Birth of Louis XVII ~ The Lost Dauphin

Louis~Charles de France, was born at the Palace of Versailles, on 27th March 1785.
As the second son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he spent his short childhood at the Palace of Versailles, with his parents.
In 1789, Louis~Charles became heir to the French throne, when his elder brother died.
The young Louis-Charles became Dauphin, just as the kingdom was being thrown into chaos by the beginning of the French Revolution.

After the death of his father, Louis~Charles was the uncrowned King of France, Louis XVII.
He and his sister were imprisoned with their mother until 3rd July 1793, when guards came in the dead of night to remove the 8-year-old Louis from his mothers arms.
Marie Antoinette resisted, clutching the child for nearly an hour, arguing and pleading.
Finally she bowed to the inevitable, and gave him up.

As Louis’ sister Marie Therese, later recalled,
“they threatened the lives of both him and me, and my mother’s maternal tenderness at length forced her to this sacrifice.”

Louis was imprisoned alone in a small, dark windowless room.
The room was barricaded like the cage of a wild animal.
The story recounts that food was passed through the bars to the boy, who survived despite the accumulated filth of his surroundings.
What happened next is at the heart of the mystery.

The official record states that Louis died in the Temple prison, at the age of 10 on 8th June 1795 from tuberculosis.
Few accepted the official verdict.
Some said that he died of neglect, some that he was murdered, and others that he did not die at all, but was spirited away to safety and another child put in his place.

A doctor who had been summoned to treat the Dauphin died mysteriously the week before the boy’s death.
His widow hinted that he had refused to take part in some irregular practice on the patient.
Rumors flew.

At first, it was widely believed, both in France and Britain, that the Committee of Public Safety (the radical governing body of the revolution) had murdered the child.
Later public opinion came to favor the escape theory.
In 1814 the historian of the newly restored French monarchy, announced that Louis Charles had escaped and was still alive.
He would not reveal his location however.
The most common rumor was that royalists substituted another child in his place, and spirited him to America where he would be safe.
The rumors did not fade with the passage of time.

In 1846 authorities exhumed the mass grave where the child was buried.
Only one showed evidence of tuberculosis.
But he wasn’t a perfect fit.
The body appeared to be that of a slightly older child, in his middle to late teens.
Of particular interest was the fact that the boy had already cut a wisdom tooth.

In the years that followed, at least a hundred men claimed to be the ill-fated prince.
Some of these more well known ‘pretenders’ stories, are readily available, and make for intriguing reading.
The Dauphin’s heart has an interesting history of it’s own.
It has been shuffling around for over 200 years.

The doctor who did the autopsy, Philippe-Jean Pelletan, was shocked to see the countless scars which covered the boy’s small body.
Evidently these were the result of the physical mistreatment which the child had suffered while imprisoned in the Temple.
In French tradition, royal’s hearts are cut out and preserved almost immediately, following death.
This was done to Louis as well.
However, rather than be placed in the Royal Tomb at The Basilica of Saint~Denis, Louis’s physician held onto the heart.

Fearing it would be stolen during the revolution, Philippe~Jean Pelletan smuggled Louis’ heart out, during the autopsy.
Dr. Pelletan stored the smuggled heart in distilled wine in order to preserve it.
However, after 8 to 10 years the distilled wine had evaporated, and the heart was, from then on kept dry.

Later one of Dr. Pelletan’s students took it.
On his deathbed, full of remorse, the student asked that it be returned to the doctor.
His wife sent it to the Archbishop of Paris, where it stayed until the Palace was attacked in the Revolution of 1830.
The crystal urn holding the heart was smashed, and the doctor’s son retrieved it from a pile of broken glass.
The heart had moved again.

After the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, the heart of the boy presumed to be the Dauphin, was sent to the Spanish branch of the Bourbon family, where it found a new home.
Soon, the heart was on the move again – the family returned the heart to Paris.
For 200 years, Louis Charles’ heart had been travelling around the Country, but in Paris, it was finally given its due.
His heart was placed in a crystal vase in the royal crypt at Saint Denis Basilica, where it stayed until 1999.
A piece was removed for DNA tests, and dramatically transported to the lab in a hearse.

In early 2000, scientists did DNA tests on the putative heart of the boy who died of tuberculosis in his prison cell.
A sample from the heart was compared with a lock of hair taken from Marie Antoinette as a child.
There was no doubt.
The owner of the heart and the queen shared DNA…………..
But is the mystery really solved?

The DNA tests did not end the speculation about “the lost dauphin.”
In fact, this test only established that the boy in the crypt, was a relative of Marie Antoinette’s.
So could the young Dauphin have been spirited away and replaced with another boy, a relative of Marie Antoinette?
It all sounds eerily similar to another story, about two little boys who went missing in the Tower, centuries earlier…..