Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their two children and immediate family were imprisoned in the keep of the Knights Templar's ancient fortress in August 1792 by the revolutionary government. By the end of 1794, when all the adults had been executed, the two children – a teenage girl and the 9- or 10-year-old dauphin, now, in the eyes of royalists, Louis XVII – remained there alone, in the charge of a family called Simon. Louis XVII was literally walled up, allowed no communication with other human beings, not even his sister, who was living on the floor above. He died of tuberculosis in 1795, a half-crazed imbecile, and was buried in a public grave.At least that is what appeared to be his fate. A number of clues, however, point to hocus-pocus. The doctor who certified the child's death kept a lock of his hair, but it was later found not to correspond with the colour of the young Louis XVII's hair, as remembered by his sister. Mme Simon confessed on her deathbed that she had substituted another child for Louis XVII. And a sympathetic sexton admitted that he had exhumed the body of this imbecile child and reburied it in the cloister of the Église Ste-Marguerite in the Faubourg St-Antoine, but when this body was dug up it was found to be that of an 18-year-old. A plausible theory is that the real Louis XVII died early in 1794. But since Robespierre needed the heir to the throne as a hostage with which to menace internal and foreign royalist enemies, he had Louis disposed of in secret and substituted the idiot. Taking advantage of this atmosphere of uncertainty, 43 different people subsequently claimed to be Louis XVII. After centuries of speculation, all rumours were put to rest in the spring of 2000 when DNA from the child who died of TB was found to match samples obtained from locks of Marie-Antoinette's hair, and also that of several other maternal relatives.
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