Modern scientific techniques are increasingly being applied to investigate historical questions, and a couple of items have been in the news recently.

King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had a son who would have become Louis XVII had he not died in the Temple Prison in 1795. Or did he?

Louis-Charles was born in 1785, the second son of the King and Queen. After the French Revolution removed his parents from the scene, he was held in Paris away from other members of his family. In 1795 a boy said to be Louis XVII died of tuberculosis in the Temple Prison and was buried in Sainte Marguerite cemetery in Paris.

There was some uncertainty about the identity of the body, and a number of people later claimed to be Louis XVII. To investigate this uncertainty, the remains were exhumed in 1846 and the doctors who examined the body declared that it was that of a boy of between 14 and 20 years of age.

In a report in the New Scientist (15 July 1995, p.8), modern forensic science has been used to investigate this matter. Pierre-Francois Puech, a forensic anthropologist and odontologist at the University of Aix Marseille, has used photographs and drawings of the remains of the skull exhumed in the nineteenth century to reconstruct the face of the boy buried as Louis XVII.

He created a two-dimensional portrait of the ‘Temple child’ by computer analysis of various features and measurements on the pictures of the skull. He then produced a face that he considered would fit the skull pattern, and compared this with portraits of the prince. Linking this information with dental records and the size of the cranium noted by doctors in 1846, he concluded that the skull belonged to a boy aged between 13 and 16. This, he feels, confirms that the king was substituted with an older look alike.

These techniques are used to reconstruct faces from skulls for the police, and I should expect that many more historical investigations will involve this technology. As for Louis XVII, what did happen to him? Any theories?

Handwriting shows ‘transformation’ in older Nelson was the headline in The Times of 24 July 1995. Olivia Graham, a consultant graphologist, has examined hundreds of Nelson’s letters in the National Maritime Museum, who instigated the project. The Admiral spent a lot of his spare time at sea writing letters, and this project was to ‘psychoanalyse’ the man.

Graphology is claimed to reveal the motivations, strengths and weaknesses of an individual, and it is claimed by this study that Nelson underwent a change in his personality at the age of 38 when he lost his right arm. This loss forced him to learn to write with his left hand, and it is this analysis of the man’s two styles of handwriting that has reached the conclusion that by the time he was 44 he was leading ‘a full, happy and more balanced existence’. Nelson mellowed as he got older. Whether the loss of his arm had anything to do with this is hard to say. (I would hazard a guess that Emma Hamilton may have influenced his happiness!)

Ms Graham has concluded that Nelson was an unstoppable force in his twenties and thirties, with an arrogance and unquestioning belief in his abilities. At the age of 38 he had to learn to write again. His later letters reveal that he was ‘more at ease with himself, able to communicate on an intimate level, becoming consciously considerate to the needs of those around him’. His early letters indicate that in his twenties he was a passionate man, ‘cerebral but with a strong sense of realism, strongly emotive and deeply in tune with his surroundings’. He was ‘also impatient, but a hard and fair taskmaster and had the ability to motivate others with his own enthusiasm and conviction’.

None of these findings are at variance with the historical record, and only confirm the character of this great man. This project is part of an exhibition on Nelson at the National Maritime Museum that opens in October.

More Napoleonic Newsdesk

Comet Coming...
Something to whet your appetite with!
The N.A. Diary