On June 8, 1795, in Paris, in the Temple, turned by the authorities into a prison, a prisoner was dying - 10-year-old Louis-Charles, he is also King of France Louis XVII. On the last journey the boy was accompanied by two old guards. "I hear music … God, how beautiful it is … I hear my mother singing … I want to tell you …". Two old soldiers were crying.
The king was buried in a common grave at the Temple cemetery. However, in the Dutch city of Delft, there is a modest grave in an old cemetery. Embossed on the plate: Louis XVII, 1785-1845. Who is under the stove?
Citizen King
In 1792, a revolution broke out in France. The monarchy was abolished, the overthrown King Louis XVI and his family (wife, son and daughter) were imprisoned in the Temple. On January 21, 1793, Marie Antoinette entered her son's room and knelt in front of him: "Your Majesty, now you are the King of France." So the boy found out that he no longer had a father.
Less than a year later, he became an orphan: on October 16, 1793, a heavy guillotine knife cut off the head of the Queen Mother.
Eight-year-old Louis was assigned a tutor - a shoemaker Simon, who promised to raise a worthy citizen from the boy. The teacher tried: he forced Louis to sing the Marseillaise and endlessly vilify the "tyrant parents". And yet the boy was fed, washed and dressed.
In January 1794, the teacher left the Temple and the boy was left alone. He was kept in a separate room under the supervision of the guards, who were only required to feed and guard. The members of the Convention who attended the prisoner noted the boy's lethargy, silence and extreme physical exhaustion - he slowly faded away and died on June 8, 1795.
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The king is dead, long live the king
No sooner had the boy's body cooled down than rumors spread that the king had not died, but miraculously escaped. A few years later in England and Germany, France and distant America, the surviving "Louis" began to appear one after another. Like the children of Lieutenant Schmidt, they roamed the world, often crossing and conflicting with each other.
Historians count over 100 impostors, most of them exposed as outright fraudsters. But the one buried in Delft deserves a separate story.
Berlin watchmaker
He appeared in Berlin in 1810 with a passport in the name of Karl Naundorf. The document was fake: according to it, the owner was 43 years old, but the young man clearly did not look like a 40-year-old. He was called to the police, where the 25-year-old watchmaker claimed to be in fact Louis XVII.
Karl Naundorf lived a long and fulfilling life. He visited England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Prussia. In 1834, Naundorf published a memoir in London detailing the story of his salvation. He met with those close to the royal court who knew the Dauphin closely, and many of them recognized the king in Naundorf.
He was the only one who correctly answered the provocative question of the nurse Agatha de Rambeau, whether he remembered his blue suit: "Of course I do, but I wore it only once, it was too tight for me." Rambeau dropped to her knees: "Your Majesty!"
The reigning houses of Europe dealt with the problem of identifying Naundorf, and the Netherlands officially recognized him as Louis XVII. The descendants of Naundorf bear the surname Bourbons and fought for the French crown for a long time - the last significant attempt dates back to 1919, the period of the Versailles Peace Conference.
What the DNA examination said
In 2014, exhausted historians decided to turn to science. 40-year-old Hugo de Bourbon - a direct descendant of Naundorf - agreed to provide material for genetic testing. For a comparative analysis, the tissues of the descendants of the Habsburgs were taken, from whose clan Marie Antoinette, mother of Louis XVII, descended. The results were negative: Naundorf could not have been the son of the executed queen.
This could be the point … But!
Another examination was carried out with the participation of the descendants of the Bourbons - and its results were positive, that is, Naundorf was not the son of the queen, but … he was the son of the king! Historians have found themselves at a final dead end. But the writers got the basis for writing an amazing historical novel and, probably, more than one.
Magazine: All the mysteries of the world # 2, Klim Podkova