The blood of beheaded French King Louis XVI has been found by scientists in an old gourd. Louis XVI was beheaded by a guillotine by French revolutionaries in 1793.
Scientists found a small piece of fabric placed inside of a hollow gourd, which left blood stains. The squash was decorated with words that say, “On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation”and belonged to a family in Italy.The scientists said the DNA is very similar to genetic material from what is believed to be the mummified head of an earlier French king, AFP reports.
The gourd has been in the hands of an Italian family for a century.
The monarch was killed by guillotine by French revolutionaries more than 200 years ago, on 21 January 1793.The BBC reported that after Louis XVI’s beheading, spectators were believed to have dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood.
For years, researchers have been trying to establish whether a genuine memento of this momentous execution in the Place de la Revolution survives today. A new DNA analysis has solved a mystery that has lasted for almost 220 years, finding that an ornate gourd almost certainly carries the bloodstains of the fallen king.
On Jan 21 1793, a Parisian called Maximilien Bourdaloue witnessed Louis’s public decapitation as the postrevolutionary “Terreur” took hold. Afterwards, he joined many others in dipping a handkerchief in the pool of blood left at the foot of the guillotine.
Bourdaloue then secreted this garment inside a calabash, now in the possession of an Italian family. The rag itself has long since decomposed, but the container still carries crimson stains and an inscription recording how the souvenir was collected after the king’s “decapitation”.
A new study in the current issue of “Forensic Science International” has filled in the missing link. The breakthrough came when scientists took a DNA sample from the mummified head of one of Louis’s most illustrious ancestors: King Henri IV, who ruled France from 1589 until 1610.
This analysis established that Henri possessed a rare partial “Y” chromosome. Louis was one of his direct male-line descendants, separated by seven generations. The stains on the calabash also contained the “Y” chromosome, along with other matches, leading experts to conclude that the container almost certainly holds the blood of the executed king.
The Execution of King Louis XVI of France
On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o’clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of execution. Accompanying Louis, at his invitation, was a priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, an Englishman living in France.