The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (11 page)

The first war the King embarked on was a relatively painless affair, for after his 1667 declaration of hostilities against Spain the campaigns that followed in Flanders and Franche-Comté bore more resemblance to triumphal progresses than bitter conflict. Peace was restored in 1668 but the war against Holland, which broke out in 1672, was an altogether more formidable undertaking. At the outset it seemed that the French would win easily and in the summer of 1672 the Dutch sued for peace, offering exceptionally generous terms. However, when these were rejected the Dutch concluded that France was set on their annihilation, leaving them with no alternative but to resume the struggle. By cutting the dykes and flooding the land around Amsterdam the Dutch halted the French advance, but the country had been saved at a terrible cost. As the war dragged on, other European powers allied with the Dutch, concerned that if France crushed Holland her power would become overwhelming. In the course of the savage struggle that ensued the civilian population of Holland suffered terrible cruelties at the hands of French troops and though Louis XIV’s Minister of War, Louvois, has customarily been blamed for this policy of ‘frightfulness’, Louis himself must bear the ultimate responsibility.
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When the war finally came to an end in 1678 the French could reasonably claim to be the victors, even though the terms obtained at Nymwegen were less favourable than those proposed by the Dutch six years earlier. Yet the victory had been costly, for casualties on all sides had been high. In September 1674, when France was celebrating its success at the battle of Senef, Mme de Sévigné noted ruefully, ‘We lost so many at this victory that without the
Te Deum
and a few standards carried to Notre-Dame we would have believed that we had lost the fight.’ More serious, however, was the fact that France had come to be viewed throughout Europe as an arrogant and exorbitant predator whose ambitions must be curbed. When Louis began exploiting legal ambiguities in Nymwegen and earlier treaties to lay claim to further territories, his determination to make ‘peace a time of conquest’ only reinforced the perception that France was a dangerous bully.
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A king so obsessed with his prestige required a fitting setting to emphasise his majesty, for Louis fully concurred with Colbert’s dictum that apart from ‘striking actions of war, nothing indicates the grandeur and spirit of princes more than buildings’. The King was particularly well endowed in this respect, for the wonderful palaces and chateaux he had inherited included Saint-Germain, Chambord, Fontainebleau, Vincennes and, in Paris, the Tuileries and the Louvre. The King used all these as temporary residences, and made significant alterations and improvements to many of them. His real passion, however, was Versailles and it was here that Louis indulged his love of building to transform an unassuming house originally used by his father as a hunting lodge into one of the most stupendous palaces in the world. Despite the unsatisfactory nature of the terrain and the lack of an abundant water supply, the King engaged the landscape designer André Le Notre to create the extraordinary gardens and park, with features that included a cruciform canal broad enough to accommodate a flotilla of sailing ships, and 1400 fountains. Well might the Duc de Saint-Simon write of Louis, ‘It diverted him to ride roughshod over nature and to use his money and ingenuity to subdue it to his will.’
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In 1668 the King embarked on a major programme of construction, commissioning the architect Louis Le Vau to enlarge the original building. Le Vau’s additions included a grandiose suite on the ground floor for the King’s private use with rooms adorned by columns and statuary, culminating in a magnificent bathroom, whose centrepiece was a massive octagonal tub carved from a single block of marble. The King’s upper apartment, which overlooked the gardens, was sited above these rooms and it was here that he entertained the court. ‘Everything is furnished divinely; everything is magnificent,’ Mme de Sévigné wrote appreciatively on first seeing it. In each room the door surrounds and window embrasures were enriched with a different coloured marble ‘as fine as those formerly brought over from Italy or Greece’, hewn from French quarries which had only recently been opened and exploited. As one passed in succession through the Salon of Venus, the Salon of Abundance, the Salon of Diana, the Salon of Mars, the Salon of Mercury and the Salon of Apollo, the interiors became progressively more elaborate and the decorative scheme was completed by ceilings ‘enriched by paintings by the best painters of the Royal Academy’.
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By 1678 the King had resolved to make Versailles the permanent seat of court and government, and he addressed himself to beautifying it still further. The conclusion of the Dutch War meant that he could allocate twice the amount of money that had been spent at Versailles during the previous year to effect more improvements. Since Le Vau was now dead, Jules Hardouin Mansart was engaged to construct the Salons of Peace and War, and the monumental Hall of Mirrors, a dazzling conception which overwhelmed the senses as much by its sheer scale as by its visual splendour. Following its completion in 1684 a court lady confidently proclaimed this to be ‘without doubt … the finest thing of its kind in the universe’.
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It is a truism that life at Versailles, so grand in many ways, was also pervaded by squalor. In an age of primitive sanitation this was, of course, a problem common to all large buildings where many people congregated. When touring Fontainebleau in 1677, John Locke noted that the back stairs leading to the apartments of the King’s brother smelt like an urinal. In 1675 a report on the Louvre claimed that ‘on the grand staircases … behind the doors and almost everywhere one sees there a mass of excrement, one smells a thousand unbearable stenches caused by calls of nature which everyone goes to do there every day’. As the description was penned by a man who was bidding for a contract to supply the Louvre with close stools and to dispose of their contents, he may have exaggerated. However, at Versailles problems of this sort were particularly acute. Once the court settled there permanently after 1682 it became more difficult to arrange for a palace which was so rarely left unoccupied to be thoroughly cleansed and aired. Sewage disposal was made more challenging because the building was not situated on a river. Courtiers also frequently referred to the ‘bad air’ of Versailles, which they generally blamed on the ‘exhalations’ that emanated from the vast masses of earth that were moved by hundreds of labourers during the landscaping of the gardens.
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Anecdotal evidence also suggests that some individuals at court were remarkably casual about the performance of natural functions. The King’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans complained in 1702 that ‘the people stationed in the galleries in front of our room piss in all the corners. It is impossible to leave one’s apartments without seeing somebody pissing.’ It is true she was apt to exaggerate but other stories go some way to bearing out her claims. The Duc de Saint-Simon described an occasion when the eccentric Bishop of Noyon was overcome by such ‘a great desire to piss’ as he passed the chapel at Versailles that he entered the King’s tribune and urinated over the balustrade, splattering the floor below. Some years earlier a correspondent of the Comte de Bussy reported that Mmes de Saulx and de Tremouille had caused outrage when they defecated in their box at the theatre ‘and then, to remove the evil smell, threw everything into the pit’. Not unnaturally the audience shrieked abuse, obliging the two ladies to withdraw, but while the response makes it plain that such behaviour was considered neither normal nor acceptable, the incident helps explain how Versailles could have acquired its insalubrious reputation.
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The King had been supremely successful in ensuring that the life of the French aristocracy revolved around the court, even while he denied them a role in central government. Despite their effective exclusion from political power, other forms of advancement were open to the nobility and they pursued these assiduously. They came to court to negotiate advantageous marriages, or in hopes of obtaining preferment in the army and Church. Others craved positions in the royal household, which not only conferred prestige on the holder but brought with it tangible benefits. The King might reward loyal servants with financial favours such as pensions or grants of monopoly: during his visit to Paris in 1679, for example, John Locke noticed that bills had been pasted all over the city ‘with a privilege for a receipt to kill lice whereof the Duke of Bouillon has the monopoly’.
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Contact with the King afforded opportunities to present him with direct requests, as well as to intercede for others who did not enjoy such close proximity to the monarch. It was, of course, understood that if this was successful, the person who had approached the King would be rewarded for his efforts by the benefiting party. Others who did not have access to the King and who had devised money-making schemes that required his approval, found it impossible to implement them directly. Instead, they sold their ideas to more privileged courtiers who were better placed to exploit them.

Naturally the King was incapable of fulfilling the expectations of more than a tiny minority of those who came to court and he had to find ways of preventing disillusionment from becoming too widespread. According to Saint-Simon, ‘He fully realised that the substantial gifts he had to offer were too few to have any continuous effect and he substituted imaginary favours that appealed to men’s jealous natures, small distinctions which he was able with extraordinary ingenuity to grant or withhold.’ Yet despite his skilful management, the King himself was acutely aware of how limited were the means at his disposal. He told his son, ‘We … who see so many hopes before us every day … can thereby easily recognise how unwarranted they are and how much time is wasted upon them.’
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To try to stave off disappointment, the King deferred decisions for as long as possible, invariably answering ‘I’ll see’ when suits were presented to him. He was conscious that even when he was able to grant requests, this stirred up resentment in other quarters. He was said to have remarked, ‘Every time I award a vacant place I make a hundred malcontents and one ingrate.’
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It was therefore a considerable achievement on the part of the King that people at court continued to see it as a place full of opportunity.

The reality was, however, that most of them had a dispiriting existence. Few were so clear-sighted about this as Mme de Maintenon (which was somewhat ironic, as her own career at court lifted her to extraordinary heights). She came to the bleak conclusion that ‘to pay one’s court entails much trouble, constraint, expense and boredom … In effect … one gets up early in the morning, one dresses oneself with care, one spends all day on one’s feet awaiting a favourable moment to get oneself seen, to present oneself, and often one comes back as one went, except that one is in despair for having wasted one’s time and trouble.’
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It is clear that in most cases the investment required to live at court far outweighed the gains. To keep up appearances it was necessary to lay out large sums on fine clothes, household expenses, servants and carriages, and all this at a time when the income from land (on which most aristocrats depended) was diminishing in real terms. The Italian observer Giovanni-Battista Primi Visconti realised that many of the nobility were being ruined by their extravagance and Mme de Sévigné professed herself mystified as to how people at court avoided total insolvency. Concerned at her daughter’s expenditure, she wrote anxiously, ‘There must be some kind of sorcery you practise in connection with … the high life you lead … I think you must resort to black magic, as must these impecunious courtiers. They never have a sou, but they go on royal tours, on every campaign. They dress in the height of fashion, take part in all the balls … no matter how bankrupt they are … Their lands decrease in value. No matter, they go on just the same.’
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Her words had an eerie resonance for, during the Affair of the Poisons, it would appear that some people at court had indeed had recourse to black magic in hopes of improving their prospects.

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Inevitably the court was beset by jealousy and spite. A Paris doctor named Gui Patin declared in 1664, ‘The court is full of intrigue, ambition and avarice’ and he stigmatised it as a place where people would rather repudiate their closest companions than to see them prosper. The Duc d’Antin confirmed this by observing that, at court, ‘One should, as a fundamental principle, render ill services to everyone, for fear of seeing someone elevated.’
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The Marquis de Sourches recalled, ‘As few people had money, everyone sought ways of getting it.’ Whenever an attractive opportunity arose, people of both sexes at court could be utterly unscrupulous about pursuing it. In August 1671 the death of the King’s principal physician, Dr Vallot, sparked a desperate struggle to succeed him, with rival courtiers supporting different candidates. Gui Patin reported that the whole court was ‘dominated … by intrigues in which the ladies are much to the fore’ and he heard that one doctor had promised ‘a great lady’ (thought to be Mme de Montespan) 30,000 livres if she bestirred herself to obtain him the post. In 1664 there had been similar excitement when it had been decided to supplement the number of ladies in the Queen’s household. ‘Almost all the ladies of the court are taking part and each one is intriguing for it,’ the Duc d’Enghien disclosed to a correspondent. The sort of tactics to which the contestants could stoop is shown by Saint-Simon’s description of what happened when a household was formed in 1696 for the Savoyard princess who married the King’s eldest grandson. As he recalled, ‘All the ladies of suitable rank and favour were actively canvassing for positions, often to one another’s detriment. Anonymous letters flew about like flies, libels and denouncements were everywhere.’
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