The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (3 page)

Criminal cases involving the aristocracy were heard directly by
Parlement.
The highest in rank, such as dukes and peers and royal officers, were entitled to be tried by the
Grand Chambre.
The cases of lesser members of the nobility came before a joint session of the
Grand Chambre
and the
Tournelle.
It was more usual, however, for
Parlement
to act as the highest court of appeal.

Apart from its judicial responsibilities,
Parlement
had the right of registering royal edicts. During the civil wars of the Fronde, the
Parlement
of Paris had sought to exploit this and had become a source of opposition to the Crown. However, once Louis XIV assumed personal control of government, he acted to curb the power of
Parlement.
Although he respected the magistrates’ privileges as hereditary office holders, he restricted their means of expressing political dissent. Most notably, in 1673 he denied
Parlement
the right of making any remonstrance before registering legislation

Rapporteur

Judge who presented a summary of the evidence uncovered by the investigating magistrate to all the judges appointed to hear a case

Sellette

Stool on which defendant sat during trial and final interrogation by judges

Tabouret

Stool on which duchesses and other high-ranking ladies were entitled to sit in the presence of the Queen

FOREWORD

The Affair of the Poisons was the name given to an extraordinary episode which took place in France during the reign of Louis XIV. In 1679 fears that poisoning had become widespread led to drastic action. What followed seemed to show that there was a serious problem, for an investigation suggested that many people were indeed using poison and black magic to rid themselves of enemies. Numerous arrests and executions resulted, with torture being widely used and suspects including distinguished individuals from the highest ranks of society.

The prelude to the Affair of the Poisons was the Brinvilliers murder case. In 1676 the Marquise de Brinvilliers was executed after being convicted of poisoning three members of her family. While there was satisfaction that this woman had been brought to justice, the case aroused fears that similar crimes were being committed by people of comparable social standing and that these were going undetected.

Shortly after this the authorities received information that Louis XIV himself was at risk of poisoning. Although these warnings came from a dubious source, they were taken seriously. Determined to protect the King from this hidden menace, the Chief of the Paris Police remained on constant alert for every sign of danger.

When two fortune tellers from Paris were arrested on suspicion of having supplied poison to wealthy clients, this was taken as confirmation that a network of poisoners was active in the city. On the King’s orders a special commission was set up to bring offenders to justice and scores of disreputable characters from the Paris underworld were seized and questioned. Many of them had made a living by predicting the future, advising on love affairs or offering to use their magic powers by providing contact with the spirit world. It was suspected that a high proportion supplemented these activities by selling poison.

Under interrogation some of these people claimed that their services had been sought not just by rich middle-class ladies who had become dissatisfied with their husbands, but also by members of the high nobility. Determined to eradicate what he regarded as an intolerable evil, the King decreed that no one, no matter how grand, would be spared having to account for their conduct.

The royal court was thrown into disarray as prominent figures there were placed under arrest or called before the special tribunal for questioning. The Queen’s Mistress of the Robes, the Comtesse de Soissons, fled the country to escape being charged with attempted murder. One of France’s most distinguished generals, the Maréchal de Luxembourg, was imprisoned in the Bastille pending his trial for sorcery and poisoning.

However, despite his avowed intention to deal firmly with all suspects, the King was placed in a quandary when evidence emerged that incriminated Mme de Montespan, his mistress of many years. She was said to have engaged in vile Satanic rituals and to have sought to poison another woman who had become the King’s lover. Uncertain whether to believe this, but realising that it would be impossible to establish the truth without irreversibly discrediting his mistress, the King was unsure how to proceed. As a result, the inquiry stagnated while the King and his police chief strove to resolve this dilemma.

*   *   *

When researching a subject, every historian is dependent on the quality of the sources and the Affair of the Poisons poses certain difficulties in this respect. Works such as the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon have to be used with caution, not least because Saint-Simon was only born in 1675 and was hence not at court during the Affair of the Poisons. Although he wrote about the events and personalities of the period, his comments were based on hearsay rather than personal observation. This did not stop him from expressing subjective judgements, or make him exercise any restraint in his opinions, but despite his assured tone the reader has to remember that his knowledge of what took place was circumscribed.

Letters written at the time of the affair are in some ways more reliable, but here, too, there are piftalls. The proceedings of the special commission set up to deal with poisoners were in theory secret and sometimes when people managed to obtain news they thought it more prudent to pass it on verbally rather than write it in a letter. Inevitably, too, private prejudices sometimes distorted observers’ judgement. The Comte de Bussy, for example, was incurably malicious, while even the shrewd and perceptive Mme de Sévigné was sometimes misinformed or mistaken. As for the letters of the Duchesse d’Orléans, these are wonderfully entertaining, but were often written years after the events she describes and are less than trustworthy.

Trial records or transcripts of interrogations can also be misleading. In many cases the evidence derives from people who were accomplished liars and who had a strong incentive to incriminate others in order to distract attention from their own misdemeanours. Testimony given under torture must likewise be treated sceptically. One historian has remarked that ‘we have only to imagine the range of the Popish Plot in England in 1679 if every witness had been tortured’.
¹
During the Affair of the Poisons, which took place at the same time in France, torture was used extensively. There can be no doubt that this complicated matters greatly and prolonged the inquiry.

Despite the fact that there are limitations to what can be known about the Affair of the Poisons, I have ended by reaching firm conclusions on various crucial matters. However, I am well aware that these judgements cannot be considered definitive and that other people inspecting the same evidence might interpret it differently.

*   *   *

When describing the profession of women like Catherine Montvoisin, Marie Vigoreux or Marguerite Delaporte, I have used the term ‘divineress’. Every time I have done so, I am reminded by a wavy red line on my computer screen that the word is not to be found in the modern lexicon (though my French dictionary does translate ‘
devineresse
’ as ‘divineress’, while cautioning that the term is rarely used). Nevertheless, I decided to retain the term, as all the possible alternatives seemed unsatisfactory. ‘Fortune teller’ was too limited, while the English seventeenth-century equivalents of ‘wise woman’ or ‘cunning folk’ were arch as well as archaic. My dictionary variously defines the verb ‘to divine’ as ‘to predict or conjecture; to discover by guessing, intuition, inspiration or magic’. Since this precisely describes the activities carried out by these women, the noun ‘divineress’ seemed most appropriate.

When mentioning these women by name I have often adopted the French usage of prefixing it with the definite article, as in ‘la Voisin’, ‘la Vigoreux’ or ‘la Delaporte’. Though Catherine Montvoisin’s clients and acquaintances sometimes addressed her as ‘Mme Voisin’, she was more usually referred to as ‘la Voisin’. In documents such as records of trial and interrogations this is the style invariably adopted for all female suspects who were not members of the aristocracy. I have emulated this. It is unfortunate, however, that the surnames of some of the characters in this book, such as Nicolas de La Reynie and Louise de La Vallière, begin with ‘La’. I hope this does not cause confusion.

*   *   *

I have tried to supply references for every quotation in the book. However, in order to reduce the quantity of numbered endnotes, I have generally only placed a single one in each paragraph. All the source references for that paragraph can be found grouped in order under the appropriate number in the endnote section at the back of the book.

*   *   *

There were several different units of currency employed in France at this period. Readers should note that in addition to the livre, which was the basic unit of currency:

Although the value of French money fluctuated in the course of the seventeenth century W. H. Lewis calculated the rate of exchange between England and France during the reign of Louis XIV as being 24 livres to £1 sterling.
²
To translate these sums into modern values is notoriously difficult, but the Bank of England estimates that £1 in 1680 would have been worth £82.66 in December 2002. According to these figures, 100 livres in 1680 would have been worth just over £4 in England at the time, which converts to just under £345 in today’s money.

*   *   *

I should like to thank the staff of the following libraries who have helped me with my research in England and France: the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale; the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library; Imperial College Library; the Institute for Historical Research; the London Library; the Public Record Office; the Service Historique de l’Armée at Vincennes and the Wellcome Library.

Many individuals have helped me in the course of writing this book, but I have particular cause to be grateful to three men. With great generosity Geoffrey Treasure read the typescript for mistakes and made many invaluable comments and suggestions. Michael Crawcour took immense trouble going through the text and much improved it by altering some of my translations from French sources. My father-in-law, Raymond Carr, also read the book at an early stage and contributed much appreciated ideas and queries.

I should also like to thank Nick Ashley; Antonia Fraser; Jasper Guinness; Julian Hope; Linda Kelly; Antoine Laurent; Bill Lovelady; Sophie-Caroline and Gilles de Marjerie; James Milson; Andreas Philiotis; Stewart Preston; Guy Rowlands; Tally Westminster and Cristina Zilkha. All have helped me in different ways while I have been working on this book in London and Paris. In addition especial thanks are due to Douglas Matthews for compiling the index.

My editor Ion Trewin, his assistant, Victoria Webb, and the copy-editor Ilsa Yardley have all been enormously helpful. As ever my agent Ed Victor has been a tremendous source of encouragement.

I should also mention the man who wrote to me (from Cambridge?) after the publication of my last book on the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. He made a reference to Mme de Brinvilliers and it was this which gave me the idea to start researching this book. Unfortunately I have since lost his letter, so I cannot thank him personally.

As well as being wonderfully enthusiastic when he read an early draft of the book, my husband Matthew Carr has supported me in countless other ways. The book is lovingly dedicated to my daughter Ella Carr.

ONE

MME DE BRINVILLIERS

At seven o’clock in the evening of 17 July 1676 a small woman in her mid-forties was led out of the Conciergerie prison in Paris. A tumbril stood in the courtyard, waiting to take her to the Place de Grève, the usual site for public executions in Paris. The woman, whose hands were bound, was barefoot and clothed in the traditional garb of a condemned prisoner. A coarse linen shift concealed her trim figure and her chestnut hair was covered by an unbecoming hood fastened under the chin. Although she was to be beheaded, rather than hanged, a noose had been placed round her neck to symbolise the death sentence that had been passed on her.

Despite the oppressive heat, a huge crowd had massed in the prison courtyard, where they had been waiting for several hours. The entire route from the Conciergerie to the Place de Grève was likewise thronged with spectators intent on catching a glimpse of the prisoner as she passed. It was later estimated that 100,000 people had turned out to witness the spectacle. The mood of most of them was unmistakably hostile, for though the Parisian populace generally evinced compassion for offenders on their way to execution, this woman’s crimes had inspired such repugnance that scarcely anyone felt any sympathy for her. Instead, she was reviled as an ‘enemy of the human race’ who deserved to be held ‘in execration by all men’.
¹

At first sight the prisoner appeared an inoffensive person. She was tiny and slender-boned with huge blue eyes, which struck an observer as ‘gentle and perfectly beautiful’. Her appearance was indeed so deceptive that one person commented that ‘nothing proves better that … the science of physiognomy is false’. For, in fact, this innocuous-looking woman had slowly poisoned her father and two brothers, inflicting the most frightful sufferings on them before they died. Nor was this all. She had also administered poison to her husband and eldest daughter, though admittedly in both cases she had subsequently regretted her action and given them antidotes. She had furthermore intended to murder her sister and sister-in-law, who had only been saved because her crimes had come to light before she could effect her plans. In the words of a shocked contemporary, ‘Medea did not go that far!’
²