The Three Out Of Hundreds Impostors Of Louis XVII

Before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was the final monarch of France. She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, and was born an archduchess of Austria. She married Louis-Auguste, the heir apparent to the French throne, in May 1770, when she was 14 years old. Her husband, Louis XVI, seized the throne and she became queen on May 10, 1774. 

The National Convention ordered Louis XVI’s execution in January 1793, and the queen was placed in solitary imprisonment in the Conciergerie in August. On October 14, 1793, she was taken before the Revolutionary War tribunal and executed two days later.

Left alone were their children. Unfortunately, the reigning king, Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France, died in June 1798. Louis XVII succeeded his brother as Dauphin at the age of four, a title retained until 1791, when the new constitution bestowed the title of Prince Royal on the heir presumptive. However, his family was shattered by the French Revolution, and the once joyous child turned out to be an orphan by the age of eight after his parents were executed in 1793. 

He was severely beaten and abandoned, secluded in a jail cell in the Paris Temple. By 1795, the newly styled Louis-Charles Capet was unrecognized, his abdomen bloated from malnourishment and covered in sores. The doctor, Philippe-Jean Pellatan, was called by the jailers. The doctor was shocked by the young Dauphin’s condition, but it was too late for help. Louis-Charles died of tuberculosis in the arms of one of the jailers on June 8, 1795.

The revolutionary administration was eager to respond. The child’s body, which had been ignored throughout his existence, was hovering near death. Dr. Pellatan did a thorough autopsy and discovered physical proof of mistreatment. The body was surreptitiously buried in a mass grave near Sainte-Marguerite Cemetery. Dauphin’s body, however, did not make it to the communal pit. Dr. Pellatan had tucked the poor child’s heart inside the handkerchief and placed it in his pocket during the autopsy. He was dead set on returning the relic to the royal Bourbon Family.

Over the years after the child’s secret burial, more than 100 pretenders (of Dauphin) to the throne have emerged as a result of the feud:

• Naundorff

Charles-Guillaume Naundorff, one of these men, was buried in the Netherlands in 1845, still stating that he was the king of France on his tombstone. Of the more than thirty men who claimed to be Louis XVII, Naundorff was one of the most obstinate.

• Baron de Richemont

He is one of the claimants to be Louis XVII. Henri Herbert or Claude Perrin was most likely his real name. Richemont spent seven years in prison in Milan before launching his claims in Paris in 1828.

• Charles de Navarre

He traveled from New Orleans to France, declaring in court that he was the long-lost Dauphin of France. It was forbidden to falsely pretend to be a monarch. He was captured in 1817 and sentenced to prison after a sham trial.