Early in the summer of 1680, only weeks after the April anti-Huguenot instruction, she again approached Seignelay at the naval secretariat. With his assistance, she arranged for Philippe to take command of a ship assigned to a routine voyage to her old island of Martinique, there to wave the French flag in the faces of the other colonial powers. Philippe was relieved. It was more than he had expected, though the ship was “only a thirty-six-cannon vessel,” named—with appropriate irony, though he did not know it—Les Jeux (Games). Later in the summer he set off for the Caribbean, accompanied by his younger son, twelve-year-old Henri-Benjamin. It was a long voyage out and an equally long voyage back, and in the months of Philippe’s absence Françoise intended to act.
The capture of Henri-Benjamin, sailing the high seas with his father, would have to be deferred, and the elder, “good-for-nothing” Saint-Hermine boy might perhaps be overlooked altogether, but that still left six: Henri-Benjamin’s brother, sixteen-year-old naval ensign Philippe de Villette, and their sister, nine-year-old Marthe-Marguerite; Louis-Henri, the younger Saint-Hermine, also aged about sixteen, and his younger sisters, one whose name is unrecorded, and Marie-Anne-Françoise, known as Minette; and a girl of about the same age, Mademoiselle Caumont d’Adde, granddaughter to the vicious old Caumont d’Adde who had hounded Jeanne d’Aubigné over her inheritance.
Young Philippe, at least, was likely to be an easy catch. Even at the age of eleven, following Françoise’s 1675 visit to Mursay, he had understood the advantages of having a relative at court, and had written requesting her help, and also the help of the Minister of War. Since then, he had been only too happy to visit her at Saint-Germain and Versailles, where his minor battle wound and his reputation as “a little hero” had ensured him a good reception. Nevertheless, when it came to abjuring his faith, he proved quite stubborn—“but we need not be deterred by that,” wrote Françoise briskly. And indeed, by early December 1680, with Philippe père still safely distant in the Caribbean, she was able to write to Charles, “Our little nephew is now Catholic; I have him here with me. He’s becoming a real courtier. I hope the King will do something for him; he’s very presentable. I’m now expecting [Louis-Henri de] Saint-Hermine, and I’ll be doing my utmost to convert him, too.”
Françoise had placed responsibility for Louis-Henri’s capture on Charles’s own rather shrugging shoulders. How he managed it is uncertain, but within a fortnight the boy had been deposited at court, bringing with him, however, a much less compliant attitude than his cousin. “Monsieur de Saint-Hermine arrived today,” Françoise relayed to Charles, “and I think he’ll give me a bit more trouble…But I did like Minette when I saw her…If you could send her to me, I’d be very pleased. There’s no other way than by force, since the family are not going to be happy at all about Philippe’s conversion. So you’ll have to get her to write to me, saying that she wants to become a Catholic. You send me that letter, then I’ll send you a lettre de cachet which you can use to take Minette to your house, until you can send her on…Do attend to this. I really want this little girl, and you’ll be obliging me as well as doing a good deed.”
Charles duly obliged with a convincing lie to the local Huguenot authorities about a Christmas visit to court for his little cousins, Mademoiselle de Saint-Hermine and her sister Minette, and Mademoiselle de Caumont d’Adde. The capture of the youngest girl, Marthe-Marguerite de Villette, was left to her Aunt Aymée, now Madame Fontmort, who agreed to the plan with no apparent hesitation. Whether troubled by a strong religious conscience, or simply in periodic need of a “conversion fee,” Aymée herself had already switched between Protestantism and Catholicism no fewer than three times. “God, who knows everything, doesn’t know what religion my sister is,” her brother had commented wryly. Perhaps equally significantly, Aymée had no child of her own; in any case, she evidently lacked the empathy to imagine the distress of her sisters Madeleine and Marie, and of Philippe’s wife Marie-Anne, as their children were whisked away by their highly placed and high-handed relative.
Aymée simply invited Marthe-Marguerite to visit her overnight, and once safely distant from Mursay, they made their rendezvous with the two other girls, minus Minette: “They were astonished and upset to see me,” Marthe-Marguerite was later to write. In the week before Christmas 1680, wicked aunt and wailing nieces all arrived in Paris. Here, on December 21, Françoise met them, and two days later she penned a lengthy missive to her distraught cousin, Marie-Anne de Villette:
Although I’m quite sure, Madame, that you give me your daughter with a good grace, and that you are overjoyed at my nephew’s conversion, I realize at the same time that you will be in need of consolation, and that’s why I’m writing.
Monsieur de Mursay [Philippe de Villette] made his devotions yesterday…I see nothing but good in him; I’ve discovered no defect other than that he talks a bit too much. I don’t yet know what I’ll do with him. He seems to want to give up the navy, and lots of people think that would be for the best, but whatever happens, don’t worry, I’ll look after him as if he were my own son. He’s learning to dance, and he’ll have to learn to ride as well, if we keep him on land. The King is filled with kindness for him, and I hope he’ll grant him a pension…Since Huguenots can’t hope for anything, we have to ask on behalf of Catholics.
…I went to Paris on Saturday to see Madame [Aymée] de Fontmort and my nieces. I found them all looking very unattractive, which I wasn’t at all pleased to see. Mademoiselle de Saint-Hermine was barely recognizable; Mademoiselle de Caumont d’Adde has got very thin, and your daughter [Marthe-Marguerite] was as yellow as wax. I took her away with me. She cried a bit, when she found herself alone in the coach, then for some time she said nothing at all, and then she started singing. Since then she has told her brother that she was crying because of what her father told her when he left [for the Caribbean], that if she changed her religion, and went to court without him, he would never see her again. She calmed down when I mentioned you, and of course she’s used to me now. When I told her that she’d grow to love me, she told me that she loved me already. I spent today reading with her and teaching her tapestry; she has a dancing-master, who tells me she’s doing very well. She likes the food here better than with her aunt in Paris.
…How sorry I am for you, my dear cousin! How distressed you must be, caught between husband and children! Your heart must be torn in two…I feel so very strongly about those I love that I can understand better than anyone how painful it must be for you. Take consolation in God, and in my friendship.
…Monsieur de Seignelay told me today that Monsieur de Villette will be back here in February. I hope that the fondness he has always had for me will prevent him from getting too carried away, and that he will realize, in his anger, that what I have done is a sign of the friendship I have for my relatives. I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get Minette…
It was the first in a series of staggeringly unapologetic letters to “my dear cousin” in Niort, whose own swift and anguished protestations have not survived. “Your letter makes me feel so sorry for you,” Françoise wrote only two days later, “or rather your situation makes me sorry for you.” Marie-Anne’s “situation,” and the reason that she was “caught between husband and children,” was that, though her husband was a Huguenot, she herself was Catholic. Under the terms of their marriage contract, their children were required to be brought up as Huguenots. In her heart of hearts, Marie-Anne may indeed have been “overjoyed,” as Françoise suggested, to see her son already converted, but she must have been anxious in the extreme as to what her husband would say on his return from sea a month or two hence.
Françoise had clearly persuaded herself that by seizing the children and inveigling them into Catholicism, she was acting to everyone’s general benefit. In one sense, it was true: as Huguenots, there was no advancement possible for them, professionally or socially, whereas as Catholics they could take full advantage of the influence she now possessed in her close
connection with the King. The Saint-Hermine and Caumont d’Adde families seem to have seen things more or less in this light: though there is no extant correspondence with them on the subject, if Françoise can be believed, they reacted “obligingly.” No doubt they were less attached to their Protestant religion than cousin Philippe de Villette had already proved himself to be—perhaps Françoise even imagined that their own response might persuade Philippe to adopt a more pragmatic attitude—and the whole affair certainly reveals the lack of importance she herself attached to some of the greatest religious and political questions of the era: Liberty of conscience within the state, or religious conformity? Did Holy Mother Catholic Church provide the only route to salvation, or was she the prophesied “scarlet whore of Babylon” and the Pope himself the Antichrist, as Luther and Calvin and Knox had all insisted? Would Protestants be damned to everlasting flames, or would it be the Catholics weeping and gnashing their teeth in hell for all eternity?
Unlike her staunch old grandfather, Agrippa, and revealing a trace, perhaps, of her calculating father, Constant, Françoise viewed these matters above all politically: religious contention had torn France apart in her grandfather’s day, and had torn Europe apart during her own childhood; it must not be allowed to do so again. The Catholic Church now had the upper hand in France, and it was best for everyone, she felt, to accept that and make their way along its clearly marked paths. She had herself been captured in the Church’s name in a practice by no means uncommon, and for her all had turned out better than could ever have been expected. Why should others not be “rescued” in the same way, since in the end, it was all for their own good?
Françoise also wanted to build up her own clan at court, and in the longer term, who would be more loyal than the flesh of her own flesh? The boys would make their way in the army or the navy, and at court she would have the girls, or one of them, at least, to mould and shape—perhaps, though she did not say it, in the image of that phantom little girl that she herself would have liked to be. She was not impartial in her treatment of her three “nieces” having failed to “get” Minette, the one above all that she had “really wanted,” she settled for Marthe-Marguerite as her special protégée, depositing the other two in a Paris convent under the general supervision of their Aunt Aymée.
Marthe-Marguerite remained at court with her brother Philippe and, for a few weeks, her cousin Louis-Henri de Saint-Hermine. As Françoise had anticipated, he had indeed been giving her “a bit more trouble,” and in the middle of January 1681 she was obliged to send him off to Père Gobelin in Paris, for him to try his conversionary luck with the recalcitrant young man. “Don’t tell him any more than you have to about invocations to the saints and indulgences and the other things that are so shocking to Protestants,” she warned. But only three weeks later, Père Gobelin had given up, too. Louis-Henri and the girls in Paris had proved less obliging than their parents, “to the infinite glory of Calvinism,” as their cousin Marthe-Marguerite later accorded. “They’re all leaving on Sunday,” Françoise informed Charles. “They put up a good resistance and then made a dignified retreat—I’m convinced they’ll repent of that…By the way, do look after Madame [Aymée] de Fontmort. She took this action only for God and for me. Her family are going to be absolutely furious with her. Do please do what you can to help her. She’s a very good woman, and clever and brave, and she’d have some good advice for you and your wife, too…”
By mid-February, most of the damage had been undone. Only Philippe and Marthe-Marguerite remained at court. Philippe, already a young man, was quite happy, making his way energetically as one of the King’s musketeers, having given up the navy definitively. But his nine-year-old sister had settled less easily, writing dozens of notes to her mother in Niort, and showing signs of apparent stress. “I’ve been making her take medicinal powders and herbal tea, and she is looking much better for it,” Françoise reported to Marie-Anne. “All her hair is falling out; I don’t want to shave her head in case it grows back brown, so I’ll just cut it very short when she goes to stay in the convent.”
In March 1681, Philippe returned from his eight-month-long trick voyage to the Caribbean, and as Françoise had feared, “the fondness” he had always had for her did not prevent him from “getting…carried away.” He was outraged. “My father’s letters to Madame de Maintenon were full of bitterness and reproaches,” recorded Marthe-Marguerite in later years. “He accused her of ingratitude to his mother, her Aunt Louise, and of injustice and cruelty towards himself, but she had the authority of the King behind her, so there was nothing he could really do.” “I’m not even going to reply to your demand that your daughter be returned to you,” Françoise wrote to him with perverse indignation. “Judge for yourself whether I’d be stupid enough to give her back when I’ve had to use force to get her.”
There was indeed nothing that Philippe could do. The King had taken a further, long-considered step towards the complete Catholicization of the realm, drawing up a new instruction which would require Huguenot parents to transfer all their children under the age of sixteen to the custody of their nearest Catholic relative. Those who refused would see the children taken from them by force in what was effectively a legalized kidnapping. And in the meantime, there was always a lettre de cachet, a royal command which no one could gainsay. It was just such a command that the baronne de Neuillant had used more than thirty years before to capture Françoise from Mursay. Françoise herself, though willing to resort to the same means, had not needed to do so. Where Madame de Neuillant had required force, she had succeeded by duplicity. “Madame de Maintenon had only asked to see the [Saint-Hermine and Caumont d’Adde] girls. She had promised not to make any effort to convert them, and so the Huguenot Council had felt they couldn’t refuse her request.”
“I feel so very strongly about those I love…” she had written to Philippe’s wife—so strongly that she had made callous use of some of them, lied to others, abused their trust, and stolen their children, with the sole apparent regret that she “did not get” one last little girl. But as she insisted to Philippe, “If the King lives, there won’t be a single Huguenot left twenty years from now,” which events were to confirm, almost literally.
Françoise had stooped to unscrupulous methods, reflecting, no doubt, a hardening of her ambition to wield some influence of her own at court. But in the end, she was proved right. One by one, her Huguenot cousins came back to her, and one by one, they converted. In 1686, five years after his tirade of letters “full of bitterness and reproaches,” Philippe himself was to accept the inevitable and become Catholic, ending his days as a marquis and a lieutenant-général of the King’s armies. His son, Philippe, also a lieutenant-général, became the comte de Mursay, and Henri-Benjamin the chevalier de Mirmande. Stubborn Louis-Henri de Saint-Hermine became a lieutenant-général, too; Marthe-Marguerite became the comtesse de Caylus; Minette, captured at last, became the comtesse de Mailly. In short, all the boys advanced professionally, and all the girls married well.
Fourteen
Uncrowned Queen
The year 1678, with the annexation of the Franche-Comté, marked the flood tide of Louis’s military glory. It was no longer endurable that his magnificence should be inadequately housed. It was decided that Versailles should become the permanent seat of both the Court and the Government.
So the work had started, and it was costing a king’s ransom. Colbert had been complaining for years that “this house is more…for the pleasure and diversion of Your Majesty than for his glory…” But on May 6, 1682, Louis finally took possession of Versailles. It was a day of piqued pride for him, all the same: he learned that the Arkansas region had been renamed Louisiana in his name—and that the Mississippi had been renamed the Colbert River.
“Taking possession of Versailles” meant formally moving the premier royal residence from the château of Saint-Germain, where Louis himself had been born, to his father’s former hunting lodge, heretofore a place for c
ountry fêtes and fireworks. Saint-Germain was admittedly small, but Colbert had not been protesting without reason: there were several other larger places that might have served in its stead. To date, the royal residence in Paris had been Catherine de’ Medici’s Tuileries palace, begun well over a century before and, like so many royal residences, still unfinished: an obsessive tinkerer where buildings were concerned, Louis had himself demolished the impressive windows and the oval staircase which had been its most distinguished features. To the east of the city there was the château of Vincennes, large, certainly, and very imposing, but more of a fortress than a palace, and still serving as an aristocrats’ prison—the prince de Condé himself had been conceived in one of its many cells. There was Fontainebleau, “about fourteen leagues from the city,” with its marvellous hunting forest: “It abounds with stags, wolves, boars…” But Fontainebleau was already perfect, and it was too obviously someone else’s creation, the Renaissance jewel of François I.
And of course, as Colbert had kept reminding the King, in Paris itself there was the gigantic palace of the Louvre, but as the King had kept reminding Colbert, it would be altogether too much trouble to install the court there. For generations a place of courtly entertainment rather than a royal residence, and already full of artists’ studios, presaging its eventual metamorphosis from palace to museum, it would certainly not have been an easy place to house hundreds of courtiers with any dignity or comfort. Colbert himself admitted that the royal apartments were no better than “rats’ holes” the King’s own bedroom was apparently so dark that even at high noon the servants would be groping their way about trying to put things in order.
The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon Page 29
