After the death of Louis XVI, his son Louis XVII was the uncrowned king of France. With the rebellion starting, Louis XVII had a hard life, due to his harsh living conditions in his prison cell. Louis XVII was given the name Dauphin, meaning the eldest son of a French king, when his brother died at a young age during the first rumblings of Revolution. He got the name Lost Dauphin because of the enigma of his disappearance. His story is very mysterious, although it was solved by DNA testing, and his story also held great historical significance. The story goes that Louis XVII became heir to the throne, or Dauphin, meaning the eldest son of a king of France, in 1789, when his older brother died at a young age. This was around the time that …show more content…
After that, what happened to Louis XVII is widely debated. Some say he was given to a shoemaker named Antoine Simon, who raised him in the Temple prison and tried to get him to forget his royal origins. This was probably so they could pawn him off as an orphan and hide him where no one would find him and he would know nothing of it himself. Another version of this story was that Simon put him under pressure to testify against his mother. Because of this, Marie Antoinette was found guilty of incest before being guillotined. It is also believed that while in Simon’s care, Louis XVII was abused sexually and physically. Others believe that he escaped, was replaced with a decoy (there are several thoughts as to who helped him) and either fled or was taken in as an orphan. One rumor was that the boy was taken to South America to be raised by an Indian couple. Later a man named Eleazer Williams came forward claiming he was the Lost Dauphin. His parents were indeed Mohawk Indians, but they said he was their fourth born child. There are records of all their children, except one, Eleazer. The other villagers claim there was an “idiot boy” around the village that would randomly say French phrases and had bad nightmares. Eleazer