Antoine Simon (1736 – 28 July 1794) was a shoemaker at Rue des Cordeliers in Paris and a member of the Club of the Cordeliers, representative of the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

. He was born in

Troyes Troyes () is a Communes of France, commune and the capital of the Departments of France, department of Aube in the Grand Est region of north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about south-east of Paris. Troyes is situated within ...

, France to François Simon and Marie-Jeanne Adenet. On 3 July 1793, Simon was designated to watch over

Louis XVII Louis XVII (born Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy; 27 March 1785 – 8 June 1795) was the younger son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. His older brother, Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France, died in June 1789, a little over ...

at the

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

. On 19 January 1794, Simon was removed from his position and left the Temple in company of his wife. On 28 July 1794, Simon was among the 21 to be sent to the

guillotine A guillotine ( ) is an apparatus designed for effectively carrying out executions by Decapitation, beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secur ...

together with

Maximilien Robespierre Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (; ; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman, widely recognised as one of the most influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre ferv ...

at the ''Place de la Révolution'', today's ''

Place de la Concorde The Place de la Concorde (; ) is a public square in Paris, France. Measuring in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées. It was the s ...

'', in Paris, in an execution which marked the end of the Terror. He was buried in the Errancis Cemetery, a common place of interment for those executed during the Revolution. He married his first wife, Marie-Barbe Hoyau (widow Munster), in November 1766. She died at the Hôtel-Dieu on 11 March 1782. Simon remarried Marie-Jeanne Aladame on 20 May 1788, in the parish of Saint-Côme-Saint-Damien. Marie-Jeanne (born on 25 June 1746, in Saint-Étienne-du-Mont parish, Paris) was a servant and the daughter of Fiacre Aladame (a carpenter) and Reine-Geneviève Aubert. She came to wider attention during the storming of the Tulleries Palace in 1792, for having diligently nursed wounded republicans. Marie-Jeanne outlived her husband and died in Paris in 1819 at the ''Hospice des Incurables''. Author Georges Bordonove gives the impression of a Simon with limited intelligence, entirely devoted to the ideals of the Revolution, and strongly influenced by political leaders such as Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and Jacques Hébert. Simon seems to have followed Chaumette's idea to "give some education to the prince ..to make him lose the idea of his rank" (''lui donner quelque éducation ..pour lui faire perdre l'idée de son rang''). He requested that his wife Marie-Jeanne help him to care for the boy. Some authors have portrayed Simon as a violent, vulgar and abusive alcoholic who acted brutally toward the child. Others have claimed that, apart from teaching the boy to sing bawdy songs and to "talk the language of the populace and soldiery", he was otherwise well treated.

In popular culture

In the US television series ''The Time Tunnel'' (1966-1967), Simon appears in the episode "Reign of Terror," played by French actor

Louis Mercier Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (9 January 1820 – 2 November 1875) is known today as the translator, along with Eleanor Elizabeth King, of three of the best-known novels of Jules Verne: ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'', ''From the Earth t ...

. Simon is mentioned in the video game '' Assassin's Creed Unity'' as the shoemaker that abused Louis XVII.

References

1736 births 1794 deaths People from Troyes Shoemakers French people executed by guillotine during the French Revolution Louis XVII {{France-artist-stub