First published in 1968, The Bourbon Tragedy marks the fall of the ancient French monarchy on August 10, 1792. The Bourbon Royal Family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple, a dark, medieval dungeon. The following January Louis XVI was taken out, tried and guillotined, and later Marie Antoinette too. Their two children, the Dauphin, a boy of eight, and his fourteen-year-old sister, were shut up alone. Eventually, in 1795, the girl was released to her mother’s Austrian relatives in exchange for eight French prisoners. She survived to ride at her uncle’s side at the Bourbon Restoration which followed the defeat of Napoleon. The boy’s fate is a mystery. Officially Louis Charles died on June 8, 1795, but it was later claimed by a series of Pretenders to the French throne that the boy who died in the Temple was not the Dauphin, but a dumb boy, dying of scrofula, who had been substituted for him. They may have been right: the little phantom King may have been rescued and, in this case, what happened to him? Was one of these claimants truly the Dauphin?
Rupert Furneaux discusses this intriguing problem in a book which tells the intimate, tragic story of the captivity and fate of the whole Bourbon family in the French Revolution. This book will be of interest to students of French history, war history, literature, philosophy as well as to any casual reader interested in the mysteries of history.