Posted on 01/02/2013 9:36:39 AM PST by Second Amendment First
When King Louis XVI went to the guillotine after the French Revolution, Parisians jostled to acquire a gruesome relic of regicide by dipping garments in his blood.
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".
There was no conclusive proof that the blood really belonged to Louis. A DNA sample could not solve the riddle unless it was compared with another drawn from a relative of the king.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
GGG Ping!
Calabash DNA Ping
“The King” on the Guillotine.
The Terror is only "postrevolutionary" to those people who wish to glorify the socialist revolution that began in France in 1789. For the rest of us, the Terror of 1793-4 is an integral, and inevitable, part of any socialist revolution.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Won’t this be an interesting episode of Antigue Roadshow?
Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are.
My mistake - Antique Roadshow not Antigue.
However, the guillotine has been replaced by the machete.
Bump your post.
I could not have said it more clearly.
Death is the ultimate point and objective of Socialist Revolution - the blood lust of the revolution must be slaked.
see tagline.
Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!...........
GMTA!........
A) I would estimate your freak show relic would fetch a King's ransom if it came up at auction. Antiques Roadshow repeat
A) I would estimate your freak show relic would fetch a King's ransom if it came up at auction. Antiques Roadshow repeat
A) I would estimate your freak show relic would fetch a King's ransom if it came up at auction. Antiques Roadshow repeat
A) I would estimate your freak show relic would fetch a King's ransom if it came up at auction. Antiques Roadshow repeat
Couldn’t they just dig up Louis XVI himself and check the dna?
So this means the rumors that Louie is living in Argentina are false?
Barbaric act of this evil Revolution, the horrible way in which they butchered this kindly monarch, who was in fact a reformer and willing to establish a constitutional monarchy with a parliament along the same lines as the UK. The French Revolution was pure evil in every way.
Wasn’t the Dauphin starved to death in prison?
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