The lost king of France
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
King Louis XVI of France and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were killed during the French Revolution. Their son and heir was said to have died in prison in 1795 but did he in fact escape? The 10-year-old spent his last two years of life in solitary confinement with no human contact. During his final few months he neither talked nor walked, rumours spread that this was an imposter and that the real dauphin had been smuggled out in a laundry basket and replaced with another boy. Years later, dozens of men from all over the world were claiming they were Louis-Charles, the rightful heir to the French throne. It could never be proven one way or the other, but in 2000 a team of scientists took DNA samples from the heart of the boy, which had been recovered and kept in a royal crypt. Claire Bowes has been speaking to professor Jean Jacques Cassiman and historian Deborah Cadbury about the mystery.
(Photo: Illustration of Louis XVII - formally Louis-Charles, Dauphin of France in prison.Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hello and thanks for downloading witness history on the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes. |
| 0:47.0 | Today we're revisiting a 200 year old French royal mystery. In 1793, the last King of France, Louis the 16th and his famous Queen Mary Antoinette were executed during the French Revolution. |
| 1:09.4 | But for two centuries it was rumored that their young son and heir survived and in the year |
| 1:15.5 | 2000 a Belgian scientist began an investigation. The fact that this could lead to answers to questions people had been looking at for hundreds of years actually was such a challenge for me that I could not say no I had to do this. |
| 1:34.4 | Professor Jean-Jacques-Cassiman conducted a DNA study which made headlines around the world. |
| 1:41.6 | In the crypt where the Kings and queens of France are buried, |
| 1:45.0 | there's a royal mystery which dates back to the French Revolution. |
| 1:48.0 | Did the Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette, |
| 1:52.0 | really die in a Parisian prison, |
| 1:54.1 | or was he, as some claim, swapped for an imposter. |
| 1:57.3 | Little Louis Charles, the Dauphin, or heir to the throne, |
| 2:01.3 | was just four years old when the people of Paris marched him and his |
| 2:05.6 | royal parents from their fabulous palace at Versailles to prison. |
| 2:10.9 | It was 1789 and the beginning of the French Revolution. |
| 2:15.0 | A mob descended on Versailles and essentially forced the Royal Family out of Versailles, |
| 2:21.0 | a whole gang 30,000 strong marched with them to Paris. |
| 2:27.0 | Deborah Cadbury is author of the Lost King of France. |
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