Francq, H.G. - Louis XVII the Unsolved Mystery (1970)

Francq, H.G. - Louis XVII the Unsolved Mystery

From the French Manuscript of the Author

Leiden, F.J. Brill, 1970

Hardcover. Blue cloth binding. Title in gold on frontboard and spine. With dust jacket
17 x 24,5 cm.
XIX, 240 p., [11] Pages

GOOD/VERY GOOD
Remark on the first free endpaper

Illustrated in black and white (one folded Plate)

In 1795, Louis Charles de Bourbon, youngest child of the French Royal Family, was supposed to have died while in prison awaiting his fate. Yet rumour had it the child had in fact been swapped for another. Certainly the boy changed considerably in health in seven months according to General Paul Barras (hardly surprising though, given the circumstances) – what did spur on rumours however was the size of the coffin used for the funeral of the heir apparent; people wondered that such a large coffin was used for such a young child. Twenty years later, the rumours were further fuelled by a death-bed confession from the Dauphin’s female gaoler: that she and her husband had substituted a boy for the Dauphin. “My little prince is not dead,” were her last words on the matter.

The Dauphin was supposed to have died in the Temple when he was ten
Various officials had visited the Dauphin in prison – far from the robust ten-year-old, they encountered a deaf-mute, a ‘pitiable creature’ – indeed, when the new gaoler was engaged, he immediately asserted that the Dauphin was an imposter. General de Barras organised a nation-wide search for the child.
According to Naundorff however, Barras was complicit in the plot to save the boy by having him smuggled out on the day the substitute died, then moved to Italy, thence to Prussia.
Naundorff began a civil court action to support his claim, was expelled from France and went to work in England where an attempt was made on his life. He died nine years later in Holland – reputedly poisoned. Enough people believed in his claim to erect a tombstone to him inscribed with ‘Louis Charles de Bourbon, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’. Whether he was imposter or not, the story of substitution acquires more substance yet in the year 1846, when the presumed Dauphin’ s body was exhumed. Two doctors pronounced the bones to be those of an older child – a boy of fifteen or sixteen. In 1894 the bones were re-examined; this time, the age was set between sixteen and eighteen. In either case,speculation continued to murmur that the child in the coffin could not be the Dauphin. A quick perusal of Louis XVII, the Unsolved Mystery by H. G. Francq is suggestive – of botched mixed burials from hasty autopsies as much as anything else.
And what of the heart? That sorry, pickled, much travelled heart on which DNA tests were carried out in 2000? Whose heart was it? Certainly it belonged to a relative of Marie Antoinette (which Naundorff, likewise through DNA,was proven not to be) – but was it the Dauphin’s? Even there, the mystery continues.It certainly gave Baroness d’Orczy plenty of plot material . . .
How on earth did I get here? What links all of these cases, including the poor man from Leicester is that of identity – personal, individual, human. It lies at the heart of the human psyche and operates at all levels of our lives. No wonder there is a constant absorbing interest every time a mummy is x-rayed, or Mozart’s skull is re-examined, or another portrait purporting to be of Shakespeare comes to light – are they who we thought they were? And are we who we thought we were? Every time we suggest doubt of a person’s identity, past or present, we take a step towards challenging our own identity – understandably, passions run high. We take sides and perceive insults when academic and scientific clash with our favourite legends and prove them hollow and worthless.
The story of individual identity continues to appeal, attract, absorb and mystify, testifying as it does to our life-long, centuries-long obsession with who we are, where we come from, where we are going… our life-long, centuries-long obsession with who we are, where we come from, where we are going….

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