolour and return to the previous Bourbon flag, which the National Assembly could not grant.

A temporary Third Republic was established, to wait for the childless Chambord's death and his replacement by the Comte de Paris, the Orleanist pretender whom Chambord had accepted as his heir. By Chambord's death in 1883, however, public opinion had swung behind the Republic, as the form of government that 'divides us least', in the words of former President Thiers.