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

by Anne Somerset

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  After a hiatus of nearly nine months the Chambre Ardente resumed its sittings on 19 May 1681. The King had seen to it that the commissioners should not hear the cases of those individuals who Marie Montvoisin and la Filastre claimed had conspired with Mme de Montespan, but there were plenty of other matters to which they could address themselves. The suggestion by Colbert’s legal adviser, Duplessis, that torture should no longer be used to elicit confessions was ignored. If anything, indeed, its use was intensified.

  Several cases of sacrilege were now dealt with by the commissioners. In July Étienne Desnoyers, Jean Huet and François Lalande were executed. All had been present when Cotton – the priest who had been burnt alongside la Filastre – had performed black masses. On 9 July the priest Gilles Davot, who had performed masses for Lesage, was hanged and his body burnt. The public executioner declined to do the hanging because Davot had been his confessor. The task had to be carried out by his assistant, though he, too, may have suffered qualms, as Davot had once been his schoolmaster.6

  The commission next meted out justice for a murder that had taken place almost fifteen years earlier. Before her execution, Mme Voisin had recalled being told by one of her clients that a woman called Mme Lescalopier had poisoned her husband. The allegation was treated seriously as M. Lescalopier’s death had been considered suspicious at the time. Upon his death there had been talk of arranging an autopsy to discover whether he had been poisoned, but his widow had had him buried before one could be carried out.7

  As a result of la Voisin’s declaration, fresh enquiries were made and this led to the arrest of Anne Poligny and Denise Sandosme, who confessed to having supplied Mme Lescalopier with poison. On 16 July the pair were hanged. Mme Lescalopier herself could not be brought to justice as she had fled the country on hearing that her accomplices had been arrested. In her absence she was tried and sentenced to death. Although it had not been possible to lay hands on her person, symbolic justice was enacted when an effigy representing her was decapitated in the Place de Grève.8

  Jeanne Chanfrain, concubine of the ghastly Guibourg, was also tried for murder. Several of her associates had declared that she had aided Guibourg to kill some of the children they had produced together. According to one account she had walled up one and thrown another into a river. It is not clear whether she had, in fact, done this, for she never confessed it even under torture. At one point she did imply that she had seen Guibourg murder one of her children but she subsequently retracted even this. Anyway, as she herself pointed out, before being placed in the brodequins, anything she said under torture should be discounted, as she knew that pain could drive her to admit crimes she had never committed.9

  Another ‘extremely dangerous’ woman, who supposedly was as inveterate a poisoner as Mme Voisin, was brought to trial in late 1681. She was a forty-four-year-old widow named Marguerite Joly, who had been arrested the previous March after Guibourg had denounced her. Under interrogation she had admitted arranging abortions and had hinted that she knew of instances when children had been offered up to the devil. No less shocking was the discovery that for a long while la Joly’s most devoted client had been Mme de Dreux who, only in April 1680, had been freed by the Chambre Ardente after being admonished and fined. At the time several of her acquaintances had been indignant that she had been given even this mild reprimand, but evidence now emerged that she was not as blameless as they had imagined. Indeed, la Joly herself would later claim that Mme de Dreux was ‘worse than the Brinvilliers lady’.10

  This was not entirely fair, as it seems unlikely that Mme de Dreux had ever succeeded in murdering anybody. According to Mme Joly, she boasted that she had poisoned two former lovers, a M. Pajot and M. de Varennes, but this was never proved. It does seem, however, that for years she had harboured murderous intentions. La Joly would later claim that if any woman so much as looked at Mme de Dreux’s lover, the Duc de Richelieu, Mme de Dreux would want her out of the way. Furthermore, seven or eight years earlier Mme de Dreux had been intent on killing the Duchesse de Richelieu. La Joly had supplied her with a powder to do the job, but Mme de Dreux had been nervous of using it. She had thought it too risky to suborn one of Mme de Richelieu’s servants to give it to her, fearing that either she would be caught or that the suspicions of M. de Richelieu (who had no conception of what she was planning) would be aroused. In the end she had decided it would be preferable to do away with the Duchesse by using magic. Accordingly, a wax figurine of the Duchesse had been fashioned. Mme de Dreux had planned to melt this in the belief that the Duchesse would go into a physical decline as the effigy representing her diminished.11 Mme Joly added that Mme de Dreux had also wanted to kill her brother, M. Saintot, and his wife, though with an equal lack of success.

  Far from being discouraged by these failures, Mme de Dreux had remained incorrigible. Not even her formal rebuke from the commissioners had deterred her from seeking to eliminate her enemies with la Joly’s aid. La Joly claimed that shortly after her release from prison Mme de Dreux had contacted her again in hopes of liquidating a lady who was showing an unwelcome interest in the Duc de Richelieu.

  On 16 July 1681 a fresh arrest warrant was issued against Mme de Dreux but she had fled the country on learning that la Joly was in custody. Even so, the case against her was presented to the commission early the following year and on 22 January 1682 judgement was passed on the fugitive. Although her husband and the faithful Duc de Richelieu had been soliciting the court to show her mercy, she was banished from France in perpetuity. Nevertheless, after a time Mme de Dreux felt able to flout the terms of her sentence. In March 1690 Louvois wrote a stern letter to M. de Dreux saying that the King had ‘learned with surprise’ that Mme de Dreux was currently in Paris. He warned that unless she left the kingdom within a week she would be sent to prison. However, within two years the King had modified the original sentence by acceding to a request that she could settle at her husband’s country residence near Chinon.12

  Mme Joly was not so fortunate. Her trial took place at the end of 1681 and resulted in her being sentenced to be burnt alive. On 19 December she was subjected to the water torture prior to execution. During this ordeal she not only repeated her claims about Mme de Dreux but admitted her own involvement in other hideous crimes. She said she had been present when the baby nephew of a friend of hers called la Poignard had been sacrificed. Twenty-two years ago, another child had been offered up to the devil in order to bring about a marriage desired by her client Mlle de Saint-Laurens. She stated that her associate Anne Meline had poisoned numerous people, including la Joly’s own husband. She herself had despatched a number of victims using arsenic, which she obtained from a female apothecary. This woman was familiar with her needs and was well aware that when la Joly asked her for cosmetic lotion, what she really wanted was ‘poison to send people to the next world’.13

  After la Joly had endured an hour and a quarter of torture, the doctors present indicated that she would not survive if her agony went on any longer. Having been laid on a mattress to recuperate, she immediately retracted much of what she had just said. Although she still maintained that long ago a child had been sacrificed at the behest of Mlle de Saint-Laurens, she now denied that la Poignard’s nephew had been slaughtered; she also changed her story about the apothecary, who she said had never sold her poison. In fact, she protested that she had never poisoned anybody, but whatever the truth of the matter her punishment had been fixed. That evening la Joly was burnt alive. A few days later her associates, la Meline, the abortionist, Marie Bouffet, and Louison Desloges (who had acted as an intermediary between la Joly and Mme de Dreux) were hanged.

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  Not all of those who came before the Chambre Ardente were dealt with so harshly. Mme Brissart, who had used spells to attract her lover, M. Rubantel, and who la Voisin had claimed had sought to poison her sister (though it seems the latter had died of natural causes) was banished from Paris for three years and fined 1000
livres. Mme Cottar was merely admonished and fined 100 livres for having employed magic and charms to win the heart of her admirer, M. Forne. On 14 July 1681 the Marquise de Fontet was given an absolute discharge by the Chamber, but since she had already spent eighteen months in prison she could be said to have paid a heavy penalty for having introduced the Maréchal de Luxembourg to Lesage.14

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  Although it had been agreed that persons alleged to have conspired with Mme de Montespan could not be brought to trial, when another plot on the King’s life was uncovered, those implicated were treated with the full rigour of the law. The details came to light fortuitously, after La Reynie had begun investigating a reported attempt to kill Colbert. In the process, he had stumbled on the trail of a still more serious crime.

  It was in December 1680 that Guibourg had set things in motion by telling La Reynie that, five years earlier, a man called M. D’Amy had come to see him. This had been at the suggestion of Jacques Deschault, an unsavoury character who was said to be willing to carry out contract killings for the tiny sum of thirty sols. D’Amy was an officer in the Chamber of Accounts in Provence and he had conceived a grudge against Colbert after losing money on a sale of timber to the navy. After he had told Guibourg that he wanted to poison Colbert, Guibourg had sent D’Amy to purchase drugs and had then arranged for these to be distilled to make them stronger. At the outset D’Amy had given Guibourg a promissory note for 1000 livres and, on receiving the drugs, he had made a cash down payment of 200 livres.15

  Hearing this, La Reynie sent an agent to the notary’s office where Guibourg had lodged the promissory note. He found that, just as Guibourg had said, the advance of 200 livres was recorded there, with the balance of 800 livres still outstanding. In La Reynie’s opinion this showed incontrovertibly that Guibourg was telling the truth. ‘It is a silent witness, an irreproachable written proof,’ he enthused, although it is, in fact, possible that D’Amy had approached Guibourg not because he wished to kill Colbert, but because he hoped the priest would help him win at gambling.16 The truth was difficult to establish, for D’Amy himself had since died.

  However, Deschault was still alive and was arrested with a confederate of his named Debray, who Guibourg claimed had supplied people with cantharides. When they were questioned, nothing further emerged about the plot against Colbert, but evidence did accumulate suggesting that they were purveyors of poison. Their services had been enlisted by a widow named Anne Carada, who was passionately in love with a married man. Hoping that their union could be legalised, she had asked Deschault to engineer the removal of her lover’s wife. Incantations were said to effect her wishes and Deschault had performed spells with wax figurines designed to bring about the death of the inconvenient spouse. The woman had subsequently died and, though Mme Carada herself maintained when questioned that she had only sought to hasten her end by using magic and had never had recourse to poison, it was regarded as a case of murder. Having been tried and found guilty, Mme Carada was beheaded for this on 25 June 1681.17

  Debray and Deschault should in theory have preceded her to the scaffold, but there had been a new development on 19 June, the day scheduled for their execution. When both men had been tortured, nothing of interest had been gleaned from Deschault, who insisted he knew nothing whatever of poison. Debray, however, volunteered some startling information, which sparked fresh concerns for the King’s safety.

  Debray revealed he had sometimes worked in partnership with a shepherd named Christophe Moreau who operated a profitable sideline to his pastoral duties. Despite the ample choice of practitioners offering similar services in the capital, people from Paris would come to see this man for help with love affairs and marriages or, more sinisterly, when they wanted to procure the death of some person. Some years earlier Moreau had been consulted by a man who said he was a relation of M. Fouquet, the former Surintendant of Finance whom the King had imprisoned for life. The mysterious client had said he was determined to bring about Fouquet’s restoration to power and that, to achieve this end, he would not scruple to kill the King.18

  Debray’s revelations engendered a flurry of arrests. Moreau was seized, along with Jean Perceval and Mathurin Barenton, whom Debray had named as Moreau’s accomplices. Debray was kept alive to see if he could remember more about the conspiracy, while his former companion Deschault, who clearly knew nothing of all this, went to the gallows as planned.

  When questioned, Moreau agreed that he had had a client who was a relation of Fouquet’s and who had styled himself the Chevalier de La Brosse. He had been accompanied by his valet, who had been introduced as Dubois, though it seemed likely that these were assumed names. Moreau protested that the Chevalier had never expressed any interest in killing the King and had merely wanted to improve his standing at court, but his account was not believed. Such scepticism seemed justified by a statement from Barenton that when Moreau had brought the Chevalier de La Brosse to see him, the Chevalier had not sought to disguise his hostility to the King.19

  The search was now on for the mysterious Chevalier and events took a new turn when evidence given by another suspect, Mathurin Chapon, led La Reynie and Louvois to believe that they had unmasked his true identity. They concluded that the Chevalier de La Brosse was the name adopted by Roger de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Marquis de Termes, a cousin by marriage of Mme de Montespan, who had already featured in the inquiry in a peripheral way.

  Exactly what led Louvois and La Reynie to Termes is unclear, though he was known to have lost a fortune as a result of Fouquet’s fall. Termes was a somewhat eccentric figure with a strange appearance and a pronounced speech impediment caused by a cleft palate though, oddly enough, he could enunciate perfectly when singing. Around the time of Fouquet’s fall he had been briefly imprisoned in the Bastille and since then had led ‘a highly licentious life’.20 He had also devoted great efforts to restoring his lost wealth and had hoped to enrich himself by attaining the Philosopher’s Stone. Using compulsion, he had set to work in his chateau a crew of alchemists including la Voisin’s lover Blessis. Their resentment at having been pressed into servitude in this way had reportedly led some of them to consider poisoning Termes. Now, however, there were suspicions that Termes was more than just a potential victim and that his bitterness at being deprived of his fortune had led him to plot the King’s death. Accordingly, he was arrested and a former employee of his named Antoine Monteran was also taken into custody.

  Confusion mounted, however, when Moreau was interviewed again and pointed the manhunt in an entirely different direction. While ignorant of the true name of the Chevalier de La Brosse, he recalled that during one visit the Chevalier had been accompanied by M. Jean Maillard, a Conseiller in the Paris Parlement. Maillard was promptly arrested and agreed that he had once been to see Moreau with the late M. Jacques Pinon du Martroy, a former Conseiller in the Court of Inquests. Pinon du Martroy had once been immensely wealthy but had been ruined when his assets had been seized following the arrest of Fouquet. Since then he had become so heavily indebted that when he had taken Maillard to see Moreau, he had adopted the pseudonym of the Chevalier de La Brosse in hopes of avoiding being harassed by his creditors.21

  Information provided by Guibourg added to the case against Pinon du Martroy, for when questioned about him the priest disclosed that Pinon had been a client of his for many years. At first Guibourg merely had a vague memory that the Conseiller had asked for his assistance in wreaking revenge on his enemies. Having thought about it a bit longer, it suddenly came back to him that Pinon had confided he wanted to poison the King.22

  The luckless M. Maillard insisted that his own and Pinon du Martroy’s encounter with Moreau had been completely innocent, but he failed to disassociate himself from the conspiracy supposedly masterminded by his dead friend. It was true that no firm evidence ever emerged to link Maillard with the recently identified threat to the King, but on the other hand there were aspects of his past history that were disturbing. Some years befo
re, Maillard had rented his country house to Sainte-Croix, the lover of Mme de Brinvilliers who had supplied her with poisons. Maillard protested that he had known Sainte-Croix merely ‘on the footing of a man of pleasure’,23 but this failed to explain why he had bound himself to pay the sum of 4000 livres on the presentation of a bill of exchange he had lodged with Sainte-Croix. When the debt had been called in after Sainte-Croix’s death, Maillard had paid the full amount to Belleguise, a crony of Sainte-Croix’s who was also clerk to the financier Pennautier.

  A possible reason why Maillard had owed money to Sainte-Croix was soon uncovered. Years before, Maillard had had an affair with the wife of M. Violet, an attorney in Parlement who had died suddenly in 1665. At the time Violet had employed a woman named Mme Guesdon who subsequently went on to work for both Mme de Brinvilliers and Sainte-Croix. Bearing this in mind, it appeared a plausible hypothesis that Mme Guesdon had been commissioned to poison Violet and that Maillard had promised to pay Sainte-Croix a substantial sum for arranging this. Violet’s widow had since remarried, but when questioned about all this, she hinted that Maillard had been responsible for Violet’s death. On the other hand her second husband had recently conceived suspicions that she had been trying to poison him, so it is not impossible that she had murdered Violet without any assistance from Maillard.24