After a trip to Great Britain (visiting both England and Scotland) in 1819, he went to Lunéville to join the 1er régiment de hussards, of which he was made colonel by Charles X in 1824.

Upon entering the Conseil (at his father's bidding), Ferdinand Philippe, who had something of a temper, criticised the time lost by ministers' prevarications and was frequently embroiled in skirmishes with the doctrinaires, to whom he wished to impart the sentiments of revolutionary youth.

During the cholera outbreak in 1832, he did not hesitate to take real risks in visiting the most sickly patients at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, accompanied by Casimir Périer (who caught the disease and died).

In 1831, under Marshal Étienne Maurice Gérard, Ferdinand Philippe and his younger brother Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, set out on their first campaign.

In 1835, when Marshal Bertrand Clauzel was sent to Algeria as Governor General, the young Prince Royal asked his father for permission to accompany him, so he could fight the Emir Abd El-Kader.

He left Constantine on 16 October, three days after the second anniversary of the town's capture, and reached Algiers on 2 November via Sétif and the Iron Gates pass.

Ferdinand Philippe set out for Algeria a third time in March 1840, taking with him his younger brother the Duke of Aumale, tutoring him in his first military experience.

Present at the battles of Affroun, Oued'Ger and Bois des Oliviers, he was put in charge of directing the attackers in the capture of Teniah de Mouzaïa.

He laid the foundations for a Histoire des Régiments, commissioned by order of the Minister of War, and began writing the service histories of the two regiments he had himself commanded.

Blanche-Joséphine Le Bascle d'Argenteuil noted, in her Souvenirs, that if the Prince Royal died young after having fathered a male heir, the July Monarchy would be faced with the prospect of a regency, in all its political uncertainty – thus, for her, the wisest course consisted of marrying off the King's third son, then the fourth, then the fifth, guaranteeing Louis Philippe descendants, all the while leaving several men around the throne who could take over from him if he died suddenly.

Queen Marie Amélie was highly favourable to such a match as she was herself a daughter of an Austrian archduchess (Maria Carolina of Austria), and Archduke Karl was not opposed to it.

However, Karl faced determined opponents on two sides – Prince Metternich, who did not want to repeat his error in marrying Marie Louise to Napoleon, and Archduchess Sophie, a Bavarian princess and sister-in-law of the new Kaiser Ferdinand I, who dominated the Vienna court with her strong personality, and was awaiting her son Franz-Josef's ascent to the imperial throne.

France's ambassador to Vienna, the Count of Sainte-Aulaire, who had been put in charge of preparing the ground for an Austrian match, felt the possibility was difficult if not completely impossible.

The new President of the Conseil, Adolphe Thiers, dreamed of concluding such a match and becoming a new Duke of Choiseul as the maker of a spectacular reversal in the alliances of Europe.

At Trento they were received by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the former Empress Consort of the French, who could not refrain from tears at the similarity between the Prince Royal and her son, the late Duke of Reichstadt.

At Milan they stayed with Archduke Rainer Joseph of Austria, Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, where they heard the news of Alibaud's assassination attempt on King Louis Philippe on 25 June.

[5] She was the niece of King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, whose wife was born Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (this did not avoid difficulties for the marriage in Berlin, which the French ambassador there, the Count Bresson, succeeded in resolving).

The Duke of Broglie was sent to Germany as ambassador extraordinary with the aim of presenting the official marriage request and bringing the princess back to France.

The civil ceremony occurred in the galerie Henri II on 30 May 1837, presided over by the Baron Pasquier, whom the King rewarded on 27 May by making him Lord Chancellor of France.

The Catholic ceremony was presided over by Romain-Frédéric Gallard, Bishop of Meaux, in the chapel of Henri IV, whilst the Lutheran one was celebrated by Pastor Cuvier in the Salon Louis Philippe.

The ceremony was well attended, but there was a notable lack of foreign ambassadors, except for Baron von Werther (Prussia), Count Le Hon (Belgium), and the chargé d'affaires of Mecklembourg.

He was passionate about modern painters, buying several canvasses from Ary Scheffer and Newton Fielding, both of whom had taught Ferdinand Philippe landscape painting from 1822 to 1830.

He possessed works by Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (The Prisoner of Chillon, The Assassination of the Bishop of Liège, Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (The Defeat of the Cimbri), Eugène Lami, Ernest Meissonnier, and Paul Delaroche.

Himself a talented draughtsman, Ferdinand Philippe made amateur engravings – twelve etchings and lithographs by him are known,[10] including a satire showing the sleeping Gulliver with Lilliputians all round him on foot and on horseback and a sign referring to the alarmist proclamation of 11 July 1792 by the Legislative Assembly that declared the fatherland to be in danger.

[11] When the horses of his carriage ran out of control at Sablonville in the Hauts-de-Seine département, he lost his balance and fractured his skull, and, despite the best attentions of his doctors, the 31-year-old Duke died some hours later, surrounded by family members who had rushed to the scene.