Antoine Simon ( French Antoine Simon ), known as Shoemaker Simon ( French Le Cordonnier Simon ) ( October 21, 1736 , Troyes - guillotined July 28, 1794 , Paris ) - French shoemaker and revolutionary who went down in history as a guard and educator young Louis XVII in prison (1793).
| Antoine Simon | |
|---|---|
| Antoine simon | |
 Drawing by Georges Gabriel (1775–1836) | |
| Date of Birth | October 21, 1736 |
| Place of Birth | Trois |
| Date of death | July 28, 1794 (57 years old) |
| Place of death | Paris |
| Citizenship |  France |
| Occupation | Politician |
Biography
The son of Francois Simon, a butcher in Troyes and Maria Joan of Aden. He moved to Paris as a young man, where he became a shoemaker. After his first marriage to Marie-Barb Oyo, who died in 1786, he remarried to the daughter of carpenter Maria Jeanne Aladam (1746–1819), who had a small annuity.
The shoemaker demanded that kind of directness and lapidarity of thinking, which in a certain environment and under certain conditions are perceived as absolute honesty and firmness of character. With the beginning of the Revolution , Simon gained the glory of a national intercessor devoted to the ideals of Freedom.
Since 1791, a member of the district, then the Cordelier section. On August 10, 1792 he was nominated by his section as members of the General Council of the Commune of Paris . After August 10, 1792, his wife treated the wounded Marseilles in the Cordelier Church, which was turned into a barracks. During the September massacre in prisons, Simon was the Commissar of the Commune and was conducting a trial of convicted aristocrats.
He lived on Kordelerov street, in house number 28, next to Marat (house number 30). After the murder of Marat on July 13, 1793, he took part in the organization of his solemn funeral.
On August 2, 1793, the detained Maria Antoinette was separated from the children and transferred from Temple to the Conciergerie prison. The Commune of Paris appointed Simon as a mentor to the young Louis XVII and allocated him an annual salary of three thousand livres. Together with his wife Maria Zhanna Aladam, he settled in Temple and took up the “revolutionary education” of the royal offspring. The task of Simon was to force the Dauphin to renounce the memory of his parents, to raise him with a real sanctuary , as well as to accustom the boy to physical labor. Meanwhile, there were rumors among the people that the shoemaker brutally tortured the heir to the French throne.
At the end of September 1793, Simon reported to the Commune that from conversations with the teenager it was revealed to him that the former queen had corrupted her own young son. As the trial of Marie Antoinette was approaching, the Commune was keenly interested in this matter. The mayor of Paris, Pash , the syndicate prosecutor Schaumett, and the deputy prosecutor Eber arrived in Temple [1] and started interrogating the royal children, who allegedly confirmed that the “mean Austrian” had descended to incest. [2] Later, at the trial, Marie Antoinette indignantly rejected the accusation. [3]
On January 19, 1794, for reasons not completely clear, Simon resigned from his post as educator and left Temple . Perhaps he did this on his own initiative, due to the serious illness of his wife. But there is evidence that on the night of January 14, 1794, Antoine Simon found the little king praying on his knees near his bed. “I will wean you, sleepwalker, kneel down like a Trappist!” - with these words, Simon pouring a jug of ice water on the head of a sick child (in a cold chamber), began to beat the boy with a shoe block ... [4] “Re-education” did not work. .. For the next six months, Simon continued to sit on the General Council of the Commune . During the Thermidorian coup, he was captured as a robespierist and guillotined on Revolution Square on July 28, 1794 (10 Thermidor II years), together with Robespierre , Saint-Just and Couton .
His widow Maria Zhanna Aladam was arrested and spent a month in custody. In the spring of 1796, at her own request, she was placed in a shelter for the incurable patients (Hospice des Incurables) on Sevres Street (Rue de Sevres), where she remained until her death ( June 10, 1819 ) and more than once told that she was not Louis XVII died in Temple. After the Restoration, she was visited by the former prisoner of Temple, the Duchess of Angouleme , who asked to stop the stories "about the miraculous salvation of the heir." However, the “widow Simon,” who had kept good health and memory until old, assured that the Dauphin managed to escape. In the end, on November 16, 1816, the royal police had to order her to be silent.
In the literature
- The American writer Augusta Huiell Seaman (1879–1950) released the novel How the Shoemaker Admonished the King (1911) - When a Cobbler Ruled a King.
- Zweig, Stefan in the essay "Marie Antoinette: A Portrait of an Ordinary Character" (1932) described the behavior of the shoemaker Simon in Temple and suggested how vile slander could arise on Marie Antoinette.
- Benzoni, Juliette dedicated to Antoine Simon a chapter in her novel "Mass Mass" (2000): A shoemaker named Simon
Notes
- ↑ According to the memoirs of Maria Theresa , the sister of Louis XVII, who was interrogated at the same time in Temple, the convention deputy David also participated in the interrogation: Mémoires de Marie-Thérèse, duchesse d'Angoulême. Paris, 1858. P. 74.
- ↑ Minutes of the interrogation of Louis Capet in Temple on October 6, 1793, signed by the Dauphin himself, as well as Pasha, Shomet, Eber and Simon. (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment October 9, 2016. Archived October 9, 2016.
- ↑ Simon, Instituteur de Louis XVII. Mort de la Reine. 3 juillet 1793-19 Janvier 1794. // Beauchesne MA Louis XVII, sa vie, son agonie, sa mort, captivité de la famille royale. Tome 2. Paris, 1871. P. 65-177.
4. Alcide Beauchesne "Louis 17, sa vie, son agonie, sa mort" 1852. Plon. Paris