Poisonous Ambition: Magic, Poison, Sex, and Scandal in the Court of the French Sun King

 

MY SOURCES

transcript

It’s a stifling day in Paris, 1676. A woman is being led down a cobbled street, hands tied. She’s a small thing, almost dainty, hands bound and feet bare. One might almost feel sorry to see her being led to her death. But the crowd is a seething mass of malice: they sneer at her, spit at her feet like a curse. She poisoned her father and brothers, they whisper...true. She honed her poisons by going to hospitals, feeding her concoctions to the sick and the poor. Untrue, but still. A noose dangles limply around her neck. She is going to be beheaded, not hung, but it is meant as a symbol and a reminder. Here walks a sorceress who committed heinous crimes.

Before the sentencing, they tortured the Marquis de Brinvilliers. They bent her over a wheel, put a funnel in her mouth, and poured water down her throat, wringing out confessions between each painful liter. She made it known that she wasn’t the only poisoner in Paris. And now, just before death, she says: “out of so many guilty people, must I be the only one put to death?” Another fanciful rumor, but it spoke to sinister truths. And the chilling fact that the marquis wasn’t some hedge witch making poisons in her basement. The Marquis de Brinvilliers was a highborn lady - a monied and well-connected lady. Her friendships reach all the way into the king’s glittering court. If a woman of such status can poison her family, then surely no one is above suspicion. There might be other sorceresses hiding in fancy clothes, and in plain sight. And there are. Paris police chief Nicolas de la Reynie feels sure of it. Yes, beneath the shining waters of his city, dark dangers lurk, unseen below the surface. Creatures he must find a way to catch.

 In a shadow-filled garden, a woman in a blood-red cape swirls her wine. It is worrying, this Brinvilliers business. Suspicions about dark magic have been raised, and no sorceress is more famous in this city than La Voisin. But her clientele are the rich and influential: surely no one will out her. If she goes down, they all will. No one would dare push down her door.

 At the Louvre, the king’s official mistress powders her cheeks. Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan, has been Louis XIV’s lover for almost a decade, giving him children, reveling in his rapt attention, whispering in his ear. She’s married to another man, but not matter - it’s not like he can deny his king what he wants. She drips with jewels and has 20 sumptuous rooms, where the queen has only 11. There have been many rivals for the Sun King’s affections, but none could best her. In this vipers’ nest of games and intrigue, she has won every hand she has played. This is the year that a courtier will say that Athénaïs has never looked better, and that “the court has never been so agreeable.” But Athénaïs can never be easy; to lose the king’s love would be to lose everything she has worked for, and she is not as young as she once was. She picks up the small vial her old friend La Voisin gave her, dark with what she suspects is old blood [ingredients]. Such charms have worked before - they are sure to keep working. And there is no price she won’t pay for greatness. Not even if the payment is in blood.

A KING AND HIS LADIES

Athénaïs first met King Louis XIV in 1667. He was still with his first mistress, Louise de la Valliere. She had just given birth to his daughter, and she was feeling poorly. So she invited the 26-year-old Athénaïs to the Hotel Brion to help entertain her lover. She also became one of the Queen’s ladies, and before long she was spending an awful lot of time in her room, quite near the King’s, catching up on her beauty rest. Something tells me that’s not all she was catching. Louise’s star fell, Athénaïs’ star rose, and as per usual the Queen had to zip her lips and deal with it. In July of 1668 the Great Royal Entertainment at Versailles was unofficially held in Athénaïs’ honour. It’s only the second party ever thrown at Versailles, and Louis spares no extravagance: he spends 117,000 livres – a third of the budget for Versailles that year - on this one-day Baroque fairytale. Imagine the king unveiling his latest innovation: the Dragon Fountain, with its water jet spewing up to 27 metres; tea in the Star Grove, bursting with sumptuous buffets; a play by Moliere, illuminated by 32 crystal lamps; another banquet; a fireworks display. Athénaïs takes it all in, whispering witticisms in the king’s ear. The most powerful men in her world, or any other.

Louis XIV has been king of France since the age of four. He’s in his twenties now, ruling over a period of unprecedented prosperity. He’s called “the Sun King” for a reason: he centralized monarchical power in France, turning his country into a leading light in Europe, a place rich in gazzling finery, innovation, and art. He is the sun around which all of France’s most ambitions cluster, desperate to bask in a bit of his light.

He lives in many fine palaces, from the Tuileries Palace to the Louvre. But his real passion project is Versailles. Starting in 1661, he transformed it from a relatively small hunting lodge into one of the most magnificent palaces in the Western world. Though he won’t move his government and court here until 1682, he spends much of his time there, and so does his court. Life in Versailles is grand and opulent, sometimes jaw-droppingly so. But in a time before reliable plumbing, it’s also host to a surprising amount of human waste. These huge palaces don’t exactly give one an easy place to take care of your business. One man wrote that behind staircases at the Louvre were “masses of excrement, one smells a thousand unbearable stenches caused by calls of nature…” In 1702, a Duchesse will complain about men not caring much on what golden pillar they might do their business. “The people stationed in the galleries in front of our room piss in all the corners,” she wrote. “It is impossible to leave one’s room without seeing someone pissing.” It doesn’t help that the king’s palaces are always mobbed with courtiers, making it impossible to properly clean a space.

In a country with no central government, the road to power is solely through the king. He grants land and titles as he pleases, and there are only so many positions and honors to go around. So those with aspirations must keep close to him always, following him from palace to palace, vying for his attention and affection. But catching the king’s eye isn’t an easy feat. At Versailles, you might have anywhere from 3,000 and 10,000 people there day by day. Many are nobility, alert to every opportunity to get into Louis’s good graces. If they are constant, and stick to the neverending rules of stifling etiquette, they might succeed. But there are so many rules: who can address whom and when, how to move your hands, even what kind of chair you’re allowed to sit in. There’s a kind of folding chair that the king sometimes lets his favorite ladies sit in in his presence, and it’s caused several women to come to actual blows. You’ll never find the king alone: only his most cherished servants and friends get to go to his Getting Up ceremonies and breakfast ceremonies. He even has a crowd to watch him wash.

This court is decadent, sophisticated, arrogant and assured. But they are also jealous, competitive, often bored and always hungry - for position, influence, control. Sometimes ravenously so. In this cutthroat world of scandal, games, and intrigues, people have little to do but suck up and scheme, and they do it assiduously. Even those who hate the toxic court can’t stay away from it. Bishop Bossuet called it “an enchanted brew which intoxicates the most sober, and the majority of those who have tasted it cannot savor anything else.”

In this glittering world, no position is more coveted than that of maîtresse-en-titre - the royal mistress. This semi-official title has been around since the 14th century and isn’t just about sex. The royal mistress is meant to keep the king amorous company, sure, but he’s most likely got other women to help satisfy him in that department. Louis, it seems, had an amorous and oft-wandering eye. This mistress is chief amongst them, though: the king’s companion not just between the sheets, but for parties and meetings. Someone to ease his troubles and talk about his day; someone he loves. Because we all know his actual WIFE is no good for that! Athénaïs has an incredible amount of power and influence. She is the brightest jewel of them all.

For a woman, there is no more powerful place to be than in the king’s bed, whispering sweet suggestions into his ear. Captivate him, and you might just hold the keys to the country. One of the most famous official mistresses, Madame de Pompadour, will only sleep with the next king, Louis XV, for the first several years of their relationship. After that, she will serve as one of his chief advisors: men would go to her while she puts on her makeup and ask for help with political matters. Athénaïs, a lover of gambling and a passionate wit, holds those keys for years. She’s witty, smart, and alluring, with a sense of humor that can be cutting. One woman said “one was never bored with her.” Another courtier said “it was enchanting to hear her.” She has to be enchanting, to hold the king’s attention. The king, it seems, has the sexual appetite of a young stallion on Viagra. He’ll have scores of children with different mistresses. But so long as it’s just sex with other women he’s after, she can handle it. But the women at court are forever scheming, and they aren’t afraid to tear other women down in their pursuit of prestige. When a coveted position within a new royal household comes up, one observer wrote that “All the ladies of suitable rank and favor were actively canvassing for positions, often to one another’s detriment. Anonymous letters flew about like flies…”

It’s 1678 now, two years after Marquis de Brinvilliers’s beheading. Athénaïs has just given birth to her ninth child - her seventh with the king. She had taken pains to bounce back and keep her beauty after each birth, but this time it isn’t easy. She can’t seem to get her figure back, and those at court are quick to note it. One man, upon seeing her alight from her carriage, wrote that her calf was almost as big around as his waist. If ever Athénaïs was vulnerable, this is the moment. Enter Mademoiselle Marie Angélique de Scorailles, the king’s sister-in-law’s newest lady in waiting. She will later come to be known as Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Born to an impoverished duke, she is incredibly beautiful, which is why her family takes great pains to get her into the king’s eyeline. Young, blonde, and exquisite, one courtier said she has “a form, a daring, an air to astonish and charm even that gallant and sophisticated court.” By the following year the king has taken her to bed. Athénaïs is bereft, though she reassures herself that the king will tire of his new toy. After all, as one writer said, the new girl is “beautiful as an angel and stupid as a basket.” But still, he seems besotted. He dotes on his new favorite, getting clothes made to match hers. He doesn’t seem to fret when Athénaïs storms off, back to Paris, making a show of her displeasure. Though he tries to hide his budding love for Fontanges in public, the king has a suite of rooms built for her at Saint-Germain, connected to his rooms by a secret staircase. No one knows about it, until Athénaïs’ two pet baby bears - yes, you heard me - find the door open, wander in, and destroy the apartment as if to avenge their mistress’ honor. Always a gambler, Athénaïs starts to throw money down on the tables in earnest, losing millions of livres, which doesn’t help the situation. And then he makes the new girl a DUCHESS, something he’s never done for Athénaïs. AND he gives an 80,000 livre allowance. This simply cannot stand--Athénaïs will not have it. She would rather see her lover DEAD than with some other woman. La Voisin will know what to do.

LA VOISIN

Born Catherine Deshayes around 1640, the woman who would become La Voisin married a man named Antoine Monvoisin, a jewelry shop owner. When his businesses failed, Catherine decided to take her growing family’s fortunes in hand. She had skills that she felt sure she could turn into income: some medical knowledge, which she used in work as a midwife, practicing both births and abortions. And though the origins of her career in witchcraft are shady, she also grew a reputation for her fortune telling. To further her craft she studied medicine and physiology, learning how to read people’s body language, their faces, their hands. She could look into the lines of you and see your future. But she could also help you shape that future to your liking. It wasn’t blasphemous, she assured her clients: her talents were gifted by God himself when she was only nine years old. This is a world in which the king has a keen interest in science, but where religion has a central place in people’s lives. In such a world, the occult is seen as a powerful force, and potentially a dangerous one. But at the point, most take a lax attitude to such entertainments. Even the king himself allows diviners and fortune tellers at court sometimes, mostly because he’s a man of science and doesn’t take it seriously. Surely it’s all just a titillating diversion for his courtiers. Surely no one is putting noxious powders in the Sun King’s bowls of nuts!

In the 1600s, a priest called La Voisin’s divination practices into question. Was she really able to read fortunes, or was she deceiving her customers for personal gain? The intelligent Catherine stood in front of a bunch of professors from the Sorbonne, explaining how her gifts worked so convincingly that they believed her. Saved by her skill in rhetoric more than anything else. From there, she worked hard to build an aura around herself: part mystery, part sorcery, part seductive power. The kind of power that lures in the leading lights of Louis’s court. They all want an edge, and they aren’t above turning to the magical to get it. Some want to always win their bets at the card tables, while others aspire to political greatness. One courtier buys himself charms to make him impervious to sword wounds. Others buy concoctions meant to cause others harm: shirts soaked in arsenic, say, or enemas filled with mercuric chloride. But most of her clients, it seems, are wealthy women. They come to her - marquise, comtesses, duchesses, wanting something that might kill a husband or a rival, or ensure that a lover will never look at anyone else. A lover, perhaps, like the king of France. La Voisin can see what her clients truly want, so she dives ever further into the making of charms, amulets, and what’re called “inheritance powders.” It seems that she believes strongly in the powers of things like urine and period blood when it comes to making love potions. When one woman comes to her seeking something to inspire a man’s affection, La Voisin asks her to bring in some of his urine and shells from the eggs he ate for breakfast. How much do you want to bet that he’ll be eating these things by dinner? The ingredients for these concoctions read like an outtake from Hocus Pocus. Arsenic, desiccated toad, the teeth of moles, the fingertips of a hanged man, Spanish fly, iron filings, human blood, the remains of mummies...tasty.

Before long, she took another step into the shadow, adding the infamous “black mass” to her repertoire. She would lie down, her body serving as a living altar for spirits to act on. There are stories of babies being killed during these rituals, their blood spilled onto the living altar and captured in vials for use in potions.

La Voison throws lavish, much-coveted parties in her courtyard garden for her clients. She invests in her image, spending 1,500 livres on a crimson velvet robe threaded all over with beautiful golden eagles. This enterprising divineress has made a new name for herself - a powerful one. But there are those who seek to tear women like her down.

THE AFFAIR OF THE POISONS

In 1677, police chief Nicolas de la Reynie had begun his hunt for the magical underworld he felt sure lay under Paris’ surface. That’s how he came upon 36-year-old divineress and fortune teller Magdelaine de la Grange. She wrote to a prominent Marquis from her prison cell, where she awaited trial, saying that she had important information about a plot against the king. The King ordered her taken to the Bastille, where she could be questioned by La Reynie. She gives few details, but enough to make it clear how much sorcery is being practiced in Paris. So he follows the thread, through Paris’s darkest alleys and its secret dens. It is not just a thread, he realizes, but a web: a tangled magical underworld full of sorceresses and renegade priests. And the more he tugs, the more appear before him. By 1679, a commission is created to interrogate those arrested. They hold their sessions at the Arsenal, lit by torches, in what was called the “Burning Chamber.” These sessions often include torture, which prompt new names, new allegations. Because we should definitely take as gospel things people say after you’ve tied them to a rack! One by one, these men and women are condemned to die for their dark practices. Legs are crushed, others hung by torchlight, yet others burned alive like the witches they are said to be. Eventually, Marie Bosse is arrested - she is La Voisin’s chief rival. You can guess what happens next. La Voison is arrested when she’s coming out of Church.

She is questioned - and tortured - many times. With each successive questioning, she reveals more information. And then she starts dropping prominent names. To the King’s dismay, several women were arrested with ties to the royal court. La Reynie promised the king that no one, no matter how high born, would escape his persecution and pursuit of justice. As the months go on, more and more high born women are arrested and questioned. As the Affair of the Poisons unfolded, it came to the fore that several women used magical means to try and poison the king’s first mistress, Louise.

La Voisin is executed in 1680. It’s the same year that a once-dazzling Fontanges seems to take a strange turn. She’s puffy and ill looking, and ever since her recent miscarriage she seems to forever be seeping blood. No one can cure her. As the Affair of the Poisons continues, another witness comes forward: Marguerite, La Voisin’s daughter. She drops a shocking bombshell...that before she died, La Voisin was long in Athénaïs de Montespan’s employ.

It’s intimated that the king’s long-time mistress first went to the divineress in 1667, where they did a black mass together. THAT’S how she managed to ensnare the king’s obsession. For years, they say, she’s gone to the woman for charms every time the king’s love is in question. She’s sprinkled love potions in his food along with aphrodisiacs to speed their efficacy. A priest was brought in to do an “amatory mass” to control the king’s mind and heart for Athénaïs, during which it was claimed a baby was killed, its blood spread on some communion crackers. And then, when the king elevated Fontanges over her, she decided she’d had quite enough. She went to La Voisin, offering the woman 10,000 ecus to help her kill both the mistress AND the king along with her. The plan was for La Voisin to take a poisoned petition to the King, hoping that handling it would make him sicken and die from the fumes. This seems...pretty unlikely. How is a poisoner supposed to concoct such a thing without it killing her before she can use it? But she wasn’t able to get close enough to him to enact the plan, and so the attempt was thwarted. Fontanges they planned to poison more slowly. By the time she finally died, it would be assumed she died of grief.

How much of this is truth, how much a reputation-slandering lie? La Reynie doesn’t know, and the King is horrified by all of it. Wouldn’t you be, if you found our your lady companion had been secretly feeding you bat’s blood and semen? He is certain of nothing, and so he continues to visit with Athénaïs. For months, she has no idea whatever that she’s being invested for poisoning and black magic. But if his lover is exposed for such practices, he’ll become the laughing stock of Europe. And so he has all such allegations of Athénaïs swept away, burned and buried. We don’t know if it’s because he believes them and wants them hidden to protect himself, or if he thinks they’re all made up to discredit her. But with Fontanges in such a sorry state, the mood at court is...paranoid. “Almost no one trusted his friends anymore,” Primi Visconti reported of the court. “As soon as someone felt ill from having eaten too much, he believed he had been poisoned.”

In 1681, Mademoiselle Fontanges finally dies of her ailments. She is only 19 years old. Later, whispers will circulate that Athénaïs is the one who killed her. Louis might be worried about that too, because he declares he doesn’t want an autopsy performed. Her family disagrees and gets it done anyway. They find no evidence of poison in her stomach - only lungs filled with pus. Modern evidence suggests that she might have had some placenta left inside her from the birth, which caused an infection. Not a pleasant way to spend your final days.

A DARK END

More women are arrested and questioned, some of them held on only the loosest of charges and evidence for years and years. The last head to roll over the Affair of the Poisons would be in 1724. Athenenais de Montespan will live on at court, the allegations about her all silenced. Are any of them true? It’s hard to say, but it doesn’t seem hard to believe that to keep the king’s love, she was willing to go to extraordinary lengths. But in this, no potion can save her. She will never spend time in the king’s bed again. In 1683, after his wife dies, Louis marries another woman in secret. That woman was once the governess for the Madame de Montespan’s children. That potion’s got to sting Athénaïs a little going down.

She faded, slowly but surely, from the king’s dazzling spotlight. She turns her efforts and money to charitable causes and abbeys. And then in 1707, she falls suddenly ill, and the emetic someone gives her makes it worse. She is dying. Lying in her bed, lights on all around her - she always has been afraid of the dark - she confessed her sins to the friends all around her, including the scandals she may have caused. But the biggest scandal of all was kept from public knowledge throughout her lifetime - she may never have known how close she came to the gallows.

 But the most haunting part of this story is the witchhunt that unfolded with the king’s permission. The numerous women who were tortured, beaten, imprisoned, and killed. Some, like Brinvilliers, might have been guilty of the crimes they were accused of. But others, it seems, may have been guilty of nothing more than trying to make the most of the Sun King’s court and its penchant for potions full of ground up toads. In this time of chaos and hysteria, the King let himself be led by fear of those who might be out to get him. As author Ann Somerset says in her book on the Affair, “The King had sought to rid the realm of poisoners, but in reality it was his mind that was poisoned.” Confessions under torture became evidence - the kind that women could be hung on. And many were.

Kate J. Armstrong