Editing Louis XVII (section)

===Prison and rumours of escape===


====1793: In the care of Antoine Simon====
[[File:Louis XVI au Temple, Musée de la Révolution française - Vizille.jpg|thumb|''Louis XVI taking care of the education of his son in the [[Temple (Paris)|Temple]]'', ([[Musée de la Révolution française]])]]
Immediately following Louis XVI's execution, plots were hatched for the escape of the prisoners from the [[Temple, Paris|Temple]], the chief of these plots were engineered by the {{ill|François Augustin Regnier de Jarjayes|lt=Chevalier de Jarjayes|fr}}, the [[Jean, Baron de Batz|Baron de Batz]], and [[Charlotte Atkyns|Lady Atkyns]]. Others said to be involved in his escape(s) are [[Paul Barras]] and [[Joséphine de Beauharnais]].<ref name="son-of-louis-xvi">{{cite book |last1=Bloy |first1=Léon |title=The Son of Louis XVI |url=https://sunnyloupublishing.com |date=2022 |publisher=Sunny Lou Publishing}}</ref>

On 3 July, Louis-Charles was separated from his mother and put in the care of [[Antoine Simon]], a [[Shoemaking|cobbler]] who had been named his guardian by the [[Committee of Public Safety]]. The tales told by royalist writers of the cruelty inflicted by Simon and his wife on the child have not been proved. Louis Charles' sister, [[Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême|Marie Thérèse]], wrote in her memoires about the "monster Simon", as did Alcide Beauchesne. Antoine Simon's wife Marie-Jeanne, in fact, took great care of the child's person.{{cn|date=February 2024}} Stories survive narrating how he was encouraged to eat and drink to excess and learned the language of the gutter. The foreign secretaries of Britain and Spain also heard accounts from their spies that the boy was raped by prostitutes in order to infect him with venereal diseases to supply the [[Paris Commune (French Revolution)|Commune]] with manufactured "evidence" against the Queen.<ref name=nagel /> However, the scenes related by {{ill|Alcide de Beauchesne|fr}} of the physical torment of the child are not supported by any testimony, though he was at this time seen by a great number of people.

On 6 October, [[Jean-Nicolas Pache|Pache]], [[Pierre Gaspard Chaumette|Chaumette]], [[Jacques Hébert]] and others visited the boy and secured his signature to charges of sexual molestation against his mother and his aunt.<ref name=nagel>{{cite book|last=Nagel|first=Susan|title=Marie-Thérèse: the fate of Marie Antoinette's daughter|year=2009|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|location=London|isbn=978-0-7475-9666-0|pages=137|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_ydFDp1ZasMC }}</ref> The next day he met his elder sister [[Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte]] for the last time.

====1794: Illness====
On 19 January 1794, the Simons left the [[Temple, Paris|Temple]], after securing a receipt for the safe transfer of their ward, who was declared to be in good health. A large part of the Temple records from that time onward disappeared under the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Bourbon Restoration]], making ascertaining of the facts impossible. Two days after the departure of the Simons, Louis-Charles is said by the 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.

[[Maximilien Robespierre]] visited Marie-Thérèse on 11 May, but no one, according to the legend, entered the boy's room for six months until [[Paul Barras]] visited the prison after the [[Thermidorean Reaction|9th Thermidor]] (27 July 1794). Barras's account of the visit describes the child as suffering from extreme neglect, but conveys no idea of the alleged walling-in. The boy made no complaint to Barras of any ill treatment. He was then cleaned and re-clothed. His room was cleaned, and during the day he was visited by his new attendant, {{ill|Jean Jacques Christophe Laurent|fr}} (1770–1807), a creole from [[Martinique]]. From 8 November onward, Laurent had assistance from a man named Gomin.

[[File:Louis Charles of France2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Louis Charles by [[Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun|Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun]]]]
Louis-Charles was then taken out for fresh air and walks on the roof of the Tower. From about the time of Gomin's arrival, he was inspected, not by delegates of the Commune, but by representatives of the civil committee of the 48 sections of Paris. From the end of October onward, the child maintained silence, explained by Laurent as a determination taken on the day he made his deposition against his mother. On 19 December 1794, he was visited by three commissioners from the Committee of Public Safety&nbsp;— {{ill|Jean-Baptiste Harmand|fr}}, [[Jean-Baptiste Charles Matthieu]] and {{ill|Jacques Reverchon|fr}}&nbsp;— but they failed to get the boy to say anything at all.

====1795: Death====
[[File:Jeton sur la mort de louis XVII.jpg|thumb|Louis XVII]]
On 31 March 1795, {{ill|Étienne Lasne|fr}} was appointed to be the child's guardian in place of Laurent. In May that year the boy was seriously ill, and a doctor, [[P. J. Desault]], who had visited him seven months earlier, was summoned. However, on 1 June, Desault himself died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison, and it was some days before doctors [[Philippe-Jean Pelletan]] and [[Jean-Baptiste Dumangin]] were called.

Louis-Charles died on 8 June 1795. The next day an autopsy was conducted by Pelletan. In the report it was stated that a child apparently about 10 years of age, "which the commissioners told us was the late Louis Capet's son", had died of a [[scrofulous]] infection of long standing. "Scrofula" as it was previously known, is nowadays called ''[[tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis]]'' referring to a [[lymphadenitis]] (chronic [[lymph node]] swelling or infection) of the neck ([[cervical lymph nodes]]) associated with [[tuberculosis]].<ref>{{DorlandsDict|nine/100011836|tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Beauchesne|first=Alcide|title=Louis XVII: His Life, His Suffering, His Death, the Captivity of the Royal Family in the Temple, Volume 1|publisher=Palala Press|date=20 May 2016|isbn=978-1357844646}}</ref> During the autopsy, the physician Dr. Pelletan 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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024|reason=Given the allegations of abuse sourcing this is very important}}

Louis-Charles was buried on 10 June in the [[Sainte Marguerite cemetery]], but 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.<ref>{{cite book|author=Xavier de Roche|title=Louis XVII. Le livre du bicentenaire|publisher=Editions de Paris|date=1995|page=12|language=fr}}</ref>

==== Heart of Louis-Charles ====
[[File:Coeur de Louis Charles de France (Louis XVII).jpg|thumb|Heart of Louis XVII inside a crystal urn, now buried at St Denis]]
Following a [[Heart-burial|tradition of preserving royal hearts]], Louis-Charles's heart was removed and smuggled out during the autopsy by the overseeing physician, [[Philippe-Jean Pelletan]]. Thus, Louis-Charles' heart was not interred with the rest of the body. 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 that time kept dry.

After the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Restoration]] in 1815, Dr. Pelletan attempted to give the heart to Louis-Charles's uncle, [[Louis XVIII]]; the latter refused because he could not bring himself to believe that it was the heart of his nephew. Dr. Pelletan then donated the heart to the [[Archbishop of Paris]], [[Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen]]. Following the [[July Revolution|Revolution of 1830]], and the plundering of the [[Archbishop's Palace of Paris]], Pelletan's son Philippe-Gabriel found the relic among the ruins and placed it in the crystal urn in which it is still kept today. After the younger Pelletan's death in 1879, it passed to Édouard Dumont.

It was later offered to [[Carlos, Duke of Madrid]] in 1895, a pretender to the throne of France and Spain, nephew (both biological and in-law) of the Archduchess [[Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria-Este (1817–1886)|Maria Theresa of Austria-Este]]. The offer was accepted and the relic was held near [[Vienna]] at [[Schloss Frohsdorf]]. In 1909, Carlos's son, [[Jaime, Duke of Madrid]], inherited the heart, and gave it to his sister, Beatriz de Borbón (1874–1961),<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> wife of [[Massimo family|Prince Fabrizio Massimo (1868–1944)]], and in 1938, to their daughter Maria della Neve, wife of Charles Piercy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://histoiredefranceactu.over-blog.fr/article-64400964.html|title=la science au secours de l'histoire|author=messire62|work=histoiredefancescience|date=6 January 2011 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.memorialdefrance.org/page23a.html|title=Cottin|publisher=|access-date=19 May 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130625231743/http://www.memorialdefrance.org/page23a.html|archive-date=25 June 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Finally Maria della Neve offered the heart to [[Jacques de Bauffremont]], president of the Memorial of the [[Basilica of St Denis]] in Paris. He in turn put the heart and its crystal urn in the basilica's necropolis of the Kings of France, the burial place of Louis-Charles's parents and other members of the [[Capetian dynasty|French royal family]].
There it rested undisturbed until December 1999, when public notaries witnessed the removal of a section of the muscle of the heart's aorta and its transfer into a sealed envelope, and subsequently the opening of the same sealed envelope in the laboratory for it to be tested.

It was in 2000 that the [[historian]] [[Philippe Delorme]] arranged for [[DNA testing]] of the heart as well as bone samples from one of the many historical claimants to Louis-Charles's identity, namely [[Karl Wilhelm Naundorff]], a German clockmaker. Ernst Brinkmann of [[Münster University]] and Belgian genetics professor Jean-Jacques Cassiman of the [[Katholieke Universiteit Leuven]], conducted [[mitochondrial DNA]] tests using a strand of the hair of the boy's mother, [[Marie Antoinette]], and other samples from her sisters [[Archduchess Maria Johanna Gabriela of Austria|Maria Johanna Gabriela]] and [[Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria|Maria Josepha]], their mother, Empress [[Maria Theresa]], and two living direct descendants in the strict maternal line of Maria Theresa, namely [[Queen Anne of Romania]] and her brother, Prince André of Bourbon-Parma, maternal relatives of Louis XVII. The tests proved both that Naundorff was not the dauphin, and the heart was that of Louis-Charles.

Of these results, historian [[Jean Tulard]] wrote: "This [mummified] heart is ... almost certainly that of Louis XVII. We can never be 100 per cent sure but this is about as sure as it gets".<ref name=":6">{{Cite news|last=Broughton|first=Philip Delves|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1463951/Tragic-French-boy-kings-heart-finds-a-final-resting-place-after-209-years.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1463951/Tragic-French-boy-kings-heart-finds-a-final-resting-place-after-209-years.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Tragic French boy king's heart finds a final resting place after 209 years|journal=Daily Telegraph|date=2004-06-07|access-date=2020-03-17|language=en-GB|issn=0307-1235}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2004/06/03/France-buries-200-year-old-royal-mystery/70691086280595/|title=France buries 200-year-old royal mystery|last=Bryant|first=Elizabeth|date=3 June 2004|website=United Press International|access-date=17 March 2020}}</ref>

In the light of this conclusion, French [[Legitimists]] organized the heart's solemn burial in the [[Basilica of St Denis]] on 8 June 2004. The burial took place in connection with a mass and during the ceremony 12-year-old Prince Amaury of Bourbon-Parma carried the heart and placed it in a niche beside the tombs of Louis-Charles' parents, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.<ref name=":6" />
It was the first time in over a century that a royal ceremony had taken place in France, complete with the [[fleur-de-lis]] standard and a royal crown.<ref name=":3">[http://www.genebase.com/blog/?p=44 "The mtDNA and its role in Ancestry: Part XIV (Descendents of Maria-Theresa)" Genebase] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090513073022/http://www.genebase.com/blog/?p=44 |date=13 May 2009 }} Retrieved 22 June 2009</ref><ref>[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k203799w/f60.image Revue rétrospective], BNF</ref><ref name=":4">{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9IFTAAAAIBAJ&pg=4943,2008214|title=French boy king's heart to be buried in crypt|date=7 June 2004|newspaper=Kingsport Daily News|location=Paris|agency=Reuters|page=1}}</ref>