The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (63 page)

Presumably the King believed that by doing this he would protect Mme de Montespan’s reputation for ever and, for a remarkably long time, he succeeded. None of Mme de Montespan’s contemporaries were aware of the accusations that had been levelled against her and for 150 years after her death the same secrecy was preserved. However, it turned out that La Reynie had kept other copies of the documents Louis XIV had burnt in 1709 and in the second half of the nineteenth century these came to light. François Ravaisson devoted four volumes of his work
Les Archives de la Bastille
to reproducing the records of the
Chambre Ardente
and when these were published in 1870–4 the black legend that Mme de Montespan was a murderer and worshipper of the devil at once came into existence.

Those who did not find the available evidence absolutely convincing still hesitated to exonerate Mme de Montespan, for it was assumed that some of the documents destroyed by the King might have contained irrevocable proof of her guilt. However, this is most unlikely. Colbert had access to all the documents detailing the accusations against her and in his searching analysis of them he never refers to any evidence that cannot be found either in Ravaisson’s work or in various Paris archives. Although there are areas of the Affair of the Poisons which are not fully documented (for example, the records relating to the trial of the Maréchal de Luxembourg are incomplete), we can feel reasonably confident that nothing damaging to Mme de Montespan has been hidden from us.

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In late June 1681, when the
Chambre Ardente
was at its most active, one of its commissioners boasted to an acquaintance, ‘You cannot imagine the good this Chamber has done.’ It is questionable, however, whether his pride in the Chamber’s achievements was justified. The commissioners would no doubt have argued that their greatest service lay in having safeguarded the life of the King, which had been shown to be menaced by poisoners. Yet from what we know of the plots against Louis XIV uncovered by the Chamber, it is hard to believe that his life had ever been in any danger. There is, of course, no disputing that, as the Marquis de Sourches approvingly noted, during its three years of existence the Chamber ‘purged France of several monsters’.
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Marie Bosse and Mme Voisin, for example, were each responsible for more than one murder and merited severe punishment. On the other hand there was no need to set up a special commission to bring them to justice, for they could have been satisfactorily dealt with by the normal course of law.

It is worth querying exactly how much poisoning was going on in France prior to the establishment of the Chamber, even though it is difficult to give a precise answer. La Reynie, for one, had no doubt at all as to the scale of the problem. In a memorandum penned in early 1682 he asserted, ‘Human life is publicly up for sale; [poisoning] is practically the only remedy used in all family troubles; sacrilege, impieties and abominations are commonly practised in Paris, the provinces and the countryside.’ This was certainly an exaggeration but others who were not altogether uncritical of the
Chambre Ardente
did believe that poisoning was becoming more widespread and that firm action was needed to suppress it. The Marquis de La Fare, for example, recorded in his memoirs that it was right to have set up a commission ‘to punish culprits and to halt the progress of this crime which increased every day’.
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However, if one tries to give figures for cases of poisoning which occurred in the fifteen years before the Chamber was set up, the numbers do not appear very significant. Besides the three victims of Mme de Brinvilliers, one can put forward the names of M. Faurye (who was probably poisoned by Magdelaine de La Grange), M. Brunet, M. Leféron, the Marquis de Canilhac, M. Lescalopier and M. Ferry. It is possible, too, that Mme Anne Carada poisoned the wife of her lover. There were others who could be said to have been fortunate to have escaped with their lives. If Mme de Dreux had been left at liberty she might have progressed to poisoning her husband or the Duchesse de Richelieu; Mme Poulaillon might have succeeded in harming her husband. Had Mme Voisin continued to operate, the toll of victims would doubtless have continued to mount and may indeed have been higher than can be proved. Both Marie Montvoisin and Lesage named numerous other clients of la Voisin who allegedly sought her help in murdering individuals, but it is impossible to ascertain whether this was so.

In the absence of efficient forensic techniques, establishing that a long dead person was a victim of poisoning was highly problematic. As Colbert’s legal adviser, Duplessis, noted at one point, it was difficult to attain the truth in an instance where ‘for example, a man has died several years ago in the arms of his family; poison has not been suspected; he has been buried and his body has not been inspected; later on, an accusation of poison occurs. In this case, how can one convict the author of the crime, when one cannot really prove that a crime has been committed?’
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It is improbable, however, that large numbers of poisonings went undetected. On the contrary, indeed, the problem tended to be overstated for in the absence of scientific proof, all too often deaths that did not deserve to be considered suspicious were wrongly attributed to poison. During the Affair of the Poisons it was alleged that Chancellor d’Aligre, M. Lionne, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the late President of the Paris
Parlement,
Guillaume Lamoignon, had all been poisoned, but there is no evidence to suggest their deaths were anything other than natural.

Disproportionate fears as to the prevalence of poisoning excited irrational panic. One source claimed that following the revelations of the Brinvilliers case, ‘Every father suspects his son and closely watches his movements … Children take precautions against their parents; a brother or sister does not dare eat anything brought by another brother or sister.’ Primi Visconti recorded that at the time of the Affair of the Poisons, ‘Almost no one trusted his friends any more … As soon as someone felt ill from having eaten too much, he believed he had been poisoned.’ Commonplace cases of gastroenteritis and stomach upset resulted in chefs and servants being arrested, prompting one wag to remark that if all the bad cooks in Paris were seized, the prisons would soon be overflowing.
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Nerves were overstretched at court as elsewhere and in the autumn of 1680 the tendency to leap to unfortunate conclusions was illustrated when a servant of the new Dauphine’s named Bessola fell ill and poison was assumed to be the cause. Two scullery boys were immediately taken into custody, even though there was no proof they had committed any crime, and they were only released when Bessola recovered. It was then grudgingly acknowledged that her illness had not been caused by anything untoward but, as the Comte de Bussy commented, ‘In the era of the
Chambre Ardente,
anything a bit out of the ordinary passes for poison.’
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Fears of this kind were naturally exacerbated by the fact that when unexpected deaths occurred, medical science was often not sufficiently far advanced to establish the true cause. Few people displayed the caution of the Marquis de Sourches who in 1689, when others at court were confidently asserting that the Queen of Spain had been poisoned, noted soberly, ‘It would be dangerous to reason in this way about all sudden deaths … as young people die just as often as old ones.’
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When the Affair of the Poisons was at its height those capable of bringing such a measured judgement to bear were scarcer still.

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If it is difficult to estimate whether poisoning was on the increase at this period, it is impossible to know whether children had really been sacrificed in black magic ceremonies in Paris. Obviously, at a time when poverty and lack of contraception ensured that there were many unwanted babies, finding infant victims would not have presented an insuperable problem and, given the strength of people’s belief in the devil, one cannot rule out that such horrors took place. One must, however, be wary of being too credulous. La Reynie took the view that the descriptions of child sacrifice supplied by Marie Montvoisin and Etienne Guibourg were so detailed and vivid that they must have been present at these events, but his reasoning was flawed. History abounds with cases where ‘witches’ have confessed to participating in atrocities and abominations, which we know to be fictitious.
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A recent authority has suggested that under relentless interrogation witches ‘engaged in a peculiar kind of dialogue with their interlocutors, adapting their responses to meet expectations’ and it is now recognised that under extreme stress individuals will ‘mingle themes from their cultural milieu with elements derived from dream and fantasy to generate self-incriminating narratives which have their own psychological significance’. Even in Britain today, allegations that children are being ritually murdered by Satanists are regularly made, but when such claims have been investigated by the police, horrific eyewitness accounts of cannibalism and infanticide have invariably been shown to be imaginary. On the other hand the recent discovery in the River Thames of the body of a male child who is thought to have been murdered so that his body parts could be used to make black magic medicines does make one cautious about asserting that similar things could not have happened in France more than 300 years ago.
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Fears that children were being kidnapped and murdered for such purposes provoked bouts of hysteria in Paris long after the
Chambre Ardente
had been disbanded. In 1701 the Royal Attorney at the Châtelet reported that fresh rumours that a high-ranking person was having children butchered in order to bathe in their blood had led to widespread disorder. The Attorney remarked wearily that this was an all too familiar phenomenon. ‘These fancies and movements of popular fury are not new; I have seen some happen which were carried to such excess that in various quarters of Paris there were women who were almost beaten to death … because they were accused of being abductors of children’.
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In the wake of the Affair of the Poisons, practical measures were instituted to reduce the incidence of poisoning. On 31 July 1682 a royal edict was registered in the Paris
Parlement
tightening up that area of the law.
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Having noted that poisoning was ‘not only the most dangerous and detestable [crime] of all but also the most difficult to discover’, it decreed that henceforth anyone convicted of supplying poison for murderous purposes, whether or not it resulted in fatalities, would be liable to the death penalty.

Because poison could be fabricated in laboratories supposedly devoted to the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, alchemy was now placed under scrutiny. The edict prohibited the private ‘preparation of drugs or distillations under pretext of [finding] chemical remedies or [doing] experiments … or searching for the Philosopher’s Stone’ unless those engaged in such research obtained an official permit to set up a workshop.

Furthermore, since in the past it had been too easy to obtain all forms of arsenic and mercury sublimate, restrictions were now placed on their sale. In future these substances could only be sold to professional men who were authorised to use them in the course of their work, such as doctors, apothecaries, surgeons, goldsmiths, dyers and blacksmiths. Whenever a purchase of poison was made by a legitimate person, the shopkeeper was required to inscribe the transaction in an official register kept for the purpose.

This was a sensible measure, which was later emulated by other countries. Bizarrely, however, it does not seem to have greatly diminished the fear of poison within France, for people there continued to display what Voltaire called their ‘unhappy propensity to suspect natural death of being occasioned by violent means’. In 1689 there were even renewed fears that the King himself was being targeted by poisoners after an anonymous letter was found referring to ‘a certain great tree, which must be felled’. To deal with the threat a new
Chambre Ardente
was set up in the Arsenal and La Reynie once again served as its
rapporteur.
On 27 June the Marquis de Sourches noted that there was a lot of talk in Paris about the executions ordered by this body. A carpenter who had posed as a physician had recently been put to death ‘for having poisoned several persons and carried out abortions for a large number of women.’ It was surmised that he had had some design against the King’s person and had been in secret communication with some exiled Huguenots, but this was not really proven.
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There was an irony in the fact that two years later Louvois, who had formerly been so active in persecuting poisoners, was himself believed to have fallen victim to poisoning. On 16 July 1691 he was in conference with the King when he suddenly felt unwell. Realising he was ill, Louis suggested that he withdraw, but soon after reaching his own apartments, the Minister collapsed and died in the arms of his doctor.
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An autopsy was carried out, which makes it plain he had suffered a pulmonary embolism that had impeded the flow of blood to the heart. Nevertheless, the fact that Louvois was known recently to have drunk from a pitcher of water that was kept constantly replenished in his study led to suspicions that he had been poisoned; these were much exacerbated when the King’s physician, D’Aquin, said he had been killed by ‘that sort of poison which blights the heart and suddenly blocks the circulation of the blood’. A floor polisher who had had access to the Minister’s study and who came from Savoy (with whom France was currently at war) was immediately arrested, though he was freed not long afterwards.
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