From the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia. Louis XVII

Alexander Kucharsky. Portrait of the Dauphin Louis-Charles

Having become heir to the throne 10 days before the start of the French Revolution, Louis-Charles Bourbon, Duke of Normandy, known as Louis XVII, never ruled his country - the National Convention declared France a republic and executed his father. In 1795, the death of the young king without a kingdom was officially announced, and his uncle, the Count of Provence, declared himself king under the name of Louis XVIII.

FIRST TEN YEARS

The French royal couple Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had no children for a long time after their wedding. While the king did not have a son, his two younger brothers were considered heirs - Count Louis of Provence and Count Charles d'Artois. They both dreamed of the throne, and both subsequently received it.
But in 1778, the royal couple first had a daughter, Maria Theresa Charlotte, and three years later a son, Louis Joseph Xavier. The birth of an heir to the throne caused a split in the royal family, and from that time on, both of the king's brothers became his enemies. For some time they tried to prove that the child’s father was not Louis at all, discrediting the royal couple.
Meanwhile, the queen had two more children - in 1785 Louis-Charles, who received the title of Duke of Normandy, and in 1786 - Sophie, who died less than a year later.

E. Vigée-Lebrun. Marie Antoinette with children. Louis-Charles is depicted at the age of two

On the eve of the revolution, the eldest son also died from tuberculosis: Louis-Charles was declared heir to the throne.
The birth of this child was surrounded by mystery. On his birthday, March 27, 1789, Louis XVI noted in his diary: “The birth of the queen. The birth of the Duke of Normandy. Everything went the same as with my son.” At the same time, it is known that Count Han-Axel Fersen, who is considered to be Marie Antoinette’s lover, was not only in Paris in June 1784, but also met alone with the queen.
Upon learning of the death of Louis XVII, Fersen wrote in his diary: “This is the last and only interest that I had left in France. At present, it is no longer there and everything to which I was attached no longer exists.” In addition, contemporaries noticed: the king more often called the boy Duke of Normandy than son.

Portraits of Louis-Charles, painted by E. Vigée-Lebrun

However, the title itself is quite unusual: in France no one has worn it since the time of the fourth son of Charles VII, who reigned in 1422-1461.
In the first years of the revolution, the young Dauphin did not play any political role. He first appeared on the political scene only after the execution of his father, which took place on January 21, 1793. As a result of the uprising on August 10, 1792, which overthrew the monarchy, the royal family was imprisoned in the Temple prison tower. It was there on the morning of January 22 that Marie Antoinette, her daughter Marie Therese, Louis XVI's sister Elizabeth and his valet Clery knelt before the Dauphin and swore allegiance to him as King Louis XVII, following the age-old tradition of "The King is dead - long live the King." All leading European powers recognized the new king. On January 28, the elder brother of the executed monarch, the Count of Provence, announced in a special declaration that he was taking over the regency until his nephew came of age and appointing the Count of d'Artois as viceroy of the kingdom.

Portrait of the Count of Provence, future Louis XVIII

From now on, most of the royalist actions both in France and abroad took place in the name or in the name of Louis XVII (moreover, coins and medals were minted with his image and name, notes were issued, passports were issued), who all this time continued to remain in the Temple , having survived the death of his mother and aunt, separated from his sister.

FAILED RESTORATION

Not all residents of the country accepted the republic established in France in September 1792. The royalist opposition existed even in the most dangerous times of the Jacobin terror, but it was able to publicly declare itself only after the coup of 9 Thermidor. After all, back in December 1792, the Convention decreed that the death penalty threatened anyone “who proposes or tries to establish royal power in France,” and this decree was never repealed. What changed by the end of 1794 - beginning of 1795?
After the fall of Robespierre, the same Convention that had recently applauded all his proposals returned the expelled deputies to its fold. On the agenda was the task of completing the Revolution, and this, according to most contemporaries, was impossible without the adoption of a new constitution.
Even one of the decrees of the National Convention was called “On ways to end the revolution.”
There was the Constitution of 1793, which was never put into effect. The democratic norms it envisaged, such as the mandatory approval of legislation by departments or the formation of a 24-member executive, would probably still have worked in peacetime conditions, but even at the beginning of 1795 they were absolutely inapplicable.
Conversations about the need for a revision of the Constitution of 1793 began in the spring of 1795, but only by the end of June a specially elected commission, called the Commission of Eleven due to the number of its members, presented for discussion its project, according to which France remained a republic with a new bicameral parliament consisting of the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred.
However, this was a little later. In the meantime, according to the English historian M. J. Sydenham, “the first months of 1795 were perhaps the most favorable opportunity that had ever presented itself for the restoration of the constitutional monarchy in France.” Here, the main hopes of the royalists were pinned, surprisingly, not on emigration and not on the Count of Provence, but on the young Louis XVII, who, without realizing it, became for some time one of the key figures in European politics.
Of course, a 10-year-old boy could not lead the country in such a turbulent time. But this was not required. It was enough to make it a symbol that unites the nation. Moreover, according to the French historian Thureau-Dangin, “the son of Louis XVI could have moved from the Temple to the Tuileries without the intervention of foreigners, without bringing with him either the restoration of the Old Order or an extremely unpopular intervention. They would have returned in 1792, not in 1788".

Temple

The internal political situation was favorable for restoration. Growing royalism in the southeast and west and the defeat of militant Jacobinism created the conditions for compromise between the various political parties. In June 1795, right at the Convention, the delegation of the city of Orleans dared to demand the release of the king’s daughter, and shortly before that, P. Barras ordered that the princess be brought everything she needed and given a companion. The same month marked the peak of rumors spreading throughout the country about the official recognition of Louis XVII as the King of France by the Convention.
Such influential Thermidorians as Tallien and Barras even entered into negotiations with the royalists, putting forward conditions: not to delve into the past and to preserve the fortunes acquired during the Revolution. According to other sources, such negotiations were even conducted by some members of the Commission of Eleven, created by the Convention to develop a new constitution. Historian of the late 19th century. A. Vandal reports that the Thermidorians had plans to place a puppet king at the head of their government, and, in his opinion, this would not only not weaken the power of the members of the Convention, but would also make it more durable.
Of course, there were considerable difficulties along the way of restoration. As journalist J.-G. wrote at the time. Peltier, “it is believed that the extreme youth of the legitimate king, the unfortunate boy imprisoned in the Temple, is one of the reasons supporting the Republic and the Revolution, because some parties disposed in favor of the proclamation of the kingdom do not know how to organize the regency necessary for this monarchy ".
It is also curious, and this is emphasized by E. B. Chernyak, that even earlier the Girondins, the Hébertists, the Dantonists, and the Robspierrists were accused of wanting to establish a regency. How random is this or, more importantly, groundless? The regency option also suited the royalists, since if one person stood at the head of the executive power, then a royalist could soon easily claim this place (and there were, of course, such plans). In addition, the chief executive himself could later become a regent.
Wed. in a letter to Malet du Pan dated July 17, 1795; "The monarchists demanded that... the post of head of state be established, and not an executive council. Being in the minority, they wanted the regency council to rule like the vice president, and this mezzotermine (half-hearted decision - D.B.) forced them to join the monarchists are part of the Republicans. To date, the death of the king has dispelled this plan, and the draft of the executive council has prevailed." Indeed, there were similar proposals at the Convention.

Execution of Lulowik XVI

DEATH OF A PRISONER OF THE TEMPLE

Just over five months after the execution of his father, the Dauphin was separated from his mother and sister. On August 4, 1793, the shoemaker Simon, a member of the Paris Commune and a member of the Cordeliers Club, was appointed his mentor. He and his wife moved to Temple. In January 1794, Simon submitted his resignation, which was granted on January 19, and the post itself was abolished as unnecessary. The Committee of Public Safety decided that from now on the Dauphin only needed protection. Soon after this, some semblance of solitary confinement was arranged for the child. In May 1794, Robespierre claimed him for the whole day. The seclusion ceased only after Thermidor.

Adelaide Labille-Guillard. Portrait of Robespierre

The very next day after the coup, Barras appeared in the Temple with the deputy of the Convention, Gupillo de Fontenay. The child they saw did not at all resemble the once cheerful prince. Barras noted the boy’s silence, the absent-mindedness of his reactions, and gave instructions to transfer him to a more spacious room, which, for reasons that are not entirely clear, was carried out only in August.
In October of the same year, the Committee of Public Safety strengthened security by adopting a resolution to send more section members to assist the permanent security. Since then, more than 200 representatives of the capital's population have visited the Temple. Is it possible to assume that none of them have ever seen the heir to the throne? And if he did, wouldn’t he really make a fuss if he discovered the substitution, and fortunately only Robespierre could be blamed for it? This is one of the most vulnerable points of the versions that claim that the Dauphin managed to escape. To explain the discrepancy, the flight is dated to January 1794, or it is noted that only nine members of the sections documented that they knew Louis-Charles before that, and their evidence is very controversial.
Members of the Convention also visited the royal prisoner several times. They claimed that from July 1794 to February 1795 the same boy appeared before them. At the same time, everyone noted his apathy, indifference, taciturnity, bordering on muteness, indicating mental retardation.

Louis XVII in the Temple (in the clothes of a craftsman boy). Sculpture of Anne Chardonnay

At the beginning of May 1795, when negotiations were in full swing with Spain on the extradition of Louis XVII, the guards reported to the Committee about the progressive deterioration of the prisoner’s health. A certain Doctor Dessault, a well-known physician in Paris, was sent to him. His testimony of his first meeting with the Dauphin has been preserved: “I found an idiot child, dying, a victim of the lowest poverty, a completely abandoned creature, degraded from the most cruel treatment.” Desso prescribed treatment for exhaustion, and in the second half of May he sent a report to the Convention, which mysteriously disappeared there. That same day the doctor dined with some of the deputies of the Convention. Upon returning home, he began to vomit violently and died soon after. Subsequently, his nephew’s wife claimed that the doctor did not recognize the prince in the patient, which the Convention was informed about.
The four who carried the prisoner’s coffin and Desso’s friend, Doctor Chopart, died no less mysteriously. And his student immediately fled to the United States of America.

Portrait of Doctor Desso

On June 6, a new doctor appeared in the Temple, who had never seen a child before - Doctor Pelletan, “a bad doctor, but a frantic revolutionary.” On June 8, the boy died, but by order of the Committee of Public Safety, the fact of death was carefully hidden even from the guards, who saw the remains only after the autopsy of the body. 40-50 hours after the death, a kind of identification of the deceased was organized, in which section and police commissioners participated. It is difficult to say whether any of them knew the king's son.
According to the law of September 1792, the death certificate of any citizen had to be signed by the two closest relatives or neighbors. The closest relative - the sister - was nearby; many former servants of the royal family lived in Paris, the governess of the Dauphine Madame de Tourzel. Their addresses were known to the Committees, and yet no real identification was made.
The autopsy protocol creates even more problems. The doctors “forgot” to note at least one characteristic feature on the boy’s body, which, as a rule, was done at that time, and also managed not to write anywhere that the autopsy was performed on Louis-Charles Bourbon. The protocol only states: “We found in the bed the body of a child who, it seemed to us, was about 10 years old, about whom the commissioners told us that he was the son of the late Louis Capet, and in whom two of us recognized a child who had been treated for several days." Doctor Jeanrois, who supervised the autopsy, was a consultant to Louis XVI for a long time and could not help but know his son. Why did he hide behind his colleagues?
Twice, in 1816 and 1894, a search for the Dauphin's grave and an exhumation of the corpse were carried out in the cemetery of St. Margaret. However, it was established that the child found at the place where the Temple prisoner was buried was between 15 and 18 years old. Dr. Jeanrois later noted that in 40 years of practice he had never seen such a developed brain in a 10-year-old child.
All these facts led historians to speculate: did the Dauphin really manage to escape? But how? Various assumptions have been made in the literature. Some authors wrote about one substitution, others - about two or even three. Many refer to evidence kept in the Temple archives that on June 18, 1795, during an inspection, a secret door was discovered through which one could enter and exit undetected. Others are haunted by the repeated testimony of the widow of the shoemaker Simon that Louis-Charles not only remained alive, but also came to visit her. Almost all of Louis-Charles' guards are named as the organizers of the escape, giving full scope to the imagination at the thought of who could be behind them.
According to another version, Louis XVII died in January 1794 and was buried at the foot of the tower. When the Temple was demolished, a skeleton was actually found. Why didn’t they announce the death of the Dauphin then? There are much more fantastic options.
We must agree with A. Lann, who wrote at the beginning of this century: “The facts suggest that such an important event as the death of the direct heir to the throne was neither legally stated by those who recently destroyed this throne, nor seriously established later by those who restored it in order to establish himself on it." But is this a coincidence?

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Whether the Dauphin died or escaped, each of these versions has many supporters. Their books contain hundreds of pages - from serious monographs with plans for the Temple to lightweight essays, where the only argument is the personal conviction of the author. However, there are a number of questions, the answer to which (or lack thereof) will help you form your own attitude towards the problem.

Question one
After the death of Louis XVI, his son was immediately recognized as king by all the major European powers - England, Spain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia - and Catherine II even signed a special decree according to which the French were subject to expulsion from the empire if they refused to swear allegiance to the new king. At the same time, after the death of the Dauphin, there was no rush to recognize the Count of Provence, who proclaimed himself Louis XVIII, as king.

Portrait of Louis XVIII

In June 1795, Austrian Foreign Minister F. Thugut wrote to the ambassador in London that there was no real evidence of the boy's death. And one of Conde’s army officers later noted in his memoirs that “no one really believed in this event.” What was this confidence based on? Until 1813, Alexander I responded extremely rarely to letters from Louis XVIII, who addressed him as “Mr. my brother and cousin,” and only titled him “Mr. Count.”
Even in the armistice convention with France concluded in April 1814, Louis XVIII is not called the king, but “His Royal Highness Monsieur, Son of France, Brother of the King, Viceroy of the Kingdom of France” (why “brother of the king” and not uncle? And yet At the same time he became Louis XVIII, not XVII).

Question two

After the Restoration, Louis XVIII ordered the exhumation of the bodies of his brother, sister and Marie Antoinette, and also ordered the erection of a monument to them, without showing the slightest interest in the body and memory of Louis XVII, despite numerous petitions. Contemporaries noticed this. January 9, 1816 F.-R. Chateaubriand makes a parliamentary request: “Where is he, the brother of the orphan from the Temple?”
“Orphan” - the elder sister of Louis XVII, Marie-Therese-Charlotte, who survived imprisonment in the Temple, the future Duchess of Angoulême (1778-1851). It is important that Chateaubriand was not only a writer and politician, but also the secretary of Madame Laetitia, Napoleon's mother. It is possible that he knew more than many others.

Anne-Louis Girordet-Trioson. Portrait of Chateaubriand

After this, the authorities ordered research to be carried out at the cemetery of St. Margaret, where the body of the child who died in the Temple was buried. The remains were found, but suddenly all research work stopped. And in the Atonement Chapel, erected by Louis XVIII shortly after this, there was again no place for the Dauphin.
Until 1821, in many churches, in accordance with government orders, funeral masses were served for the murdered Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. No services were ordered for the Dauphin. Since the king himself crossed out the name of his nephew from the text of the prayer “Memento” approved by him. When the clergy, on their own initiative, decided to hold a funeral service in 1817, already announced in the Monitor, Louis XVIII canceled it, and when asked by the head of the court ceremony, he replied: “We are not entirely sure about the death of our nephew.” When trying again to celebrate the funeral mass in June 1821, at the last moment, by order from the palace, it was replaced with the usual funeral prayer. According to Catholic canons, serving a requiem mass for a living person was considered to be inflicting damage, and the king knew this.
January 21 and October 16 - the days of death of the royal couple - were always considered mourning days at court, and on June 8 balls were often held, as on ordinary days.
In the crypt in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, where the remains of executed members of the royal family are buried, there are two medallions depicting both Dauphins Louis-Joseph-Xavier and Louis-Charles. On the first - the dates of their birth and death, on the second - only the inscription: "Louis XVII, King of France and Navarre."

Question three

How can we explain the amazing leniency of the Restoration government towards some of the most active participants in the revolution? It is known that at a time when most of the “regicides” were expelled from the country, Barras not only was not sent into exile, not only retained the rank of general, but was also accepted into public service. After his death in 1829, the coffin was allowed to be covered with a three-color revolutionary banner (the only banner allowed at that time was the white Bourbon banner). One of the court ladies reported that back in 1803 Barras assured her that the Dauphin remained alive.

Paul Barras

Under all subsequent regimes, including the Restoration, Robespierre's sister, Charlotte, received a pension with a break of several years. And if Napoleon was grateful to Robespierre the Younger, whom he knew personally, then how can one explain Louis XVIII’s favor towards Charlotte? There was an opinion that she saved many from the guillotine, that the king was grateful to Robespierre for executing his unloved brother. But then how can we explain the repressions against the other “regicides”? A. Dubosc is sure that Charlotte was an agent of Louis XVIII from the very beginning. But under him, her pension was reduced by three times compared to the amount of the Empire period.
Among these opinions and speculations, two points of view seem to have a right to exist. The first, which was adhered to by A. Laponner, who knew Charlotte well in the last years of her life: Louis XVIII paid Charlotte not to publish her memoirs. But in the text of the memoirs, which were nevertheless published, there is nothing that undermines the foundations of the monarchy, and the police did not even try to seize the publication.
It was published by L. Laponneret after his death in 1834. Russian edition: Robespierre C. Memoirs. L., 1925. A. Laponnere himself saw the danger of memoirs in an attempt to rehabilitate Maximilien Robespierre.
Supporters of the second point of view are sure that Charlotte knew from her brother that the Dauphin remained alive, and she was paid to hide this secret. How it really happened is still unclear.

Question four

There is a well-known phrase of Napoleon, once uttered in anger at the European courts and the French government in exile: “If I want to confuse all their claims, I will make a man appear whose existence will surprise the whole world!” Who did the emperor have in mind? Josephine said: “Know, my children, that not all the dead rest in their graves.” Considering Josephine’s long-standing connections with Barras, as well as the fact that she recommended one person to be the Dauphin’s guard, it is possible that she had special knowledge of what happened. There is a legend that the Empress shared this information with Alexander I during his stay in Paris." A few days after this, Josephine suddenly died.

Question five

One of the secret articles of the Treaty of Paris dated May 30, 1815 read: “Although the high contracting parties are not sure of the death of the son of Louis XVI, the situation in Europe and public interests require that they place Louis Stanislas-Xavier, Count of Provence, in power the official title of king, but for two years he will actually only be a regent until it is confirmed that he is the true sovereign." This text was published in 1831 by Labrelly de Fontaine, the librarian of the Duchess of Orleans. What were the high-level negotiating parties based on?

Question six

When, after the Restoration, Louis XVIII wanted to renew the concordat with the Vatican, he rejected the formulation “Louis XVIII, enthroned” and, after long negotiations, agreed to “enthroned by his ancestors.” Why?

Question seven

Historians note the ambivalence of the Dauphin's sister Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte (later Duchess of Angoulême) on the question of whether he could have survived.

Alexandre-François Caminade. Portrait of the Duchess of Angoulême

She learned about the death of her mother, aunt and brother at the same time, after Thermidor. A. Castelo calls her “the most unfortunate woman in our history.” Upon leaving prison, the daughter of the executed king wrote a letter to Louis XVIII, mourning the death of her father, mother and aunt. She was also informed about the death of her brother, but there is not a word about him in the letter. After her death, letters were left to her confidant, Baron Charles, from which it is clear that she still was not sure of her brother’s death, she hoped that he managed to escape , but with each new false Dauphin these hopes melted away. In 1849, she wrote at the beginning of her will: “I will soon be reunited with the souls of my father, my mother and my aunt,” again without mentioning her brother.

Question eight

During the autopsy of a child who died in the Temple, Dr. Pelletan removed the heart from the deceased and carefully preserved it. After the Restoration, he tried to offer it to both the Duchess of Angoulême and Louis XVIII. Both refused.
At the same time, Commissioner Damon cut off a lock of hair from the child. And again, the august persons rejected attempts to hand over this relic to them. When it was subsequently compared with a strand kept by Marie Antoinette, the examination showed that the samples had nothing in common.
There are many more similar questions in the literature. Here, only those that were difficult or impossible to answer were selected, if not based on the fact that the boy still remained alive. And one part of the contemporaries knew about this, while the other part was not exactly sure of the death of the Dauphin.
However, then the last and most important question arises: why were the prince’s rights not recognized under any of the subsequent regimes? There is no answer to it. Each of the authors writing about this problem has their own point of view. In our opinion, before recognizing the miraculously saved Dauphin, it was necessary to establish the correspondence of the personality of one or another applicant to the image of the true heir to the throne. This was precisely the most difficult thing.

CONTENDERS

About 60 people claimed to be the miraculously saved Louis XVII. The story of all the contenders would fill hundreds of pages and would be very entertaining. Let's remember just a few of the most famous.
So, in February 1819, a certain Philippe, aka Mathurin Brunot, who called himself Charles of Navarre, appeared before the Rouen Correctional Court. Before that, in November 1815, Louis XVIII received from him a letter requesting a meeting, signed “Dauphin-Bourbon”. Despite his obviously incorrect common speech, Bruno aroused sympathy in France, and when he was transferred from prison to the courtroom, shouts were even heard: “Long live the king!” The Duchess of Angoulême sent a special representative to him in prison, who was supposed to receive answers to a number of questions. And the Minister of Police E. Decaz, who was not particularly gullible, demanded special daily reports on his behavior. It was discovered that the young man's parents were in good health and recognized him as their son. Bruno died in prison in 1822.
Another false Dauphin, Baron de Richemont, working in Rouen in the late 20s as a freelance employee in the prefecture, distributed appeals to the French people in which he assured that he was the son of the executed king.

Baron de Richemont

In 1834, the court found his harassment unfounded, which did not prevent him from filing a claim for inheritance against the Duchess of Angoulême in 1849. And only the death of the latter put an end to the trial.
Another contender was Karl-Wilhelm Naundorff. Until 1810, the life of this man was unknown to anyone. This year he appeared in Berlin and soon announced to the Prussian Minister of Police Le Coq that he was the son of Louis XVI, allegedly presented him with documents, in particular, a letter signed by Louis XVI.
The chain of his further adventures is illuminated in historiography. When he arrived in Paris in the early summer of 1833, leaving his family in Prussia, he was recognized by many friends and servants of the deceased royal family, forming a kind of court around him. A. Provens, who specially dealt with this problem, noted that “Naundorff retained all the memories of the Dauphin’s childhood, even the most intimate, the most secret,” knew the Temple, Versailles, Rambouillet and the Tuileries well, and could easily indicate what changes had occurred in the palaces since his stay there are the royal couple.
Despite this, his rights to the throne remained unrecognized. He was forced to emigrate to England, then to Holland, where he died in August 1845. Here is the testimony of the doctors who treated him: “The delirious patient’s thoughts mainly returned to his unfortunate father Louis XVI, to the terrible spectacle of the guillotine, or he joined his hands in prayer and confusedly asked for a quick meeting in heaven with his royal father.”
Was he the real Louis XVII? For more than a century, professional and amateur researchers have been searching for the answer to this question. A number of the stories he invented are clearly fantastic. In the two published volumes of his correspondence there is no indication that it was written by the king's son. He did not tell his wife about any places in Paris associated with his “parents,” but he did tell his date of birth. And this is after 16 years of marriage!

Portrait of Naundorf

The historian G. Bohr found out that in May 1788 the Dauphin was vaccinated against smallpox on both arms. However, during a post-mortem examination of Naundorf's body, a vaccination mark was found on only one arm. In 1810, all residents of Berlin were forcibly vaccinated against smallpox. But where are the earlier traces?
No explanation has yet been invented for Naundorff's amazing awareness. A handwriting study carried out showed a great similarity between his handwriting and that of the Dauphin, and with the exception of the mysterious vaccination mark, all the other marks characteristic of the Dauphin were on Naundorff’s body. Anthropometric data also coincided. A. Decaux wrote: “Along with the riddle of Louis XVII, there is the riddle of Naundorff.” Even if he was not the son of Louis XVI, the historian believed, Naundorff was somehow involved in the disappearance of the Dauphin.
Decaux noted that traces of smallpox vaccination might have disappeared. The doctors with whom the author of the article consulted at the Academy of Medicine unanimously believe that this is impossible.
The story of Louis XVII is amazing. A king without a kingdom, whose mere existence almost had a significant impact on the fate of revolutionary France. Just once, without realizing it, he found himself in the very center of a political struggle. But even after his real or imaginary death, he did not cease to disturb the minds of politicians, historians and writers.

In 2000, DNA analysis was carried out on the heart, which is generally believed to have been removed during the supposed autopsy of Louis XVII and preserved in alcohol by the doctor's descendants, then passed from one European aristocrat to another.

The experts concluded that the relevant genetic signatures matched DNA extracted from Marie Antoinette's hair and the hair of Louis' sister; thus, this fact is considered proof that the Dauphin actually died at the Temple in 1795. However, this point of view also found its opponents.
After an examination, the heart was buried on June 8, 2004 in the Basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris, the tomb of French monarchs. The vessel with the heart was placed in a coffin covered with a blue banner with a gold image of the royal lilies. Representatives of all the royal houses of Europe attended the funeral.

Louis Charles was born in Versailles and received the title of Duke of Normandy, and in 1789, after the death of his older brother Louis Joseph, he became Dauphin (heir to the throne). After the revolution on August 10, 1792, he and his parents ended up in the Temple. After his execution by his uncle, the Count of Provence (later), he was proclaimed king of France and immediately the child was recognized as king by all major European powers - England, Spain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia - and even signed a special decree according to which he was expelled from The French were subject to the empire if they refused to swear allegiance to the new king.

In June 1793, the prince was separated from his mother and handed over to a rude Jacobin, shoemaker Simon, who, along with his wife, treated him very badly. Thus began a monstrous experiment with the goal of “re-educating” the young Capetian in the spirit of equality. This idea was born in the head of the prosecutor of the Paris commune, Chaumette. By the end of the third month, Louis Charles' tormentors could be satisfied. He behaved like a real sans-culotte - he cursed, blasphemed, cursed the aristocrats and the queen, his mother. Presumably, they felt special satisfaction when he handed Simon slippers, cleaned his wife’s shoes, served them at the table, and wiped their feet with a towel.

But all this was only preparation for the vile performance staged by the revolutionary justice in the fall of 1793, during the investigation and trial of the “widow Capet.” Marie Antoinette was accused of conspiracy against the republic. But at the same time, the former queen was accused of debauchery towards her son - incest. And the Dauphin acted as a witness for the prosecution at this trial. There is no need to describe the course of the so-called investigation, which consisted of interrogations of Louis Charles, confrontations between him and his sister, as well as with his aunt. Suffice it to say that the child gave the required testimony, which was carefully recorded. On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was guillotined.

The history of this process is so incredible that from the very beginning suspicions arose about its falsification - allegedly a double was presented instead of the son. These suspicions are not unfounded and have not been refuted to this day, especially since the rest of the life and death of Louis Charles are shrouded in mystery.

In January 1794, terrorists imprisoned Louis in solitary confinement. In the spring, Louis was visited by Robespierre, perhaps intending to restore the puppet monarchy, but already in July Robespierre was overthrown and executed. Meanwhile, Louis' health was deteriorating. The jailers, starting in February 1795, more than once informed the municipal council about the prince’s illness; however, he did not receive any medical care for months. Only in May, when tumors appeared around his knees and arm joints, were doctors given access to the patient. However, the prince's condition worsened every day, and on June 8, 1795, he died. The corpse was lowered into a common grave in the Saint-Martin cemetery and covered with lime, so that in 1815 its remains could no longer be found. The vague circumstances of Louis's death led to the fact that in the 19th century, impostors appeared in several European countries and even in America, calling themselves by his name. One of them, the German watchmaker Naundorf, even sued the Bourbons after the restoration and passed on his claims to inheritance.

On June 8, 1795, a ten-year-old boy died in the Temple Prison in Paris. The child was seriously ill and had not spoken a word for several months.

The boy was an orphan. His parents were considered to be King Louis XVI of Bourbon and Queen Marie Antoinette. Both died by guillotine in 1793. The heir's name was Louis-Charles, and many already called him Louis XVII.

Before burial, the boy's heart was removed and subsequently preserved.

The fairy tale was born almost immediately.

Rumors spread that the prince had not died in the Temple. One after another, people began to appear calling themselves Louis XVII, miraculously saved, raised in secret and now laying claim to their rights.

Meanwhile, the revolution was over. The republic was replaced by an empire, and then the Bourbons returned to the French throne. King Louis XVIII was the younger brother of the executed Louis XVI.

Is it worth explaining how the newly-minted “nephews” disturbed the court? Throughout the Restoration (1815 1836), impostors did not disappear from the political context. They continued to intrigue the public during the July Monarchy (1830 1848), when a representative of the Orleans branch of the Bourbons was on the throne.

Only from the middle of the 19th century, when this dynasty finally disappeared from the political scene, the mystery of the true fate of Louis-Charles, Dauphin of France, began to move into the category of historiographical problems.

Historians of those times were rarely interested in children. But about this man, who barely managed to cross the threshold of the first decade of his life, they wrote vying with each other. Fierce debate about the boy who died in the Temple did not stop on the pages of scientific publications and in fiction. They continued in the twentieth century until very recently. And not only in France. We have also written on this topic 1. Everyone found arguments in favor of their “truth.”

And here's a sensation. Modern science has provided irrefutable data. Genetic research puts an end to the debate.

On December 15, 1999, biologists came to the crypt of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Four fragments were taken from the heart of Louis-Charles Bourbon buried there, from which researchers then isolated genetic material, DNA. The examination was carried out by professors Jean-Jacques Cassiman from the Belgian University of Louvain and Berndt Brinkmann from the German University of Münster. Comparison of this DNA with that which was previously extracted from the hair of Marie Antoinette, as well as her sisters and other relatives, leaves no room for doubt. The child, in whose chest the long-suffering heart was beating, was undoubtedly the closest relative of the French queen.

Which means there is no more mystery. The fairy tale did not happen. No one saved the little prince. It was he who died in the Temple Prison in Paris on June 8, 1795.

Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy was born in Versailles
March 27, 1785. He was the third child and second son of the royal family. The Dauphin, that is, the heir to the throne, was first Louis-Joseph-Xavier, born four years earlier than his brother. The daughters' names were Marie-Therese-Charlotte (1778 1855) and Sophie-Hélène-Beatrice (1786 1787).

The First Dauphin was seriously ill with bone tuberculosis, from which he died on June 4, 1789. From that moment on, the four-year-old Duke of Normandy began to be called the heir to the French throne.

The revolution was already underway. It's been a month since the States General met, where the powers of the deputies were being checked. And unrest in society, outbursts of popular anger, parliamentary revolts - all this has been growing in the country for the third year now.

Even if the parents had not recently lost two children (a son and a daughter), they had something to grieve and worry about. The Queen became perhaps the main object of hatred of the common people as a frivolous spendthrift, “Madame Deficit”, and also an Austrian The King bore a heavy burden of responsibility both for the financial crisis, which was largely inherited, and for the reform attempts undertaken by his ministers.

However, so far the suffering and hardships of the parents, at least outwardly, have not affected the lives of the royal children.

It is known that Louis-Charles was chou d'amour (favorite, treasure) of his mother, with whom he spent a lot of time. Marie Antoinette loved to read La Fontaine's fables and Perrault's fairy tales to her son, sang to him, accompanying herself on the harpsichord.

A text written in the queen's hand in 1789 has been preserved, telling about the character of the Dauphin. It was compiled for the boy’s teacher, Madame de Tourzel, and testifies to the mother’s attentive and tender attitude towards the child. The Queen writes that Louis-Charles really wants to be good, but this is not always easy for the baby. He is a dreamer and sometimes gets so carried away that he confuses fiction with reality. By the way, the note also contains the following remark: “The sensitivity of his nervous system is such that any unusual noise frightens him.” The king's son, for example, is afraid of dogs.

However, there is little reliable information about the first years of life of the future Louis XVII. The memoirs of people who knew him then and the biographies based on them approach the genre of the “life of a martyr” and require a very critical attitude towards themselves. But we know well when and how the revolution burst into it.

On October 6, 1789, the boy was awakened at dawn and dragged to the king's chambers. An angry crowd burst into the Palace of Versailles. Several Life Guards had already been killed, the queen was in danger

The baby saw his crying mother, trembling with fear and humiliation. I heard furious screams and insults directed at her, and saw the distorted faces of terrible people. Here Marie Antoinette, holding her son and daughter by the hands, goes out onto the balcony. Below, the multi-headed revolution sways and rumbles menacingly. A boy and a girl huddle close to their mother. But the crowd is shouting for the children to be removed. The threat applies only to the woman. The Queen takes Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse into the room and appears alone

That same day, the royal cortege, accompanied by Lafayette's National Guards and the rebels, moves slowly towards Paris. Excited women dance around the carriage, frantic, unbridled screams are heard, insults are heard against Marie Antoinette, the meaning of which the prince and princess, thank God, cannot understand. Only at eleven o'clock in the evening do the crowned travelers and their exhausted children finally reach their new home - the Tuileries Palace.

The events of the famous march to Versailles and the king's move to Paris have been described hundreds of times. But the turmoil that an eleven-year-old girl and a four-and-a-half-year-old boy experienced that day will forever remain unknown. One can only guess what imprint the fears and horrors of that day left on their psyche.

And this was just the beginning. In the Tuileries I had to start a new life. At the same time, it soon turned out that the revolutionary authorities of Paris actually took the king and his family captive. Their freedom of action and even movement was significantly limited. And every week the restrictions became more and more, and the situation became more and more humiliating. Despair and fear began to appear on the faces of the adults surrounding Louis-Charles and Marie-Therese.

Finally, in the summer of 1791, the famous escape attempt of the royal family was made. Late in the evening of June 20, the governess Madame de Tourzel, instead of putting the children to bed, wrapped them up warmly and led them out of the Tuileries gates onto the Rue Echelle, where the carriage was waiting. Madame de Tourzel will play the role of the Russian Baroness Corff, returning to her homeland with her children. The baroness's "footman" will be Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette's "chamber". Travelers gather separately, taking precautions They wait long and anxiously for the “maid”, who, not knowing Paris, wanders through the streets. And ahead is a night and a day on the road, a tiring trip to the northeastern border of France. It will all end in the village of Varennes, where the “footman” and “maid” will be recognized and detained.

And now the way back: the depressed faces of the adults, strangers in the carriage next to their father and mother (these were the commissioners of the National Assembly Barnave and Pétion), who behave like owners, and again the crowds around, shouting angrily or threateningly silent

Louis-Charles, a boy with an easily excitable psyche, is six years old.

Another year passes; on June 20, 1792, a crowd breaks into the royal residence, as once at Versailles. While she is in charge of the Tuileries, the queen and her children sit barricaded in one of the rooms. The king puts on a revolutionary Phrygian cap and shouts: “Long live the nation!” However, it is clear that his days in power are numbered. And it’s hard to vouch for life itself; the security of the Swiss Guards cannot hold back the onslaught of the rebels.

And now comes the denouement. On August 9, the people arm themselves, the alarm sounds, the drums are beaten, and demands for the deposition of the king are clearly heard. Menacing sounds once again reach the ears of the inhabitants of the Tuileries. Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, their children and the king's sister Elizabeth, under the protection of guards, are now leaving the palace forever. They go to the National Assembly.

Here, in a small room next to the meeting room, the royal family will spend three days. From here you can clearly hear the hostile voices of deputies, and cannon salvoes, and rifle shots The Tuileries are taken by storm.

On August 13, 1792, the seven-year-old Dauphin Louis-Charles and his family were imprisoned. They were settled under reliable guard in the small tower of the Temple: the king on the third floor, everyone else on the second. Communication was allowed, so at first the imprisonment brought the children closer to their parents. However, this later turned into psychological trauma.

At first, the boy was under the care of his mother: she spent most of the time with him, putting him to bed and getting him up in the morning. Louis-Charles saw his father only during the day. On September 26, for greater safety, the Commune transferred the king to the main tower; now the family could only see him at dinner. A month passed and all the prisoners were moved to the main tower. But a change took place in the boy’s life again. From now on, his bed was placed in his father's room, and the queen had to leave her son after dinner. The Dauphin was not transferred upstairs to his mother even when the king fell ill at the end of November; the queen was not allowed to stay with the child overnight, even when he had a fever.

However, aside from all the painful changes and restrictions, things haven't been that bad so far. Life flowed measuredly and monotonously. The children spent a lot of time with their parents and with their aunt, with whom they became very close, walked together in the Temple courtyard, and gathered at the table several times a day. Louis XVI played with his son and studied with him for at least two hours every day. Being a very educated man, he read with Louis-Charles and gave him lessons in history, geography, mathematics, and Latin. Surely a friendship arose between them; the boy was just at the age when his father’s attention becomes important.

But on December 11, the trial of Louis XVI began. From that moment on, he was finally separated from his family, and the Dauphin was sent back to his mother.

The separation, and especially the last meeting and farewell of the family with the king on January 20, 1793, on the eve of his execution, could not but become a severe mental shock for the child. According to an eyewitness, the meeting lasted about two hours. The women were sobbing, the Dauphin stood between the condemned man’s knees and hugged him. A child of less than eight years old knew that tomorrow his father would be killed.

Immediately after the death of Louis XVI, his brother, the Count of Provence, who was in Westphalia, proclaimed Louis-Charles King Louis XVII, and declared himself regent under his nephew. The emigration swore allegiance to the new king, and European courts recognized him. But it is at this time that the little monarch himself begins to get sick, and the trials of recent years begin to affect the child’s body.

Modern doctors who have examined Louis-Charles' medical history discover symptoms of tuberculosis, from which his brother died. This serious disease develops quickly in the body with a weakened immune system as a result of stress or an unhealthy lifestyle. Children become especially easy targets for tuberculosis in such conditions.

In the spring of 1793, the Dauphin began to experience pleurisy, and at the same time his joints became swollen, that is, a symptom of a very common form of the disease, especially in children, tuberculous lymphadenitis (inflammation of the lymph nodes caused by tuberculosis bacilli). If the disease is neglected, sepsis develops 2.

After the death of his father, Louis-Charles lived in Temple for several months with his mother, aunt and sister. However, on July 13, 1793, the Jacobin government decides to isolate the former Dauphin from his mother. The revolutionary education of the royal son is entrusted to a member of the Council of the Paris Commune, the shoemaker Simon and his wife. A new blow could well be fatal for an eight-year-old child. Of course, he cried, clung to his mother, and did not allow himself to be taken away. He cried for a long time and then refused to eat for several days. The loss of parents one after another, loss of a sense of security, insecurity, fear, incomprehensibility and hostility of the environment - this is what the life of a seriously ill boy was like from now on.

The shoemaker Simon, apparently, was not the ruthless monster that the royalist tradition portrayed him as. He and his wife were quite conscientious about the assignment given to them. The child was dressed, washed and fed, and walked in the Temple garden. They bought him toys and birds, of which documentary evidence has been preserved. However, everything dear to Louis-Charles had previously been ridiculed and desecrated here; everything that he had previously been taught and praised for could only irritate these people. Behavior, habits and customs - everything was completely alien. And strangers all around, who hated the boy’s loved ones and did not mince words about his mother

And after a few months, the French Dauphin was bawling revolutionary songs and cursing like a shoemaker. What happened to his psyche?

In October, the trial of Marie Antoinette began. It seemed insufficient to the revolutionary “investigators” to accuse the queen of treason. They came to interrogate her little son.

The so-called testimony of Louis-Charles Capet against Marie Antoinette is one of the most shameful episodes in French history and the French Revolution. Historians rarely cite the entire text of the protocol; the lies recorded on paper are too implausible, vile and disgusting. The vile “document” bears the signature of the Queen’s favorite child, in the wrong, sick hand.

It is interesting that Robespierre was outraged by the “testimony” received, believing that it could only arouse sympathy for the defendant. And so it happened. Marie Antoinette responded to the dirty slander with the utmost dignity; the organizers of the trial looked pale.

Charles Capet's "revolutionary education" ended on January 19, 1794. Simon, having received a new assignment from the Commune, left the Temple. From now on, the little prisoner had only guards. His isolation intensified: the premises were limited to one room, and he was allowed to walk only on the roof of the tower.

Anti-Jacobin, including royalist, sentiments were increasingly spreading in the country. France was at war with monarchical Europe. Uncertainty about the future forced revolutionary leaders to take into account the figure of the son of the executed Louis XVI as a bargaining chip in political trading. It is known that Robespierre was very interested in the Dauphin.

Immediately after the Thermidorian coup, Barras, an influential representative of the new government, comes to the Temple. A new guard, Laurent, is assigned to the boy. It was ordered to provide the best care for a nine-year-old child, who, after Simon's departure, was virtually abandoned. However, this was not done.

By this time, Louis-Charles's health was deteriorating significantly. He is apathetic and inactive due to joint pain or mental trauma He refuses to eat. In February 1795, a medical commission was sent to the Temple, and then a doctor, the famous surgeon Deso, was appointed. “I found an idiot child dying, a victim of the lowest poverty, a completely abandoned creature, degraded by the most cruel treatment,” he writes in his conclusion. The boy is dirty, covered in lice, he cannot get out of bed, his joints are swollen, his skin is covered with boils and ulcers that open up. And he hasn't talked to anyone for a long time.

The fact that in recent months the prisoner of the Temple did not utter a word in response to appeals to him is attested to by various people. Subsequently, this became one of the foundations of the myth about the replacement of the prince with a mute boy. However, psychologists and psychiatrists are well aware of such a symptom of severe childhood neurosis or mental disorder as mutism, when the child really cannot utter a word. It is typical for patients aged three to five years, but under severe stress it may well appear at nine to ten years of age.

Medicine was already powerless. Antibiotics had not yet appeared, and the treatment of tuberculosis in those days was essentially reduced to increasing the body's resistance. The patient was prescribed a healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition, a dry climate and plenty of sun. At an early stage, such methods sometimes gave good results. But not in this case. A neglected patient, deprived for a long time of the basic conditions of normal existence, especially a child, especially one who experienced severe mental trauma one after another, such a patient had no chance of life.

Louis-Charles Bourbon died while the government was negotiating for him with the Spanish court. After the official announcement of his death, the Count of Provence proclaimed himself King Louis XVIII.

But then rumors began to spread.

Three circumstances contributed to the birth of the fairy tale.

Firstly, the truth about the child tortured in the dungeon turned out to be too terrible. I didn’t want to recognize her, but when I did, I was begging to believe in a miraculous continuation with abduction, disguise, life under someone else’s name And, as expected, with a happy ending.

Secondly, indeed, no one could be sure then that the French government was telling the truth in its official statement. No evidence was presented.

There was not a single person who was constantly with the Dauphin in the last three years of his life and could testify to the development of his illness and death. The guards, doctors, and commissars changed all the time. Subsequently, only the most scrupulous research proved that all this time the prisoner of the Temple was in plain sight, and it would have been extremely difficult to replace him and secretly take him out.

Even the autopsy of the corpse was completed hastily and legally illiterate, which gave rise to doubts for a long time. For example, the deceased was not identified by relatives, despite the fact that his sister was right there, in the Temple. The protocol does not contain any indication of the boy's distinctive features. His name is never mentioned at all, but refers to the corpse of a ten-year-old child, the cause of whose death was the development of scrofula.

Thirdly, many influential people could benefit politically from rumors of the miraculous salvation of Louis XVII, both immediately after his death and later, over several decades. In a word, the idea was born that the little prince was saved. And what kind of stories she was surrounded by! Either Louis-Charles was taken with him by Simon, who was in cahoots with the Prince of Condé Or he was kidnapped from the Temple by Robespierre himself Or Barras and Josephine Beauharnais, the future wife of Napoleon, organized the removal of a euthanized child in a coffin from prison

Demand creates supply, and the first “Louis XVII” appeared at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. In total, experts counted more than sixty of them. And everyone had a lot in common. Adventurers, dissatisfied with their social status, left their home in pursuit of success. The troubled times demanded such people - self-confident, courageous and unscrupulous in their means.

However, the police quickly exposed most of the impostors and put them in prison. This was the case with the son of a tailor, Jean-Marie Hervago, and this was the case with Mathurin Bruno, whose adventures were by no means limited to the field of Louis XVII. Although there were others who took the matter more seriously. Thus, the famous Henri-Ethel Ber-Louis-Hector Hébert, who called himself Baron de Richemont, Duke of Normandy, published his biography with the substantiation of his royal claims - a real novel. Although Richemont had to serve his sentence twice and hide in England for several years, he nevertheless remained “in the role” until his death in 1855. He was “recognized” by some representatives of the old aristocracy; he had his own “party”. But the myth of the Prussian watchmaker Karl Wilhelm Naundorff turned out to be the most enduring. His descendants until recently bore the surname de Bourbon, proud of their resemblance to the monarchs and suing for recognition of their royal blood. Several biological examinations were carried out on this matter, for which, in particular, DNA was extracted from Marie Antoinette’s hair. The fact is that the origin of Naundorf really still remains a mystery. This man received a passport in the name of Naundorff from the Prussian police after he declared himself the son of Louis XVI. But being a German and not speaking French, the watchmaker spoke in detail about the life of the French royal family, which he passed off as childhood memories. In a word, the “Naundorff mystery” still exists.

The success of the impostors was greatly facilitated by the fact that many dark spots continued to remain in the history of the Temple prisoner.

Louis XVIII was not at all convinced of the death of his nephew. Immediately after returning from emigration in 1815, he ordered that the graves of his executed relatives, his brother and sister-in-law, be found in the Madeleine cemetery and their remains transferred to the ancient royal tomb in Saint-Denis. At the cemetery, the king ordered the construction of an Atonement Chapel, where funeral masses for the dead monarchs began to be regularly celebrated (and still are). However, Louis XVIII never ordered funeral masses for the Dauphin.

Searches were also carried out in the cemetery of the Church of Sainte-Marguerite, where, according to official information, the Dauphin was buried. But the exact location of the grave was unknown, and the remains were not found. In the 19th century, excavations were carried out at this cemetery twice more (in 1846 and 1894). The skeleton of a child seemed to have been discovered, but examination of the bones showed that they belonged to a teenager of fourteen to fifteen years old. This result was used to substantiate the version of substitution, but then the remains from the cemetery were compared with the description of those that were autopsied in the Temple in 1795, and it turned out that we could not be talking about the same person.

Marie-Therese, Duchess of Angouleme, could not be sure of the death of her brother. After spending more than three years in the Temple (from thirteen to seventeen years), she was exchanged in December 1795 for French officers who were captured by the Austrians. By the way, after her stay in prison, the princess changed so much that later versions were expressed about her replacement.

Marie-Therese did not see her brother in the last months of his life; she, like everyone else, had to believe rumors or official reports. She probably also hesitated, since from time to time she sent questionnaires to impostors, in particular Bruno and Naundorff.

Both the king and the Duchess of Angoulême refused to accept and place in Saint-Denis the heart of Louis-Charles, the same one that was now subjected to genetic analysis: the donor, the surgeon Pelletan, could not provide any evidence of its authenticity.

In 1795, Pelletan was one of the doctors who performed the autopsy at the Temple. Secretly from his colleagues, he took out the boy's heart and, rolling it in bran and wrapping it in a handkerchief, hid it in his pocket. Returning home, Pelletan preserved the heart in alcohol and kept it for many years before offering it as a gift to the august relatives of the deceased. But they didn’t believe him.

The further fate of the Dauphin's heart is interesting. He was received by the Archbishop of Paris. However, during the revolution of 1830, the rebels destroyed the archbishopric, the vessel with the heart was broken, and the heart itself was left lying in the sand among the fragments. The next day, the desecrated shrine was picked up by Pelletan’s son. Now placed in a new vessel, the heart was kept for a long time in the Pelletan family, and in 1895 it was given to Don Carlos of Bourbon, Duke of Madrid, at that time heir to the French kings. The heart of Louis-Charles found its place in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, as already mentioned, in 1975 with the permission of the French government and at the request of the Bourbons.

It is not surprising that the authenticity of this relic has still been questioned by many. The story told by Pelletan, which ultimately turned out to be true, refuted the romantic myth of the prince's rescue. A myth that was destined to have such a long life, in contrast to the short life of its hero.

However, maybe it’s no longer worth talking about this myth in the present tense? After all, the mystery is no longer there; the evidence is undeniable.

The results of the examination received quite a wide response in France: leading newspapers published reports about it. This turned out to be important for the French. Although there were probably those who didn’t believe it. After all, not everyone believed the results of a recently conducted similar genetic examination of the remains of Nicholas II and his family

But if speculation continues, it will have as little to do with reality as all the previous ones. Nothing can be done - the price for freedom and equality includes the ruined life of ten-year-old Louis XVII.

1 Chernyak E.B. "Five centuries of secret war." M., 1966; his: “Conspiracy of times gone by.” M., 1994; Bovykin D.Yu. “Louis XVII: life and legend” // “New and Contemporary History”. 1995. #4; his: “Louis XVII. Life after death "// "The World of Genealogy." M., 1997.
2 The author takes this opportunity to thank doctor E.E. Titova and child psychologist N.B. Kedrova for the valuable assistance provided in preparing the article.

To understand the horror of the regicide of 1793, it should be remembered that over the previous hundred and fifty years there had been only three kings in France. There was something of immortality in this longevity. In the eyes of the people, the monarch lost all attributes of personality, turning into a faceless absolute reality, a divine being.

It was this demigod that the revolution sent to the scaffold.

When the monarchies of Europe declared war on revolutionary France, the Legislative Assembly decided to arrest Louis XVI. He was transferred with his family to the Temple fortress, the former possession of the Templar Order, already as prisoners.

The members of the royal family outwardly endured the dramatic change in their fate with composure. There were five of them in the Temple Tower - the king, Queen Marie Antoinette, their children Louis Charles and Maria Theresa, the king's sister Elizabeth. Their fates were shared by two more devoted creatures - the king's favorite valet Clery and the dog Coco. To distract themselves from sad thoughts, the prisoners tried to occupy themselves as best they could. Elizabeth darned clothes, the king and queen educated the children and played skittles with them.

Royal family in the Temple.

However, events developed quickly.

On September 20, 1792, the newly elected National Convention abolished the monarchy. The former king nominally became an ordinary "Citizen Louis Capet."

And then, on the basis of documents that were found in the Tuileries and which testified to Louis’s connections with the noble emigration, he was accused of high treason.

His trial began on December 20, 1792. Three weeks later he was sentenced to death. Three times it was put to a vote, and each time the deputies of the Convention confirmed their verdict - “La mort!” (La mor! Death!), although the last time the majority was only one vote.

On January 21, 1793, Louis ascended the scaffold built on the Place de la Revolution (present-day Place de la Concorde). Until the last moment, he retained dignity and self-control, which he so lacked in his political activities. Just before his death, he exclaimed to the crowd: “French! I am dying innocently and I pray to God that my blood will not fall on my people.”

The fate of the Dauphin

After the execution of Louis XVI, the only legal heir to the thousand-year-old French monarchy was the eight-year-old son of the executed king Louis Charles, who bore the title of Dauphin of France. The royalists who were in exile proclaimed him King Louis XVII. And this predetermined his fate.

Six months after the execution of the king, the boy was torn away from his mother and transferred to another room of the Temple Tower. A monstrous experiment began with the goal of “re-educating” the young Capetian in the spirit of republican equality. The commissar of the Commune, the shoemaker Simon, and his wife were assigned to Louis Charles as mentors. These degenerates, with the help of bullying and beatings, tried to change the child’s habits and break his will.

By the end of the third month, Louis Charles' tormentors could be satisfied. He behaved like a real sans-culotte: he swore, blasphemed, cursed the aristocrats and his mother, Queen Marie Antoinette. In addition, the frightened kid served Simon slippers, cleaned his wife's shoes, served them at the table, and washed the feet of these brutes.

Louis XVII in the Temple (in the clothes of a craftsman boy). Sculpture of Anne Chardonnay

But all this was only preparation for the vile performance staged by the revolutionary justice in the fall of 1793, during the trial of the “widow Capet.” Marie Antoinette was accused of conspiracy against the republic. At the same time, the former queen was accused of incest with her son. Eight-year-old Louis Charles was dragged into court and forced to give testimony, which was carefully recorded. On October 16, Marie Antoinette was guillotined.

The Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave. At the beginning of May 1795, when negotiations were underway with Spain about the extradition of Louis XVII, the guards reported to the Committee about the progressive deterioration of the prisoner's health. A well-known physician in Paris, Dr. Desso, was sent to him. His testimony of his first meeting with the Dauphin has been preserved: “I found an idiot child, dying, a victim of the lowest poverty, a completely abandoned creature, degraded from the most cruel treatment.” From that time on, nothing more was known about Louis Charles. Therefore, the official news of the death of the little sufferer on June 8, 1795 aroused distrust. Rumors spread that Louis Charles was alive and hiding under an assumed name. Subsequently, 27 people turned to the surviving daughter of Louis XVI, Maria Teresa, with a request to recognize them as a brother. In total, about 60 people claimed to become Louis XVII, who miraculously escaped.

The official version of the death of Louis Charles indeed rests on shaky foundations. The supposed burial of the Dauphin was opened twice - in 1816 and 1894. But the remains buried there could not be identified. However, it was established that the child found at the place where the Temple prisoner was buried was between 15 and 18 years old, and not 10, as expected.

The main argument in favor of the fact that Louis Charles really died in 1795 is the data obtained during genetic testing. During the autopsy of a child who died in the Temple, Dr. Pelletan removed the heart from the deceased and carefully preserved it. After his death, the relic passed from one aristocratic family to another for almost two centuries.

In 2000, a DNA analysis of this organ was carried out. The experts concluded that the relevant genetic signatures matched DNA extracted from Marie Antoinette's hair and the hair of Louis Charles' sister; thus, this fact is considered proof that the Dauphin actually died at the Temple in 1795. However, the results of this study are also refuted.

Perhaps the mystery of the death of Louis XVII will never be revealed.

The Mystery of Louis XVII

After the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, the monarchists proclaimed his son Louis-Charles, imprisoned in the Temple prison, King of France Louis XVII. The Dauphin did not live to see his liberation, dying of tuberculosis in 1795, at the age of 10. However, the exhumation and examination of his remains made it possible to conclude: it is not Louis-Charles who is buried in the grave of the heir to the throne...

On July 14, 1789, Parisians took the Bastille - the Great French Revolution began. In October, King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette and their children were forced to leave Versailles and escorted by excited crowds to bustling Paris. Here the king was forced to approve the reforms of the National Assembly. Louis felt that clouds were gathering over him and his family, so in June 1791 he tried to escape. Alas, the king and his household were overtaken and returned to Paris.

On September 21, 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the Republic. The King of France was tried as a traitor and sentenced to death. On January 21, 1793, the guillotine cut off Louis XVI's head. Marie Antoinette outlived him by only nine months: the hellish invention of the revolution did not spare her either.

After the execution of Louis XVI, royalists in exile proclaimed his young son Louis XVII, appointing his uncle, the Count of Provence, as regent under him. The revolutionaries prepared a completely different future for the heir to the throne: by decision of the National Convention, Louis-Charles was sent for re-education to the shoemaker Antoine Simon and his wife, who settled with the Dauphin in the Temple prison.

The failed Louis XVII

According to some information, these were real sadists who mocked the child, forcing him to sing “La Marseillaise” and at the same time slap the unfortunate man on the head for mistakes in the text. According to other evidence, the Simons treated the boy well, and they left the Temple on the orders of the warden Chaumette.

After this, the heir to the throne was thrown into the same solitary cell where his father was kept before the execution. It is unclear what threat the child posed, but all the windows in his cell were sealed tightly, the door was walled up halfway, and the upper part was covered with a powerful grate with a tiny window for passing food. The Dauphin's sister, 16-year-old Maria Teresa, was also in the Temple.

When the guillotine cut off Robespierre's head, Paul de Barras, the leader of the National Convention, who played a significant role in ending the bloody terror and the execution of its initiator, first went to the Temple to visit Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse. The Dauphin looked terrifying: his joints were very swollen and he could barely move. The boy was coughing violently, his bed was infested with insects, and there was nothing to breathe in the cell. The stale air and the smell of sewage quickly forced Barras to retreat. Maria Teresa looked much better: it turned out that she did not even know about her brother’s imprisonment in the same tower, on the floor below. Barras called a doctor and ordered that the prisoners be provided with decent living conditions, fresh air and increased nutrition. Alas! The heir never got out of bed and died of tuberculosis on June 18, 1795.

When the Count of Provence became King Louis XVIII of France in 1814 (after the defeat of Napoleon), he had to fight off pretenders to the throne with all his might, in the person of whom the unfortunate Louis-Charles was “resurrected” no less than 40 times... Louis also suffered from the tireless swindlers -Philippe, who ruled France from 1830 to 1848.

Perhaps, the inventive watchmaker Karl Wilhelm Naundorff from Germany was especially successful in this. Although Naundorff barely spoke French, he almost succeeded in convincing the court at Versailles that he was the son of the executed Louis. The watchmaker spoke in detail about the family life of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and even recognized courtiers whom he could only see decades ago. He correctly answered all the questions concerning life at court and the location of the royal chambers.

Difficulties began when Naundorff tried to cover the events from 1795, when the Dauphin supposedly died, to 1810, the time of his appearance in Berlin. Firstly, the watchmaker could not explain how, by whom and when he was released from prison. Secondly, he claimed that his liberators continued to hold him as a prisoner and took him to America.

It is curious that Maria Teresa, although she recognized the possibility of replacing her brother in prison, refused to meet with the impostor, declaring that she did not find the slightest resemblance to her brother in the portrait provided to her. As a result, by order of King Louis-Philippe, Naundorff was arrested and deported to England.

But the watchmaker either really was the Dauphin, or was damaged in his mind and believed in his own fantasies, for he did not calm down and continued to make claims to the throne. He even began to invent a bomb for the Bourbons, who deprived him of the throne. One day a bomb exploded, destroying the house of the terrorist “heir.” However, Naundorff survived and declared that he would definitely take the French throne on January 1, 1840. However, time passed, and the throne remained with the Bourbons, and the watchmaker finally lost his supporters. Naundorf died on August 10, 1845. According to one version, he was poisoned. Probably, for someone, his claims to the throne still posed a danger?

Naundorf's descendants fought for their royal blood until the 20th century. In 1954, a French court put an end to the persistent claims of the descendants of the German watchmaker, rendering a verdict: Louis XVII died on June 8, 1795 in the Temple. Thus, all attempts to classify oneself as his descendants began to look absurd. Everything seemed to fall into place. Or maybe the French court still sinned against the truth?

Despite the court verdict on the death of the Dauphin, evidence in favor of the version of the replacement of the heir exists. Thus, one of the members of the convention, who visited Louis-Charles at the beginning of 1795, claimed that the boy was deaf and mute (an excellent candidate for a substitution!), and the guard recalled a child too tall for 10 years. The widow Simona, who cared for the boy before his imprisonment alone, also believed in the substitution. She was allegedly told about this by a cook who participated in preparing the heir’s escape. And the doctors who examined the child clearly hinted to their loved ones that it was not Louis XVII who died, but a completely different boy.

In 1846, the remains of a prisoner who died in prison were exhumed, and experts came to the conclusion that the skeleton belonged to a 14-year-old teenager with a height of 1 m 55 cm. But the Dauphin literally turned 10 years old before his death and he was not tall! Even more intriguing was the hair examination. By chance, a lock of the hair of the heir to the throne, which Marie Antoinette sent in a letter to one of her friends, was preserved.

During the exhumation, a strand was also cut off. After 150 years, both strands were examined using modern methods, and it turned out that they belonged to different people...

Probably, the substitution can also explain the strange isolation of the prisoner, who was almost walled up in his cell in an attempt to hide the Dauphin’s escape.

The prisoner could have been sold to the royalists by the head of the prison, Chaummet, because it was on his orders that the Dauphin was separated from the Simons and imprisoned alone...

Where did Louis XVII disappear to? Most likely, the fate of Louis XVII will remain one of the unsolved mysteries of history.

P.S. The debate over whether the Dauphin managed to escape or died in the Temple seemed to have recently ended. Professor at the Belgian University of Louvain Jean-Jacques Cassiman and professor at the University of the German city of Münster Ernst Brinkmann used genetic analysis to confirm that the 10-year-old boy who died on June 8, 1795 in the Temple Prison in Paris was indeed the son of Queen Marie Antoinette of France.

The heart of little Louis helped solve the mystery of who died in the Temple. One of the forensic experts, who was present at the autopsy of the deceased Dauphin, managed to distract the attention of his colleagues and hide the heart of the heir to the throne. The boy's corpse was buried in a mass grave. For many years it passed from hand to hand. In 1975, the precious relic passed into the hands of the Duke of Beaufremont, head of the Legitimists of France, who placed it in the crypt of the Cathedral of Saint-Denis.

German and Belgian professors independently analyzed the DNA of the boy's heart. Hair samples from Marie Antoinette and her two sisters, who belonged to the Austrian Habsburg dynasty, were then subjected to a similar procedure.

A DNA analysis was also carried out of the descendants of this dynasty: Anna of Romania and her brother Andre de Bourbon of Parma. Having compared the results obtained, scientists were convinced of the relationship between the alleged Dauphin and the Habsburgs.

But the mystery of the death or salvation of Louis-Charles has not yet been completed. Perhaps the found heart does not belong to the Dauphin Louis-Charles, who died at the age of ten, but to the eldest son of Louis XVI, Louis-Joseph-Xavier, who died at the age of eight. His heart was lost in 1817. Thus, DNA analysis only proved that we are talking about a child born into the family of Marie Antoinette. However, there is no direct evidence that the remains belong specifically to the failed Louis XVII.

So, one mystery - who died in Temple prison - was replaced by another - whose heart was examined for DNA by two professors: Louis-Charles or Louis-Joseph-Xavier?

(Based on materials from F. Perfilov, M. Taranov)