Pretensions of a Pretender

...Has he, as some suggest, been consciously preparing the way for restoration of the Monarchy...

...The Count of Paris, it should be said, is not necessarily aiming at an immediate restoration of the monarchy...

...Across the way a bookseller can turn up a dusty copy of the illustrated life of the Count published in 1956, with all the trappings of a campaign biography...

...Henri is de Gaulle's choice as his successor, Express affirmed, "and the Count of Paris knows it...

...troops from Europe...

...Wherever he goes, the crowds cheer him and his family as they cheer the royalty of Great Britain, Belgium, or any other country...

...Henri burst into laughter, certainly more than the guard thought appropriate...

...For his part, Henri refused the suggestion of Royalist officers that he stage a coup...

...In June 1940, however, he was authorized by Premier Paul Reynaud to enter the Foreign Legion (which his grandfather had founded) under a pseudonym and as a private...

...When he launched his newsletter in 1948 the Count of Paris made it clear that he, too, was addressing himself not to Monarchists, but without distinction to all Frenchmen...

...At the beginning of World War II, in an attempt to keep Italy out of the War and obtain information from the royal families in Athens, Sofia and Belgrade, Henri served as a confidential agent for France...

...It could happen again.' "Would you agree to be President of the Republic...

...Visitors to the spectacular chateau at Amboise are taken through the grounds by guides wearing the coat of arms of the House of France...

...If at the moment I can be useful to the country, I should be at its disposal without raising the question of regime...

...During the Algerian War, Henri wrote: "Don't break with your own future, follow General de Gaulle...

...Once they arrived in Switzerland, the story goes, his guard said to him: "Have some coffee, even a brandy-the Republic is paying for it...

...The question mark is the attitude of General de Gaulle, whose term as President ends in 1965...

...A recent book entitled La Succession, by former Socialist Deputy Arthur Conte, leaves a place for Prince Henri in French government if he is willing to accept the substance (election as President) without demanding the symbol (a crown) as well...

...Nor is the count of the traditional Monarchist school...

...His Royal Highness Prince Henri, Count of Paris and would-be King Henri VI, has been working quietly but fervently for the restoration of his throne: "10 hours a day for the past 34 years,' as a French journalist recently remarked...

...Through his travels, his publications, his encounters with chiefs of government in France and abroad, he has been his own greatest promoter...

...Although the Count's availability has long been well known, only lately has it been given serious thought...

...In 1931 he married his cousin, Isabelle d'Orleans-Bragance, descendant of a parallel branch of the Orleans family and the emperors of Brazil...

...The Count reached Algiers with a false passport...

...He later made a trip to Vichy to try to persuade Marshal Pétain to move to Algiers...

...Not long ago, for example, the influential weekly Express headlined its lead article, "Why de Gaulle has Chosen the Count of Paris...

...Admiral Darlan took power in Algiers in the name of Pétain...

...Pretensions of a Pretender By Herbert Lottman Paris An increasing number of Frenchmen believe that the next President of the Republic will be, simultaneously, King of France...

...Similarly, it is recalled that the Count's direct ancestor, the Duke of Orleans, was willing, as a 19th century compromise, to stand on a balcony with Lafayette holding a tricolor flag and to be elected Louis-Philippe-not King of France, but King of the French...

...It is possible," the Count of Paris has said, "that sooner than one expects the French will need the principle of stability, impartiality, and superior justice that I represent, without feeling the need to rebuild a throne...

...In La Succession, Arthur Conte says: "Nobody any longer smiles at the idea.' Herbert Lottman, a freelance writer, frequently reports on the French scene for this magazine...

...Suddenly news of Darlan's assassination arrived, and the Count himself was accused of being one of the killer's inspirators...

...The fact remains, however, that his claim has neither the public appeal nor historical solidity of the Count of Paris...

...That year, too, he visited Ben Gurion in Israel...

...Whatever his genealogical pretensions, Charivari declared, several other candidates (Jacques-Henri, Prince Napoleon, Prince Xavier de Bourbon-Parme), by virtue of their right-wing convictions, are more deserving of the throne than the Count of Paris, "who incarnates practically nothing of what we want...

...At the age of 24 he favored a corporate state system, but later confessed to being wrong...

...His availability has been a fact of life ever since the death of his father, the Duke of Guise, who was the previous pretender...

...No," he replied...

...His second son, François, died on an Algerian battlefield in the fall of 1960...

...In 1947, Pretender Jacques-Henri issued a declaration to the effect that he was legitimate heir to the throne...

...and Britain, in opposing French Algerian policy, were digging their own graves because of the Communist menace...

...When the Count of Paris travels to the provinces he is received in white gloves, with an honor guard...

...The Economist observes, however, that de Gaulle may hesitate to go through with this plan, since a royal candidate would lose many "republican" votes in an election...

...He has since said that at that point Eisenhower blocked his chances for taking over by refusing to allow him use of the radio...

...He opposed the Right-wing Action Française, stated publicly that he did not read the extremist weekly Aspects de la France, and repudiated the idea of a bloody coup to gain power...

...Interestingly, the Fifth Republic struck out the previous ineligibility of members of the Royal family to become President of the Republic...

...He owns vast forests in France, the Chateau of Amboise in the Loire valley, and 160 acres near Estoril, Portugal, not to mention his wife's Latin American wealth and his mother's lands in Morocco...

...United States Consul Robert Murphy, the Free French and the Jewish colony offered no objections...

...A minority opinion holds that the real French royal family descends more directly from a son of Louis XIV: Philippe Duke of Anjou (1683-1746), who became King of Spain (Philippe V) and renounced his French nationality and his rights to the throne for himself and his descendants...

...The Count is not by any means a poor man...

...The family still lives the life of royalty anywhere, attending balls and charity sales...

...On his return to Rabat the Americans were landing, and he saw them fired on by the French at Port Lyautey...

...At the time of the French Revolution, he voted for Louis XVIs beheading and renounced title to the throne for himself and all the Orleans to follow...

...A weekly picture magazine for midinettes has read much significance into General de Gaulle's 1960 letter to Henri on the death of his son in Algeria...

...The Rightist monthly Charivari-whose editor was recently sentenced to a month in prison for offense to the Chief of State -devoted 12 pages of its July issue (with charts) to a learned exposé on the pretenders to the throne, concluding that the Count of Paris was at best heir of a "fifth dynasty" (that of Louis-Philippe), but refusing to accept the Orleans family as legitimate heirs to the Bourbons...

...In 1938 he illegally entered France to hold a press conference to denounce the Munich Pact, an event which disheartened the traditional Royalists grouped around Maurras, who adored Munich...

...The partisans of Jacques-Henri reply that if Philippe V's renunciation was valid, was not Philippe Egalité's too...

...General Giraud's maneuvering for power put an end to his pretensions, especially when Roosevelt ordered Giraud's installation as chief of government at Algiers...

...Henri wanted to enlist in the Army, but the French government refused to allow him to do so...

...A grave crisis could take place requiring an arbiter not available in the parties to avoid dictatorship...

...The Count of Paris is a direct descendant of Philippe Duke of Orleans (1640-1701), of LouisPhilippe-Joseph (Philippe Egalité), and of King (of the French) LouisPhilippe (1773-1850...

...The principle incarnated by me can be valuable even in a Republic...

...Express cited the Count's own draft constitution-published in 1948 and containing many similarities to the Fifth Republic's 1958 Constitution-which provides for a monarch who judges, arbitrates and "incarnates the Nation and symbolizes the continuity and permanence of la patrie...

...he was once asked in an interview...

...Thus in 1954 he opposed the European Defense Community (although some years later he accused the Soviets of trying to bring about the withdrawal of U.S...

...In his Information Bulletin, 40,000 copies of which are published and circulated by a private secretariat with a building of its own in Paris, he has often supported Gaullist positions...

...He has been an outspoken democrat and champion of social justice according to his own philosophy ever since, and has consistently voiced opposition to dictatorship...

...his partisans say he avoids high society and prefers to talk with labor leaders...

...Shortly afterward the French Secret Army planted a plastic bomb at his spacious home in suburban Louveciennes, causing great damage but claiming no victims only because the Count and his family were absent at the time...

...Since that time the Count has never stopped campaigning...

...The Count had initially come to de Gaulle's attention in wartime Algiers, when the former's partisans hoped to install him as head of the provisional government...

...This happened in Algiers...

...Serious political commentators as well as the popular press are devoting more and more attention to the subject...

...He also saw Pierre Laval, who rejected the idea of easing the way for the Allies in North Africa...

...But this was before the Fifth Republic's Constitution dropped the interdiction...

...The Constitution forbids it...

...The future of Henri VI-his legal name is Henri d'Orleans, but he prefers Count of Paris, which was Hugues Capet's name toohas 10 living children...

...The first Philippe was the son of Louis XIII (1601-1643) and brother of Louis XIV (1638-1715...

...The family's main line, which runs through Louis XV, Louis XVI, and the restoration King Charles X, was broken in 1883 when Henri X, Count of Chambord, died without heirs...

...Indeed, every public statement of the Count's in recent years has indicated moderation (in French terms) and a close parallel to Gaullist philosophy...

...The staid "Foreign Report" published by the Economist in London, in a recent discussion of de Gaulle's successor, lists a Monarch as first possibility, pointing out that in his earlier days the General was influenced by the Royalist doctrines expounded by Charles Maurras...

...The Count of Paris was born in 1908 in the Aisne department of France and raised in Morocco...

...In 1960, he declared that "de Gaulle alone can lead France and Algeria toward a common destiny...

...He is the hope for France, Algeria, he is your safeguard...

...In a 1956 interview he said that the U.S...

...Unhappy at the Count's liberal tendencies, factions on the Right seek revenge for his anti-colonial attitude...

...Both Gaullists and other Free French discussed the possibility of replacing Darlan with the Count of Paris...

...Behind him is a large personal fortune, the esteem of General de Gaulle, and a group of devoted followers...

...After that, people are astonished that the choice between the two systems does not impassion the public and that there is a certain depoliticization," the political scientist Georges Vedel has written...

...He has gone on record saying that France has acted correctly in the Common Market...

...Addressing the Count by his proper title, Monseigneur, de Gaulle wrote: "The sacrifice of the young Prince François, killed gloriously for France, adds an exemplary service to all those his race has given to the country and which are the thread of our history...

...In turn, Henri has been an outspoken Gaullist...

...Far from being hostile to the notion of restoration of the Monarchy, the petit peuple seem to be excited by every public reference to it...

...De Gaulle and Henri have been meeting privately several times a year...

...The Fourth Republic was the kingdom of 600 kinglets, the Fifth that of the king...

...In this view, the rightful pretender is Jacques-Henri, Duke of Anjou and of Segovia, son of King Alphonse XIII of Spain, born in 1908...

...De Gaulle also has sent the Prince to Africa and Asia as his personal representative, and reportedly to Spain as well...

...From that time on the Orleans family, in the ardent opinion of its supporters, became the royal line, with Prince Henri being the current candidate for the throne...

...Now the Count is eligible to be next Chief of State...

...But the Orleanists maintain that Jacques-Henri cannot be the pretender, since he descends from Philippe V of Spain, who renounced the throne both for himself and his descendants...

...After demobilization he returned to Morocco, where he became involved in plotting, both on behalf of Free France and of himself...

...Express claims that de Gaulle has privately sounded out the Church on Henri's candidacy, but the Church was not quite happy about once again linking its destiny to the monarchy...

...Jacques-Henri's branch of the family, the argument runs, became heir to the throne in 1883, at the death of the Count of Chambord...

...A brochure he published that year on his life and political ideas added that he favored an elite of ability as opposed to one of money or birth, was against violent means of taking power, and wished to be called on by the people as an arbiter...

...He was not forbidden by French law from visiting France in his youth, for two cousins who preceded his father in the line of succession were still living (they died without heirs, in 1924 and 1926 respectively...

...Though prohibited from entering France, he traveled with a false passport in the company of a French plainclothes agent who himself was unaware of the Count's identity...

...Still, a counter-offensive has come from the extreme Right...