Circumstances of His Death

Our unfortunate story opens in the Temple Prison on this day, the third of July, 1793. Dusk has fallen, wrapping the medieval fortress in a velvet blanket of darkness, and the fractured royal family (By this time, Louis XVI has already been executed), is about to begin their evening ritual of prayers and reading.

Suddenly, the door to their cell swings open, banging loudly against the stone walls, and a contingent of municipal officers enter.

Marie Antoinette is told she will be forcibly separated from her beloved seven-year-old son, Louis-Charles.

She does not take the news calmly. She stands at the foot of her son's bed, arms splayed, loudly, vehemently refusing to let anyone near the frightened boy. In this moment, she is not Marie Antoinete, former Queen of France and Navarre, but Marie Antoinette, the mother. A primal instinct to protect her threatened offspring is greater than any desire to appear dignified. The stand-off lasted nearly an hour.

Finally, one of the municipal officers threatens violence if she does not peacefully yield to the parting.

Can you see her in that moment? Perhaps she let her arms fall heavily to her sides. Maybe her shoulders slumped and her chin dropped to her chest in a posture of defeat. Her sense of hopeless must have hung thick and heavy in the air. It would have taken a hard-hearted individual to stand idly by and witness such an emotionally-charged scene.

Elena wrote:Simon and Robespierre both died on the guillotine. I don't know what became of some of the others. As far as I know there was never any official inquiry into the boy's death, other than what Madame Royale conducted on her own. I think the powers-that-be were always too afraid at what would be revealed to the public.

I got curious, and I’m not 100% sure on this but:

There are at least two published versions of Madame Royale’s memoirs. The earliest edition was published in 1817 without her permission—this early edition, published without her name and retaining her original third person perspective, was made from a copy of the original manuscript she wrote in the Temple. The later editions, published as early as 1823, were from a longer manuscript that she worked on with Louis XVIII, who helped her edit and “correct” her updated manuscript.

In the original 1817 French edition of her memoirs, there is no mention of a visit from Robespierre or a mysterious man at all. (There is the chance that there is a mention of a visit elsewhere in the memoir, but unless she used tricky phrasing that didn’t involve using the word man, visit, think, respect, or Robespierre, then probably not.)

The 1823 French and English editions of her memoirs, however, do include this visit. The new edition expands on certain incidents, which may have been the choice of Madame Royale or at the nudging of her Uncle to give the manuscript more detail. For example, in the original 1817 manuscript she merely mentions that she was interrogated and lists some items that were taken away. In the 1823 edition, a portion of one of her interrogations is included (‘Come, young citizen, tell us, have you a great many knives?’ ‘No, gentlemen, only two.’ etc) to, perhaps, give the readers more details about her sufferings in the Temple.

So, why is the mysterious visit in the expanded versions of her memoirs but not (as far as I can tell) in the original or at least, earlier, manuscript? I think that one plausible explanation is that as Madame Royale was dictating her memoirs and talking about these expanded memories, she remembered a visit from a respected man whom she did not know—a minor detail, maybe something to include, maybe something to leave out. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to assume that from there, someone—either Louis XVIII or Therese herself—proposed the idea that perhaps this mysterious visit from a man who looked over her books and was treated with great respect, deference even, was actually the infamous Robespierre.

Do you happen to know whether it was the first or second edition that was written under the guidance of Madame de Chanterenne? Her influence may also relate to the odd inconsistency.

I know I cast doubt on the validity of the speculation in another post, but I do find it odd that someone who was consciously trying to calumniate Robespierre would confine themselves to noting that he acted insolently. Wasn’t it Hitler or someone of his kin who said that if you are going to lie, lie big? The mellow, almost incidental, “Oh, it might’ve been Robespierre” makes me inclined to think that if nothing else, Madame Royale or whoever was influencing her writing, believed that they were speaking the truth - this doesn’t omit the possibility that they were mistaken, of course, just genuine.

The Thermidorian legend of Robespierre’s wanting to wed Madame Royale likely also has a connection here. And it was bantied about during his lifetime. The question is how this ties in to the alleged visit. Was the legend o the marriage spawned from one of Robespierre’s enemies hearing that he was having secret rendez-vous with a princess of France? Or was the legend of the visit inspired because of the legend of the marriage? Sort of a retroactive, “Oh, Madame Royale was visited by a mysterious man? Well we know Robespierre wanted to marry her so it must’ve been him” type deal.

The earlier manuscript was the one she wrote in the Temple, so that would be the one that Chanterenne may have had a hand in. Her shorter earlier manuscript may also have something to do with her social isolation—some of Chanterenne’s reports on Therese, for example, mention that she still had difficulty in speaking and writing even after she was given books, writing tools, etc, to use. The history of the memoirs publication is also a bit fuddled, admittedly—there are unauthorized editions, truncated/summarized editions, translated editions, editions with/without the memoirs of Clery & Hue and letters of Elisabeth, and so on.

I think it’s more plausible that they assumed they were telling the truth as well—both that the visit happened and that someone (Therese or otherwise) believed it was noteworthy to include because it may have been Robespierre. As you said, if they really wanted to hammer home the point that Robespierre was a Big Bad Wolf who visited the Temple there are plenty of easy ways to embellish that story to make it a lot more dastardly than “Someone, I think Robespierre, came to visit me and looked haughtily at my books.”

It’s the chicken and the egg, isn’t it? Did the legend of Robespierre wanting to whisk off a Bourbon bride start because he visited the Temple, or did the bride legend itself spawn the story that he visited the Temple? Which then may have traveled through the years, possibly influencing Therese or Louis XVIII in their decision that the visitor was noteworthy because he may have been Robespierre.

Elena wrote:I saw this exchange on Anna's site and I am grateful to you for transferring it here since I think it is very helpful to our understanding of the conditions in the Temple. Madame Royale wrote her memoirs in 1795 under the direction of the Thermidorean Madame Chanterenne, who filled in for MTC details that the princess could not have known due to her solitary confinement. Madame Royale wrote/ dictated while still in the Temple prison so that would have been the first edition and of course everything was slanted to make the former revolutionary regimes look as bad as possible. Not that extreme ill-treatment of the Dauphin did not occur; it may even have been worse than we know. In the memoirs of Madame de Gontaut, governess of the grandchildren of Charles X, there are conversations recorded that occurred with MTC about the imprisonment which are very horrifying and which I detail in my novel Madame Royale.

As for the visit of Robespierre, I believe he did visit Madame Royale in prison but she did not know who he was until later. What his intentions really were are a mystery.

Elena wrote:I am consulting Susan Nagel's book, Marie-Therese, Child of Terror, p. 275. There was several editions of MTC's memoirs, most of them unauthorized. The edition edited by Louis XVIII in 1819 wanted to make it clear that Louis XVII had died in the Temple. The authorized edition published in 1823 coincided with an unauthorized edition published by Madame de Soucy, to whom Madame Royale had given a copy of her prison recollections as a souvenir of their journey Vienna. The princess felt betrayed and was very concerned about her story being accurately told.

Elena wrote:
I don't think the story about Robespierre's proposed marriage to Madame Royale originated with her. The rumors were circulating in royalist circles after it was discovered, from her description, that Robespierre had visited her.

Joseph Turquan's biography of Madame Royale goes into this and so does Minnergerode Meade's Son of Marie-Antoinette. MTC described Robespierre as a lean man in a powdered wig, nankeen suit, with steel spectacles. She had no idea who he was but she later claimed she demanded a doctor for her brother, whom she had not seen in months. She was much later told it was Robespierre who had come to see her and that he had thought about marrying her. She was probably told this by Madame Chanterenne or by her uncle Louis XVIII.

Louis XVIII had to make it clear that Louis XVII was indeed dead because of all the rumors circulating that the boy had survived, rumors which were enhanced by the various claimants who started coming out of the woodwork.

I just wanted to make certain that I was not sounding like I was mitigating the abuse since Madame Royale's memoirs were slanted against Robespierre, etc. by her editors. And you are correct that the neglect of the Dauphin worsened after Robespierre's death.

Under the guise of law, he aspired
By promoting his own dictatorship
To become the real king
Of a fictitious Republic.
This proud plan fell flat
And, frustrated in his canine appetite,
Instead of marrying a Capet
he espoused the guillotine!

After returning to France in 1814, after twenty years of exile, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, was contacted by the Sisters of Charity at the Hôpital des Incurables in Paris. One of their patients was Madame Simon, widow of the infamous Simon the cobbler who had brutalized the little Louis XVII in the Temple prison. Widow Simon claimed that the boy king had been smuggled out of the Temple in a basket of laundry, and that he had not died in 1795, but had been replaced by another boy who died in his place. The princess did not know what to make of such a wild story. In December of 1814 she went incognito to the hospital with two friends to personally interview the cobbler's widow. The following is a rendition of the confrontation from the novel Madame Royale:

....A frail old woman sat alone by the stove. She was in a wheelchair, a white linen cap on her head, a shawl around her shoulders and a blanket across her legs. She was tatting in the fading December light streaming through the window.

"Mère Simon, some people are here to see you, " said Sister Lucie. She withdrew without curtsying, as Thérèse had asked her. Lifting her veil, Thérèse approached the cobbler's widow. Her eyes met the steel grey ones in the withered face. It was a hard visage, as hard as she had ever remembered it to be, but not evil. She stared keenly at Thérèse for several seconds before looking down again at her tatting.

"Sit down, Madame," said Widow Simon, gesturing to a chair. Thérèse sat down; Pauline and Mathieu remained standing by the door. "You have heard, I suppose, that I was once the governess of the Dauphin. People talk of nothing but the Dauphin nowadays. Everyone wants to know about him; I tell them everything I can recall."

"Yes, Madame Simon," said Thérèse, trying to soften her grating voice. "I would like to hear about the Dauphin. They say he was a handsome child."

"Handsome!" exclaimed Mère Simon. "Ah, mon Dieu, he was like an angel with his golden curls and thick eyelashes! Both of my little Bourbons were beautiful children. Yes, his sister was a lovely girl, too." She furtively glanced at Thérèse. "A proud lass, but lovely. Oh, la la, but my Charles was a naughty rascal."

"You took care of him, did you not?"

"Indeed, yes, Madame." The old woman stopped tatting and closed her eyes. "I made certain he ate all the food on his plate. I swept his chamber everyday and mended his clothes. I changed his bed linen often. Those tales about lice-- well, not while I, Jeanne Simon, resided at the Temple. My Charles loved me and I loved him. He wanted to come with us when we left."

"Your husband," asked Thérèse, hesitantly, "did he love Charles?"

Madame Simon's eyebrows arched defiantly."I do not care what stories you may have heard, but Simon did not hit Charles all that often. Why, he only hit him when he was drunk, and then he would hit me, too, for that matter. And Charles was a rascal-- all those princely airs and graces, those fine manners and book-learning, why, it just made Simon as mad as can be. He had to beat it all out of him, and knock some sense into his head. He would have done the same to a boy of our own. But he never hit him with an iron poker, knocking him half-dead. That's an evil lie. And he never broke his toys, or killed his pet birds. Not Simon. As for the guards--well, that's another story altogether. They would wake the little fellow up every few hours a night, when they let him sleep at all, to make certain he was still there. 'Capet, are you awake? Show yourself, you whelp!' they would call. It angered me, I must say. Simon did no such thing. He even bought Charles a dog, which was given to the boy's sister after he left."

"Yes," said Thérèse, remembering little Coco. "So I have heard. But tell me, did you take the Dauphin away with you?"

"We did, indeed. Simon smuggled him out in a hamper of dirty linen. Hiding the likes of Monsieur Charles was no easy task, let me tell you. Then Simon took him to some place called Vitry. Afterwards, Simon was killed. I did not see the Dauphin again for many years."

Thérèse suppressed a small gasp. "You saw him, Madame? When?"

The old woman's eyes brightened and her face glowed. "My Charles came to see me in 1802. He stood right here in this room."

Thérèse felt her pulses pounding, as she hid her emotion. "From the tower of the Temple until 1802 is a long time," she said lightly. "How were you able to recognize him?"

"By the scar on his upper lip, where the rabbit scratched him." The hard mouth softened into a sly smile. "Madame, I recognize you quite well, notwithstanding your disguise, although I have not seen you for very much longer....You are Madame Marie-Thérèse!"

Thérèse stood up and almost bolted from the room....

~ from Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal, Chapter 14, "The Hospital," copyright 2000 by E. M. Vidal

If the reports by the those that visited him post-Thermidor are to be believed, his confinement was improved (in that he was giving new clothing, better food and taken for walks) in late July/early August, but he died from an illness in the spring anyway. … Of course now that I want to access the page to find out when a visit occurred, the English translation of Jean Baptiste Harmand’s report won’t load. Anyway, when Harmand visited he reported that Charles had swellings on various areas of his body and had a look of “resignation” and “indifference,” even as he listened to Harmand’s commands and walked around, ate food, etc. It is possible that the loss of his family, the isolation, and so on, exacerbated his condition to the point that even better treatment could not do much to fix it. (Especially if he did die from a form of tuberculosis, which may have been inevitable and brought on earlier by the physical and mental stress of his condition—to speculate, anyway.) 

I think that the changeling rumors started because of the seclusion! But in a different ‘order,’ so to speak. One of the more popular changeling theories is that the reason that Louis Charles was put into seclusion was that someone (who?) rescued him and put a substitute in his place. (Sometimes the substitute is mute, deaf, etc, sometimes not.) In any case, this meant that he had to be kept from the guards as much as possible so that they didn’t know the substitution took place until, presumably, it was too late to actually do anything.