The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (64 page)

Despite the lack of supporting evidence, people at court continued to believe Louvois had been poisoned. The Duchesse d’Orléans held typically robust views on the subject. Having toyed with the possibility that the Minister had been killed by his own sons, she next propounded the theory that he had been poisoned by her
bête noire,
Mme de Maintenon, who she claimed had long ago mastered ‘the art of Mme de Brinvilliers’.
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Within a few years, however, it would be brought home to Madame how horrible it was to cast such aspersions.

In April 1711 the King’s only legitimate son, the Grand Dauphin, died of smallpox. As usual the Duchesse d’Orléans believed he had been killed by ‘a terrible poison’. ‘I was told yesterday that after his death a black vapour was seen to rise from his mouth and his face turned as black as pitch and remained that colour,’ she breathlessly informed a correspondent.
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A year later death made far more terrible incursions into the royal family. In February 1712 the enchanting young Duchesse de Bourgogne, who was married to the King’s eldest grandson and heir apparent, contracted a highly infectious disease whose symptoms included a rash and high fever, and which has been tentatively identified as measles, scarlet fever or a form of typhus. Within days of her death on 12 February her husband, the Duc de Bourgogne, also fell dangerously ill and he followed her to the grave on 18 February. The tragedy was compounded when the young couple’s elder son, a child of five, was struck down with the same disease and died on 7 March.

Predictably, the grim succession of fatalities was widely ascribed to poison and, to the horror of Madame, the finger was pointed at her son, who had succeeded his father as Duc d’Orléans in 1701. Not only had Orléans’s own chance of succeeding to the throne been much improved by the snuffing out of so many of his male relations, but he was known to be interested in chemistry, which still had sinister connotations. Madame claimed that the fact that her late husband had also been associated in the public mind with the death of his first wife in 1670 meant that people were more ready to think evil of his son. ‘Whoever dies at court, my son is blamed,’ she wailed in March 1712,
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but though the King heartily disliked his nephew, he did not believe these slanders. When Louis died in 1715, to be succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, the Duc d’Orléans was appointed regent.

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The edict of July 1682 had not been concerned solely with poisons, for it was also directed against superstitious abuses. In one respect it represented an advance, because it marked an important stage in the process whereby witchcraft was no longer recognised as an offence. The very existence of witchcraft was implicitly questioned, for penalties were set out only for those who, by pretending they were ‘diviners, magicians or sorcerers’, corrupted the gullible. The edict ordained that all those who fell into this category should leave the realm forthwith on pain of corporal punishment, while anyone convicted of the more serious offence of sacrilege would be sentenced to death.
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Colbert’s adviser Duplessis had stressed the importance of mounting a purge against fortune-tellers and practitioners of magic, stressing that unless all those involved in this ‘detestable commerce’ were driven out of business, the public would assume that such activities were acceptable.
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La Reynie, too, believed it was essential to halt their operations on the grounds that they seduced their clients into crime. Yet though it is clear that the highest priority was attached to cleansing Paris of these parasites, the attempt to eliminate them was an utter failure.

Even at the end of the seventeenth century, successors to Mme Voisin were still at work in Paris and they continued to number people of high rank among their clients. In 1696 a woman of this kind was arrested ‘for the greatest infamies in the world’ and, when her premises were searched, letters were found written to her by the Marquis de Feuquières. More shocking still, the letters made clear that the King’s nephew, the Duc de Chartres (the future Duc d’Orléans), had had dealings with her.
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The King suppressed the evidence and the woman was never brought to trial, but the episode showed that the divineresses were far from eradicated.

In October 1702 La Reynie’s successor as Lieutenant-General of the Paris Police, René Voyer, Comte d’Argenson, reported that the capital was plagued by ‘a great disorder which is growing from day to day and which is not confined to the corruption of morals but tends to the destruction of every principle of religion’. This alarming situation was caused by a proliferation of ‘false diviners, would-be sorcerers, [individuals] who promise to discover treasure or communicate with spirits’, as well as numerous persons ‘who distribute powders, talismans and pentacles’. There was a huge number of these charlatans and their clients were multiplying all the time.
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The details supplied by d’Argenson make familiar reading to anyone acquainted with the Affair of the Poisons. Those rounded up by his officers at the time included one Jemme, who specialised in drawing up pacts with the devil, and another man, Bendrode, who claimed to have the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone. A priest named Père Robert was said to have performed ‘sacrifices’ in order to consummate diabolic pacts and to have supplied clients with pieces of rope retrieved from the neck of a hanged man, which he had blessed with a consecrated wafer. He claimed that whoever possessed a section of this rope ‘would make himself loved by all women, would win at gambling … and would succeed in all affairs’. The Baron de Saugeon and his wife sold ‘a water to re-establish virginity’, while a pregnant woman named Lebrun who had volunteered to surrender her infant to the devil had ‘given birth within a magic circle to a child who was carried off that very instant’.
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What was more, these people catered to prestigious clients. The divineress Marie-Anne de La Ville, who was arrested at this time, numbered among her customers not just the incorrigible Marquis de Feuquières but also Mme de Grancey, an intimate of the late Duc d’Orléans. Another man named Boyer who performed conjurations and told fortunes claimed to have accurately predicted the future to unnamed ‘duchesses’.
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D’Argenson regarded all this as a serious problem, but he did not want the offenders tried in any form of court, not even a secret tribunal. He noted that not only might it prove problematic to obtain convictions when all the witnesses for the prosecution were associates of the accused and themselves of bad character, but also that ‘the impact made on the public by investigating cases of this kind creates the sort of scandal which dishonours religion and makes the Protestants more unruly’.

His preferred solution was that the culprits should be imprisoned in distant chateaux or confined to workhouses by order of the King. He was confident that such measures, ‘executed by means of the highest authority will make more impression on the public and instil more fear into the inquisitive than a long series of investigations and sixty sentences [passed] by an extraordinary commission’.
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Clearly d’Argenson was aware of the difficulties that had beset the
Chambre Ardente
and had no wish to be sucked into a similar quagmire.

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D’Argenson’s reluctance to emulate La Reynie is the more understandable in view of the fact that, while it was in being, the
Chambre Ardente
was considered to have caused great damage to France’s international reputation. When the scandal first broke, it was assumed there must be real substance in the allegations against eminent figures, and at court there was widespread shame at the prospect that people of high rank had committed foul crimes. Mme de Sévigné commented that the accusations of poison, sacrilege and abortion were ‘filling all Europe with horror’ and lamented that henceforth ‘a Frenchman will be synonymous with a poisoner in foreign lands’.
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However, as it became apparent that grand individuals were being called before the commission for ‘mere trifles’, there was a change of emphasis. Not only was it considered deplorable that the superstition and credulity of members of the French élite should be paraded before foreigners, but there was a feeling that by taking such absurdities so seriously the authorities had unnecessarily exposed the kingdom to the mockery of outsiders.

Colbert’s objections to the activities of the
Chambre Ardente
stemmed partly from his belief that they were damaging to national prestige, and certainly the affair aroused a great deal of interest outside France. Foreign ambassadors stationed there were careful to include details in despatches, and printed accounts of episodes such as the Duchesse de Bouillon’s appearance before the commissioners were also circulated in some countries. The father of M. de Feuquières was serving as French ambassador to Sweden when his son was summoned before the commission, so he was well placed to observe the impact that the affair created overseas. In July 1680 he wrote to inform the King that ‘for the past six months, the affairs of the Arsenal Chamber have caused a sensation in Sweden’. He explained that for fear of being thought partial, he had refrained from drawing attention to this until his son had been discharged by the commissioners. Nevertheless, the experience had showed him ‘how disheartening it is, Sire, when one is concerned for the glory of the fatherland, to see it discredited by a low affair’.
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Certainly, it was ironic that Louis XIV, who was so passionate about upholding the glory of France, should have done so much to compromise it by setting up the
Chambre Ardente.

By the later years of the reign the perception had developed that the Affair of the Poisons was a painful episode to which it was wiser not to draw attention. In her memoirs, written towards the end of her life, the Duchesse de Montpensier mentioned that the Comtesse de Soissons left the country because ‘she was mixed up in the business of the
Chambre Ardente’,
but added cautiously, ‘I will not attempt to talk of that; the matter is too delicate and [to do so] one must be better informed about it than I am.’ Mme de Sévigné also gives the impression that the subject was best avoided: in 1689 she wrote that at court ‘one does not talk of poison; that word is forbidden at Versailles and throughout all France’.
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Shortly before her execution Mme Voisin declared, ‘Debauchery is the primary incentive of all these disorders’ and this pronouncement was thought to contain much truth. Prior to the trial of Mme de Brinvilliers, a lawyer who wrote a tract protesting her innocence had urged his readers not to be prejudiced against her on account of her sexual misconduct, for it was essential to bear in mind ‘the distance which separates dissolute morals from the infamy of crime’.
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However, her conviction and subsequent admission of guilt suggested that, on the contrary, the two were often closely interlinked. The fact that all those at court who were called before the
Chambre Ardente
were known to have irregular private lives reinforced the idea that there was a connection.

When the Affair of the Poisons was at its height the celebrated preacher Père Bourdaloue gave a sermon at court on 2 February 1680 in which he explicitly linked immorality with far worse offences. He began by praising the King for having taken firm action against those who were currently menacing French society, declaring that ‘there were monsters hidden within France, and your Majesty is the hero whom God has raised up to crush and stifle them’. He then thundered that ‘the sacrilege, impiety and homicide which have spread throughout France’ were the ‘fatal but infallible consequence of debauchery and licentious morals’, before once again encouraging the King to seek out the culprits. ‘It is to you, Sire, to whom the public will be indebted for being purged of them,’ he intoned.
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Bourdaloue’s strictures inevitably made the King reflect and it is notable that from this point Louis made a sustained effort to improve the morals of the court. He now led by example and, though the onset of his forties and the influence of Mme de Maintenon partly accounted for the alterations in his own way of life, the things he had learned during the Affair of the Poisons also played a part. The revelations that emerged in the course of it, and the fact that he had had to contemplate the possibility that his former mistress had committed the most frightful abominations, not only aided his resolve to live a purer life himself but convinced him of the importance of discouraging immorality in others.

The King did what he could to inaugurate a religious revival. Always a sincere believer, his piety became still more pronounced and he evinced what one German diplomat described as ‘a great inclination for devotion’. Though he failed to fill the exacting standards of Mme de Maintenon, who complained he still attached too much importance to outward observance rather than developing an inner spirituality, he strove to be more godly. He also tried to make his courtiers more religious. During a visit to France in 1679 the English philosopher John Locke had noted that traditional fasts enjoined by the Church were now widely ignored. He reported, ‘The observation of Lent at Paris is come almost to nothing. Meat is openly to be had … and dispensation commonly to be had from the curate without any more ado and people of sense laugh at it.’ The King set out to change such disrespectful attitudes. In April 1684 the Marquis de Dangeau recorded in his diary, ‘The King at his levee spoke strongly about courtiers who do not perform their Easter duties, [saying that] he greatly esteemed those who performed them properly, and that he urged them all to think about this very seriously.’
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