Louis XVII separated from his mother, Marie Antoinette

Louis XVII separated from his mother, Marie Antoinette

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In 1793, France was in shambles.

The public had overthrown the monarchy, and imprisoned the royal family.

After the execution of Louis XVI, his eight-year-old son, Louis XVII, was now, technically the King of France.

On 3rd July, Louis was separated from his mother Marie Antoinette, and put in the care of a cobbler, by the name of Antoine Simon.

The tales told by royalist writers of the cruelty inflicted by Simon and his wife on Louis, have not been proved.

However, Louis sister Marie Therese, wrote in her memoires about the "monster Simon"

Foreign secretaries of Britain and Spain, also heard accounts from their spies, that the boy was rAped by pr0stitutes in order to infect him with venereal diseases.

Eventually young Louis was imprisoned in the Temple Prison..

Louis is said by Restoration historians, to have been put in a dark room that 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.

There, Louis died on 8th June 1795, at the age of 10.

The next day, physician Philippe~Jean Pelletan, performed an autopsy, and his report stated that~

"a child apparently about 10 years of age, had died of a scrofulus infection of long standing"

Scrofulus is what we today, would call Tuberculosis.

During the autopsy, the physician was shocked to see the countless scars which covered the boy's body, evidently 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.

Louis was buried on 10th June in the Sainte Marguarite Cemetary without ceremony, and no stone was erected to mark the spot.

A skull was found there in 1846 and identified as his, though later re-examination in 1893, showed it to be from a teenager and therefore unlikely to be his.

As soon as the news of little Louis death broke, people were questioning if this was true.

Had the young king really died?

Or had he managed to get away to a place of safety?

Rumors quickly spread that the body buried, was not that of Louis, and that he had been spirited away alive by sympathizers.

So the legend of the "Lost Dauphin" was born.

When the Bourbon Monarchy was restored in 1814, some one hundred 'Louis' claimants came forward.

Would-be royal heirs continued to appear across Europe, for decades afterward.

Over the centuries, Louis little mummified heart fell into different hands.

Finally, in 1975, Louis heart returned to the basilica.

Genetic and historical studies in the beginning of the 21st century, confirmed that the heart indeed did belong to Louis Charles de France.

It was confirmed that this was the heart of the young king, who did die while imprisoned at the age of 10.

Consequently, on 8th June 2004, it was placed in the Chappelle des Bourbons in the Basilica of Saint~Denis, amongst his fellow royals.

The crypt of the Bourbons contains cenotaphs, in other words, funerary monuments which do not contain a body.

One of the most treasured relics was taken from the body of Louis XVII, whose small withered heart now sits in a crystal jar.

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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVII]

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[https://www.ranker.com/.../strange-things.../emily-mast...

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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Heart of Louis XVII inside a crystal urn, St Denis France.

Wikipedia.