The Lost Dauphin: A strong case

Continued from last week

Rev. John H. Hanson also relays a conversation that Eleazar Williams said took place between the Prince of Joinville and Williams in Green Bay at the Astor Hotel.

“You have been accustomed, sir, to consider yourself a native of this country, but you are not. You are of foreign descent; you were born in Europe, sir, and however incredible it may at first seem to you, I have to tell you that you are the son of a king,” the Prince told Williams.

“There ought to be much consolation to you to know this fact. You have suffered a great deal, and have been brought very low, but you have not suffered more, or been more degraded than my father, who was long in exile and poverty in this country; but there is this difference between him and you, that he was all along aware of his high birth, whereas you have been spared the knowledge of your origin.”

The Prince then produced a piece of parchment paper that contained verbiage that would declare his renouncing of his right to the throne if signed.

Williams conveyed that signing the document “…might be the personal consequences to myself, I felt that I could not be the instrument of bartering away with my own hand the rights pertaining to me by my birth, and sacrificing the interests of my family, and that I could only give to him the answer which de Provence gave to the ambassador of Napoleon at Warsaw, ‘Though I am in poverty and exile I will not sacrifice my honor,’” he said.

“The Prince upon this assumed a loud tone, and accused me of ingratitude in trampling on the overtures of the King, his father, who he said was actuated in making the proposition more by feelings of kindness and pity towards me than by any other consideration, since his claim to the French throne rested on an entirely different basis to mine — not that of hereditary descent, but of popular election.”

The Putnam’s magazine article goes on to list two dozen points that provide a solid case for Williams and his link to King Louis XVI; this included his likeness to the royal family, various marks on his body which corresponded with those known to have been on the body of the Dauphin and two boxes of clothing and medals of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette which were said to have been left with him in his youth.

While the article provided a strong case for Williams, someone would soon come forward to dispute his claims.

To be continued