French revolutionists condemned King Louis XVI to death on 21. January 1793 by means of the guillotine at the Place de la Revolution in Paris (roughly where the Obelisk decorating the Place de la Concorde stands today). After a short but defiant speech he lost his head as the crowd rushed to the scaffold to dip hankerchiefs into his blood as momentos. An ornate gourd decorated with French Revolution themes was recently uncovered which had contained a blood soaked hankerchief dating to this time. The gourd was allegedly a gift to Napoleon Bonaparte who became First Consul of France in 1799 and Emperor in 1804. An anonymous Italian family was in its posession since possibly the late 1800s and came forward with the relic. It bears an inscription that Maximilien Bourdaloue on 21. January dipped his hankerchief in the blood of the king. Dried blood was scraped out and this is the same DNA we present in this DNA spotlight! The sample contains unsually high and rare markers for the Y-DNA haplogroup G2a.
Relic French King Louis XVI
mtDNA Haplogroup: N1b
Y-DNA Haplogroup: G2a (P15/PF3112)
Genetic Distance: 7.0566
Sample Match! 100% closer than other users
Follow Us
Like Us
