TWENTY-ONE
Versailles
The Versailles of Louis XIV had begun as a dream. In the springtime of his youth, he had planned the château and its sprawling gardens as an expression of his love for Louise de La Vallière. Now the dream had become a reality. The château lay before him, a magnificent symbol of his power and glory. Beyond it, the gardens stretched out as far as the eye could see. It was late spring. The flowers were blooming, and the trees had taken on their mantles of green. The air was pleasantly warm, and a cooling breeze gently swept across the empty courtyard.
Louis had arrived amid great ceremony, but it was not Louise at his side; it was the queen, Marie-Thérèse. Philippe and Liselotte followed, and ranged behind them were the princes of the blood, courtiers, ministers, and an army of servants. All eyes gazed at Louis’s creation, overawed by its grandeur. All were familiar with Versailles; they had been there countless times, passed endless days and nights in lavish entertainments, but this time it was different. This was no ordinary visit. As the wide, golden central gate slowly opened, Louis and Marie-Thérèse advanced into the courtyard, while the rest of the family and the court made their way through the smaller gates on either side. From now on, Versailles was to be Louis’s home, the seat of the royal family and the center of government. It was May 6, 1682, and the Sun King had taken possession of his new palace.
Versailles, or what there was of it, scarcely merited such a stately entrance. Many of the buildings were obscured by scaffolding. Work had barely begun on the north wing, although the south wing was habitable. The western façade was completed, but the space within was a clutter of scaffolding and tables covered with drawings, brushes, and paint. The smell of fresh paint and gilding was overpowering, while the chambers, corridors, and staircases were filled with masons;1 the sound of their constant hammering could disturb the serenity of even the most forbearing of people. In the gardens too there was still much work to be done, but there were splendors, hints of the marvels to come. The walls and ceiling of the Grand Staircase, which would become known as the escalier des ambassadeurs because Louis would greet foreign ambassadors here, were decorated with images from antiquity, especially chosen to portray Louis in all his glory.
Louis was impatient to see his dream fulfilled, and for this reason he moved the court into the château in a bid to expedite the work. For those with eyes to see and the vision to imagine, however, Versailles was essentially realized; it stood on the threshold of being.
The ladies and gentlemen of the court made the best of a difficult situation. It was not pleasant to live in what was effectively a building site, but it was a court after all and they were courtiers. The ladies wore brightly colored dresses in silk or brocade over white chemises, which fell from the shoulders to reveal a pure décolleté adorned with jewels. Pearls were still popular, worn as necklaces and decorating the hair. In the summer, the ladies carried fans of lace, while furred muffs kept their hands warm in wintertime. The gentlemen followed Louis’s example and wore long brocade coats, left open to show off an elaborately embroidered waistcoat or a pure white shirt of silk or lawn beneath. A flourish of ribbons, now back in vogue, fastened cravats, ornamented one shoulder, and adorned sword hilts, lace cuffs, and feathered hats. Shoes were square-toed with high red heels and decorated with large bows. Perruques were routinely worn now, framing the face and flowing in luxurious curls to the waist. The courtiers experimented with color, and perruques of all shades were seen, though Louis favored black.
The court had barely settled into Versailles when the king’s happiness was crowned with a new addition to the royal family. The dauphine, who was seven months pregnant when she moved to her new home, felt her first contractions at the beginning of August, but she had told only the queen. Now, two days later, there was no chance of concealing the fact that her baby was on its way. Louis had already appointed an accoucheur, the same Clément who had delivered the duc du Maine, and he trusted him completely.
As Versailles bustled with excited ministers, ambassadors, foreign leaders, secretaries, servants, and subjects, only Louis remained calm enough to go to bed that night.2 Nevertheless, even he had to be alerted to the imminent birth, and at five the following morning, some brave soul was sent to rouse him. The king asked if his presence was needed immediately, and upon being assured that it was not, he calmly went to mass before making his way to his daughter-in-law’s chamber. Inside, the crowds pressed on all sides, and Louis was obliged to push his way in. He fed the dauphine chicken broth with his own hand, all the while offering words of comfort and encouragement. Marie-Thérèse, who also attended, sent orders for the relics of Sainte-Marguerite to be exposed in the chamber, a privilege usually reserved for the accouchements of the queens of France.
The dauphine’s pains continued into the next day, when a birthing chair was brought in readiness, but with still no sign of the baby, Louis left to go to dinner. He returned to the dauphine’s chamber and remained with her throughout the night. However, the dawn brought with it no change, and Marie-Anne began to despair. She told Louis that “it was unfortunate for her to have known so good a prince, and to have had so good a father and so good a husband, to leave them so soon.”3 Louis tenderly replied that “he would be content if she had a girl, provided she suffered less and that she was soon delivered.”4
The anxious faces burst into smiles when, at last, the cry of the newborn baby was heard. Louis had prearranged a special code with Clément: he would ask if the child was a boy or a girl, upon which Clément would reply “I do not know” for a girl, or “I do not know yet” for a boy. When the moment they had all been waiting for arrived, Louis duly asked the sex of the child. Clément replied that he did not know yet, but his tone and the glint in his eye gave the game away. Louis wanted to be the first to announce the birth of his grandson, the first of a new generation of Bourbon princes. He turned to the waiting crowd and told them that a new duc de Bourgogne had been born. He then left the chamber and began to make his way through the throng of courtiers, who threw themselves at his feet, kissed his hands, and even tried to embrace him. With a son and a grandson, the Bourbon line was doubly secure.5
Marie-Thérèse had also found happiness at last, although for her it was tinged with loneliness. She shared the court’s love of gambling and joined courtiers at the various tables in the salons. Her favorite game was hombre, although she was not very good at it and she frequently lost. After a few games, she would withdraw to her room, where she would shut herself up with a few favored ladies and pray silently at her small altar. Her inability to master the French language and her lack of wit were insurmountable barriers to her ever being able to form a court of her own, as Louis had encouraged her to do when they were first married. The king spent his days with his ministers, courtiers, and his mistresses, yet he would always return to the queen’s bed every night no matter how late the hour, though he came out of duty, not love, and Marie-Thérèse, who had seen six of her seven children die, had little but her rigid Spanish Catholicism to console her.6
In May 1683, Louis, the queen, the dauphine, Philippe, and Liselotte, followed by a large entourage, travelled to Franche-Comté and Alsace to inspect the fortifications. It was a long journey, and upon their return to Versailles, it was obvious that the queen was not well. She had developed an abscess under her left arm, which the physicians treated by bleeding her. Naturally, the only effect this had was to weaken the queen still further. Louis was the first to realize that she was not going to recover. He rushed to the chapel and ordered the altar candles and the sacred heart to be taken to her bedroom. Here, the queen received the last sacraments “with exemplary resignation,”7 while Louis followed the sad ceremony with great devotion. Marie-Thérèse died on July 30 after only four days of illness. Louis tearfully noted, “This is the first grief she has ever caused me,”8 but Liselotte, who had loved the queen and was deeply distressed by her death, had much more to say. “Her death is entirely due to the i
gnorance of the doctors, who killed her as surely as if they had pierced her heart with a sword,”9 she wrote. In another letter, she related a tragic comment uttered by the queen: “Marie-Thérèse said on her deathbed that in all her life since she became Queen she had had only one really happy day.”10
Françoise, who had attended Marie-Thérèse throughout her short illness, turned to withdraw to her own apartments. However, the duc de La Rochefoucauld stopped her and drew her attention to the grieving king: “This is not the time to leave him, Madame,” he said. “In the state he is in now, he really wants you.”11 Louis, despite the almost offhand words he had spoken following the death of his wife and queen, was affected by her loss, but his grief was short-lived. Nevertheless, he could never bear to remain in a place where someone close to him had died, so, as he had done following the deaths of Mazarin and his mother, he made arrangements to leave Versailles for a while. This was the first sadness to be associated with his glittering château, but it would not be the last. He then travelled to Saint-Cloud, where he spent a few days before moving on to Fontainebleau, which would be his home for much of the rest of the summer.
The sorrow was not yet over for Louis, however. Colbert was finally succumbing to the pressures of working for so demanding a master. For almost a quarter of a century, the minister had served Louis well. Apart from reforming the fiscal system, he had also improved the postal service and the roads, and he was the driving force behind the Canal du Midi, a remarkable civil engineering project that linked France’s Atlantic coast with the Mediterranean. He regulated manufacturing and commerce,12 and renovated France’s navy. Now, overburdened, his initial enthusiasm and love for his office had gone; the pleasant, open demeanor he showed his colleagues gave way to depression and irascibility. He constantly fretted about finding Louis the increasing amounts of money he needed for Versailles, military earthworks, and other buildings projects. He worried about the deepening poverty of Louis’s subjects, for which he would carry the blame.13 Louis, it seemed, could never be satisfied. Even as he toured his latest fortifications or conducted sieges, he was always thinking about his beloved Versailles; his most recent tour was no exception, and he wrote to Colbert ordering him to hurry the work because he might have to shorten his journey by a few days.14
Colbert, however, was now seriously ill, and it was left to his son, the marquis de Seignelay, to organize the queen’s obsequies and take care of her debts. Seignelay kept the king informed of his father’s progress, while Louis sent sympathetic letters in which he expressed the hope that God would not take from the world he who was so necessary to the welfare of the state. He spoke of his friendship for his minister,15 but in truth, their relationship had never been anything more than master and servant. Louis certainly respected Colbert, even though the minister did not always agree with royal policy, and when Colbert died on September 6, 1683, Louis sent a letter of sincere condolence to his widow. She had lost a husband who was dear to her, he wrote, while he had lost a minister with whom he was fully satisfied.16
Colbert had achieved much during his lifetime in Louis’s service. Following the arrest of Foucquet at the very start of Louis’s personal reign, he had seized and developed the overseas trade Foucquet had initiated. He fostered commerce by encouraging shipbuilding and imposing taxes on foreign ships entering French ports. Colbert both hated and admired the Dutch, and he adopted many of their business practices as he organized overseas companies, but his heavy-handed approach and insistence upon directing affairs from Paris antagonized local officials, especially in Marseilles, who preferred to carry on their businesses as they saw fit. As a result, the most successful companies were those that traded privately.
The most productive of Colbert’s enterprises was the East India Company, which he founded in 1664 and which would outlast the reign of Louis XIV. The Levant Company, founded five years later, lacked investment and clashed with the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles, which traded with Turkey with greater success.
Offshore, the French population of the West Indies was growing, but Colbert interfered with trade in a bid to rival the Dutch, and his approach merely annoyed the settlers and proved detrimental to their businesses. The situation was better in Canada, however. Still known as New France at this stage, it was administered as any other French province was, with a governor and an intendant. Further south, Père Jacques Marquette and a fur trader named Louis Joliet discovered the Mississippi in 1669–70. Shortly afterwards, La Salle17 opened up the Mississippi basin as far as the Gulf of Mexico. He sailed the river to its mouth and named it “Colbert” in recognition of the assistance he had received from the minister. Three years later, the region would be named La Louisiane in honor of Louis XIV, who nevertheless showed little interest in France’s overseas enterprise.18
Following his death, Colbert’s offices were largely taken over by Louvois, except the one that he had really coveted, that of the navy, which went to Colbert’s capable son, the marquis de Seignelay.
Colbert’s death occurred while Louis was recovering from an accident. He had been riding in the forest of Fontainebleau, and a fall from his horse had left him with a painful dislocated left elbow. The first course of treatment was, of course, to bleed him, but “the cruel vapors that this remedy aroused in the king” prevented his physicians from prescribing it. Instead, it was decided that Louis should go on a special diet, which was expected to produce the same effects as bleeding. He would abstain entirely from eating meat, and he drank almost no wine, a regime he would observe for four or five days. The swelling on his arm was treated with an embrocation made of oil of roses and egg yolks mixed with vinegar and plantain water. On the sixth day, the bruise came up and the inflammation began to cease, at which point the embrocation was stopped and the arm was wrapped each morning and evening in a poultice of strong wine in which had been boiled balustine, myrtle berries, and leaves of wormwood. Next Louis was purged with ordinary bouillon, which produced a satisfying quantity of phlegm and bile. Finally, now that the threat of inflammation and gangrene had been removed, the arm was placed into a plaster of wax and resin, which supported it while the strength and flexibility returned, putting the arm well on the road to recovery.19
Even when they were not worried about his health, the eyes of the court were firmly fixed on Louis. Always the topic of conversation, people wondered whether or not he would remarry. “To tell the truth,” wrote Liselotte, “I believe that he will do so.”20 As it was, Louis had already made up his mind that he would take a second wife. In fact, he had already chosen her. It was while the court was at Fontainebleau that he began to show increasing favor to Françoise, and his attention caused her to “change the course of her life.”21 Louis had decided that he would marry Françoise.
Before he took such an important step, however, Louis wished to test the opinion of his ministers, and he approached Louvois “as though the thing had not yet been decided.” Louvois thought it was an appalling idea: “Ah! Sire!” he cried, “Has Your Majesty seriously considered this? The greatest King in the world, covered in glory, to marry the Widow Scarron: do you wish to be dishonored?” He then realized that he had perhaps gone too far, and he threw himself at Louis’s feet, tears streaming down his face, begging Louis to forgive him for the liberties he had taken. He urged Louis to punish him by relieving him of all his offices and casting him into prison. Louis ordered him to get up: “Are you mad?” he demanded before turning on his heel and walking away from the grovelling minister.22
When Louis made known to Françoise his intention to marry her, his proposal—or was it a command?—threw her into turmoil. She was filled with uncertainty over her thoughts, her fears, and her hopes. “Her heart was not free,” wrote Mme de Caylus, “and her mind was very troubled. In order to excuse her obvious distress, and the tears she freely wept, she complained of the vapors.” She spent a lot of time walking in the forest of Fontainebleau with a friend and, when she returned, she appeared to have recovered h
er composure.23
In her confusion, she turned to her confessor, Abbé Gobelin, for advice. He told her, “Do not think of your own feelings, madame, think of your duty to the King and his happiness; and of the great opportunity to which God calls you.”24 The opportunity of which he spoke was for her to accomplish her cherished ambition to lead Louis to salvation. A palpable change now came over Françoise. While once she had hated the court and actively looked for an opportunity to leave it for good, she now saw it as her duty to remain.25 Louis, meanwhile, moved her into the queen’s old apartment at Fontainebleau.26
Shortly afterwards, a small group of people—the archbishop of Paris; Père de La Chaise; Alexandre Bontemps, Louis’s premier valet de chambre and confidant; the marquise de Montchevreuil, Françoise’s close friend, and her husband; and one of Françoise’s femmes de chambre—gathered in the chapel at Versailles. It was dark outside, for the midnight hour was about to strike. Louis then entered, as did Françoise. Vows were exchanged, prayers were said and the blessing given, and Louis and Françoise were pronounced husband and wife.
The marriage was secret because there was no need to make it public;27 Louis had taken a wife, not a queen. It was not such an extraordinary decision, as morganatic marriages were not uncommon in that day and age. Louis’s decision might have been influenced by his council,28 but it could just as easily have been his own wish, for which he had several reasons. First, he saw no need to found a second royal family. He already had a son and one grandson, while the dauphine was well into her second pregnancy and, indeed, would produce a second son on December 19. Another factor was Louis’s past experience. He had grown up amid the turmoil and disorder that could be caused by overambitious family members, and he had no inclination to inflict such horrors on his own son and his family. Françoise, at forty-eight, was too old to produce children, so this danger was removed. Moreover, she was not of royal blood, and so could not be queen.29
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