French Royal Tombs Robbed.
Not so the French. For three days in the Reign of Terror a Paris mob raged in the abbey church of St. Denis, which for centuries was the chosen burying-place of the French kings. In this sanctuary of the Old Régime the mob respected nothing. The silk robes were torn from the bodies of Hugues Capet, Philip the Hardy, and Philip the Fair.
A handful of gray dust, all that was left of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, was flung to the wind, and one after another, Capetians, Valois, and Bourbons were dragged from the tomb and tumbled into a trench. On the pavement, one eye-witness says, rolled the heads of Louis XII and Francis I, of Marshal Turenne and of the great Constable Duguesclin.
For a short time the corpse of Henry IV, the most popular of all the long line of French kings, was respected. Embalmed with the best Italian skill, and so well preserved that the two fatal dagger wounds in the chest were still plainly visible, the body lay untouched for two days. Then some one shouted that Henry, like all the rest, had deceived the people, and his body, too, was flung into the trench.
After the Restoration an attempt was made to return the royal bodies to their tombs, but it was not altogether successful.