by Hilton, Lisa
It seems that when Athénaïs became aware of her power over the King, she feared his love as much as she desired it. Some commentators have attempted rather implausibly to cast her as a reluctant victim of the King’s passion, while others are determined to see her as a ruthless strategist with a clear mission to seduce him. Montespan’s role is thus equally ambiguous. Was her husband’s absence a convenience, allowing Athénaïs to pursue her schemes unimpeded, or was it his neglect that left her unprotected and vulnerable? Neither view is incompatible with the other. Though her pride and ambition may have pulled her towards Louis, her religion and sense of social position may have drawn her away. At the end of 1666 she was certainly vacillating between her duty to her husband and her desire for the King. She famously remarked, “Heaven defend me from becoming the King’s mistress, but were such a misfortune to befall me, I should certainly not have the audacity to appear before the Queen!,” an observation which, despite its obvious hypocrisy, may yet contain a germ of truth. It is true, as Saint-Simon recounts, that she pleaded with her husband to take her to his country estate at Guyenne as she was afraid of the consequences of the King’s interest. Montespan, with characteristic indifference to his wife’s feelings, did not find the journey convenient, and she remained at court.
If Athénaïs was secretly plotting to attract the King, why would she sabotage her plan just as it was coming to fruition? Perhaps she had a psychological need to believe that her hand had been forced, that her husband’s carelessness justified her actions. For all her celebrated boldness and defiance, Athénaïs remained a religious woman. She always adhered, for example, to the fast days of the Church, a particular sacrifice given her greediness, and when the Duchesse d’Uzès once expressed surprise at her strictness, she responded angrily, “What, Madame? Because I commit one sin am I to commit all others?” If Athénaïs could believe that she had honestly attempted to escape disgrace, she could assuage her very real guilt at the prospect of adultery, and appease her conscience without conflict. Mme. de Caylus comments: “Far from being born debauched, the character of Mme. de Montespan was naturally distanced from gallantry, and drawn towards virtue.” All the same, the scandalous poet Aretino had suggested that the only roles available to women were wife, nun or whore, and Athénaïs may have concurred with him in finding the last option the most agreeable. She wanted to believe that the King had a genuine passion for her, that she could conquer his love by her spirit, not merely through her machinations. Like Louise, she held the view that true love was the only excuse for sin, but as she was more sensible, when she had made her choice she damned herself with gusto.
If the King were truly in love, what then? Kings are not in the habit of waiting on their desires; as Mme. de Sévigné’s cousin Bussy-Rabutin remarked, a King in love does not sigh for long. Some years earlier, Louis had taken a passing fancy to one of the Queen’s maids-of-honor, a hussy named Mlle. de la Mothe-Houdancourt, who, despite already having several lovers, put up an enticing show of resistance. The superintendent of the maids, one Mme. de Navailles, had gone so far as to block up the doors and windows of their dormitory to repulse Louis and a party of gallants who were attempting a slithering assault over the roofs of the palace of St. Germain. The reluctant maid had opportunity to preserve her spurious virtue in a convent, while Mme. de Navailles was rewarded with a long and brutal disgrace in exile in the country. Whatever charming manners concealed the King’s intentions, he demanded instant submission from women. Unlike his great-grandson Louis XV, he never went so far as to force himself on anyone, but then, he never had to. Monsieur’s second wife sniffed that not even the kitchenmaids were safe from his lust. If Athénaïs had really caught Louis’s attention, she could not risk backing down. So she hesitated, aware that restraint increased her value, but also of the irrevocable consequences of her decision.
In May 1667, a choice was made for her. Louis began to clear the way for a new favorite. Politically, he was facing the first test of his independent rule with the outbreak of the Devolution war, and before he departed for the front in Flanders, he tidied up his personal affairs. In the Queen’s dowry settlement, negotiated by Mazarin before his death, Marie-Thérèse had ceded her right of inheritance to the Spanish territories in the Netherlands in return for the payment of half a million ecus, a sum which, on the death of her father Philip IV in 1665, remained unpaid — just as the canny Mazarin had predicted it would. This gave Louis an opportunity to increase his territories by invading the Spanish holdings in Flanders on the pretext of claiming compensation for Marie-Thérèse’s dowry.
Louis had inherited a strong army, but the complications of the Fronde had damaged its discipline and organization. The regiments were under the personal control of their officers, who made a profit on the expenses paid to them, and there were many abuses, from inadequate feeding and clothing of the men to the system of passévivants, whereby expenses were paid for a full company when about 40 percent of the troops consisted of imaginary soldiers invented for the financial enrichment of the officer. From 1661, Louis and his war minister, Louvois, took the army in hand and tried to combat such feudal abuses, introducing reforms such as paying the soldiers every ten days. Within six years, Louis had 50,000 well-trained men under the generalship of the Maréchal de Turenne. It was the finest army in Europe, and Louis, like a young man with a fast horse, was dying to test its mettle. On 8 May 1667, he sent to the Spanish government a “Treaty on the rights of the Most Christian Queen on diverse states of the monarchy of Spain.” It was an incitement to an international conflict masquerading as the most reasonably bourgeois civil right: a husband claiming on behalf of his wife the portion of her paternal heritage to which she, and therefore he, was entitled.
What Marie-Thérèse thought about her husband making war in her own name against her own country was never considered. Louis, meanwhile, was thrilled at the prospect of a real conflict to assert his authority as a king. One of the officers, the Comte de Coligny, sent a dashing description of the campaign to Bussy-Rabutin in the country: “Everything that you have seen of the magnificence of Solomon and the grandeur of the King of Persia is nothing compared with the pomp which accompanies the King on his journey. All that one sees passing in the streets are plumes, golden costumes, chariots, mules magnificently harnessed, warhorses. All the courtiers, the officers and the volunteers have left with sumptuous equipages, one counts thirty thousand horses solely for them.”
Louise, described by Mme. de Sévigné as “that little violet which hid itself under the grass and was ashamed of being mistress,” was no consort for such a flamboyant warrior, but the King compensated her by making her a duchess and legitimizing her little girl. On 13 May 1667, he issued letters patent on behalf of “our dear and well-beloved and very loyal Louise de La Vallière,” giving her the duchy of Vaujours, which would pass to her children after her, and acknowledging his daughter Marie-Anne with “all honors.” Louise, who was pregnant yet again with the future Comte de Vermandois, remarked sadly and accurately that it was like a present given to a dismissed servant. Earlier that month, the gossips had observed, Louis had taken Athénaïs for a carriage ride à deux.
The court left St. Germain on 16 May, and on the 24th Louis departed Fontainebleau to join his armies. Marie-Thérèse, who was, as usual, behindhand with the news of Louise’s elevation, took the opportunity to exercise some regal spite and maliciously suggested that the Duchesse de Vaujours should depart to inspect her new country estate. Louise left sadly in her duchess’s coach, hung, according to strict etiquette, with scarlet fabric (only princesses of the blood might nail it into place), quietly determined to stay in communication with the King. She waited anxiously at Versailles for news of the campaign.
On 25 May, Louis inspected his troops, then took the road towards the enemy, including Athénaïs among the ladies in his carriage. Louis always insisted on traveling with women. He thought a journey with a man too likely to end in an embarrassing petition. Such an
invitation, despite its prestige, was rather a mixed blessing, since Louis, who was an impatient traveler, refused to allow the ladies pause for sleep or even to relieve themselves. To aggravate the latter problem, they were also expected to share with gusto his enormous meals. Making amusing conversation for twelve or fourteen hours in a jolting, freezing coach whose glasses were always open — the King loathed stuffiness — with a bloated stomach and a screaming bladder, was a miserable privilege. On one occasion, the Duchesse de Chevreuse traveled with Louis all the way from Versailles to Fontainebleau in the most urgent need. She was so afraid of displeasing the King that she bore it for six hours, almost fainting with discomfort. When at last they arrived, she dashed to the chapel, unable to restrain herself any longer, and relieved herself in a holy vessel while the Duc de Beauvilliers stood guard.
Louis always admired Athénaïs’s capacity for endurance in such situations. She was too wise ever to complain, and even when she was pregnant she would follow him on campaign, tolerating the lurching carriages and haphazard accommodation. It was lucky that her health was so strong, as Louis’s contempt for physical weakness allowed no exceptions. Years later, he ordered his granddaughter, the Duchesse de Berry, to travel with the court to Fontainebleau when she was three months’ pregnant, despite her doctors’ advice that the trip would be a risk to the child. His one concession to the Duchesse’s condition was that she was permitted to travel by barge, which offered a smoother ride than the coach. But her boat collided with a bridge, and her party narrowly avoided drowning. Unsurprisingly, she miscarried. Louis’s view of the matter was summed up in a letter from his sister-in-law, Monsieur’s second wife, who wrote that of course the Duchesse’s accident was unfortunate, but not upsetting. “After all, she is all right . . . and the child was only a girl.”4
In 1673, when Athénaïs was expecting her daughter Mlle. de Nantes, the journey to the front took the royal party through the Vosges mountains, on winding, precipitous roads surrounded, as Mademoiselle recalled, by trees “of a green so black and so melancholy that they were fearful.” They traveled through seven towns in eight days on routes packed with terrified refugees. On another occasion, Louis’s entourage was forced to spend the night in a cottage that was little more than a barn. The Queen took the only bed, and the ladies had straw pallets on the floor. Marie-Thérèse was concerned about the promiscuity of such an arrangement, but Louis remarked dryly that if she left the bed curtains open, no one could get into mischief while she observed them all.
In 1667, Louis’s troops, under the command of Turenne, had begun their campaign on the disputed Flanders borders. Their victories were as impressive as their lacy and befeathered outfits. The Spanish quickly surrendered Armentières and Charleroi, and two more towns fell after a few days’ fighting. Before attacking Tournai and Douai, the King ordered a pause for the Queen to join him, ostensibly to allow time for the repair of the fortifications at Charleroi. A rendezvous was arranged at Avesnes on the Netherlands border, and the Queen, whom Athénaïs had rejoined at Compiègne, departed on the morning of 7 June. Meanwhile, Louise, still languishing at Versailles, having heard of the King’s victories, rashly decided to go and congratulate him in person. In the one defiant and predictably ill-judged action of her life, she set off for Flanders. Her carriage arrived at La Fère, where the Queen’s party was resting for the night, on the evening of the 7th. Marie-Thérèse wept with rage and humiliation, and all her ladies, including Athénaïs, professed their shock and disgust at such scandalous impertinence. The Queen had poor Louise locked out of the church where they all heard Mass, and when they broke the next stage of their journey, she gave orders that no refreshments be served to the Duchesse de Vaujours. Luckily, the servants were much more afraid of the King than of the Queen, and Louise was given her lunch in secret. Doggedly, she pursued her goal.
The next day, as the Queen’s carriage approached Avesnes, the King and his troops were sighted over a hill. Marie-Thérèse decided to go directly to meet him. Suddenly, a coach broke from the train and dashed over the fields, careering over the hillside at full speed as Louise hysterically urged on her coachmen in her mad rush to meet the King. Desperate for the chance to explain herself, she arrived five minutes before her mistress, disheveled, panting and tearful. It was a grave miscalculation. Louis was outraged by such an affront to the etiquette owed to his wife. He greeted Louise with suppressed fury, merely remarking “What, Madame? Before the Queen?” Louise, in disgrace, was permitted to attend Mass and dine at the royal table, but the King’s icy politeness made it clear that these attentions were paid to her rank as Duchess and not to her role as his favorite.
Athénaïs de Montespan was lodged in the household of her friend Julie de Montausier, the elderly daughter of the famous salon hostess Mme. de Rambouillet. It was almost certainly here, at Avesnes, that she finally became the King’s lover. One version of the story is that the King, disguised in the livery of one of M. de Montausier’s servants, surprised Athénaïs at her bath. Did she know at once who the intruder was, detecting something less than servile in the sooty eyes beneath the slouched cap? Louis was so transfixed by her that he stood dumb and unable to move, gazing upon her until Athénaïs laughed at him and dropped her towel.
One of Mme. de Montausier’s rooms was close to the apartment of the King, and after a while, sharp eyes observed that a guard who had been placed at the door was removed downstairs. The Marquise de Montespan rather neglected her duties to the Queen, while the King spent much time in his private rooms. Athénaïs’s roommate Mme. d’Heudicourt took to leaving her discreetly alone so that Louis could visit her in disguise. Some days later, the old and the new mistresses attended confession together. It would be interesting to know whose was the more unquiet conscience.
At this time, Louis commenced the series of military successes that for ten years rendered him indisputably the most powerful monarch in Europe. If the Flanders campaign of 1667 marks the real beginning of the Great Century, then it corresponds precisely with the beginnings of the King’s greatest love affair. Disguises, midnight assignations, the trumpets sounding the King’s victories, love and glory allied — all the accoutrements of a romantic novel surrounded the young man triumphant in his first conquests. Like all lovers, Athénaïs and Louis must have lain at dawn in one another’s arms believing the world made new for them. In their case, it was true.
The campaign continued splendidly. Louis’s new passion made him more daring than ever, and his troops were inspired. The King personally led the attack on Tournai, advancing in the first line, unflinching even when his page was shot down next to him. The town capitulated quickly, and the army progressed to Douai, where Louis aroused delighted admiration in the soldiers as he led the charge on a white horse, an ostentatious white plume in his hat, fearlessly dodging bullets to be first on to the ramparts. He was not always so reckless as in the enthusiasm of the war of Devolution. In 1676, with the Spanish as the enemy once again, he took the advice of Louvois and remained behind the lines at the Battle of Bouchain. Louvois was afraid that if the King were killed, the country would be left in chaos. But Louis was genuinely a brave and committed soldier, and he was very hurt when he heard that the troops were muttering that his grandfather Henri IV had shown no such caution. Since the battle resulted in a resounding victory for the French, Louis blamed Louvois for making him appear a coward, a grudge that still rankled more than twenty years later.
Four days sufficed for Douai, then Louis rushed to Compiègne to join Athénaïs. Puzzled by the alteration in the King’s nocturnal habits, the Queen inquired at dinner what was keeping him from her bed until four o’clock in the morning. Louis replied that he was occupied with his dispatches, turning to his cousin Mademoiselle to hide his smile. She wisely kept her eyes on her plate. It must have been thrilling to conduct a new love affair right under the nose not only of the Queen, but of the maîtresse en titre as well. To keep Athénaïs with him, Louis dragged off the long-suffer
ing Marie-Thérèse in the stifling summer heat to inspect the towns conquered in her name. In the King’s carriage, Louis and Athénaïs played jokes on Mademoiselle, pretending they had crashed every time she nodded off. When Athénaïs rode with the Queen, Louis could be heard singing as he trotted next to the open window of the carriage. While Marie-Thérèse went off to grumble at God in her newly acquired churches and convents, Athénaïs complained of “faintness,” and kept to her rooms during the long, hot afternoons.
Louis’s libido was famed for being as tremendous as his appetite, and, indeed, he made love the way that he ate, with a capacity that would have finished most men. Rather conveniently, he considered it a mark of gallantry to “honor” any woman who professed herself in love with him. His innumerable casual liasions were, however, simply the fulfillment of a momentary impulse, an appeasement of the flesh, forgotten as quickly as he was satisfied. In the case of his apparently bulimic appetite for food, it was discovered after his death that his intestines were twice as long as those of a normal man, but his prodigious hunger for sex was not reflected by any special physical attributes, as one of his casual flings, the Princesse de Monaco, reported. None of his women was able to please him as greatly, or for so long, as Athénaïs de Montespan. Despite the rumors that the Queen was less than averse to her marital duties, she was frankly far too unattractive for sex with her to be anything more than an obligation for the King. Louis needed to make love to Athénaïs at least three times a day, and he was sometimes so impatient that he began to undress her even before her ladies had retired from the room, but Athénaïs never showed that she was embarrassed by such ardor, if indeed she was, and matched his enthusiasm with her own. Louis was finally realizing the dreams of military glory which had haunted him since, as a frightened child, he had been hurried away from the battlegrounds of the Fronde, and in a sense the war of Devolution marked his coming of age as a monarch as much as his assumption of personal power in 1660. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the courtiers remarked on a new assurance when he returned to Versailles, a new confidence in his manhood as much as in his monarchy.
