Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (35 page)

By the autumn of 1688 it was decided by the Council that a quick preventative war would secure the desired German cities. On 10 September six thousand troops entered Bonn, and the Dauphin himself was dispatched to seize Philippsburg. By December, Louvois was drawing up plans according to ‘the intentions of His Majesty … to destroy the city and citadel of Mannheim and all its houses'.
³⁹
In the meantime Louis had quarrelled with the Papacy over the nomination of the new Bishop of Cologne and had taken the opportunity to seize Avignon.

The misery of Liselotte herself throughout this autumn can hardly be exaggerated. In particular she was horrified at the plans to raze Mannheim to the ground, the city which her father had rebuilt with such care: ‘My name is being used for the ruin of my homeland.' She told the Dauphin that she saw the destruction of Heidelberg and Mannheim in her nightmares. Unable to control her suffering in public, Liselotte incurred the strong disapproval of the King, both for her sentiments and the uncontrolled manner of their expression. A few years earlier she had been ticked off indirectly by Louis – his confessor spoke to hers – for a variety of failings. Her language was vulgar: she had for example told the Dauphin that even if she saw him bollock-naked from the soles of his feet up, she would not be tempted by him (nor anyone else). She had allowed her ladies to indulge in gallantries, and had merely laughed with the wayward Marie-Anne de Conti about her own behaviour instead of reprimanding her.
⁴⁰

Liselotte was privately furious. She was not ‘a chambermaid', she told her aunt Sophia, to be treated like this, unlike the King's precious Maintenon ‘who was born to it'. She was not the Princesse de Conti's governess either, to stop her having lovers if she wanted them. Her frank language – and with her talk of crapping and pissing it
was
frank – she blamed on the King: he had said a hundred times that in the family one could say anything. And as for her ladies' gallantries, ‘such conduct was not without precedent' and in fact ‘quite usual at any court'. (Liselotte certainly had a point there.) In general, Liselotte's slavish devotion to Louis was fading. When she pleaded for her father and he merely replied:
Je verrai'
(I shall see) Liselotte wrote bitterly that this royal formula was worse than a straightforward refusal.
*
41

The truth was that neither Liselotte as Second Lady nor the Dauphine as acting First Lady of Versailles was fulfilling Louis's expectations; the latter had to be instructed to form a suitable circle with the curt words on the subject of royal duties: ‘We are not individuals.'
⁴²
it was here that the absence of a Queen-figure mattered to the whole harmony of the court: this was a need that Françoise could not fulfil.

The King's decision to attack Germany in September 1688 was however to have unexpected consequences in that respect. There soon would be a Queen at Versailles, if not a Queen of France. The German foray meant that Louis failed to support the besieged Catholic King of England, James II, whom his own Parliament was trying to oust after a disastrous reign of under four years. He calculated that James's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange would not dare to invade England in late autumn. He was wrong. In the absence of the French navy, which Louis directed elsewhere, William sailed triumphantly towards England, landing on 4 November at Brixham in Torbay in the West Country. Within weeks Queen Mary Beatrice and her infant son were fleeing for France. As Louis XIV received the pathetic refugee, he was welcoming, of course, not only an unhappy woman, but also a policy: it was a policy of support for the Jacobite cause, as that of the exiled King James would soon become known.

After his death, it was discovered that his stomach and bowels in their size and capacity were double those of any ordinary man. No doubt this information consoled the surviving courtiers who had had to keep up with him.

The disappointed Figuelotte married another older man, the widowed Elector of Brandenburg, later first King of Prussia; her son was Frederick William I, the Soldier King, and her grandson Frederick the Great. Her possible progeny by Louis XIV – surely great warriors – are material for speculation.

Although morganatic marriages were principally used to enable a man of royal rank to marry a women of inferior status, it has been suggested that the Grande Mademoiselle married her suitor Lauzun in this manner when he was released from his long imprisonment, as many of their contemporaries believed.
⁶

The
Journals
of the Marquis de Dangeau, from 1684 onwards, are an important source for the day-to-day routine, including the health, of Louis XIV.

The eight little volumes, 4½ inches by 2½ inches, are now preserved in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Versailles.

She is the wide-eyed, curly-haired little girl who features in the most famous portrait of Madame de Maintenon.

It has been calculated that in the twenty-four years Françoise owned the property she spent between eight and ten months there, if all the visits are added up.
³¹

† Now a charming ruin, resembling a picture by Hubert Robert.

Le Roy Ladurie has argued that bleeding and especially purging fulfilled ‘a ritual of royal purity, comparable to the constant washing and bathing incumbent on the highest Brahmin circles in the Indian caste system'. Enemas were regularly prescribed by seventeenth-century doctors to rid the patient's body of its noxious humours.
³⁶

The present statue is a nineteenth-century replacement of the original, which was destroyed at the time of the French Revolution.

Je verrai
was unpopular with others besides Liselotte: a one-armed Gascon soldier exclaimed: ‘If I had said “I shall see” to my general, ordering me into battle, I should still have my arm.’
⁴¹

CHAPTER 12
Grandeurs of the World

You see what becomes of the grandeurs of the world, we shall come to that, you and I.

– Louis XIV to the Dauphin, 1690

M
ary Beatrice, the fugitive Queen of England who flung herself upon the mercies of Louis XIV, was no longer the shy, sweet princess who had passed through France on her way to marriage fifteen years earlier. Then the tender King had described himself to the pretty teenager as her ‘godfather'; she was after all the daughter of a Mazarinette, Laura Martinozzi, who had been matched by her Cardinal-uncle to the future Duke of Modena. But Mary Beatrice's marriage had been from the first extremely testing both privately and publicly, and she had changed.

In 1673, at the age of fifteen, she found herself matched to an ageing and not particularly prepossessing prince twenty-five years her senior. James, then Duke of York, had been a dashing soldier in his youth, but somehow the Stuarts (those that kept their heads) did not improve with age. He was also a notorious
roué
like his brother Charles, but without the charm that enabled the Merry Monarch to carry these things off: so ugly were his mistresses that Charles wittily suggested they had been imposed upon him by his confessors. The young Catholic Duchess of York had to tolerate her husband's bastards, as well as the two Protestant daughters by his first wife, Mary and Anne. James's marriage was from the first extremely unpopular in the country: understandably so, since Charles II's intention in agreeing to it was to curry favour with the French King rather than the English Parliament.

The Protestants were cheered, and Mary Beatrice devastated, by the fact that she appeared to be unable to bear children that survived beyond infancy. Isabella, who died in 1681, reached four and a half; the rest died at birth or very young, and there were at least four miscarriages, the last in May 1684. That meant that the Protestant Mary, since 1677 wife of William of Orange, would in the course of time succeed; her equally Protestant sister Anne, wife of George of Denmark, would follow her, should William and Mary have no children. Perhaps the Protestants were foolhardy in supposing that a woman still in her twenties who had conceived nine times in ten years would not do so again. At any rate in the autumn of 1687 Mary Beatrice found herself pregnant once more. Possibly the therapeutic mineral waters at Bath which she had visited in September were responsible for her renewed fertility, or even a visit to the miraculous St Winifred's Well in North Wales a few years earlier.

A day of thanksgiving in England was decreed on 23 December in the hope that ‘the Queen might be the joyful mother of children'. The invocation of the Irish Catholic poet Diarmaid MacCarthy that God might vouchsafe a son and heir to James, whom he called ‘that bright shining star of bliss', was not however generally shared; nor for that matter was his lyrical description of James himself.
¹
The trouble was that this child if male would be heir to the throne – and Catholic. By the time Mary Beatrice did give birth to a healthy boy on 1 June 1688 it was found necessary to invent such fantasies as the baby having been smuggled into the Queen's chamber in a warming-pan: this despite the usual presence of a vast number of courtiers on the occasion, including Protestants.
*
Yet this birth, so long awaited by Mary Beatrice and James, was undoubtedly the catalyst for the crisis which erupted in English politics in the high summer of 1688, resulting in the invitation to William of Orange by a group of Whig grandees.

Helpless before William of Orange's invasion, which was joined by many of his alleged supporters, King James was taken prisoner. Queen Mary Beatrice and the little Prince James Edward escaped with the aid of the Duc de Lauzun, the Grande Mademoiselle's erstwhile fiancé. He had been brought out of his long imprisonment by the generosity of Anne-Marie-Louise. By this successful action Lauzun did at last restore himself to favour. Mother and son arrived at Calais in 21 December, awaited news of James, and then moved on to meet the King.

The result of all these eventful years, culminating in the ordeal of the flight, had been to make of Mary Beatrice a strong, intelligent woman of much resolution concealed under a modest, graceful and extremely feminine exterior. At thirty she had lost none of her youthful brunette beauty: she had an extremely good figure, on the thin side, but that only enhanced the impression of willowy grace. Her hair was ‘black as jet', she had a white skin, full red lips, beautiful teeth, dark eyebrows and soulful dark eyes, even if they were currently ‘dim with weeping’.
²
All this made her not dissimilar to her aunt Marie Mancini, although Mary Beatrice's features, set in a perfect oval face, were far more classical. It was no wonder that she had been one of the favourite subjects of court artists such as Lely and Kneller, who painted her over and over again.

Furthermore, this Queen was cosmopolitan, speaking and writing excellent French as well as Italian and English, and enough Latin to read from the scriptures in that language daily.
³
Above all, Mary Beatrice was naturally and sincerely devout. She had never wavered in the Catholicism in which she had been raised, despite the winds of change around her. For all these qualities, the whole French court, including the King and Madame de Maintenon, were from the first Mary Beatrice's respectful admirers.

Mary Beatrice was greeted on 6 January at Versailles by Louis XIV and given all honours. She was then escorted to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, her new home by kind permission of the King, who also endowed the household generously and provided a lavish pension. Four days later Madame de Sévigné was in ecstasy over the court's newest royal acquisition, hailing her for her ‘distinguished bearing and her quick wit'. This, coupled with Mary Beatrice's beauty, meant that she had ‘natural sovereign power', as Lord Peterborough had reported long ago, inspecting his future bride for James II. The refugee Queen certainly understood the manners of Versailles. When Louis XIV fondled the six-month-old Prince of Wales, the Queen remarked that hitherto she had envied her tiny son's good fortune in knowing nothing of the calamities that beset him, but now ‘I pity him because he is also unaware of Your Majesty's caresses and kindnesses.'
⁴

When King James did arrive it was thanks to a discreetly blind eye turned by William III. The new King, as he would shortly become at the instance of Parliament, joint sovereign with his wife Mary, had no wish to add to the embarrassment of the family usurpation by keeping his dispossessed father-in-law a prisoner. So James was allowed to slip away, joining his wife and baby son at Saint-Germain. Mary Beatrice raised her hands to heaven. ‘How happy I am! How happy I am!' she cried. The French court was less ecstatic.
⁵
James certainly did not receive the golden opinions garnered by Mary Beatrice. It was probably a question of age: James was fifty-five and this was his second full exile in a lifetime (there had been other, shorter episodes). People noted that Mary Beatrice was by now the more ambitious of the two, not only because she was still in her prime, but because she had a young son to root for.

Very quickly the King and Queen of England, supported by Louis both financially and emotionally, were integrated into the court rituals of Versailles, once the difference between English and French rules of kissing had been sorted out: English duchesses, unlike French ones, did not expect to be kissed, but the French got their way after protests. Only the Dauphine Marianne-Victoire found something – as usual – to grumble about, since Louis insisted on Mary Beatrice being accorded the full precedence Duc to a Queen. This technically displaced the Dauphine, whose husband was a mere heir, not a King; she tried to avoid being visibly demoted by receiving Mary Beatrice in bed – a well-known ploy which left her precedence open to question. Marianne-Victoire could not stay there for ever. In the end she did get out of bed during Mary Beatrice's visit for fear of the King's displeasure. The situation was further complicated when Mary Beatrice gave birth to a daughter Louisa Maria, in June 1692: here was a princess who was a King's daughter even if the King concerned was over the water. There was no other such legitimate princess at court. There would be further ploys as Louisa Maria grew up, for her to establish her true precedence, for others to avoid it.

In all this Louis himself was gravely concerned to support the Queen, who from the first appealed to his sense of chivalry, while Madame de Maintenon quickly established a proper friendship with her; the two women, a quarter of a century apart in age, had much in common as regards their piety and good sense, besides which the beautiful and virtuous Mary Beatrice was a faithful if suffering wife, exactly the sort of friend Françoise wanted the King to have. There were after all some less suitable contenders, even if it
was
only a question of friendship these days. For example, there was the Anglo-Irish beauty married to a French aristocrat, Elizabeth Hamilton, Comtesse de Gramont. Once known for good reason as
‘la belle Hamilton
', a former raffish member of the court of Charles II, Elizabeth was now ostentatiously pious, corresponding regularly with Bishop Fénelon. She remained however sharp and amusing even if her colourful past was behind her; in seeking and on occasion demanding her presence, the King chose to manifest a small measure of independence from his secret wife. Louis's addiction to her company was so great that Françoise once confided to a friend that if she died, Elizabeth would take her place.

Mary Beatrice, the unfortunate refugee, posed none of these problems to Françoise. There was certainly no glint of naughtiness in her dark eyes, whereas
‘la belle Hamilton’
in her conversation at least retained something of the wit and sauciness which had enchanted the English. Marly, the King's new pleasure-house where he loved to retreat with designated courtiers (mostly ladies), was close enough to Saint-Germain for Louis to pay Mary Beatrice almost daily visits in 1689, as Dangeau's
Journal
records.
⁶

As to Versailles, the first version of his famous book entitled
The Way to Present the Gardens of Versailles
was actually produced in July 1689 to coincide with her visit ‘to view the waters'.
⁷
According to Dangeau, numerous refreshments were served during a tour which started at the Fountain of Neptune. All this was exactly as laid down by Louis, with his usual eye for detail including the refreshments: ‘Go along the top end of the Latona, pause there, go to the Marais where there will be fruit and ices … Go to the Trois-Fontaines along the top and be sure that there are ices there.'

Ices were good, but it was also considerate of someone trailing round Versailles in the July heat (a testing experience had by myriads since) that
The Way
also instructed: ‘Be sure that the carriages are waiting at the gate to the Trianon.' In any case there were by now at least fifteen ‘wheeled chairs' at Versailles, upholstered in damask of different colours, for the weary or the middle-aged. To say nothing of boats and gondolas, which thronged the canals and artificial water: another leisurely, beguilingly effortless way of enjoying Versailles. One is reminded that the iron-willed Sun King could also understand the weakness of others. As he sauntered around his
potager
(vegetable garden) the courtiers who followed were told that they could pick the fruit and eat it. In general the great outdoors brought out the best in Louis XIV.

This was the light-hearted man who adored his hunting dogs – his Pistolet, his Silvie, his Mignonne, his Princesse – as much as Liselotte liked her domestic pets, and had a particular love of English setters. He carried biscuits for them ‘made daily by the royal pastrycooks' in his pockets, and designated a special chamber near his own, the Cabinet des Chiens, where he fed his dogs by hand. These favourites had magnificent beds of their own in all Louis's palaces, made of veneered walnut and ebony marquetry lined with crimson velvet (like their human counterparts the mistresses, for Louis looked after his own). It was the King who cancelled a Council meeting in February 1685 because the weather was so good and he wanted to be outside, with a jaunty parody of an air from Quinault and Lully's
Atys
: ‘As soon as he saw his dog, he left everything for her / Nothing can stop him / When the fine weather calls.'
⁸
(The actual text referred to Bellona, the Goddess of War: ‘As soon as he saw her / He left everything for her' – rather more the popular image of Louis XIV.)

Encouraged by King Louis XIV, who provided a small force of French troops and French officers, King James left for Ireland in the spring of 1689. His plan was to recover his English throne through the back door of Ireland. Louis's farewell to his cousin was a reversal of the salutation by which he had said goodbye to the young Marie-Louise d'Orléans of Spain: ‘I hope, Monsieur, never to see you again. Nevertheless if fortune so wishes it that we meet again, you will find me the same as you have always found me.'
⁹
Mary Beatrice was left behind, her dignity and good sense admired more than ever as the English royal fortunes waned. King James's personal campaign ended with his defeat by his son-in-law William III at the Battle of the Boyne on 12 July (NS) 1690, and he returned to France. The joint French and Irish campaign went on until it suffered a final defeat at the Battle of Aughrim a year later.

Thenceforward the exiled King languished at Saint-Germain, receiving none of the plaudits from the French court which his wife continued to merit. They found him irresolute and self-pitying: thus charmless by the standards of Versailles. Occasional forays were planned to recover his lost kingdom. None were successful. The defeat of the French navy off Cap La Hogue in May 1692 prevented the army assembled at Cherbourg from sailing. Four years later another potential invasion was cancelled Duc to lack of ‘Jacobite' response over the water.