Louis XVII King of France Louis in 1789, portrait by Alexander Kucharsky Reign 21 January 1793-8 June 1795 Born 27 March 1785 Died 8 June 1795 Predecessor Louis XVI Successor Louis XVIII Royal House Bourbon Father Louis XVI Mother Marie Antoinette

Louis XVII of France (March 27, 1785 – June 8, 1795), from birth to 1789 known as Louis-Charles, Duke of Normandy; then from 1789 to 1791 as Louis-Charles, Dauphin of Viennois; and from 1791 to 1793 as Louis-Charles, Prince Royal of France, was the son of King Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette. Image File history File links Louis_Charles_of_France6. ... January 21 is the 21st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1793 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1795 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... March 27 is the 86th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (87th in leap years). ... 1785 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1795 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Louis XVI of France Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French from 1791 to 1792. ... Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 - September 16, 1824) was King of France and Navarre from 1814 (although he declared that he considered his reign to have begun in 1795) until his death in 1824, with a brief break in 1815 due to Napoleons return in the Hundred Days. ... Also see:  Early Modern France The House of Bourbon is an important European royal house. ... Louis XVI of France Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French from 1791 to 1792. ... Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria (born November 1755 – executed 16 October 1793) Daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, wife of Louis XVI and mother of Louis XVII. She was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. ... March 27 is the 86th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (87th in leap years). ... 1785 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1795 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Coat of Arms of the Dauphins of France. ... Louis XVI of France Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French from 1791 to 1792. ... Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria (born November 1755 – executed 16 October 1793) Daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, wife of Louis XVI and mother of Louis XVII. She was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. ...

During the Revolution

During the French Revolution, the young Louis-Charles was imprisoned with his parents. As the eldest living son of King Louis XVI, he was proclaimed king on January 28, 1793 by his uncle (after his father was executed), Monsieur Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, the Comte de Provence, in a declaration issued from exile in the city of Hamm, near Dortmund, Westphalia. At the time, the declaration was without authority, as France was a republic; however, when France and the other European powers later accepted Louis-Stanislas-Xavier as King Louis XVIII of France, his numbering tacitly recognised Louis XVII's right to the throne. The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a pivotal period in the history of French, European and Western civilization. ... Louis XVI of France Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French from 1791 to 1792. ... January 28 is the 28th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1793 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Monsieur means My Lord in French, and is now generally used as an honorific for all men, the equivalent to the English Mister. ... Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 - September 16, 1824) was King of France from 1814 (although he declared that he considered his reign to have begun in 1795) until his death in 1824. ... The now-extinct title of Count of Provence belonged to local families of Frankish origin, to the House of Barcelona, to the House of Anjou and to a cadet branch of the House of Valois. ... Map of Germany showing Hamm Hamm is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. ... Dortmund is a city in Germany, located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. ... Westphalia (German: Westfalen) is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Münster, Bielefeld, and Osnabrück and included in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. ... In a broad definition, a republic is a state or country that is led by people whose political power is based on principles that are not beyond the control of the people of that state or country. ... Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 - September 16, 1824) was King of France and Navarre from 1814 (although he declared that he considered his reign to have begun in 1795) until his death in 1824, with a brief break in 1815 due to Napoleons return in the Hundred Days. ...

After his father's death

In 1793, while the royal family was being held at the Temple prison in Paris, Louis-Charles was separated from his mother and sister in order to dissuade any monarchist bids to free him. He remained imprisoned alone, a floor below his sister Marie-Thérèse, until his death in June 1795. His captors referred to him by the family name "Capet", after Hugh Capet, the original founder of the royal dynasty. This use of a surname was a deliberate insult, since royalty do not normally use surnames. The Temple was an ancient fortress in Paris, located in what are now the IIIe and IVe arrondissements. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Région ÃŽle-de-France Département Paris (75) Subdivisions 20 arrondissements Mayor Bertrand Delanoë  (PS) (since 2001) City Statistics Land... Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. ... Portrait of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Madame Royale Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, (December 19, 1778 - October 19, 1851), also known as La Princesse Royale or Madame Royale, was the eldest child of King Louis XVI and his Austrian wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. ... -1...

Louis-Charles was set to work as a cobbler's assistant and taught to curse his parents. He was officially reported to have died in the prison from what is today recognised as tuberculosis. Reportedly, his body was ravaged by tumors and scabies. An autopsy was carried out at the prison and, following a tradition of preserving royal hearts, his heart was smuggled out and preserved by the examining physician, Philippe-Jean Pelletan. Louis-Charles' body was buried in a mass grave. Tuberculosis (abbreviated as TB for Tubercle Bacillus) is a common and deadly infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can also affect the central nervous system, lymphatic system, circulatory system, genitourinary system, bones and joints. ...

"Lost Dauphin" claimants

Rumours quickly spread, however, that the body buried was not that of Louis-Charles and that he had been spirited away alive by sympathizers. Thus born the legend of the "Lost Dauphin". When the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814, hundreds of claimants came forward. Would-be royal heirs continued to appear across Europe for decades afterward and some of their descendants still have small but loyal retinues of followers today. Popular candidates for the Lost Dauphin included John James Audubon, the naturalist; Eleazer Williams, a missionary from Wisconsin of Mohawk Native American descent; and Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, a German clockmaker. Mark Twain satirized the host of claimants in the characters of the Duke and the Dauphin, the con men in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Following the ousting of Napoleon I of France in 1814, the Allies restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. ... John James Audubon John James Audubon[1] (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a Franco-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The Mohawk (Kanienkeh or Kanienkehaka meaning People of the Flint) are an indigenous people of North America who live around Lake Ontario and the St. ... Karl Wilhelm Naundorff (1785? - August 10, 1845) was a German clock- and-watchmaker who until his death claimed to be Prince Louis-Charles. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the lead section of this article may need to be expanded. ... Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is commonly accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. ...

As many as 100 "false dauphins" appeared over the years; all were exposed and their real identities discovered.

Testing the heart

Louis-Charles' heart changed hands many times. 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 long dead nephew. It is not known if Pelletan tried to approach Marie-Thérèse, Duchesse d'Angouleme (daughter of Louis XVI) with her brother's heart. Its saga was only beginning. First it was stolen by one of Pelletan's students, who confessed to the theft on his deathbed and asked his wife to return the heart to Pelletan. Instead, she sent it to the Archbishop of Paris, where it stayed until the Revolution of 1830. It also spent some time in Spain. By 1975, it was being kept in a crystal vase at the royal crypt in the Saint Denis Basilica outside Paris, the burial place of Louis-Charles' parents and of many other members of France's royal families. Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 - September 16, 1824) was King of France and Navarre from 1814 (although he declared that he considered his reign to have begun in 1795) until his death in 1824, with a brief break in 1815 due to Napoleons return in the Hundred Days. ... Charles X of France and Navarre (October 9, 1757 – November 6, 1836) was born at the Palace of Versailles. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... The archbishop of Paris is one of twenty-three archbishops in France. ... Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix commemorates the July Revolution The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, was a revolt by the middle class against Bourbon King Charles X which forced him out of office and replaced him with the Orleanist King Louis-Philippe. ... West façade of Saint Denis The Basilica of Saint Denis (French: Basilique de Saint-Denis, or simply Basilique Saint-Denis) is the famous burial site of the French monarchs, comparable to Westminster Abbey in England. ...

In the 1990s, Philippe Delorme, the contemporary authority on the subject, arranged for DNA testing of the heart. Ernst Brinkmann of Germany's Muenster University and a Belgian genetics professor, Jean-Jacques Cassiman of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, conducted the two independent tests. In 2000, comparison with DNA reclaimed from the hair of Marie Antoinette confirmed the heart as royal and it was finally buried in the Basilica on June 8, 2004. Philippe Delorme is a french historian and journalist (born in 1960, January 22sd) whose articles have appeared in Point de Vue and Historia, among others. ... Genetic fingerprinting or DNA testing is a technique to distinguish between individuals of the same species using only samples of their DNA. Its invention by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester was announced in 1985. ... The University of Münster (German Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public university located in the city of Münster in Germany. ... The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven in English - also the translated name of its French-speaking sister university) or K.U. Leuven is a Flemish university, located in the town of Leuven in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking (northern) region of Belgium. ... Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria (born November 1755 – executed 16 October 1793) Daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, wife of Louis XVI and mother of Louis XVII. She was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

It should be noted, however, that the DNA tested was mitochondrial DNA. This DNA is inherited only from the mother and allows tracing of a direct maternal genetic line. Assuming there was no tampering with the test's samples, therefore, the comparison only proved that the two samples shared the same maternal ancestry. It does not prove that the heart belonged to a particular individual. Since there was this tradition of removing royal hearts after death, it is possible that the heart may have been that of another young royal, for instance that of Louis XVI's first son, Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, who died in 1789. However, the historical evidence from the time makes it extremely likely that the heart belonged to the Lost Dauphin, and no one else. // Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is DNA that is located in mitochondria. ... Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François (October 22, 1781 – June 4, 1789) was the second child and first son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. ...

Further reading

• Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII. London: Fourth Estate, 2002 (ISBN 1841155888, hardcover), 2003 (ISBN 1841155896, paperback); New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002 (ISBN 0312283121, hardcover); New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003 (ISBN 0312320299, paperback reprint). (Note that subtitles vary in different editions of the book.)
  • Reviewed by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books, Vol. 25, No. 8, August 17, 2003.

External links

• A pedigree of Louis-Charles (not necessarily reliable).
• (French) Philippe Delorme's website (one page in English).
• (French) MSN Forum on Louis XVII for French "survivantists".
• (French) Details about the DNA analysis of the heart believed to be that of Louis-Charles.