Louis XVI Blood Stain on Cloth To Be Auctioned, Stain is Allegedly From After French King Was Beheaded

A cloth that is stained with what is said to be former French king Louis XVI's blood is set to be auctioned from Paul Frasier Collectibles in Paris April 3.

Louis XVI was the king of France from 1774 until 1792, when he had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the French Revolution. Louis XVI was arrested in 1792, convicted of high treason and executed by guillotine under the desacralized common name of Louis Capet at the Place de la Revolution. The stained cloth claims to come from the time of the execution, catching the blood of the recently beheaded king.

The cloth measures 9 cm by 13 cm and comes in a special miniature coffin. The coffin comes with a handwritten piece of paper that says "The precious blood of Louis XVI, 21 January 1793."

The existence of the blood-stained cloth is not an unusual idea. Parisians at the execution scrambled to take souvenirs from the deposed king's corpse, cutting hair off of his head or dabbing cloths in the blood collecting around the guillotine.

While there is some doubt that the blood on the cloth belongs to Louis XVI, a team of researchers claims that the blood is almost definitely from the monarch. Researchers compared the blood on the cloth to DNA extracted from the mummified head of King Henri IV, a direct ancestor of Louis XVI. They appeared to be a match.

250 times more likely that the [owners of the] head and the blood are paternally related, than unrelated," a researcher explained in a statement.

"Taking into consideration that the partial Y-chromosome profile is extremely rare in modern human databases, we concluded that both males could be paternally related," the study concluded. "Historically speaking, this forensic DNA data would confirm the identity of the previous Louis XVI sample."