Antoine Simon was born in Troyes

Troyes

Troyes is a commune and the capital of the Aube department in north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about southeast of Paris. Many half-timbered houses survive in the old town...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the son of François Simon and Marie-Jeanne Adenet. He was a shoemaker at Rue des Cordeliers in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. A member of the Club of the Cordeliers, representative of the Paris Commune

Paris Commune (French Revolution)

The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, the Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take orders from the central French...

, on 3 July 1793, he was designated to watch over Louis XVII at the Temple

Temple (Paris)

The Temple was a medieval fortress in Paris, located in what is now the IIIe arrondissement. It was built by the Knights Templar from the 12th century, as their European headquarters. In the 13th century it replaced earlier works of the Vieille Temple in Le Marais...

,

Royalist authors painted the image of a violent, vulgar and alcoholic Simon, acting brutally toward the child; however, this has never been proven. Author Georges Bordonove

Georges Bordonove

Georges Bordonove was a French historian and writer.- Biography :Georges Bordonove was a member of the jury of the Prix Hugues Capet....

 traces the portrait of a Simon with a limited intelligence, entirely devoted to the ideals of the Revolution, and strongly influenced by political leaders such as Pierre Gaspard Chaumette

Pierre Gaspard Chaumette

Pierre Gaspard Chaumette was a French politician of the Revolutionaryperiod.-Early activities:Born in Nevers France, 24 May 1763, his main interest was botany and science. Chaumette studied medicine at the University of Paris in 1790, but gave up his career in medicine at the start of the Revolution...

 and Jacques Hébert

Jacques Hébert

Jacques René Hébert was a French journalist, and the founder and editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...

. 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 (1745–1819) help him in the care of the boy.

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 guillotined together with Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...

, Place de la Révolution, today's Place de la Concorde

Place de la Concorde

The Place de la Concorde 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.- History :...

, in Paris, execution which marks the end of the Terror

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

.

Simon's wife Marie-Jeanne died in Paris in 1819 at the Hospice des Incurables.