Louis XVII - Did he die in the Tower?

I am very happy to see this thread started, as the Bourbons of France have long fascinated me, way before the Romanovs. Actually my first love is Marie Antionette, and Versailles I have considered the "epidome" of what is "royal", well, until I went to St.Petersburg ! [but then, so much there is modeled on Versailles and the Bourbon court].
The unfortunate child, Louis XVII sadly met his fate in the dark prison. His sister's story, Madame Royale is also sad if not as targic. The Castelot books on both of them are interesting.

Poor Louis Charles, such a devoted son, and how horrible his life must have been after he was taken from his mother.  

However I somehow feel sorrier for the survivor of it all Marie Therese Charlotte, Duchesse de Angouleme. On her gravestone is the quote " Ask yourselves, ye who pass this way, if your sorrows in life do not equal mine."

A woman who was the sole survivor of the Royal Family,
left to money hungry, greedy relatives who cared naught for her, and then married to her cousin, who cared naught for her.  It is too bad she didn't have children, so she could have had someone in her life to love.

Just think of the agony, each time she interviewed a pretender, the thoughts that must have entered her head, is he, isn't he..... very sad, very very tragic.

i read a book of marie antoinette, written by stefan zweig. in there it said that among other accusations brought to marie antoinette was incest! apparently the accusers had managed to get the dauphin to testify that his mother had molested him!  :-/

no-one actually believed it, since he probably was scared out of his minds, but still, what a cruel thing to put her through.

the same book said that it's very likely that the dauphin was actually axel fersen's son...

It is a site about Axel de Fersen   (Sorry it is in french) :

http://axelvonfersen.free.fr/

And look at the gallery, it is said once again that it is Louis Joseph in the portrait, Lisa do you have a link where it is said that it is not him ?

Poor Louis Charles, such a devoted son, and how horrible his life must have been after he was taken from his mother.  

However I somehow feel sorrier for the survivor of it all Marie Therese Charlotte, Duchesse de Angouleme. On her gravestone is the quote " Ask yourselves, ye who pass this way, if your sorrows in life do not equal mine."

A woman who was the sole survivor of the Royal Family,
left to money hungry, greedy relatives who cared naught for her, and then married to her cousin, who cared naught for her.  It is too bad she didn't have children, so she could have had someone in her life to love.

Just think of the agony, each time she interviewed a pretender, the thoughts that must have entered her head, is he, isn't he..... very sad, very very tragic.

I totally agree - I've always felt very bad for Marie-Therese. For her to have survived, with her entirely family dead . . . shudder.

Re Axel Fersen - I never heard that he was Louis-Charles' father. Possible, of course, but we have no reason to beleive it. Louis XVI certainly considered Louis-Charles his son.

Yes, ilyala, Louis Charles was convinced to swear that both his mother and his aunt, Madame Elisabeth, had molested him. When this ''proof" was brought to trial, Marie Antoinette talked to the jury and said that she called to reason and to the hearts of all those who were parents, but that she wouldn't respond to such aberration... or something similar to that.

It was absurd confessing to that, so much when she knew that, although she was being tried, she was going to be executed whatever happened during the trial!

And look at the gallery, it is said once again that it is Louis Joseph in the portrait, Lisa do you have a link where it is said that it is not him ?

Le site de l'agence photographique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux!

http://www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/home.aspx

for Louis XVII: http://www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/CSearchT.aspx?V=CSearchT&SID=22S39UVT2RNF&E=S_22S39UVT2RNF&NoR=500&New=T

For Louis Joseph:http://www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/CSearchZ.aspx?o=&Total=65&FP=1925659&E=22S39UVT24ZL&SID=22S39UVT24ZL&New=T&Pic=48&SubE=2C6NU0S9QI5X

Merci Lisa  , Je leur ai écrit pour avoir plus de précision sur cette histoire d'identification  

De rien!

This is indeed Louis XVII, after Kucharski Alexandre (1741-1819), Museum of Versailles:



another by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

I question whether the top picture is truly Louis XVII. In books it is sometimes labelled as such, but to me it looks like the first Dauphin, Louis-Joseph, who died of tuberculosis in 1789. The bottom picture is definitely Louis XVII, the robust Louis-Charles, with chubby cheeks and curly hair the color of straw as he was often described, even into the days of the Temple imprisonment, before being separated from his mother. Louis-Joseph was thin, delicate and consumptive-looking. Charles was healthy like a "peasant child." The boys in these two pictures do not look like the same person, taking it for granted that children go through various transformations.

This is just my opinion. For many years I was confused as to how these two pictures were both supposed to be Louis XVII, while the top one so much resembles Louis-Joseph. I really do think some history books have the wrong name on the wrong child.

To know more about Louis XVII:

- Louis XVII at Wikipedia;




- Naundorff, the most famous claimant;

- Website about Naundorff - only in French.

- Website of Philippe Delorme, french historian who arranged for DNA testing of the long-supposed to be Louis XVII's heart - in French.

Now THIS is definitely the blonde, plump Louis-Charles, Louis XVII, the lost Dauphin.

Poor little Louis XVII - the ill-fated son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI - was forcibly taken from his mother and sister after his father's execution and given to one of the jailers where he was brainwashed into saying at his mother's trial that she was incestuously involved with him!  I simply cannot imagine her anguish at seeing him and hearing the obscenities he was uttering.  

Then after her execution - he passes into the pages of history -- most people believing he died of abuse and neglect in the Tower - but many people came forward later claiming to be this same boy.
Echoes of GD Anastasia!   :-/

What is everyone's opinion on this?  How do you think he died?  

Janet R.

I think Louis XVII did not die in the Temple in 1795 but was replaced by another boy. Yes, I have read all about the DNA. The specimen used, a desiccated heart, to me is questionable. How do they know where that heart really came from? The doctor who performed the autopsy and allegedly removed the heart was sympathetic to the Revolution and no one witnessed the autopsy but other revolutionaries. Marie-Therese was right upstairs but not allowed to come downstairs to see her "brother's" body, not to pray at his side or anything. After the body was removed, she allowed to come out of solitary confinement where she had been for a year and go down into the garden.

It is theorized that the real Dauphin may have been exchanged with one Jean-Marie Hervagault, illegitimate son of the Duc de Valentinois, Prince of Monaco, a relative of the Habsburgs. He was five years older than Louis-Charles, which accounts for the fact that eyewitnesses said the captive "Dauphin" looked to be about 15, not 10.  The bones later excavated were definitely those of a teenager, in spite of the wierd effects TB has on bone growth. Interesting.....

Also, let us recall that the Royal crypt at Saint-Denis had been rifled by the revolutionaries and the many remains scattered - it may have been Louis-Joseph's heart, the older brother, or another family member's. There were many royal hearts at large, see Andre Castelot's book. (Also Meade Minnergerode's "Son of Marie-Antoinette.")

I do not know which claimant was the real one. I am not a Naundorfiste, however. It is well to keep in mind that Provence was said to be sending out boys as decoys, just to stir up the pot and distract attention away from whoever was the true claimant.

while i don't quite believe what you're saying... let's go along with it... if i were the little dauphin and had just escaped (somehow) prison, after having been worked out as a peaasant, after having to make horrible allegations against my mother, and after living in such a closed off environment... i doubt i would ever want to go back there again. especially since he was so little when everything happened. i would find myself a peaceful place, live a quiet life and forget all about the horrors of revolution

while i don't quite believe what you're saying... let's go along with it... if i were the little dauphin and had just escaped (somehow) prison, after having been worked out as a peaasant, after having to make horrible allegations against my mother, and after living in such a closed off environment... i doubt i would ever want to go back there again. especially since he was so little when everything happened. i would find myself a peaceful place, live a quiet life and forget all about the horrors of revolution

I agree; I think that if he did escape he lived in obscurity somewhere. I also think his sister was aware that if her brother was ever found, he might not be mentally capable of taking the reins of government because of the unspeakable things that had happened to him.

[http://erhj.blogspot.com]

DNA studies done on Naundorff's remains proved that he was not Louis XVII.

Arturo Beéche