The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV

by Anne Somerset

  Back in the spring of 1679 it had been Colbert who had signed the letters patent establishing the special tribunal, but despite the fact that he was the Minister with responsibility for Paris he had since then kept himself aloof from the Chambre Ardente’s proceedings. Now, however, his advice was sought because, with the inquiry at stalemate, it was felt that wider consultation was desirable. Instead of leaving everything in the hands of Louvois and La Reynie, the King decided to obtain the opinion of Louvois’s father, M. Le Tellier (who was Chancellor of France) and Colbert. Accordingly, a full dossier on ‘the particular facts’ relating to Mme de Montespan was compiled. In early February 1681 one set of these documents was sent to Louvois on the understanding that, once he had read them to the King, he and Louis would examine them in detail. Copies of the papers (which filled three caskets in all) were also sent to Colbert and Le Tellier.41

  Colbert had had misgivings about the Chambre Ardente for some time. According to Primi Visconti, ‘Colbert looked unfavourably on this tribunal for, besides the fact that it was costing the King a great deal, he recognised that it was defaming the nation.’42 The fact that most of the eminent people who had been summoned before the commission were affiliated to Colbert in some way, whereas no one close to Louvois had been affected, can only have intensified Colbert’s disenchantment.

  By this time he had come to question not merely the wisdom but even the legality of establishing such a commission. He now wondered ‘if this affair had been entrusted in its entirety to the criminal lieutenants [at the Châtelet] … it would have been more promptly concluded and more effectively punished, without falling into all these difficulties’. Furthermore, since the inquiry had been so protracted, he queried whether this had compromised its legitimacy, for the law stated that justice must be administered swiftly to all suspects. His principal legal adviser subsequently informed him that this would have been the case were it not for the fact that the inquiry was now dealing with matters that had a direct bearing on the King’s safety, which meant that the normal rules did not apply.43

  Already distinctly unenthusiastic about the Chambre Ardente, Colbert was absolutely appalled when he discovered that Mme de Montespan and Mme de Vivonne had fallen under suspicion. Colbert was now related by marriage to both ladies for in February 1679 his third daughter had married the eldest son of the Duc and Duchesse de Vivonne. Even before this, Colbert had always enjoyed cordial relations with Mme de Montespan, whereas she and Louvois had recently become estranged. Relations between them had been soured by Louvois’s failure in 1676 to support Mme de Montespan’s brother, the Duc de Vivonne, when the latter had been sent to assist the Sicilians in the struggle against their Spanish overlords. Vivonne had complained to his sister about Louvois’s reluctance to provide him with reinforcements, but none had been forthcoming and in January 1678 the Duc had been ignominiously recalled from the island. Further bitterness had been caused because Louvois had showed warm approval when the King embarked on his affair with Mlle de Fontanges, whereas Colbert had done his best to prevent Mme de Montespan from suffering too humiliating a decline in status.44

  All this had not prevented Mme de Montespan from suggesting to Louvois that his daughter should marry her nephew but ‘he gave a deaf ear’ to the proposal, ‘which brought about a rupture between them’. According to one source, he had not wanted to conclude a marriage alliance with a young man whose parents were so heavily indebted and he was said to have told Mme de Montespan ‘that his daughter did not have sufficient wealth to restore the affairs of that family’.45 To compound the insult, Louvois had subsequently bestowed his daughter on the son of the Prince de Marcillac, who had acted as the King’s pander when Louis had fallen in love with Mlle de Fontanges.

  Having received this rebuff, Mme de Montespan had next turned to Colbert and he, in contrast, had been delighted to wed his daughter to the Vivonnes’ heir. Having taken pride in allying himself with the family, he was naturally aghast to learn that his daughter’s aunt and mother-in-law faced possible ruin. He at once took steps to avert this, fearing that an attack on them would not only be a grave miscarriage of justice, but would also damage his own prestige.

  Determined to defend Mme de Montespan against ‘this execrable calumny’, Colbert enlisted the services of Claude Duplessis, a skilled advocate who often provided him with legal advice. He also examined the case himself with his customary thoroughness. He drew up a searching critique of it and this, coupled with Duplessis’s analysis, exposes the many weaknesses which surround ‘the particular facts’.46

  Colbert had no doubt that the aim of Marie Montvoisin and the other prisoners who had defamed Mme de Montespan was to prolong the inquiry and thus delay their own trials. He drew attention to the contradictions and inconsistencies in Marie’s evidence, and the way in which her claims had escalated with each successive interview. He observed that no one else had supported her allegation that the King was to be killed with a petition, or that there had been a conspiracy to murder Mlle de Fontanges with poisoned textiles. With regard to the petition, he pointed out that if there had been any truth in what Marie had said it was extraordinary that la Voisin had found it impossible to approach the King. Had she truly been in league with Mme de Montespan, the latter would have had no difficulty procuring her access to the King; failing that, Mlle des Oeillets could have arranged for la Voisin to be presented to him. As it was, however, la Voisin had sought the help of the Duc de Montausier’s valet, a lowly individual who proved incapable of aiding her.

  Like Duplessis, Colbert was sure that the prisoners at Vincennes would have had no difficulty communicating with one another for, as Duplessis noted, this was something ‘the whole of human prudence cannot prevent’.47 This, of course, was immensely significant, for it explained how Guibourg, Lesage and Marie Montvoisin had been able to co-ordinate their accounts.

  The prisoners at Vincennes were not kept in solitary confinement but were housed at least three to a cell and this in itself would have increased opportunities for exchanging information and ideas. At several points in 1680 Louvois expressed concern that lax security at Vincennes was enabling prisoners to receive messages from outside the prison.48 Repeated attempts were made to prevent such breaches, but even in September some doubts remained as to whether all the problems had been overcome. La Reynie also believed that some prisoners had maintained contacts with the outside world. When one female prisoner would not give him the answers he wanted, he was sure this was because she had been told not to break her silence by people still at liberty.49 If it was theoretically possible to smuggle messages into Vincennes, it would surely have posed less of a problem to establish a surreptitious system of internal communications?

  Colbert also pointed out that if Mme de Montespan had wanted to kill the King, it would not have been difficult for her to have poisoned him. She did, after all, frequently eat with him, but instead of availing herself of the opportunities this afforded she had adopted the difficult and circuitous route of employing la Voisin to present him with a petition.

  It was also pertinent to query why Mme de Montespan might wish to kill the King. Colbert contended that for most of the time she had been royal mistress she had never had the least grounds for doubting the King’s devotion to her and it was only in 1678 (presumably Colbert believed that the affair with Mlle de Fontanges had started then) that she had experienced ‘some trifling jealous anxieties’.50 Here Colbert was on weak ground, for before that point Athénaïs had often had occasion to feel disquiet about the strength of the King’s attachment to her. When they had started their affair she had had to compete with the King’s residual fondness for Louise de La Vallière. Later she had to cope with other rivals for, besides his flirtations with Mme de Soubise and Mme de Ludres, Louis was suspected of brief liaisons with many women. Athénaïs was also threatened by the King’s conscience, which might prompt him to abandon her to save his soul. Certainly, when he attempted to terminate their relationship at Easter
1675 she would have had a motive to turn to la Voisin in hopes of retrieving the situation. Yet, as Colbert commented, resolving to punish the King by assassinating him would certainly not have done her any good. Her position at court was entirely dependent on Louis and if he died she would lose everything.

  Then Colbert advanced his most telling argument, for he simply refused to accept that Mme de Montespan could have been capable of the unspeakably wicked deeds described by Guibourg and Marie Montvoisin. As he remarked, the King had lived in close proximity to Athénaïs for many years and during all that time he had never seen anything that could justify these terrible suspicions. If Mme de Montespan had been involved in something so loathsome, it was beyond belief that she could have continued to stay by the King’s side, apparently completely at her ease and displaying a perfect tranquillity of soul. ‘These are things which cannot be conceived of,’ Colbert urged. ‘His Majesty, who knows Mme de Montespan to the very bottom of her soul, will never persuade himself that she had been capable of these abominations.’51

  Without question these were powerful words but it is strange that they were uttered by Colbert, rather than the King. Colbert was by nature so glacial that Mme de Sévigné nicknamed him ‘the North’, while Abbé Choisy described him as being ‘devoid of passion after giving up wine’.52 On this occasion, however, his instincts proved more generous than his master’s. For many years the King had had a loving relationship with Mme de Montespan but, so far as we know, he never voiced similar sentiments in her defence.

  Colbert now applied his formidable mind to devising some way of bringing matters to a satisfactory close. He noted that there were several options to choose from, none of which was perfect. The Chambre Ardente could simply be dissolved forthwith, but if this happened it would inevitably excite unwelcome comment. People would wonder why the commission had been prevented from completing its task and, as Duplessis put it, ‘the Chamber would cease [to exist] but the affair would not be over’. Alternatively, it might be advisable to allow the commission to try offenders such as la Trianon who, while guilty of sacrilege and other capital offences, had always denied having anything to do with Mme de Montespan. Once that had been done, it should be possible to prosecute Marie Montvoisin, Guibourg and Lesage for slander, thus ensuring they did not escape punishment. If that was deemed too risky, it would be preferable to transport all prisoners who might dishonour Mme de Montespan in a court of law to some of France’s remoter colonies.53

  Colbert’s legal adviser Duplessis favoured another course. He believed it would be possible for the commission to proceed with all the cases that were still awaiting judgement provided that, after convictions had been obtained, torture was not applied. He believed it was the use of torture that had caused the inquiry to spiral out of control and, if it continued to be inflicted, this would provide an almost certain means ‘by which the Chamber would be perpetuated and the affair immortalised’.54 Yet while the avoidance of torture might have brought some benefits, it could not resolve all difficulties. After all, Guibourg, Lesage and Marie Montvoisin had managed to create all this trouble without being subjected to physical torments.

  * * *

  In the early spring of 1681 the King summoned those conversant with ‘the particular facts’ to advise him what to do. In all, the King held four meetings on the subject, attended by Louvois, Le Tellier, La Reynie and Colbert. It is not known what was said at these meetings but clearly there was a great deal of argument, for each one lasted four hours.55 One may conjecture that La Reynie would have been in favour of the Chamber reconvening, while Colbert would certainly have argued that at all costs Mme de Montespan’s reputation must be preserved. The views expressed by Louvois and Le Tellier cannot be discerned.

  Having listened to all this, the King made his wishes known. He decreed that although he had decided against disbanding the Chamber he did not wish it to hear any evidence which discredited Mme de Montespan. This meant that certain malefactors could not be brought to justice but he intended ‘to provide for them … by other means’.56

  We have no clue as to the King’s reasoning at this point. There is nothing to indicate whether he believed the terrible allegations against Mme de Montespan were baseless or if, on the contrary, he thought they were true. Many historians have concluded that he did indeed believe in her guilt but that he did not want her misdeeds exposed. According to this interpretation, the King decided to protect her in recognition of his past love for her, and because he considered it too embarrassing to inflict the appropriate punishment on the mother of his children.*

  * * *

  On 17 April 1681 La Reynie drew up a memorandum57 for Louvois outlining how the King’s orders could be executed. He proposed that when they next assembled, the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente should be shown a heavily edited transcript of what la Filastre had said under torture, omitting all mention of Mme de Montespan. They should be told that ‘for good and just considerations important to his service’, the King had decided to withhold from them certain facts which had no bearing on the case of any person who would be brought before them.

  La Reynie reminded Louvois that this would have far-reaching consequences. It was obvious that if Mme de Montespan’s name was to be kept unsullied, individuals like Marie Montvoisin, Lesage and Guibourg could never be brought before the tribunal. Moreover, since the records of la Filastre’s trial and conviction were incomplete, any person she had mentioned in her testimony would also escape justice, for they could not be judged until all the evidence relevant to their case had been considered. As a result, it would be impossible to try a large number of people suspected of heinous crimes.

  La Reynie acknowledged that the decision to censor la Filastre’s final confessions might arouse curiosity, but though people might indulge in ‘doubtful and uncertain conjectures’, no one would know the real reason. Furthermore, while it was regrettable that so many miscreants would now be ineligible for trial, there were numerous other offenders on whom the commission could pronounce judgement. Once the Chambre Ardente reassembled, it would by no means remain idle. In fact, after the Chamber reconvened, on 18 May 1681, more death sentences were passed in the remaining months of its existence than during all its previous sittings.

  TEN

  THE END OF THE AFFAIR

  In late March 1681 the poor young Duchesse de Fontanges retired to Port Royal convent in Paris. This was no mere Easter retreat, for she went there ‘to prepare herself for the voyage to eternity’. Having been ailing ever since her miscarriage fifteen months earlier, her health had now deteriorated to a point where she was obviously ‘in an irrecoverable condition’. Since death was so clearly imminent, her confessor had persuaded her to remove herself to a more fitting environment, for ‘the court was not a proper place for that last act’. The English ambassador heard that her inexorable decline had ‘cost many royal tears’,1 but though the King undoubtedly was saddened by her plight, his love for her had already so much diminished that the prospect of losing her did not leave him utterly desolate.

  Her physicians had predicted she would not survive till Easter, but in the event she lingered a little longer and it was 28 June before she finally succumbed to the congestion clogging up her lungs. On being informed, the King initially indicated that he considered it undesirable for an autopsy to be performed,2 presumably because he feared that this would encourage rumours that she had been poisoned. Despite this, a post-mortem was, in fact, carried out, perhaps at the insistence of her family.

  The doctors found that her lungs were in an appalling condition (with the right one in particular being full of ‘purulent matter’) while her chest was flooded with fluid. This led an early twentieth-century doctor who took an interest in the case to conclude that she had died from pleuro-pneumonia induced by tuberculosis. However, in view of the fact that she is known to have suffered from a persistent loss of blood after her miscarriage, a more recent authority suggested that when she lost her baby, a f
ragment of the placenta lodged in her uterus. This would have been a source of infection, which ultimately brought about an abscess on the lungs. An alternative suggestion is that she was killed by a rare form of cancer, which occasionally develops after a cyst on the placenta is expelled during pregnancy. The fact that Mlle de Fontanges’s heart and liver were described in the autopsy as somewhat ‘blighted’ and ‘corrupted’ did lead one person to argue that this could have been caused by the slow action of arsenic, but this has remained an isolated opinion.3 On the whole the overwhelming probability is that she died from complications arising from her earlier miscarriage.

  Among her contemporaries, that astute observer Primi Visconti was one of those who attributed Mlle de Fontanges’s terminal illness to her pregnancy, for he observed wryly that she died ‘a martyr to the King’s pleasures’. Mindful that Louise de La Vallière and Mme de Ludres had also withdrawn to convents, the Comte de Bussy joked that sharing the King’s bed appeared a sure route to salvation,4 but the doleful spectacle prompted more sombre reflections in others. For them, the passing of the exquisite creature who had revelled in her conquest of the King, and whose extravagance and love of luxury had been so marked, appeared a grim illustration of the fleeting nature of worldly triumphs.

  Inevitably, many people at court elected to think that Mlle de Fontanges had been poisoned. Although no reports of la Filastre’s final confessions or Marie Montvoisin’s allegations had reached the public, the fact that the young woman herself had blamed poison for her illness, coupled with the fact that poison was very much on people’s minds, ensured that it was whispered that she had been a victim of foul play. It was equally predictable that Mme de Montespan should be named as the person responsible. Years later the Duchesse d’Orléans recalled how, at the time, there was talk that Mme de Montespan had given her rival poisoned milk, though the Duchesse conceded that she had no idea whether there was any truth in this. In her memoirs Mme de Maintenon’s niece, Mme de Caylus, recorded, ‘Many rumours circulated about this death to Mme de Montespan’s detriment.’ Even the cautious German diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim alluded to these suspicions when in 1690 he wrote a description of the French court, noting that Mlle de Fontanges had been carried off by ‘a vexatious malady which stayed with her from her first childbed and which a fairly common report, perhaps without any foundation, attributed to a beverage given to her on Mme de Montespan’s secret orders’.5