The Last King of the New France was Louis Philippe I who gained power on August 9, 1830, when the French National Assembly declared him Louis-Philippe I, King of the French. He ruled from 1830 until February 24, 1848, when he abdicated in favor of his grandson. During the period of 36 years between the Reign of Terror and 1830, knowing that his father had died on the Guillotine on 6 November 1793, Louis-Philippe I spent years on the run. At the age of nineteen, Louis Philippe left France. It was some twenty-one years before he again set foot on French soil. He took odd jobs such as teaching French in a boys' boarding school in Italy. Every time he was found out and his true identity discovered, he had to move on quickly knowing the guillotine was awaiting him back in France. He reached Finland where he fathered a child whose descendant now claims to be the rightful King of France. Finally, he was able to catch a boat that took him to Philadelphia in the USA. There he was soon joined by his younger brothers Antoine and Louis Charles. This is a diary he kept during their travels in America. What is amazing it the breadth of his experiences and the distances he covered when most of the Eastern half of the United States remained unknown and unexplored. They went as far north as Maine, West to Niagara Falls and then crossed the Appalachian Mountains went down the Mississippi River to New Orleans between 1796 and 1799. It must be remembered that NOBODY had crossed the entire Continental United States until 1806 with the Lewis and Clark Expedition from May 1804 to September 1806.
