The Terrible Fate Of Marie Antoinette's Children | The Lost Dauphin of France And His Siblings

Marie Antoinette the Austrian princess who became a French Queen is best known for being beheaded by Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution in 1793. famous for her Fashions love of the Arts and alleged decadence in the face of France's poverty she is less well known as a mother not only giving birth to four of her children she also adopted four more but what happened to the eight forgotten children of the French King and Queen Marie Antoinette was married by proxy on the 19th of April 1770 to Louis Auguste the dofan of France their marriage was the result of an end to hostilities between Austria and France when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria agreed to a match for her daughter with Louis XV of France's eldest grandson it was hope their Union would strengthen both countries against Great Britain and Prussia Marie Antoinette was only 14 but on the 14th of May she set out for the edge of the forest of compania where she was to meet her future husband for the first time who was also just 15. just two days later the young couple were married in person at the Palace of Versailles and as was typical for Royal marriages at the time was followed by the ritual bedding the couple were tucked in together in the hopes they would consummate their marriage however this didn't happen and wouldn't happen for several years afterwards there are many theories around why this occurred ranging from being so young when they were married a lack of interest and understanding of sex to a possible penile condition Louis may have had whatever the reason it damaged the reputation of the couple well into their becoming the king and queen of France in 1774. they wouldn't have their first biological child until another three years had gone by and Marie Antoinette's desire for a child reportedly led to the very odd and difficult story of their first adopted son one day in 1776 Marie Antoinette was out for a carriage ride with her ladies in waiting when they went past a small Village near Lucien there was a sudden jolt as the carriage came to a sharp stop outside five-year-old Francois Michelle gagne had run out in front onto the road narrowly avoiding an accident The Carriage was immediately stopped and The Coachman jumped down to check on the child thankfully finding him unhurt his grandmother flung open her cottage door flying across to her grandson but before she got to Francois Michelle the queen herself came down from her seat with her arms held out Marie Antoinette cried out that the child was hers that Destiny had handed him to her to console her until she gave birth to a child of her own the queen pressed on asking if his mother was still alive his grandmother replied no Madam my daughter died last winter and left five small children upon my hands Marie Antoinette then asked if the elderly woman would agree to allowing her to adopt her young grandson also promising to financially take care of his siblings the grandmother agreed this may seem heartless but for an old woman with at least four or five orphaned children to take care of in rural 18th century France the queen offering to pay for them and bring one up at court was like winning the lottery this came about in later years with his brother being able to have an education in music and dowries and monetary gifts being given to Francois Michelle's two sisters not surprisingly the little boy was not happy with this Arrangement and as the carriage drove off he showed his displeasure by screaming and kicking the queen and her ladies it set the tone for his future relationship with the royal family from the start Francois Michelle missed his biological family it wasn't unusual for wealthy families to Foster more impoverished children but this was unusual in that Marie Antoinette gave Francois Michelle a new name Armand and he became if not part of Court Life part of the private family life of the French Royals in the absence of giving birth to any biological child children the little boy apparently brought the queen a lot of Joy however once she gave birth to her first daughter in 1778 she reportedly lost interest in Francois Michelle he was never happy in his life at the palace and as a result the relationship between the boy and his adoptive parents was always miserable and broken it was no surprise then that when the French Revolution broke out in 1789 he came to have Republican sympathies and joined the revolutionaries he was sadly killed just a few years later at the Battle of German in 1792 but he was far from their only child finally in 1778 Marie Antoinette gave birth to the first Royal child Marie Therese her birth was a difficult one but when she finally came into the world she was greeted by her mother with great Delight it was reported that the queen said poor little one you are not desired but you will be nonetheless dear to me a son would have belonged to the state you will belong to me contrary to Mary Antoinette's later image of a materialistic Queen who ignored the plight of the poor she apparently wanted to bring her daughter up to be more in touch with normal people she often invited children of lower social ranks to eat with Marie Therese and encouraged her daughter give her toys away to the poor apparently Louis XVI was very affectionate and loving as a father and often indulged his daughter she had a happy childhood until the French Revolution began attacks on her mother increased a mixture of xenophobia within the French court against her Austrian roots and political propaganda used to explain the weakened French economy things seemed for a while to be all right until the Bastille was stormed on the 14th of July 1789 things began to move fast after that on the 5th of October a group of working-class women marched of a science stormed the palace intent on taking food they had heard was stored there the royal family was forced to take refuge in the king's Apartments later being moved by the demands of the crowd to twilery Palace an escape plan was formed which would have allowed the family to escape to a royalist stronghold in northeastern France but they were cut off and forced back to Paris on the 13th of August 1792 the whole family were imprisoned in the Tour de tompla the remains of a medieval castle it must have been terrifying for Marie Therese and her parents she was just 10 years old a few months later her father was taken from the tower and she never saw him again he was executed by guillotine on the 21st of January 1793 Marie Therese was left with her mother Marie Antoinette her aunt Madame Elizabeth younger sister of the deceased King and her younger brother Louis Charles who had been declared Louis XVI by royalist supporters this support meant that six months later on the 3rd of July revolutionaries came and removed Louis from his family entrusting him to the care of a cobbler called Antoine Simone the three women left of the family tried to stop them crying out and reaching for him but it was no use on the 2nd of August Marie Antoinette was taken away to meet her fate and was followed by Madame Elizabeth who was executed on the 10th of May 1794 Marie Therese was now left alone however she still didn't know her mother and Aunt were dead until over a year later in August 1795 when she was finally told about what had happened to them her grief was immense she didn't escape the horror of her situation until the 18th of December 1795 on the eve of her 17th birthday she was finally able to go to Vienna where her cousin the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II lived but her anguish was far from over after marrying her cousin Louis Antoine Duke de ungalem in June 1799 the couple moved to buckinghamshire in Britain to Hartwell house the couple although they had no children were reportedly happy enough and Britain was a welcoming place for the French Royals however it was still Exile and Marie Therese must have felt a mixture of longing for the home she had lost and dealing with the grief those memories of the past brought finally in 1814 with the abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte her long years of Exile were over and Marie Therese returned to France with her husband Louis Antoine by her side and her uncle Louis the 18th but understandably it was a difficult return she didn't trust anyone who had supported the Republic under Napoleon and many young men came forward claiming to be her long Dead Brother Louis Charles this caused her much distress despite her uncle's attempts to prevent them coming forward the bourbon restoration as the return of the royal family was known was briefly interrupted a year later in 1815 by the hundred days this was an attempt by Napoleon to regain control of France but It ultimately failed and the restoration continued afterwards until 1830. her father-in-law was by this time on the throne as Charles the tenth and his Ultra royalist ideals had alienated the Royals once more from ordinary working people he was forced to abdicate on the 2nd of August followed by his son Louis Antoine who was arguably King of France in the 20 minutes between his father's abdication and his own therefore Marie Therese was Queen of France for those 20 minutes but it was soon over and they were once again in Exile fleeing to Britain after Years of Living between relatives homes in Europe outliving her husband Marie Therese died of pneumonia on the 19th of October 1851 at the age of 83. hers had been a long and sad life with moments of happiness and memories of people who had long since passed in the name of France on her grave she is remembered as Queen Dowager of France a reference to her brief queenship but she was not an only child and the first of her two biological Brothers Louis Joseph was born at the Palace of Versailles on the 22nd of October 1781 as France at that time barred women from holding the throne Louis Joseph was hailed's the dofan of France the heir to the French Crown his birth was therefore met with great joy and he was close to his parents and sisters system much loved by them all he was apparently a happy and intelligent child but it soon became clear that he had weak Health when he was only three years old Louis Joseph suddenly became ill with a series of fevers fearful for the young dolphin's Health the little boy was quickly transported to Chateau de la muet a royal residence on the edge of Paris he recovered to the relief of everyone and just a year later in 1785 he was inoculated against smallpox and sent to rest at the Chateau once more in 1786 the fevers returned again but this time the Royal household ignored the fevers it was around this time the Young Prince was also noted to walk with some difficulty which was due to a curved spine this was treated with a metal corset but two years later in 1788 his fevers increased this was a symptom of tuberculosis but still no one understood what was really wrong on the 4th of June 1789 Louis Joseph of France died he was still a child only seven years old and his death devastated his family his wet nurse Genevieve barbier was accused retrospectively of transmitting the disease to the dofan through her milk his death came just as the Estates General that led to the French Revolution were convened and must have been an ill Omen of more sadness yet to come when Louis Joseph died his title of Dothan of France passed to his younger brother Louis Charles who was born in March 1785. Louis Charles's upbringing like that of his siblings was as expected for a royal child he was looked after by a governor and a royal household and his mother and father doted on him as much as their other children but there were ugly rumors at court that he was in fact an illegitimate son of Marie Antoinette and axel Von ferson a Swedish count she was thought to be romantically involved with most modern historians dispute this as there is little evidence and Marie Antoinette was unlikely to have made her position at court more difficult against her enemies after his family was moved to the twilery Palace in 1789 life became much more strained and less private for them all Louis Charles's mother was only permitted to see her two children with guards and their hands kept behind her back at all times all three of them would be searched for letters smuggled between them however things were to get much worse in 1792 when the family were taken to Temple Tower it wouldn't be long before Louis Charles found himself removed from them with the death of his father royless intent on restoring the French Royals named him Louis XVI this made him a threat in the eyes of the revolutionaries and on the 11th of December he was taken away from his family it would be the last time he ever saw them he was placed into the hands of Antoine Simon a cobbler who had been named as his Guardian while there is little proof for them stories written by royalists started to circulate of the ill treatment of the young boy however Marie Therese later wrote in her memoirs and stated that Antoine was The Monster Simon suggesting there was at least some truth to them foreign secretaries in both Britain and Spain had spies report back with horrific accounts that the Young Prince had been raped by prostitutes in order to infect him with sexually transmitted diseases to create fake evidence against the queen other accounts including the Memoirs written by his older sister Marie Therese stated that he was beaten and physically abused by his jailers on the 6th of October French politicians and other supporters visited the boy and secured a signature from him condemning his mother and Aunt with charges of sexual child abuse the Poor Boy's mental state Can Only Be Imagined however visitors to the prison never reported seeing any of this but a planned visit might have meant the visitors didn't see the truth and the truth becomes even more difficult to find after this point as many records for this period were lost restoration historians would later tell a story of how Louis Charles was kept in a filthy dark room with bars only being passed food through them to survive no one entered his room for six months Paul baras a French politician visited after the 27th of July 1794 and while he claimed the boy was suffering from neglect he made no mention of a dark dirty room with bars the reality is probably somewhere in between both stories it's likely Louis Charles was kept imprisoned in a room of some kind but there's no reason to believe he would have been intentionally starved or left in a filthy room as there is no proof of it the one thing that was true was Louis Charles's silence since the day he had signed the document accusing his mother and Aunt of abuse the young boy had remained mute early in 1795 Louis Charles fell ill Physicians were called for but on the 8th of June the young boy's life finally came to an end he was only 10 years old a French surgeon who was called to do the autopsy Philippe jean-peletan stated that the prince had died of tuberculosis the surgeon also removed and smuggled out Louis Charles's heart following a tradition of preserving the hearts of French royalty This Heart passed through various hands in a dried State until it was finally interned in the Saint Donnie Basilica on the 8th of June 2004 as for Louis Charles's final resting place it was unmarked his remains buried at Saint margarite cemetery on the 10th of June Marie Antoinette's final biological child was Sophie Helena Beatrice born on the 9th of July 1786. [Music] sadly hers is a very short tale as she did not live long enough to see out her first year of Life the little girl was born a good size and healthy but she contracted an illness which also played her two older brothers tuberculosis at just 11 months old after suffering nearly a week of convulsions the young princess died on the 19th of June 1787 when someone tried to console Marie Antoinette that she had not known her child long and therefore could not be as deeply attached to her the French Queen responded don't forget that she would have been my friend it was obvious that like most mothers Marie Antoinette loved her children but this was not the end to the French King and queen's children in 1787 the French official gevalier de beaufler came to court with a gift for the queen a parrot and a young boy from French Senegal who had been enslaved by the buffalo called Jean amilka not much is known about Jean's life before this point except that he was born around 1781 so was only six years old when he was presented at the French Court Marie Antoinette immediately manumated the small boy arranging for him to be baptized and he was officially adopted by the French king and queen as their Foster son it was expected of the royal couple to take on foster children as part of their duties but unlike his other Foster siblings Jean was not raised at court the Queen instead arranged a place for him in a boarding school in songklu paying for him even as the French Revolution continued only stopping after her imprisonment when she could no longer afford to pay for him why he was not raised at court alongside his other siblings raises obvious questions about racism but many of the older siblings of Marie Antoinette's other adopted children also didn't live at court the true reasons are unknown but after she was unable to keep paying the fees for Jean's boarding school he was expelled it was thought for many years that the poor boy was simply turned out into the street and starved to death however later research has shown this not to be true that in fact Jean was taken in by one of his tutors Quentin Belden we know this as Belden applied to the French government for a grant to cover Jean schooling one that was for people who had been enslaved before the Revolution he was apparently skilled enough as an artist to be enrolled at the lianco Academy in Paris in 1796 with government support once more however he sadly died at a hospital in Paris later that same year and he then disappears from the historical record Marie Antoinette's third adopted child actually lived at Versailles long before she got royal adoptive parents born Marie Philippine labrike later given the name Ernestine by Marie Antoinette the young girl was born on the 31st of July 1778 to Jacques lambrike and Marie Philippine Juarez her father was a servant to the company Provence the king's brother and her mother was a chambermaid while Ernestine was still a very small child she was chosen to be the playmate and companion of Marie Therese spending her days with her royal friend and returning to her family at night this was a common custom at the time to allow Royal or Noble children a playmate of a lower social level than themselves as it was thought to teach humility for the poorer families they probably had little say in the matter and might have been paid extra which would help bring up their other children rumors at court once again abounded but this time of Louis XVI Ernestine was said to Bear a strong resemblance to the French King and so there were Whispers that she was in fact his secret illegitimate child this only came about as she had a passing resemblance to Marie Therese her daily life was very similar to that of the princess Marie Antoinette gave orders that the two girls should be dressed the same and when they ate dinner one should be served before the other on alternating days Ernestine even received the same education as Marie Therese and the governesses along with all the other household staff were told to treat the girls as equals in private some time before 1788 ernestine's mother died despite her father still being alive Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI formally adopted Ernestine as their daughter on the 9th of November of that year she was awarded a pension of 12 000 liver by the king and was in private the same as her other brothers and sisters however she was never given a formal rank or treated as a royal daughter in public and at court was simply known as Marie Therese's Playmate she also had two biological siblings who were fostered by the royal family but only in the form of financial aid and they never lived with them as Ernestine did when the revolution broke out Ernestine traveled with the family to tulari Palace she remained there until 1791 when she was sent to her biological father who was safely in the countryside until the Royal Family's Escape Plan failed and they were sent back to Paris where she rejoined them there is a story that on the 10th of August 1792 Marie Antoinette ordered the Royal governess Renee Suzanne de soucy to take Ernestine to safety and look after her as do Susie raced outside the palace to fetch a carriage leaving Ernestine stood alone for a moment a passing Rebel mistook Ernestine for Marie Therese he threw the corpse of a member of the Swiss guard at her feet but a nearby shopkeeper defended her chasing off the rebel ironically because he also believed her to be Marie Therese during the terror of what came afterwards Ernestine was looked after by the Susie's father and his family her biological father Jacques was arrested and later executed on the 9th of July 1794 for his collection to the Royal Family little is known about ernestine's life after this point on the 2nd of September 1796 she was finally old enough to no longer need Guardians and was permitted to live alone and sort her own affairs on the 7th of December 1810 she finally found some happiness of her own when she married a widower called Jean Charles Germaine prepan under her birth name of Marie Philippine lambreque unknown whether she chose to use this name because she wanted to cast off her adoptive name and the memories that came with it or if it was simply safer to do so sadly her happiness didn't last long and she died on the 30th of December 1813 in santani aged just 35 of unknown causes her resemblance to Marie Therese however abounded in rumors that the two girls had switched at some point and that the Marita Reese who was now part of the bourbon restoration was in fact Ernestine and the real Marie Therese had supposedly disappeared into hillberg Housen in Germany there she was known by locals as the dark Countess only went out with a veil over her face and hardly spoke when she died she was hurriedly buried however DNA testing in 2013 on the body of the dark Countess proved that this story was untrue the final child Marie Antoinette adopted was yet another Playmate this time for Louis Charles her name was jean-louise victoire and she was born in 1787 to an usher within the Royal household and also had two older siblings in 1790 despite the uncertainty of the Royal Family's future Marie Antoinette adopted John and her two siblings when she heard that their parents had died within just a few months of each other her two older sisters were sent to a Convent with all their expenses paid but John was kept at court to be a playmate to Louis Charles and given the name Zoe just two years later when Zoe was five she was sent to join her sisters at their Convent just before the French Royals attempted to escape during the flight to Varane in 1791. as with Zhang Amal Carr the expenses for the children ceased when Marie Antoinette was imprisoned and nothing further is known about out their fate it can only be hoped that someone was kind enough to take them in despite Marie Antoinette's image after the French Revolution she was really no worse or better than any other Queen from Europe's courts but she obviously had a big heart and was a mother to many children not merely those she gave birth to sadly many of her children died young some of them after years of Anguish or imprisonment some of them violently but their stories are Testament to the caring family the French Queen attempted to create for them all if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like And subscribe so you don't miss any new documentaries [Music]

Channel: History's Forgotten People

Views: 867,415

Keywords: marie antoinette, louis XVI, french revolution, jean amilcar, marie therese madame royale, marie therese of france, louis joseph of france, louis charles of france, louis XVII, ernestine lambriquet, the dark countess, marie antoinette forgotten children

Id: fGRCuVd1rrQ

Length: 30min 54sec (1854 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022