Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Louis XVII

A portrait of Louis-Charles, the "peasant child," later Louis XVII, who was so tormented in the Temple prison, after being torn from his mother's arms. (More HERE.) Via Tiny-Librarian. Share

2 comments:

Jack B. said...

I've got to admit I've never been able to understand the abject cruelty and inhumanity in how that child was treated, even by hardened Jacobins. Even the Republican committee sent to look on him before his death were disgusted. And yet nothing much was done for him. And then nobody seemed to care when he died. He wasn't even given a funeral. Yet, unlike his mother and father, had never been convicted of anything (indeed was forced to call himself Citizen Capet). Contrast the Directory's insistence on giving Marie-Therese a trousseau (which I always took as an insult) when she was traded to the Austrians as a sign of Republican French honor! For Louis Charles? Nothing.

Even today, the French Republic does not like to talk about him. I think a lot of if has to do with saving face for the Revolution. He is never really mentioned in French historical textbooks and when his heart was reinterred with his parents the French Republic sent no representatives for someone whom a) was regarded as King of France by most of Europe and many Frenchmen and b) had been basically murdered by officials of the First French Republic.

julygirl said...

To this day and to my knowledge the French consider the Revolution a triumph without admitting the horror suffered by many innocent people.