As night fell, Marie-Adélaïde’s fever worsened. Louis continued his visits, and Françoise left the bedside only when he arrived. The dauphine’s condition had now deteriorated to the point that she was urged to take the sacraments as a precaution. At first she refused, but under gentle persuasion, she finally agreed that she should prepare for death.
Marie-Adélaïde did not want her usual confessor, Père de La Rue, and she asked for M. Bailly, the priest of the mission of the parish of Versailles. Unfortunately, he was unavailable, so instead she asked for a Franciscan friar, Père Noel. As they waited for the friar to arrive, the dauphin could no longer hide his grief, and the doctors persuaded him to go to his own rooms and stay there in order to spare him the awful experience of witnessing his wife’s last moments.
At last Père Noel arrived. He heard Marie-Adélaïde’s last confession and administered the extreme unction and the last sacraments, which Louis had personally gone to collect at the foot of the grand staircase. An hour later, Marie-Adélaïde asked for the prayers for the dying, but the friar told her that the time had not yet come. Instead, she was urged to try to sleep.
Louis and Françoise waited in the drawing room throughout the sacred ceremony, and when it was over the doctors were summoned into the royal presence. They informed the king that Marie-Adélaïde should be bled from the foot before the fever returned, and that an emetic should be administered before dawn if the bleeding proved ineffective. This was the last thing a doctor should have done to someone in such a weakened state. Liselotte protested, saying that they ought to wait for the sweating to stop before they bled her. The doctors merely mocked her, while Françoise asked if she thought she was cleverer than the physicians. “No, Madame,” replied Liselotte, “but one doesn’t need to be very clever to know that nature must be followed, and since she is inclined to perspire, it would be much better to allow her to go on as she is, instead of making a sick person in a sweat get up to be bled.”18 As it was, the fever did return, and though it was not as violent as before, Marie-Adélaïde had a restless night. The prescribed emetic was administered, but with no effect.
During the day, Marie-Adélaïde faded into unconsciousness, rousing at rare intervals. As evening fell, many of her servants were so distressed that they were allowed into her room even though the king was present. A few minutes after Louis left, Marie-Adélaïde died.
Louis, Françoise, and Mme de Caylus, Françoise’s cousin, drove back to Marly as the court mourned the princess who had been its leading light. Liselotte sympathized with the duchesse de Savoy, for whom the loss of her daughter was irreparable, but the tragedy deeply affected Louis too:
because he had brought up the Dauphiness to suit himself, and she was his greatest comfort, his only joy. She was so light-hearted that she never was at a loss to find some way of distracting him, however sad he might be. She ran in and out a hundred times a day, and each time she had something funny to tell. The King will miss her everywhere, and it is not to be wondered at that her death has sorely afflicted him.19
Louis’s grief was profound, but there was more to come. Marie-Adélaïde had often spoken of her death. “A learned astrologer of Turin,” wrote Liselotte, “had predicted to Madame la Dauphine all that would happen to her, and that she would die in her twenty-seventh year.” While she was still in good health, she often said, “Well, I must enjoy myself, because I cannot enjoy myself long, for I shall die this year.”20 Once she said to her husband that the time was drawing near and she wanted to know whom he would marry after she had gone. He replied that he would marry no one, for he would follow her to the grave within a week.21
As it was, the dauphin had become ill while he’d watched over his wife throughout her final illness, and his complaint was made much worse by the intense grief he felt at her loss. He kept to his rooms at Versailles and allowed no one to see him except his brother, the duc de Berry, his confessor, and the duc de Beauvilliers.
On February 13, he was persuaded to go to Marly to spare him the anguish of hearing the sounds coming from the room above, where the doctors and embalmers were performing their final services for his wife. Although he received visits from Françoise and others, none of them stayed with him for very long, for everyone was so absorbed in their own sorrow that there was no comfort to give or receive.
The dauphin was clearly unwell. His eyes were wild and glazed, and vivid spots had broken out on his face. Still, he waited for the announcement that the king had awoken, then made to go to the lever as usual, but the tears that he had been holding back so bravely spilled down his cheeks and he turned away without saying anything. It was only when Saint-Simon pressed him that he left his room and went to the king’s apartments.
There were only a few people at Marly, and they had assembled in the drawing room, while those who had the entrée waited in the small room that separated the king’s apartments from those belonging to Françoise. She was still in her bedroom, but when she heard that Louis was awake, she went in to see him alone. After a few minutes, the others followed her. Then the dauphin entered. As soon as Louis saw him, he called him to his side and “embraced him tenderly and long, and many times. These first touching moments were passed in broken words mingled with tears.”22
As Louis looked into his grandson’s face, he became alarmed and ordered the doctors to take his pulse. They did so and said that it was not quite normal, although they would later admit that it was, in fact, very bad, and they said that he should go to bed. Louis embraced the young man once again and told him to take care of himself before sending him to his room.
Louis was also feeling unwell. He had spent a bad night and had awoken with a headache, but he carried on as usual, receiving some nobles who had presented themselves. He also visited the dauphin, whose pulse had become more erratic, and who was now showing signs of fever. The dauphin spent his time in prayer and sacred reading. Again, Louis spent a difficult night as his worry for the dauphin increased. He expressed his fears to Boudin that his grandson might not recover.
On Monday, February 15, Louis was bled. Meanwhile, the health of the dauphin had not improved. The king visited him, as did Françoise and the duc de Berry, but the following day the patient’s condition worsened. He complained of a consuming fire, as though he was being devoured by flames, which became more violent as the day wore on, while the spots on his face had now spread all over his body. As evening approached, he asked Louis’s permission to take communion very early in the morning without ceremony and with no assistants at the mass which would be said in his chamber. Louis granted this request, and immediately after midnight, the sacraments were brought. The dauphin now spent two hours in great communication with God, but he then became very confused. He was given extreme unction, after which he died at half past eight on the morning of February 18. He was only twenty-nine years old.
Saint-Simon hinted that the dauphin and dauphine died by poisoning. He noted that just as the court was settling in at Marly, Marie-Adélaïde’s premier physician, Jean Boudin, warned her to be careful, for he had reliable information that certain persons wished to poison her and the dauphin, whom he also warned. He also spoke of the matter openly in the salon, and, needless to say, fear spread among the courtiers. Louis demanded a private word with him. Boudin told the king that his information was sound, although he did not know its origins. This was the first hint of something mysterious afoot, and while his friends told him to keep quiet, the rumor spread into the wider community. As though this was not enough, twenty-four hours had scarcely passed when the dauphin received a similar warning from his brother, the king of Spain. This new message was vague and gave no indication of its provenance, but King Philippe appeared to believe it nonetheless. This one mentioned only the dauphin, although the dauphine was implicated. While everyone at court outwardly dismissed these warnings, inwardly they continued to be disturbed by them, and a feeling of consternation and silence descended upon the court.
A week later,
on February 5, the duc de Noailles presented Marie-Adélaïde with a beautiful snuffbox containing Spanish snuff, which she very much enjoyed.23 She kept the box on a table in her private boudoir. That evening, she was taken ill with a violent fever and went to bed. There she remained until morning, when she felt well enough to get up and go about her daily business. However, the next day she again felt unwell. The fever had returned, and she now began to experience a pain below the temples that was so violent that she begged the king, who was coming to see her, to stay away. The pain could not be relieved by tobacco, opium, or bleedings, but as her fever increased, the pain subsided. The duchess’s illness inspired rumors about the snuffbox, but when one of her ladies, Mme de Lévi, went to retrieve the box, it could not be found anywhere.24
Elsewhere, however, Saint-Simon suggested that the duc du Maine, protected by Mme de Maintenon, had spread the rumor that Louis’s nephew, Orléans, had poisoned the dauphin and dauphine and that Louis had believed it.25 His motives were easy to find: the duc, knowing that the king was now quite old, feared his loss of status:
The death of all the princes of the blood of an age to take part in the world had won him his latest and most important grandeur. By crushing this member of the royal family with so fearful a calumny, and by inducing the king and society to believe it, he counted on destroying him forever in the most odious and ignominious manner.26
Did Louis believe it, though? Liselotte, who was, after all, Orléans’s mother, knew that he did not. The matter was “reported to the king in all seriousness,” she wrote, “and he immediately spoke of it to my son. With unfailing kindness, he assured him that he did not believe it.” However, he advised Orléans to “send his apothecary, the poor scholarly Humberg, to the Bastille in order that he might clear himself.”27
As it turned out, Humberg was not sent to the Bastille, because Louis forbade the officials there to receive him. Louis simply refused to believe what was being said about his nephew, and his feelings on the subject were supported by the results of the autopsies that were carried out on the bodies of the dauphine and the dauphin. No traces of poison were found. “Well, well, Madame,” said Louis to Françoise, “didn’t I say that what you told me about my nephew was false?”28 Marie-Adélaïde had died of measles, while “it was the bad atmosphere and grief which were responsible for the dauphin’s death.”29
The young couple was prepared for burial, their hearts being sent to the Val-de-Grâce. On February 25, Louis informed the duchesse de Ventadour, the governess of the couple’s two small boys, that the eldest boy, the duc de Bretagne, would henceforth take the name and rank of dauphin.30 On the following day, the bodies of the dauphine and dauphin were buried together at Saint-Denis, but Louis was forced to relive these tragedies all over again when, on March 5, he received the formal condolences from various institutions.31 Every last detail of their short lives was read out in speeches that must have wrenched his heart. Little did he know that his grief was about to deepen still further.
The next day, the duc de Bretagne and his younger brother, the duc d’Anjou, developed the measles rash. Although the children had been given a private baptism at birth, Louis now ordered Mme de Ventadour to have them christened in a formal ceremony as a matter of urgency. She was free to choose the godparents, but both boys were to be given the name Louis.
The king’s physician, Fagon, and eight colleagues he had brought in from Paris, agreed that the best course of action was to bleed the two boys. Mme de Ventadour thought that the duc d’Anjou, who was only two years old, was too young to be subjected to such treatment. She carried him to her room, wrapped him warmly, and fed him some wine and a biscuit.32 The child recovered from his illness, but his elder brother was not so lucky. The five-year-old duc de Bretagne was bled, but the treatment had no effect. As his condition worsened, he cried that he did not want to go to Saint-Denis: “That is a horrible journey,” he said, “horrible.”33 That night, just before midnight, the little boy died.
Louis reflected upon the terrible events of the past year, during which three heirs to the throne had died, as well as the young princess who had come to his kingdom as a child and whom he had loved instantly as though she had been his daughter. He arrived at the conclusion that God was punishing him: for his vanity, for the hardship he had inflicted upon his people, for his love of gloire, which he relentlessly pursued no matter the cost. Now he knew the price of glory: it was to be paid for with the lives of his loved ones, the security of his crown, and the tears he would never stop shedding.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Le Soleil se Coucher
Terrible events had shaken France and broken Louis’s heart. The ageing king now longed for nothing more than peace. As it was, events had conspired to grant this desperate wish. The installation of a Tory government in England under Queen Anne had marked a major shift in the political landscape of the country. England no longer insisted upon the restoration of the Habsburgs to the Spanish throne; instead, realizing the futility of the ongoing war, they were desirous to reach an agreement with France that would foster peace and commerce between their two countries.
This possibility was brought a step closer when Emperor Joseph died childless in April 1711. His brother, who still called himself Charles III of Spain, was elected emperor that October. In July of the following year, the maréchal de Villars,1 as commander of the French forces, orchestrated a daring maneuver to capture the town of Denain in Flanders, close to the border with France. This cut off Prince Eugène’s lines of communication so that he had no choice but to lift his siege of the nearby town of Landrecies. Over the next few months Villars swept Eugène away, reestablishing Vauban’s ceinture de fer and paving the way for Louis to negotiate peace from a position of strength.
The main stumbling block to any treaty was the allies’ demand that the thrones of France and Spain must never be occupied by the same prince. However, as Louis stipulated in the letters patent of 1700, when Philippe accepted the Spanish throne, Philippe would not renounce his claim to the throne of France. At that time, this clause was of little consequence. The French line of succession rested safely with the dauphin and his son, the duc de Bourgogne, who, in turn, was the father of two fine boys. The Bourbon line, therefore, was secure for at least the next three generations. Then tragedy struck and only the two-year-old duc d’Anjou remained. Louis, however, worried that young Anjou would not live. Since he firmly believed that the right to the succession was decreed by God and enshrined in the laws of primogeniture, in the event of the duc d’Anjou’s death, Philippe V of Spain would become the next in line to the throne of France. Should that happen, Philippe would be succeeded on the Spanish throne by his brother, the duc de Berry.
This scenario was unacceptable to the English, who wrote to Louis to tell him that unless Philippe renounced his claim to the French throne and Berry renounced his rights in Spain, the peace talks would end and the war continue. Louis wrote to Philippe V, pointing out that he had kept the war going long enough to secure him and his queen on the throne of Spain, but “it is not right that I conclude the ruin of my kingdom solely with the view of preserving their rights either to reunite one day the monarchies of France and Spain or to divide them among their children.”2 He then warned Philippe, “It only remains for me to decide whether I want peace at this price or the continuation of war. As the second course is not possible to sustain, I will certainly take the first.”3 Philippe had no choice but to agree, and he announced his decision to Louis on April 22, 1712.4 The peace negotiations would eventually lead to the Treaties of Utrecht, signed between France and the allies on April 11, 1713, and Rastadt, which Louis signed with the Holy Roman Empire on March 6, 1714.
In May 1714, Louis once again was required to receive the Holy Sacrament for a member of his family. This time, it was his grandson, the duc de Berry, who was in need of the last rites. He had sustained a serious injury while out hunting a few days earlier but had said nothing about it at the time. When
he began to pass blood, he put it down to dysentery; but, again, he ordered his valet to say nothing of it, “for fear of being made to swallow heaps of remedies.”5 He was well enough to hunt again that Saturday, and it was then that the secret of his accident came out. A peasant asked one of the king’s men how the duc was faring. When told that he was well, the peasant commented, “Princes must have harder bones than we peasants, since I saw him receive a blow on Thursday at the chase while he was pulling up his horse which would have burst open three peasants.”
The duc’s symptoms were alarming: “a virulent fever, nose bleeding, drowsiness, and sickness accompanied by a high temperature.” Worse was to come, for he began to vomit clots of black blood, to the despair of Fagon, who said there was no remedy “because there was already gangrene in his body.” The duc died at the age of only twenty-eight. He and his wife, who was pregnant, hoped their child would be a boy. As it was, the duchesse gave birth to a stillborn daughter.6
The succession now rested upon two factors: the continuing good health of the king and the survival of his four-year-old great-grandson, the duc d’Anjou. Should Anjou die, the crown would go to Philippe d’Orléans, the son of Louis’s late brother, Philippe, and Liselotte. Philippe was a good soldier, a lover of the arts, especially music, a good conversationalist, and quite learned. Perhaps his greatest diversion, however, was women. “I wish that he didn’t like them so much,” wrote Liselotte, “because he is ruining both himself and his children; besides, his fondness for them leads him into such debauched society that he is weaned away from everything good.”7
Then there was the rumor that Orléans had poisoned the duc and duchesse de Bourgogne and their son. “I, who would let myself be burned at the stake to testify to his innocence, looked upon the rumor at first as mere folly,” wrote Liselotte. While Louis did not believe it, the rumor cast its shadow. Orléans was unpopular in Paris, in the provinces, and at court. His troubles were undoubtedly caused by a cabal against him, perpetrated by the duc du Maine, his wife, and his half brother, the duc d’Antin. This led to an estrangement between Louis and his nephew, which “now became more and more visible to the Court and to those who were producing it.”8 In the face of this, Louis took the step, unique in the history of France, of raising the duc du Maine and the comte de Toulouse, his two sons by Athénaïs, to a rank just below that of princes of the blood and declaring them and their descendants eligible to succeed him should the legitimate line fail.9
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