[1] The responsibility of Marie Antoinette for the policy of the king
before and during the Revolution has been the subject of much
controversy. In general it may be said that her influence on politics
has been much exaggerated. (See MARIE ANTOINETTE.) [ED.]
LOUIS XVII. (1785-1795?), titular king of France, second son of Louis
XVI. and Marie Antoinette, was born at Versailles on the 27th of March
1785, was christened the same day Louis Charles, and given the title of
duke of Normandy. Louis Charles became dauphin on the death of his elder
brother on the 4th of June 1789. It is only with his incarceration in
the Temple on the 13th of August 1792, that his history, apart from that
of his parents, becomes of interest. The royal party included, beside
the king and queen, their daughter Marie Thérèse Charlotte (Madame
Royale), the king's sister Madame Élisabeth, the valet Cléry and others.
The prisoners were lodged at first in the smaller Tower, but were
removed to the larger Tower on the 27th of October. Louis Charles was
then separated from his mother and aunt to be put in his father's
charge, except for a few hours daily, but was restored to the women when
Louis was isolated from his family at the beginning of his trial in
December.
On the 21st of January 1793 Louis became, for the royalists, king of
France, and a week later the comte de Provence arrogated to himself the
title of regent. From that moment began new plots for the escape of the
prisoners from the Temple, the chief of which were engineered by the
Chevalier de Jarjayes,[1] the baron de Batz,[2] and the faithful Lady
Atkyns.[3] On the 3rd of July the little dauphin was again separated
from his mother, this time to be given into the keeping of the cobbler
Antoine Simon[4] who had been named his guardian by the Committee of
General Security. The tales told by the royalist writers of the
barbarous cruelty inflicted by Simon and his wife on the child are not
proven. Marie Jeanne, in fact, took great care of the child's person,
and there is documentary evidence to prove that he had air and food. But
the Simons were obviously grotesquely unfit guardians for a prince, and
they doubtless caused much suffering to the impressionable child, who
was made on occasion to eat and drink to excess, and learnt the language
of the gutter. But the scenes related by A. de Beauchesne of the
physical martyrdom of the child are not supported by any other
testimony, though he was at this time seen by a great number of people.
On the 6th of October Pache, Chaumette, Hébert and others visited him
and secured from him admissions of infamous accusations against his
mother, with his signature to a list of her alleged crimes since her
entry in the Temple, and next day he was confronted with his sister
Marie Thérèse for the last time.
Simon's wife now fell ill, and on the 19th of January 1794 the Simons
left the Temple, after securing a receipt for the safe transfer of their
prisoner, who was declared to be in good health. A large part of the
Temple records from that time onwards were destroyed under the
Restoration, so that exact knowledge of the facts is practically
impossible. Two days after the departure of the Simons the prisoner is
said by the Restoration historians to have been put in a dark room which
was barricaded like the cage of a wild animal. The story runs that food
was passed through the bars to the child, who survived in spite of the
accumulated filth of his surroundings. Robespierre[5] visited Marie
Thérèse on the 11th of May, but no one, according to the legend, entered
the dauphin's room for six months until Barras visited the prison after
the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794). Barras's account of the visit
describes the child as suffering from extreme neglect, but conveys no
idea of the alleged walling in. It is nevertheless certain that during
the first half of 1794 he was very strictly secluded; he had no special
guardian, but was under the charge of guards changed from day to day.
The child made no complaint to Barras of his treatment, probably because
he feared to do so. He was then cleansed and re-clothed, his room
cleaned, and during the day he was visited by his new attendant, a
creole and a compatriot of Joséphine de Beauharnais, named Jean Jacques
Christophe Laurent (1770-1807), who had from the 8th of November onwards
assistance for his charge from a man named Gomin. The child was now
taken out to walk on the roof of the Tower. From about the time of
Gomin's entrance the prisoner was inspected, not by delegates of the
Commune, but by representatives of the civil committee of the 48
sections of Paris. The rare recurrence of the same inspectors would
obviously facilitate fraud, if any such were intended. From the end of
October onwards the child maintained an obstinate silence, explained by
Laurent as a determination taken on the day he made his deposition
against his mother. On the 19th of December 1794 he was visited by three
commissioners from the Committee of General Security--J. B. Harmand de
la Meuse, J. B. C. Mathieu and J. Reverchon--who extracted no word from
him. On Laurent's retirement Étienne Lasne was appointed on the 31st of
March 1795 to be the child's guardian. In May 1795 the prisoner was
seriously ill, and a doctor, P. J. Desault, well acquainted with the
dauphin, having visited him seven months earlier, was summoned. Desault
died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison, on the 1st of June, and
it was some days before doctors Pelletan and Dumangin were called. Then
it was announced that on the 8th Louis Charles died. Next day an autopsy
was held at which it was stated that a child apparently about ten years
of age, "which the commissioners told us was the late Louis Capet's
son," had died of a scrofulous affection of long standing. He was buried
on the 10th in the cemetery of Ste Marguerite, but no stone was erected
to mark the spot.
The weak parts of this story are the sudden and unexplained departure of
the Simons; the subsequent useless cruelty of treating the child like a
wild beast and keeping him in a dark room practically out of sight
(unless any doubt of his identity was possible), while his sister was in
comparative comfort; the cause of death, declared to be of long
standing, but in fact developed with such rapidity; the insufficient
excuse provided for the child's muteness under Gomin's régime (he had
answered Barras) and the irregularities in the formalities in attending
the death and the funeral, when a simple identification of the body by
Marie Thérèse would have prevented any question of resuscitated
dauphins. Both Barras and Harmand de la Meuse are said to have given
leave for the brother and sister to see each other, but the meeting was
never permitted. The argument from the sudden disappearance of persons
in a position to know something of the truth is of a less convincing
character. It may be noted that the more famous of the persons alleged
by partisans of subsequent pretenders to have been hustled out of the
world for their connexion with the secret are the empress Joséphine, the
due d'Enghien and the duc de Berri.
Immediately on the announcement of the dauphin's death there arose a
rumour that he had escaped. Simien-Despréaux, one of Louis XVIII.'s own
authors, stated at a later period (1814) that Louis XVII. was living and
that among the signatories of the treaty of April 13th were some who
possessed proofs of his existence; and Eckard, one of the mainstays of
the official account, left among his unpublished papers a statement that
many members of "an assembly of our wise men" obstinately named Louis
XVII. as the prince whom their wishes demanded. Unfortunately the
removal of the child suited the plans of the comte de Provence (now
Louis XVIII. for the _émigrés_) as well as it suited the revolutionary
government, and no serious attempt was made by the royal family to
ascertain the truth, though they paid none of the tributes to the memory
of the dead king which might reasonably have been expected, had they
been convinced of his death. Even his sister wore no mourning for him
until she arrived at Vienna and saw that this was expected of her. In
spite of the massive literature which has accumulated on the subject,
neither his death in the Temple nor his escape therefrom has been
definitely established, though a very strong presumption is established
in favour of the latter.
Some forty candidates for his honours were forthcoming under the
Restoration. The most important of these pretenders were Karl Wilhelm
Naundorff and the comte de Richemont. Naundorff's story rested on a
series of complicated intrigues. According to him Barras determined to
save the dauphin in order to please Joséphine Beauharnais, the future
empress, having conceived the idea of using the dauphin's existence as a
means of dominating the comte de Provence in the event of a restoration.
The dauphin was concealed in the fourth storey of the Tower, a wooden
figure being substituted for him. Laurent, to protect himself from the
consequences of the substitution, replaced the wooden figure by a deaf
mute, who was presently exchanged for the scrofulous child of the death
certificate. The deaf mute was also concealed in the Temple. It was not
the dead child, but the dauphin who left the prison in the coffin,
whence he was extracted by his friends on the way to the cemetery.
Richemont's tale that the woman Simon, who was genuinely attached to
him, smuggled him out in a basket, is simple and more credible, and does
not necessarily invalidate the story of the subsequent operations with
the deaf mute and the scrofulous patient, Laurent in that case being
deceived from the beginning, but it renders them extremely unlikely. A
third pretender, Eleazar Williams, did not affect to know anything of
his escape. He possessed, he said, no consciousness of his early years,
only emerging from idiocy at the age of thirteen, when he was living
with an Indian family in New York State. He was a missionary to the
Indians when the prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, met him,
and after some conversation asked him to sign a document abdicating his
rights in favour of Louis Philippe, in return for which he, the dauphin
(alias Eleazar Williams), was to receive the private inheritance which
was his. This Eleazar refused to do. The wildness of this tale refutes
itself.
Richemont (Henri Ethelbert Louis Victor Hébert) was in prison in Milan
for seven years and began to put forward his claims in Paris in 1828. In
1833 he was again arrested, was brought to trial in the following year
and was condemned to twelve years' imprisonment. He escaped after a few
months and left the country, to return in 1840. He died at Gleize on the
10th of August 1853, the name of Louis Charles de France being inscribed
on his tomb until the government ordered its removal.
Naundorff, or Naündorff, who had arrived from nowhere in Berlin in 1810,
with papers giving the name Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, in order to escape
the persecutions of which he declared himself the object, settled at
Spandau in 1812 as a clockmaker, and married in 1818 Johanna Einert. In
1822 he removed to Brandenburg, and in 1828 to Crossen, near Frankfort.
He was imprisoned from 1825 to 1828 for coining, though apparently on
insufficient evidence, and in 1833 came to push his claims in Paris,
where he was recognized as the dauphin by many persons formerly
connected with the court of Louis XVI. Expelled from France in 1836, the
day after bringing a suit against the duchess of Angoulême for the
restitution of the dauphin's private property, he lived in exile till
his death at Delft on the 10th of August 1845, and his tomb was
inscribed "Louis XVII., roi de France et de Navarre (Charles Louis, duc
de Normandie)." The Dutch authorities who had inscribed on his death
certificate the name of Charles Louis de Bourbon, duc de Normandie
(Louis XVII.) permitted his son to bear the name de Bourbon, and when
the family appealed in 1850-1851, and again in 1874, for the restitution
of their civil rights as heirs of Louis XVI. no less an advocate than
Jules Favre pleaded their cause. Of all the pretenders Naundorff has the
best case. He was certainly not the Jew of Prussian Poland which his
enemies declared him to be, and he has to this day a circle of devoted
adherents. Since he was sincerely convinced of his own rights, it is
surprising that he put forward no claim in 1814.
If the dauphin did escape, it seems probable that he perished shortly
afterwards or lived in a safe obscurity. The account of the substitution
in the Temple is well substantiated, even to the names of the
substitutes. The curious imbroglio deceived royalists and republicans
alike. Lady Atkyns was trying by every possible means to get the dauphin
out of his prison when he was apparently already in safe hands, if not
outside the Temple walls. A child was in fact delivered to her agents,
but he was a deaf mute. That there was fraud, and complicated fraud, in
the guardians of the dauphin may be taken as proved by a succession of
writers from 1850 onwards, and more recently by Frédéric Barbey, who
wisely attempts no ultimate solution. When the partisans of Richemont or
Naundorff come to the post-Temple careers of their heroes, they become
in most cases so uncritical as to be unconvincing.
The official version of the dauphin's history as accepted under the
Restoration was drawn up by Simien Despréaux in his uncritical _Louis
XVII._ (1817), and is found, fortified by documents, in M. Eckard's
_Mémoires historiques sur Louis XVII_. (1817) and in A. de
Beauchesne's _Louis XVII., sa vie, son agonie, sa mort. Captivité de
la famille royale au Temple_ (2 vols., 1852, and many subsequent
editions), containing copies of original documents, and essential to
the study of the question, although its sentimental pictures of the
boy martyr can no longer be accepted. L. de la Sicotière, "Les faux
Louis XVII.," in _Revue des questions historiques_ (vol. xxxii.,
1882), deals with the pretenders Jean Marie Hervagault, Mathurin
Bruneau and the rest; see also Dr Cabanes, _Les Morts mystérieuses de
l'histoire_ (1901), and revised catalogue of the J. Sanford Saltus
collection of Louis XVII. books (New York, 1908). Catherine Welch, in
_The Little Dauphin_ (1908) gives a résumé of the various sides of the
question.
Madame Royale's own account of the captivity of the Temple was first
printed with additions and suppressions in 1817, and often
subsequently, the best edition being that from her autograph text by
G. Lenôtre, _La Fille de Louis XVI., Marie Thérèse Charlotte de
France, duchesse d'Angoulême, le Temple, l'échange, l'exil_ (1907).
There are two collections of writings on the subject: _Marie Thérèse
de France_, compiled (1852) by the marquis de Pastoret, and comprising
beside the memoir written by Marie Thérèse herself, articles by M. de
Montbel, Sainte-Beuve, J. Lemoine, La Guéronnière and extracts from
Joseph Weber's memoirs; and _Mémoires de Marie Thérèse duchesse
d'Angoulême_, comprising extracts from the narratives of Charles Goret
(_Mon Témoignage_, 1852), of C. F. Beaulieu (_Mémoire adressée à la
nation_, 1795), of L. G. Michaud (_Opinion d'un Français_, 1795) and
of Mme de Tourzel (_Mémoires_ 1883). Cf. A. Lanne, _La Soeur de Louis
XVII._, and the articles on "Madame Royale," on the "Captivité de la
famille royale au Temple" and on the "Mise en liberté de Madame" in M.
Tourneux's _Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris pendant la révolution
française_ (vol. iv., 1906, and vol. i., 1890).
_Naündorff._--For the case of Naündorff see his own narrative, _Abrégé
de l'histoire des infortunes du Dauphin_ (London, 1836; Eng. trans.,
1838); also Modeste Gruau de la Barre, _Intrigues dévoilées ou Louis
XVII._ ... (3 vols., Rotterdam, 1846-1848); O. Friedrichs,
_Correspondance intime et inédite de Louis XVII._ (Naündorff)
1834-1838 (2 vols., 1904); _Plaidoirie de Jules Favre devant la cour
d'appel de Paris pour les héritiers de feu Charles-Guillaume
Naündorff_ (1874); H. Provins, _Le Dernier roi légitime de France_ (2
vols., the first of which consists of destructive criticism of
Beauchesne and his followers, 1889); A. Lanne, "Louis XVII. et le
secret de la Révolution," _Bulletin mensuel_ (1893 et seq.) of the
Société des études sur la question Louis XVII., also _La Légitimité_
(Bordeaux, Toulouse, 1883-1898). See further the article "Naündorff"
in M. Tourneux, _Bibl. de la ville de Paris pendant la Révolution_,
vol. iv. (1906).
_Williams._--J. H. Hanson, _The Lost Prince: Facts tending to prove
the Identity of Louis XVII. of France and the Rev. Eleazer Williams_
(London and New York, 1854).
_De Richemont._--_Mémoires du duc de Normandie, fils de Louis XVI.,
écrits et publiés par lui-même_ (Paris, 1831), compiled, according to
Quérard, by E. T. Bourg, called Saint Edme; Morin de Guérivière,
_Quelques souvenirs_ ... (Paris, 1832); and J. Suvigny, _La
Restauration convaincue ... ou preuves de l'existence du fils de Louis
XVI._ (Paris, 1851).
The widespread interest taken in Louis XVII. is shown by the fact that
since 1905 a monthly periodical has appeared in Paris on this subject,
entitled _Revue historique de la question Louis XVII._, also by the
promised examination of the subject by the Société d'Histoire
contemporaine. (M. Br.)