Louis XVII - Did he die in the Tower?

[Carol Jean]

I don't think that you understand what I am trying to prove by having the DNA of a male line descendant of King Louis XIV to compare with the DNA of my brother who is a direct male line descendant of the boy that escaped France at the time of the French Revolution and told that his parents were both beheaded and that he was of the Royalty of France  and that he had came over from France to America hiding for fear of his life.
If I can find a male descendant of King Louis XIV in a direct male line (male to son to son and so on) that would be willing to have his DNA tested and post the results on Ancestry.Com's DNA or Family Tree DNA --- the maybe I will find a DNA match and will then have the proof that I am looking for that will prove that the little boy that came on the boat from France to America was really the son of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI.

[King François X]

I belive all the descendants of Louis XIV are "royal" and are probably not open to give there DNA. Some of them have official websites i imagine. The "empress of russia" does.( i hate her) ha. And can i have a link to your book Carol Jean? i would love to buy it.

[Carol Jean]

Hi, I can not give you a link to my book on  this forum---no advertizing but if you will leave me a private message then I will try to contact you and find out where to send you a book.  I do not want to go against the rules of using this forum. Thanks for your interest. 

[Naslednik Norvezhskiy]

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.

I think Marie-Antoinette was right in appealing to the hearts of fellow parents, who most likely realized what an absurd charge that was. Yes, it was in a period not long after the witch hunts, when people could be made to hysterically believe almost anything about a woman, but it was also an age of incredible cruelty and abuse (i.g. whipping and child prostitution) which we in Western societies fortunately are very unfamiliar with today, so it seems absurd that mother-son and aunt-nephew incest should be an issue. Especially considering that this was not just an age when poor families all slept together in one bed, but also an age when babies were nursed for years (often by other women than their own mother) and mothers, who were constantly pregnant or nursing, wouldn't think it odd to soothe an eight-year-old like the Dauphin with the occassional tit treat when he became too jealous of his suckling baby sibling.

[Carol Jean]

If there is anyone interested in what I have put together in my book--I would be glad to have others look at the book and contents.
For information contact me at cjgennut@yahoo.com.

[darius]

If there is anyone interested in what I have put together in my book--I would be glad to have others look at the book and contents.
For information contact me at cjgennut@yahoo.com.

Having written a book I find it rather peculiar that you haven´t been able to use even an online geneology to trace the line of Louis XIV...

[Carol Jean]

I did write a book and I have traced the genealogy of King Louis XVI---and I have contacted some of the descendants of the Royal Kings of France.  So what are you saying? I have done a lot of research on the Royal Family and their ancestors and descendants. I just have not found anyone who IS a descendant that will do a DNA test.  How would you go about doing that? Have you any idea?

[darius]

It´s a bit of a problem if they aren´t willing to collaborate.  Only options as I see it is to somehow procure their hairbrush, or prick them with a pin.  On a serious note, apart from the likenesses you have detected in family pictures, and the account of the goaler´s wife that the Dauphin escaped, what makes you think that the Dauphin was your ancestor, and that your ancestor wasn´t simply one of the millions of immigrants who arrived in the Americas in the 18th and 19th century.  I am afraid to say that your claim is tenuous to say the least based on what you have shared here.

[Carol Jean]

You and lots of others have your opinon---we are all intitled to our own beliefs and thoughts. After doing so much research on my ancestor and not finding any connection to any family here in the U.S. and knowing the story handed down from one generation to another about HOW he arrived in the U.S. and then actually tracing him and his whereabouts--trying for years and years to find out his ancestry in the conventionally way I then took his word that he was of the Royalty of France and tried to find out who he really was. DNA proved that the surname he had was NOT his surname at all. So, with all this in mind--I then turned to the Royalty of France and their history, ancestors, stories and pictures.
And I am saying that I worked on his ancestry here in the U.S. for more years than you are old--probably as I started when I was in my teens and I am now in my sixties. So, this is no fly by night ---grabbing at some sort of whim.

[Kalafrana]

I've been looking at this thread for the first time today, and one question which has yet to be answered is how the heart which was DNA-tested, and whose provenance seems to be well-attested, could come from a descendant of Maria Theresa other than the young Dauphin. Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but as I understand it, the test showed the heart to come from a descendant of MT. She had a huge family (15 children), but it seems highly unlikely that a boy substituted for the Dauphin would also be descended from MT, as well as being around the right age and able to pass for him. An illegitimate descendant is a possibility in theory, but unlikely to be conveniently available in practice.

Ann

[Carol Jean]

From what I have read the test on the heart proved that the heart belonged to someone that had the same ancestry as Marie Antoinette and two of her sisters. I read in a book by Deborah Cadbury that the test did not prove that the heart belonged to a son of Marie Antoinette.
DNA goes back from father to father to father and so on. The only connection that is proven by mtdna testing is from the Mother to the son.
Otherwise if a woman has a test---it goes back to her mother and then her mother and then her mother and so on. So to prove that a son belongs to a woman ---they have a test that can prove that---and to prove that a child belongs to a father they can prove that.  But that is as far as it goes either back on the female side or the male side depending what sex that the child is. If you have access to a computer to look up the books written by Deborah Cadbury--the name of the book has escaped my memory. Oh, and Marie Antoinette had four children--two boys and two girls.

[Kalafrana]

OK.

M DNA goes largely unchanged down the female line, and that was what was relied on to identify the Romanov remains in the 1990s. That was what had to be used as the other types of DNA were too degraded to be used.

So we are dealing with someone in the same female line of descent as Marie Antoinette, and therefore Maria Theresia. My knowledge of the 18th century Habsburg dynasty is rusty now, but what I do remember distinctly from studying the period at university is that the Habsburgs suffered a biological crisis in the early 18th century, and there were very few of them at the time she succeeded in 1740. She and her husband solved the problem by having a huge family, but it seems to me unlikely that a boy substituted for the Dauphin would, most conveniently, have the right ancestry through the female line. There may have been illegitimate sons of Marie Antoinette's brothers around, for example (I don't know) but genetically that would not work, as they would inherit their M DNA from their non-Habsburg mothers.

Ann

[Vanya Ivanova]

The heart in the Basilica taken by Pelletan has a totally undisputed history from 1830 onwards although there is still documentary evidence for it being in Pelletan's possession before that. The 1998 DNA tests proved that it was the heart of a male child between 7-10 years of age and that this child was unequivocally the son or possibly the grandson of one of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria's daughters.

Of these, only four of those that made it to adulthood had issue. Maria Christina of Teschen, who had a daughter that died in infancy (a day after birth), Maria Amalia of Parma who had 9 children only 3 of which were boys, her eldest lived to adulthood, and the younger two died at a few days and 3 years respectively. Maria Carolina of Sicily had two sons who survived into adulthood and of the male grandchildren through Maria Amalia and Maria Carolina's daughters there are no princes whose hearts would accurately match or have been available to Pelletan.

That leaves Marie Antoinette who had two sons, Louis Joseph and Louis Charles. Given that the heart was known to be in the hands of Pellatan who is proven to have also examined a deceased male child in the Temple in 1795, and the complete lack of male candidates available from Marie Antoinette's sisters, ( the two aunts DNA that was tested, Maria Johanna and Maria Josepha died without issue) then the heart HAS to belong to either of Marie Antoinette's sons with all the supporting evidence pointing to Louis Charles.

Louis Joseph died aged 7 and was buried in the Royal tombs at St Denis. These were destroyed during the revolution in 1793 and the bodies removed and despoiled. However, the burial custom for the princes/Kings of France was for the heart to be removed at death and then embalmed ( this is what prompted Pelletan to remove the heart in the first place) The heart of Louis Joseph was removed and embalmed ( records prove this) not stored in alchohol as was the heart kept by Pelletan.

Therefore the heart tested in 1998 can only be that of Louis XVII, there are no other viable candidates that the heart could belong to.

[Kalafrana]

Vanya

Thank you, but just to complete the circle, who was Pelletan and how did he have access to the heart?

Ann

[Vanya Ivanova]

Jean Phillippe Pelletan was a Parisian surgeon who upon the French Revolution in 1789 was appointed chief surgeon to the new 'Guarde Nationale'. In 1795 he was working as head surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, the oldest and most central hospital in Paris on the Ile de Cite (its still there). It was therefore the nearest hospital to the Temple prison where the surviving children of Louis XVI were being held. He attended to Louis XVII's medical needs at the Temple on several occasions before the child's death of Tuberculosis  on 8th June 1795 ( the same disease that killed his elder brother Louis Joseph).

On the 9th June 1795 he was called there to perform an autopsy on the body of the ten year old Louis XVII. Despite his elevation by the revolution, he still had monarchist sympathies and so observed the French Royal burial custom of removing the heart. He did this in secret and preserved the child's heart in alcohol. Pelletan then made several documented attempts to give the heart to the child's remaining relatives, including Louis XVIII but these came to nothing. In Pelletan's later career he also acted as consultant-surgeon to Napoleon Bonaparte.

The heart Pelletan removed from the child in the Temple was later stolen by one of his medical students but returned to his widow ( Pelletan's) it then possibly left France for a time and was held by Spanish relatives of the Bourbon family who then gave it to the Archbishop of Paris who had it stored at St Denis where it remained from 1830 onwards.

In 1998-2000, the historian Philippe Delorme arranged for the heart to be tested by a Belgian DNA specialist Prof. Cassiman of the University of Louvain who confirmed via the analysis given in my last post that it was indeed the heart of Louis XVII. On the 8th June 2004 ( 209 yrs to day that Louis XVII died) the heart was buried in a funeral service attended by representatives of many of europes royal families at the royal basilica at St Denis and was then interred next to the remains of the child's parents, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.