Ten Boys from History

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

The royal prisoners were soon removed to the principal tower of the Temple, where the Dauphin occupied a room with the king, until after Louis was taken away for trial, when the Dauphin was placed in his mother's care, and after that time he saw his father only once. The king was condemned to death. Having foreseen it, calmly he had accepted the decree, asking only that he might see his family once to say farewell. This privilege was granted and during the scene which lasted almost two hours, little Louis, born to inherit not glory but misfortune, held his father in his arms and kissed and comforted him in the fashion of a strong man rather than a little child. He did not understand causes, but he saw effects, and he was brave because mamma and papa needed someone beside them, who smiled, and so he held tears back until the time when they were a natural consequence of the final parting with his loved father.

And now little Louis was no longer the Dauphin, but rightful King of France—King of France, only think of it, and scarcely eight years old! Marie Antoinette, from the hour of separation from her husband devoted her entire strength and time to the education of her child, the little King. She felt she had no time to lose, and every moment of the day was made to serve some useful end. Even the games he played had each a purpose. It was a touching sight to see him leaning his elbows on a tiny table, absorbed in reading the history of France, then eagerly telling what he had read, and commenting on it. The queen made a special point of talking to the little King of his royal office, told him of his father's gentleness and mercy to his enemies, and made him promise to be as merciful if he should ever reign, and he soon was made to feel that greatness comes not with titles, but with character, and once in his sleep was heard to murmur:

"I will be good and kind; for I am king." Poor little Louis!

At this time there were wars and rumours of wars outside the walls of the Temple. Plots to liberate the queen and her son and to restore little Louis to the throne were set on foot by friends of the royal family, and though one and all failed of execution, they vitally affected the young king's life. When the plots were discovered by which Louis was to be abducted and publicly declared king, the revolutionists became so fearful that the plan might be really carried out, that they decided it was unwise to let him remain with his mother any longer, and the decree went forth that the son of Louis Sixteenth was to be taken from his mother and sister, and given into the care of a tutor to be chosen by the committee representing the people.

The queen was driven almost to madness by this unexpected decree, and when men came to take Louis away from her and carry him to another part of the Tower, she frantically placed herself in front of his bed, and insisted that he should not be taken, but power and force were on the wrong side, and at last, the officers tore the child from his mother's arms and carried him dazed and trembling with fright to his new apartment.

King of France was little Louis in title, but the most lonely, most frightened of all children in the land. For two days and two nights he refused food and held out his arms to his so-called tutor, constantly pleading to be taken back to his mother and sister. And who was his "tutor"? No other than Simon, the cobbler, he whose brawny arms had once stopped the Dauphin's way in the garden of the Tuileries. Simon and his wife had been chosen to guard and care for the little King of France, because they were staunch revolutionists who could be relied on to protect the interests of their party. Historians differ in their accounts of the treatment of the young King by this rough couple, but it seems pretty sure now that during their stay in the Temple they were not altogether cruel to little Louis. He was allowed to play both in his rooms and in the garden, had a billiard table, and a case of mechanical birds for his amusement, and when he grieved for his sister's companionship, another little companion of his own age was found to play with him, and it is also known that during his two sicknesses, Simon and his wife cared for him with as much devotion as if he had been their own child. Whether this was because of the fine salary attached to the position, or from some native kindness underneath his coarse rough exterior, we do not know, but be this as it may, Simon evidently gave only such measure of cruelty to his charge as was insisted on by those who employed him, and it was doubtless, they who forced Simon to do what he did to destroy the child's mental and bodily faculties. Louis was made to share their political opinions, to imitate their coarse manners and even to sing their revolutionary songs, while in place of the mourning he had worn for his father, he now wore the coarsest garments and the red cap of the Jacobins, and was often made to drink and eat far more than was good for him, until at last he was in a condition of body and mind such as his tormentors desired, when he could be made a tool to suit their own ends, because of his weakened and abnormal condition.

No page of history is written in so black an ink nor with so many blots as that on which is recorded the imprisonment and torture of little Louis Seventeenth, the King who never reigned, and no page of history offers a more bewildering puzzle for solution, from the moment of his being taken from his mother's care—a puzzle to which there have been more answers, and about which as much mystery hangs, as about any other incident on the pages of history, and no page has been oftener read and re-read than this which offers for solution the problem of the ending of this little King who never reigned.

We see him last as a prisoner; thin, haggard, sick unto death, with no sparkle in his lustreless eyes, no motion in his swollen joints, no pretty retort on his lips as of old, and with a sigh we turn from the ghastly sight to the pages of French history where we again read in detail the accounts of his life and death, and then it is for us to decide upon our answer to this riddle which offers more than one solution.

Louis Seventeenth of France, in his ninth year, was imprisoned by the revolutionists and subjected to every kind of torture that a human being could be made to suffer. As a result of that treatment, and of loneliness and cruelty, did he pine and sicken and die a natural death as some accounts say?

Did he, as some say, deliberately resist all the attempts made by his persecutors to enter into conversation with him, by maintaining a complete silence of fifteen months; or had a dumb child been put in his place by friends who had secretly rescued the real little king from his prison, and hidden him in a garret room of the Temple until they could safely liberate him? Then finding the dumb child too healthy to suit their plans, did they, as it is said, replace him by a very sick child, who died in the room where the little king was supposed to be imprisoned, and announce his death to the French nation as that of Louis Seventeenth, the royal prisoner? While the poor little substitute was lying in what was supposedly the coffin of little Louis, had the real King been given a strong dose of opium, and hurriedly placed in the coffin, instead of the substitute, as has been said?