Baron de Richemont
claimant to be Louis XVII of France
The Baron de Richemont (c. 1785 – 10 August 1853) was a French imposter who claimed to be Louis XVII, the son of King Louis XVI and heir to the French throne, who died in prison during the French Revolution.
His real identity was uncertain, but he is generally identified by historians as Henri Hébert (born 1788) or possibly Claude Perrin (born 1786), the latter being a potential pseudonym.
Richemont was imprisoned in Milan from 1818 to 1825 after being arrested for traveling under a false identity. He first advanced his royal claims in Paris in 1828. In 1833, he was arrested; he was tried the following year, convicted, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. During his trial, a letter from Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, a rival claimant, was read in court, adding to the confusion. Richemont escaped his imprisonment after roughly one year and fled the country. He returned to France in 1840 and died at Gleizé on 10 August 1853. 'Louis-Charles de France' (Louis Charles of France; Louis XVII's full name was Louis Charles) was inscribed on his tomb, but the government ordered its removal in 1858.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baron de Richemont” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.