What happened to Marie-Antoinette's children?

Answer 1

Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had four children:

* Marie-Thérèse * Louis-Joseph * Louis-Charles, aka Louis XVII * Sophie Hélène Beatrix. Louis-Joseph and Sophie Hélène both died in childhood, before the time of the French Revolution.

Louis-Charles was the Dauphin at the time of the Revolution, and Heir to the Throne. When his parents were arrested and imprisoned in 1792, he was eventually taken from them and held separately from the rest of the family.

Later, during the trial of Marie-Antoinette (after Louis XVI had already been executed), the boy was tortured and forced by the revolutionary authorities to testify during his mother's trial that she had sexually abused him.

Louis-Charles died in prison. Whether it was a deliberate murder or not is not known. He was a sickly child and could quite possibly have died in the unhygenic conditions of the prison and following his rough treatment. Of course it is also possible that the revolutionaries murdered him because in the eyes of monarchists he was now King Louis XVII, and the monarchists sought to restore him to the throne.

Marie-Thérèse, by contrast, survived the revolution. She was released from prison following the end of the Reign of Terror. She lived in exile through the reign of Napoleon to see her uncle Louis XVIII be restored as King of France in 1815, followed by her second uncle, Charles X. She married her cousin's son and became Duchess of Angoulême.

Finally her uncle Charles was deposed as king in 1830 and she moved into exile again. She finally died in 1851 at the age of 73.

Answer 2

Marie-Antoinette's two surviving children, Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles, faced tragic fates. Marie-Thérèse survived the Reign of Terror and lived to old age. Louis-Charles died in captivity during the French Revolution, at the age of 10, due to illness and neglect.