Louis XVII

Louis XVII
King of France and Navarre
Louis in 1789, portrait by Alexander Kucharsky
Reign	21 January, 1793 – 8 June, 1795
Full name	Louis-Charles
Titles	Duke of Normandy (1785–89) Dauphin of Viennois (1789–91) Prince Royal of France (1791–93)
Born	27 March 1785(1785--)
	Château de Versailles
Died	8 June 1795 (aged 10)
	Paris Temple
Predecessor	Louis XVI
Successor	Louis XVIII
Royal House	Bourbon
Father	Louis XVI
Mother	Marie Antoinette of Austria

Louis XVII of France, also Louis VI of Navarre (March 27 1785 – June 8 1795), from birth to 1789 known as Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy; then from 1789 to 1791 as Louis-Charles, Dauphin of Viennois; and from 1791 to 1793 as Louis-Charles, Prince Royal of France, was the son of King Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette of Austria. From his father's death in 1793 to his own death in 1795, he was considered King of France and Navarre by French royalists.

Before his father's death

Gabrielle de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac was appointed Governess to the Royal Children, including the future Louis XVII and Princess Marie-Thérèse.

Agathe de Rambaud was chosen by the queen to be the Berceuse des Enfants de France ^[1] of the Duke of Normandy, who became the Dauphin (the heir to the throne) at the death of his elder brother Louis-Joseph, Dauphin of France. Alain Decaux wrote: "Madame de Rambaud^[2] was officially in charge of the care of the Dauphin from the day of his birth until August 10, 1792, in other words, for seven years. During these seven years, she never left him, she cradled him, took care of him, dressed him, comforted him, scolded him. Ten times, a hundred times, more than Marie Antoinette, she was a true mother for him"^[3].

Her friend, Louise-Elisabeth, Marquise de Tourzel was the last governess to the royal children of King Louis XVI of France and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette.

After his father's death

On the night of July 3, 1793, commissioners arrived at Temple Prison and went to the royal family's cell with instructions to separate Marie Antoinette's son from the rest of his family. He had been proclaimed Louis XVII by exiled royalists after his father's death. The republican government had therefore decided to imprison the eight-year-old child in solitary confinement. Louis flung himself into his mother's arms crying hysterically, and Marie Antoinette shielded him with her body, refusing to give him up. When the commissioners threatened to kill her if she did not hand the child over, she still refused to move. It was only when they threatened to kill her daughter, Marie Thérèse, and then her, that she came to realise how hopeless the situation was. Two hours after the commissioners had entered her room, the former Queen relinquished her son to them. Louis was carried away screaming and crying, while begging his mother to save him.

This was done to dissuade any monarchist or royalist bids to free him and re-establish the French monarchy. He remained imprisoned alone, a floor below his sister Marie-Thérèse, until his death in June 1795. He was only ten years old. As a part of his republican re-education, his jailers forced him to drink large quanities of alcohol between severe beatings and torture, and was made to sing "La Marseillaise" while wearing the bonnet of a sansculotte. His captors referred to him by the family name "Capet," after Hugh Capet, the original founder of the royal dynasty. This use of a surname was a deliberate insult, since royalty do not normally use surnames. Similarly, when his father King Louis XVI was executed, he was referred to as "Louis Capet".

Louis-Charles was set to work as a cobbler's assistant within the prison and taught to curse his parents. He had been told that he had fallen from favor with his parents, who still lived but no longer wanted him. He was treated cruelly, and was officially reported to have died in the prison from consumption (tuberculosis). Reportedly, his body was ravaged by tumors and scabies. He was reported to have been extremely thin and bony from malnutrition when examined after his death. An autopsy was carried out at the prison and, following a tradition of preserving royal hearts, his heart was smuggled out and preserved by the examining physician, Philippe-Jean Pelletan. Louis-Charles's body was buried in a mass grave. Dr. Pelletan was also shocked at all the scars from abuses of the child, such as whipping, all over the front and back of his torso as well as on his arms, legs, and feet.

"Lost Dauphin" claimants

Rumours quickly spread, however, that the body buried was not that of Louis-Charles and that he had been spirited away alive by sympathizers. Thus was born the legend of the "Lost Dauphin." When the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814, hundreds of claimants came forward. Would-be royal heirs continued to appear across Europe for decades afterward and some of their descendants still have small but loyal retinues of followers today. Popular candidates for the Lost Dauphin included John James Audubon, the naturalist; Eleazer Williams, a missionary from Wisconsin of Mohawk Native American descent; and Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, a German clockmaker. Mark Twain satirized the host of claimants in the characters of the Duke and the Dauphin, the con men in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

As many as 100 "false dauphins" appeared over the years. Whether there was any truth to any of their claims was uncertain, as there appeared to be no hard proof of the King's fate.

Testing the heart

House of Bourbon

Henri IV Sister    Catherine of Navarre, Duchess of Lorraine Children    Louis XIII    Elisabeth, Queen of Spain    Christine Marie, Duchess of Savoy    Nicholas Henri    Gaston, Duke of Orléans    Henriette-Marie, Queen of England and Scotland Louis XIII Children    Louis XIV    Philippe, Duke of Orléans Louis XIV Children    Louis, Dauphin    Marie-Anne    Marie-Therèse    Philippe-Charles, Duc d'Anjou    Louis-François, Duc d'Anjou Grandchildren    Louis, Dauphin    King Felipe V of Spain    Charles, Duke of Berry Great Grandchildren    Louis, Dauphin    Louis XV Louis XV Children    Louise-Elisabeth, Duchess of Parma    Madame Henriette    Louis, Dauphin    Madame Marie Adélaïde    Madame Victoire    Madame Sophie    Madame Louise Grandchildren    Marie Clotilde, Queen of Sardinia    Louis XVI    Louis XVIII    Charles X    Madame Élisabeth Louis XVI Children    Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Duchess of Angouleme    Louis-Joseph, Dauphin    Louis XVII    Sophie-Beatrix Louis XVII Louis XVIII Charles X Children    Louis XIX    Charles, Duke of Berry Grandchildren    Henri V    Louise, Duchess of Parma

Louis-Charles's heart changed hands many times. Pelletan tried to return the heart to Louis XVIII and his brother Charles X, both of whom could not bring themselves to believe the heart to be genuinely that of their long-dead nephew. It is not known if Pelletan tried to approach Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême (daughter of Louis XVI) with her brother's heart. Its saga was only beginning. First it was stolen by one of Pelletan's students, who confessed to the theft on his deathbed and asked his wife to return the heart to Pelletan. Instead, she sent it to the Archbishop of Paris, where it stayed until the Revolution of 1830. It also spent some time in Spain. By 1975, it was being kept in a crystal vase at the royal crypt in the Saint Denis Basilica outside Paris, the burial place of Louis-Charles' parents and of many other members of France's royal families.

The funeral of King Louis XVII in 2004

In the 1990s, Philippe Delorme, the contemporary authority on the subject, arranged for DNA testing of the heart. Ernst Brinkmann of Germany's Münster University and a Belgian genetics professor, Jean-Jacques Cassiman of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, conducted two independent tests. In 2000, comparison with DNA from the hair of Marie-Antoinette confirmed the heart was from a close relative of hers, and it was finally buried in the Basilica on June 8 2004.

It should be noted, however, that the DNA tested was mitochondrial DNA. This DNA is inherited only from the mother and allows tracing of a direct maternal genetic line. Assuming there was no tampering with the tests' samples, therefore, the comparison only proved that the two samples shared the same maternal ancestry. It does not prove that the heart belonged to a particular individual. Since there was a tradition of removing royal hearts after death, it is possible that the heart may have been that of another young royal, for instance that of Louis XVI's first son, Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, who died in 1789. However, the heart of Louis-Joseph would have been removed and embalmed as was customary for all princes of France. The heart tested as part of the DNA experiment had not been embalmed, only preserved in alcohol. This is consistent with Pelletan's story of having left the heart in a jar of alcohol after removing it in 1795 from the body that was claimed to be that of Louis XVII.

Ancestry

Notes

Further reading

• Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII. London: Fourth Estate, 2002 (ISBN 1-84115-588-8, hardcover), 2003 (ISBN 1-84115-589-6, paperback); New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002 (ISBN 0-312-28312-1, hardcover); New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003 (ISBN 0-312-32029-9, paperback reprint). (Note that subtitles vary in different editions of the book.)
  • Reviewed by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books, Vol. 25, No. 8, August 17, 2003.

External links

Primary sources

• (French) Duchess of Angoulême's Memoirs on the Captivity in the Temple (from the autograph manuscript)
• Duchess of Angoulême's Memoirs on the Captivity in the Temple, (1823 English translation of a slightly redacted French edition)

Other material

• A pedigree of Louis-Charles (not necessarily reliable).
• (French) Philippe Delorme's website (one page in English).
• (French) Details about the DNA analysis of the heart believed to be that of Louis-Charles.
• Dangerous Exile at the Internet Movie Database