The real Louis XVII and the False Dauphins

The real dauphin, Louis-Charles of France, Duke of Normandy, son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, was born in 1785. He was only seven years old on 10 August 1792, when the royal family was arrested and imprisoned in the Temple. Made an orphan by the executions of his father (21 January 1793) and his mother (16 October 1793), he died of an illness on 8 June, 1795, at the age of 10.

Even though the monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792, royalists considered the child the legitimate heir to the throne under the name Louis XVII. The Count of Provence, brother of Louis XVI, thus received the name Louis XVIII after the death of his nephew.

The myth of the survival of the young Temple prisoner began to spread in 1795. It was fueled in the political sphere by the restoration of the monarchy in France in 1815 and in the cultural sphere by the romantic appetite for tragic stories of imprisonment, escape, and conspiracy. Thus, it developed throughout the first half of the 19^th century. This allowed for the emergence of imposters, some more convincing than others, who pretended to be the dauphin, secretly spirited out of the prison. The Baron de Richemont was one of many “false dauphins,” along with Jean-Marie Hervagault,^[3] Mathurin Bruneau, Jean-François Dufresne (also called “Charles of Navarre”), Victor Persat, Fontolive, Karl Naundorff, and Eleazar Williams.

Theory of survival developed by the Baron de Richemont

De Richemont’s version of the story begins around 1818, but over the years, he expanded it with new details. He was probably inspired by a novel by Jean-Joseph Regnault-Warin, “The Magdalen Church-yard,”^[4] from which Hervagault had already drawn his theories.

He thus pretended to be the dauphin, taken out of the Temple Prison in 1794 and replaced with another child. This was all at the instigation of the Prince de Condé and the Vendéen General Charette, with the complicity of the wife of Antoine Simon, his jailer. He maintained that he was placed with the army under a false name and entrusted to General Jean-Baptiste Kléber, then to General Louis Desaix. After these two generals died, he was sent to America by Joseph Fouché, minister of police. On his return to France, he was arrested on the orders of Louis XVIII, who had decided to send his own nephew to an Austrian prison in Italy, so he could usurp the throne more easily.

This last episode in the list of misadventures of the pseudo-Louis XVII may have been based on a real experience of incarceration. Traveling under a false passport with the name of Bourlon or Bourdon, he was arrested on 12 April 1818 near Mantua by agents of the Austrian police. After claiming to be Louis-Charles de Bourbon, he was placed in detention in the prison of Milan, from which he was released in October 1825.

In “My Prisons," the poet-patriot Silvio Pellico described his incarceration at Saint Margaret in Milan in 1820 and said he had met a prisoner claiming to be the Duke of Normandy.^[5] Another political prisoner, Alexandre Andryane, claimed to have glimpsed the same person. Pellico’s story, published in Italy in 1832, then translated into French in 1833, came after De Richemont's autobiography in 1831; this eyewitness account could thus prove the impostor’s presence in Lombard prisons in the 1820s.

Published for the first time in 1831, the false Louis XVII’s autobiography was enriched with new—and sometimes contradictory—facts in the following years. Carefully ascribing important roles to deceased people (the Prince de Condé, for example, died in 1830 in unclear circumstances), he developed a conspiracy theory and amalgamated several famous mysteries into his claims (Joseph-Bernardin Fualdès, whose murder was widely discussed, was killed because he knew too much), as well as parts of the accounts of other false dauphins and even people such as the “visionary” peasant Thomas Martin (who, however, supported Naundorff, the Baron de Richemont’s famous rival).^[6]

The schemes of Henri Hébert

Henri Hébert’s existence was recorded for the first time in 1826, when he moved to Rouen, where he made a living as a temporary employee of the Seine-Inférieure Prefecture, then as the owner and shopkeeper of a glassworks.

Having become bankrupt around 1829, he fled Rouen, where he had been sentenced by default to three months in prison. It was around this time that he swindled a couple from Montigny-sur-Avre, M. and Mme. De Malard, who believed they’d met the real Louis XVII.

He took advantage of the turmoil of the three “glorious days” of the July 1830 Revolution, during which he wrote manifests explaining his ambitions to several people, including the Duc de Choiseul. He changed his name and place of residence several times, giving himself the title “Baron de Richemont,” all the while mingling with republican agitators and abusing many people’s trust.

Hébert moved to Paris next, where he surrounded himself with accomplices and tried to thwart police investigations by using different addresses and different, borrowed names.^[7]

Arrest and trial (1833-1834)

Hébert was considered a suspect in the investigation of the republican plots of the Society for the Rights of Man. He was arrested in August 1833 on the order of the prefect of police, Henri Gisquet,^[8] who at that time confiscated a clumsily-coded planner, several political pamphlets, and a secret printing press used for several publications, including the autobiography of the so-called Louis XVII (possibly edited by the mysterious “Saint-Edme”^[9]). He also confiscated a “letter to the deputies” signed with the pseudonym “Jean Bonhomme,” which was said to contain an insult to the king. Imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie, Hébert was taken to Lyon to be confronted by witnesses. The inquest, the confrontations, and the simple cryptological analysis of the planner allowed the authorities to retrace Henri Hébert's movements and actions since his arrival in Rouen in 1826.

The trial of Hébert and his accomplices took place from 30 October to 5 November 1834, at the Assize Court of the Seine. Among the witnesses called to the stand was the last person responsible for guarding the dauphin, an old building-painter named Étienne Lasne (1756-1841). He confirmed that the true son of Louis XVI had died in his arms at the Temple Prison in 1795. During the October 31^st session, a man called Morel de Saint-Didier, an emissary of Naundorff, spoke up to defend Naundorff’s legitimacy and to accuse Hébert of being an impostor.

The defense couldn’t find witnesses capable of supporting the survivalist theory. Alexandre Andryane admitted that the pseudo-Duke of Normandy who he’d seen in Milan could have been Hébert but didn’t confirm any of his other claims. A Doctor Rémusat affirmed that he’d taken the testimony of Marie-Jeanne Simon, but the words of Louis XVII’s jailer’s widow, who’d died 15 years earlier in a hospice, didn’t carry much weight, especially since the Simons had left the Temple in January 1794. Hébert had originally dated his supposed escape to June 1794 before changing his version of events.

Having dismissed the accusation of a plot against the king and of fraud (for lack of complaints from any victims), the jury found Hébert guilty of all the other charges, including a plot against the State and press-related crimes.^[7]

Escape and demands of recognition

Hébert was condemned to serve a 12-year sentence in Sainte-Pélagie Prison, where, according to journalist Taxile Delord, his culinary talents were much appreciated by the other prisoners.^[10] Hébert escaped from prison on 19 August 1835 and took refuge abroad for several years. Returning to France around 1838, he benefited from an 1840 royal decree of amnesty towards political prisoners.

For many years, the Baron de Richemont fought in vain to obtain the official recognition of the Duchess of Angoulême, his supposed sister. An intermediary contacted her in 1840, and she was indignant at being approached. She told the emissary, “My brother, sir, died in the Temple, I’m certain of it, and the man of whom you’re speaking to me is nothing but one more impostor to add to those who’ve already appeared.” Hébert then contacted the Duke of Bordeaux, without much more success. Naundorff’s death in 1845 only encouraged the Baron de Richemont’s overtures and pursuits.

Again profiting from the revolutionary fervor of 1848, he tried to get recognition from the provisionary government, gave a speech at the Barrière du Maine club, and even declared himself a candidate in the April elections.^[10][11]

The following year, during which he claimed to have met Pope Pius IX in Gaeta, Italy, he tried to summon the Duchess of Angoulême to court in hopes of obtaining her recognition (and later, a part of her inheritance).^[12]

"The ex-Baron de Richemont" in 1850. Lithograph by Maurin, published in the biography written under the name Claravali del Curso.

Around 1850, another book about him was published, “Vie de Mgr le duc de Normandie," by a certain Claravali del Curso, possibly a new accomplice or simply a nom de plume of the Baron de Richemont.^[13] In addition to this new book, de Richemont used a bimonthly publication called “L’inflexible, journal des intérêts de tous” (1849-1851) to defend his interests.

Death

In 1853, he went to stay at the home of the Countess of Apchier, the Chateau de Vaurenard in Gleizé. Her husband had been Louis XVI’s page. While there, de Richemont died of apoplexy on 10 August 1853. His death certificate, witnessed by those he’d duped, named him Louis-Charles of France. A tribunal in Villefranche on 12 September 1859, judged that the certificate had to be “rectified, in accordance with the fact that it wrongly certifies the death of Louis-Charles of France, whereas it should be limited to certifying the death of an unknown person calling himself Baron de Richemont.”^[14] The epitaph on his tomb was the same and was also corrected by order of the authorities.^[15]

The Chateau de Vaurenard, where the Baron de Richemont died in 1853.

Richemont had no known masculine descendants, so his partisans (including the sculptor Foyatier, the nun Elisabeth Eppinger, and even the former bishop of Strasbourg, Monseigneur Tharin), consigned him to history and to his mysteries.^[1] A historian, Michel Wartelle, still supports the theory that the Baron de Richemont really was Louis XVII.^[16]

Possible alias

In June 1842, the Baron de Richemont, then living at 45 Quai de Valmy, Paris, was newly arrested by the police, who thought he was Claude Perrin, who was wanted for several acts of fraud in another province.^[1] The Baron de Richemont immediately denied it and was released for lack of evidence after 40 hours.