Louis XVII., CHARLES, second son of Louis XVI. of France, born at Versailles, 27th March 1785, received the title of Duke of Normandy, till, on the death of his brother in 1789, he became dauphin. He was a promising boy. In the earlier days of the Revolution he was sometimes dressed in the uniform of the National Guard and decorated with the tricolor to gratify the populace. After the death of his father he continued in prison—at first with his mother, but afterwards apart from her—in the Temple, under the charge of a brutal Jacobin shoemaker named Simon, who treated him with great cruelty and pushed him into vicious excesses, so that he became a mere wreck both in mind and body. After the overthrow of the Terrorists he was—perhaps intentionally—forgotten, and died 8th June 1795. A report spread that he was poisoned, but a commission of physicians examined the body and declared the report unfounded.
All the attempts made by Louis XVIII. in 1815 to find the remains of this most hapless victim of the Revolution proved fruitless, and this fact gave room for the appearance of a succession of false dauphins, whose claims deluded many honest royalists in France. Of these the first was Jean Marie Hervagault, the son of a St Lô tailor, born in 1781, who ran away from home at fourteen, and soon found many supporters in Brittany, Normandy, Champagne, and Burgundy. In 1802 he was sentenced for his imposture to a four years' imprisonment, and later, under Napoleon's empire, was confined in the Bicêtre, where he died in 1812. Another false Louis, who attracted some attention under the name Charles of France, was Mathurin Brumeau, born in 1784 at Bezins, the son of a maker of wooden shoes. He early took to a roving life, was committed as a vagrant in 1803, next spent some years in North America, returned to push his claims in France, and was sent to prison for seven years at Rouen. After the July revolution he disappeared. The third false Louis XVII., who attracted much attention in 1833 and 1834, was the so-called Duc de Richmont, whose proper name was François Henri Hébert, a native of the Rouen district. The idea that he was a son of Louis XVI. first possessed him about 1828. After the July revolution he protested in a series of writings against Louis-Philippe, and attempted to push his claim by Mémoires. In 1834 he was sent to jail for twelve years, but eight months later succeeded in making an escape to London, where he died in 1845. Perhaps the most remarkable claimant was the Potsdam watchmaker, Karl Wilhelm Naundorf, whose claim rested on a striking Bourbon resemblance. After many crosses in Berlin, Spandau, and Brandenburg, besides a three years' imprisonment, he found his way to France in 1833, but was expelled three years later. He made his way to England, and died in 1845. His children assumed the name of Bourbon, and in 1851 and 1874 raised fruitless actions before the Paris law-courts against the Comte de Chambord. See Elizabeth Evans's Story of Louis XVII. (1893).