Louis Charles de France
Detail by Marie-Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun
1787
Louis Charles de France was born on 27 March 1785, at the Château de Versailles, in Versailles, France. He was the second son of Marie Antoinette, Queen Consort of France and Navarre (2 November 1755 - 16 October 1793) and Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre (23 August 1754 - 21 January 1793). His maternal grandparents were Maria Theresia, Holy Roman Empress (13 May 1717 - 29 November 1780) and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (8 December 1708 - 18 August 1765). His paternal grandparents were Princess Marie Josèphe of Saxony (4 November 1731 - 13 March 1767) and Louis, Dauphin de France (4 September 1729 - 20 December 1765). His siblings were: Marie Thérèse Charlotte (19 December 1778 - 19 October 1851), Louis Joseph Xavier Francois (22 October 1781 - 4 June 1789) and Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrix of France (9 July 1786 - 19 June 1787). At his birth he gained the title Duc de Berry. Agathe de Rambaud was chosen by the Queen to be the Berceuse des Enfants de France. Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchesse de Polignac (1749-1793) was appointed Governess and Louise-Elisabeth, Marquise de Tourzel, was the last Governess to the Royal Children of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. He was a child of great promise, but cruelty of humanity would deprive him from innocence to face a reign of terror. In 1792, the revolutionists imprisoned him with the Royal family in the Temple Prison. His father, Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793, in Paris. The exiled French Royalists proclaimed him to be King, as Louis XVII. A week later the Comte de Provence arrogated to himself the title of Regent. Commissioners arrived at the Temple prison on the night of 3 July 1793, with instructions to separate Louis Charles from his family. The republican government had decided to imprison the eight-year-old boy in solitary confinement, because he had been proclaimed Louis XVII by exiled Royalists. According to the Mémoires de Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Duchesse d'Angoulême, "...he threw himself into my mother's arms, and with violent cries entreated not to be parted from her. My mother would not let her son go, and she actually defended against the efforts of the officers the bed in which she had placed him. The men threatened to call up the guard and use violence. My mother exclaimed that they had better kill her than tear her child from her. At last they threatened our lives, and my mother's maternal tenderness forced her to the sacrifice." Two hours after the commissioners had entered her room, Marie Antoinette relinquished her son to them. His sister wrote, "My aunt and I dressed the child, for my poor mother had no longer strength for anything. Nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him up in her arms and delivered him herself to the officers, bathing him with her tears, foreseeing that she was never to behold him again. The poor little fellow embraced us all tenderly, and was carried away in a flood of tears." Antoine Simon had been named his guardian by the Committee of General Security. "...My mother's horror was extreme when she heard that Simon, a shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen as a municipal officer in the Temple, was the person to whom her child was confided." Louis Charles was still within the grounds of the Temple Prison, his mother, sister and aunt could hear him cry. His sister continued, "We often went up to the Tower, because my brother went, too, from the other side. The only pleasure my mother enjoyed was seeing him through a crevice as he passed at a distance. She would watch for hours together to see him as he passed. It was her only hope, her only thought." According to the Memoirs of Marie Antoinette by Madame Campan, "...his memory retained everything, and his sensitiveness comprehended everything. His features "recalled the somewhat effeminate look of Louis XV, and the Austrian hauteur of Maria Theresa; his blue eyes, aquiline nose, elevated nostrils, well-defined mouth, pouting lips, chestnut hair parted in the middle and falling in thick curls on his shoulders, resembled his mother before her years of tears and torture. All the beauty of his race, by both descents, seemed to reappear in him."
"What does the Convention intend to do with him?" Asked Antoine Simon, when the innocent victim was placed in his clutches. "Transport him?"
"No."
"Kill him?"
"No."
"Poison him?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Why, get rid of him."
Pache, Chaumette and Hébert visited Louis Charles on 6 October 1793 and secured from him admissions of the accusations against his mother, with his signature. Louis Charles met his sister, Marie Thérèse Charlotte for the last time on 7 October 1793. When Simon's wife fell ill they left the Temple on 19 January 1794. The prisoner was put in a dark room on 21 January 1794, barricaded like a cage, food was passed through the bars. Robespierre visited Marie Thérèse Charlotte on 11 May 1794, but no one entered Louis Charles's room. After the 9th Thermidor, Barras visited the prison on 27 July 1794. According to Barrass account of the visit, the child was suffering from extreme neglect. He was then cleansed and re-clothed, his room was cleaned, and during the day he was visited by his new attendant, Jean Jacques Christophe Laurent (1770-1807). Louis was now taken out to walk on the roof of the Tower. 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 on 19 December 1794. In March 1795, Laurent retired. Étienne Lasne was appointed on 31 March 1795 to be the child's guardian. In May 1795, the prisoner was seriously ill. Three days after the first report on Wednesday, 6 May 1795, the authorities appointed M. Desault to give assistance. Desault died on 1 June 1795. M. Pelletan, head surgeon of the Grand Hospice de l'Humanite then attend the prisoner. Louis XVII Charles died aged 10, on 8 June 1795, in the Temple, Paris. The secrecy surrounding his last months gave rise to the mystery of the, Lost Dauphin. An autopsy was carried out at the prison and following the tradition of preserving Royal hearts, his heart was preserved by the examining physician, Philippe-Jean Pelletan. His body was buried in the St. Marguerite Cemetery, France. Pelletan tried to return the heart to Louis XVIII and his brother Charles X, both of whom could not bring themselves to believe the heart to be genuinely that of their nephew. The heart was later stolen by one of Pelletan's students, who confessed on his deathbed and asked his wife to return the heart to Pelletan, but she sent it to the Archbishop of Paris, where it stayed until the Revolution of 1830. By 1975, it was kept in a crystal vase at the Royal Crypt in the Saint-Denis Basilica, outside Paris. Later DNA testing of the heart compared with DNA from the hair of Marie Antoinette confirmed the heart was of the same maternal ancestry as that of the Queen. The heart was interred on 8 June 2004, in the Saint-Denis Basilica.
Excerpts and Sources: Memoirs of Marie Antoinette by Madame Campan and Mémoires de Madame Royale, Duchesse d'Angoulême by Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Duchesse d'Angoulême.
