Sainte-Marguerite church in Paris and the Louis XVII mystery
And also
The tops
Louis XVII’s grave?
The little neighboring cemetery houses… Louis XVII’s grave.
On this tomb, we can read this: ″L. XVII, 1785-1795″ and Attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus, "see if there’s a pain like mine″…
Oooo, it sounds like a real mystery, isn’t it? Let’s see that...
Louis XVII’s mystery
The dauphin Louis XVII, son of king of France Louis XVI and queen Marie-Antoinette, the ″Child of the Temple″… the most mysterious enigma of French history!
On June 8th 1795, little Louis died alone and sick in the sinister jail of Le Temple, in Paris...
A little king in the turmoil
So, let’s go back in time, in August 1792.
Louis, 7 years old, followed his family in the dark jail of Le Temple: Louis XVI, Antoinette, his sister madame Royale and his aunt madame Elisabeth.
Outside, a storm rumbled… and suddenly, a lightning burst.
The weather was so hot, almost stifling… and Louis was so scared! He hold tight his little hand in her mum’s one.
Do you recognize him? He was the little Louis XVII who became king of France in January 1793 after his daddy's death.
In July 1793, he was separated from his family, in the Temple, after 1 year of jail.
He was so afraid, alone, in this sinister place!
He was humiliated… he became a simple citizen, left to himself among the darkness of the fortress.
There, a man called Antoine Simon, French citizen, raised him.
But in his damp jail, deprived of everything, Louis fell sick. A violent tuberculosis… Louis died on June 8th 1795.
2 years later, a small cortege brought the little body in his tomb in Sainte-Marguerite: the church where they buried people from the Temple district, between 1637 and 1804...
Whom does that heart belong to?
But gossips started to say weird things… people said Louis was still alive!
Impostors soon started to appear: we have 43 false dauphins! Including the famous baron de Richemont, in the castle of Vaurenard…
So, did Louis die in the Temple jail? Did they bury him in Sainte-Marguerite?
During the exhumation in 1846, they found bones belonging to a young man who had tuberculosis… a young man about 16 years old. But Louis died at 10!
In 1894, here we go again: new exhumations and new analysis. The teen, who was 1,60 metres, was really 16… So, no link with Louis.
On the other hand, a doctor who examined the dauphin’s last remains in the Temple stole his heart and kept it as a relic.
Thanks to this heart, to prove the dauphin’s identity, they made DNA analysis on Marie-Antoinette’s hairs. Result: the heart had a family link with the queen!
No doubt, now: Louis XVII really died in the Temple jail in 1795… So, in June 8th 2004, little Louis’ heart was put in a vault in the famous basilica of Saint-Denis, near Paris.
Finally, back with his parents...