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664 LOUIS XVII. (FBANCE) LOUIS XVIII. (FRANCE) in Paris, erected by the knights templars, was assigned as the prison for the royal family. The national convention assembled, and on Sept. 21 proclaimed France a republic. In December they brought the king to trial on va- rious charges, the substance of which was that he had conspired with the emigrants and the foreigners to overthrow the constitution and restore the ancient order of things. These charges were supported by documents which had been found in an iron safe concealed in a wall of the Tuileries. Louis, assisted by three advocates, Tronchet, Deseze, and Malesherbes, was brought before the convention on Dec. 11 and 26, and made a dignified and forcible de- fence, but was found guilty by a unanimous vote, Jan. 15, 1793. After stormy debates be- tween the Girondists and Jacobins, he was condemned on the 20th by a majority of a few votes, and guillotined on the 21st. Among the special works on the life and reign of Louis XVI. are the histories of Droz, Falloux, and Soulavie, and De Tocqueville's Coup d'wil sur le regne de Louis XVI. The Journal de Louis XVI., edited by Louis Nicolard(5t (Paris, 1873), is a minute diary of his private life in Versailles, devoted chiefly to trivial accounts. LOUIS XVII., dauphin and titular king of France, son of the preceding, born in Ver- sailles, March 27, 1785, died in the Temple at Paris, June 8, 1795. He was the third child of Louis and Marie Antoinette. The title he first bore was duke of Normandy, and he be- came dauphin by the death of his elder broth- er Louis Joseph, June 4, 1789. He was very carefully educated under the supervision of his father, and at the outbreak of the revolution was a beautiful, lively, and intelligent child, but remarkably impatient and unmanageable. He was imprisoned in the Temple with the rest of the royal family, Aug. 13, 1792. After the execution of his father, Jan. 21, 1793, he was proclaimed king by his uncle (afterward Louis XVIIL), and was recognized by most of the courts of Europe, by the Vendean chiefs, and by the insurgents in the south of France. These demonstrations, together with several attempts by the royalists to rescue him from prison, ir- ritated and alarmed the revolutionary govern- ment; and on July 3, at 10 o'clock at night, the boy was torn from his mother's arms and carried screaming to another part of the prison. Here he was consigned to the care of a shoe- maker named Antoine Simon, a violent Jacobin of rough manners and brutal temper, who, with his wife, treated him with systematic cruelty. The young prince was left alone in a cell day and night, without employment or amusement, or any opportunity for exercise or to breathe fresh air. A vessel of water, seldom replen- ished, was given him, and some coarse food was occasionally thrown in at the half opened door. He was 'allowed no means of washing himself, and his bed was not made for months. His limbs became rigid, and his mind, through terror, grief, and monotony, became imbecile, and at length deranged. Something he had said in reply to questions having been pervert- ed to the injury of his mother, he resolved thenceforth to be silent, and for a long period neither threats nor blows nor coaxings could induce him to speak. When not sleeping he sat quietly in his chair, without uttering a sound or shedding a tear, or shrinking from the rats with which his dungeon swarmed. Af- ter the reign of terror he was placed under more merciful keepers, but was still kept in solitary confinement, and not allowed to see his sister, imprisoned in an adjoining apart- ment. At length, in May, 1795, a physician was allowed to see him, who pronounced him dying of scrofula. According to official ac- counts, he died at 2 P. M. in the arms of Lasne, one of his keepers, and the next day, June 9, his body was identified and certified to by four members of the committee of public safety and by more than 20 officials of the Temple. A post-mortem examination was made the same day by four distinguished physicians. On the 10th the remains were buried in the ceme- tery of Ste. Marguerite, and every trace of the grave carefully obliterated. The principal pre- tenders who have claimed to be Louis XVII. were the Rev. Eleazar Williams, who died in 1858 (see WILLIAMS, ELEAZAK); Hervagault, a tailor's son, who died at Bicetre in 1812; Bruneau, another mechanic's son, who died in prison about 1818; Hebert, who called himself baron de Richemont, duke of Normandy, and after various arrests and adventures died about 1855 ; and Naundorff, son of a Prussian lock- smith, born in 1786, died at Delft, Aug. 10, 1845. The last named published his autobiog- raphy, Histoire des infortunes du dauphin. His claims were pleaded in 1851 by Jules Favre before a French court, at the instance of his son and daughter; but the evidence of the death of Louis XVII. in 1795 was regarded as conclusive by the court. The case was revived in February, 1874, with the same result. See Intrigues devoilees, ou Louis XVII., dernier roi legitime de France (4 vols., Rotterdam, 1846-' 8), and other writings by Gruau de la Barre ; and Beauchesne, Louis XVII., sa vie, son agonie, sa mort (Paris, 1852 ; English trans- lation by William Hazlitt, London, 1853). LOUIS XVIII. (Louis STANISLAS XAVIEK), king of France, born in Versailles, Nov. 17, 1755, died in Paris, Sept. 16, 1824. The fourth son of the dauphin of Louis XV. and of Maria Jose- pha of Saxony, he received at his birth the title of count of Provence, and on the accession of his brother Louis XVI., that of Monsieur. He spent much time during his brother's reign in philosophical and literary studies, and in petty intrigues against the king, the queen, and his younger brother, the future Charles X. He opposed the liberal measures of Maurepas, the reforms of Turgot, and the financial experi- ments' of Necker, but afterward took an im- portant part in the acts of the assembly of no- tables, contributed to the fall of Oalonne, sided