by Michael Hone
The chateau of the Effiats and nearby tower had an oubliette where Richelieu was said to have taken men to be tortured, while Richelieu sought to expose plots against Louis and himself, plots the child in the crib would be ordered to unmask and reveal to the cardinal, one of which Cinq-Mars would himself lead, resulting in his execution. When Louis later asked Richelieu why he hadn’t tortured Cinq-Mars as he did all the others, the cardinal answered that he feared Cinq-Mars would reveal the truth, that it was Louis himself who had encouraged the boy to organize the conspiracy meant to kill Richelieu, because Louis wanted to rid himself of the obstacle to his becoming his own man, an impossibility because Louis possessed little of a manly nature.
Chateau of the Effiats
Historians believe that Cinq-Mars feared the cardinal, but his actions later, his repeated refusals to do as the cardinal demanded, accepting, finally, the honors Louis bestowed on him for reasons that were Cinq-Mars’s own. It was Cinq-Mars alone who placed himself alongside the wrinkled, worn and sickly body of the king, smelly and pasty to the touch, so unlike the young breasts of Cinq-Mars’s numerous conquests, girls who sighed to his touch, girls of sweet breath and eyes of lust fulfilled.
Let the reader not doubt for a second that the boy’s destiny, his gift from Mother Nature to the court of Louis XIII, was to inspire love.
Antoine Effiat, Cinq-Mars’s father, and his children, three daughters and three sons, lived in times of terrible religious struggle, new Protestantism against corrupt Catholicism (4), the essential word here ‘’new’’ to be emphasized, then as today the best adjective to sell a product, because the basis of Protestantism, with the Calvinist concept of predestination, its lack of pomp and ceremony, seemed a weak alternative, although Protestants did have psalms singing. It was the worst of times, 36 years of religious wars, plagues and famine, the skulls of babies crushed in front of the eyes of their parents, Protestant and Catholic children alike, before the adults themselves were run through with a sword or had their throats cut. From the strong hand of François I came the lesser grip of his son Henri II, and then collapse at the hands of François II, Charles IX and Henri III, Henri III who fulfilled himself with pearl-covered apparel, little dogs and boys that could bring out the woman in him, and scratch the cross-dressing Henri there where it itched within (5). Henri IV, le bon roi, a stud in the Wilt-Chamberlain class of womanizers, followed Henri III but was stayed in his enthusiasm to help his people by his assassination. Louis XIV, Louis XIII’s son, would later put an end to the disorder, initiating a reign as celebrated as that of Ramses II and nearly twice as long, one that impoverished his people and led directly to the Revolution of 1789.
But for the moment France was governed by still another weak monarch, Louis XIII, who regretted every desire he had for Cinq-Mars and other boys, and like Thomas Jefferson, a slaver who feared the wrath of a just God for bondage so horrifying, Louis too knew he would be called before a heavenly throne and damned for each time he had grazed Cinq-Mars’s jasmine-scented body with more than his fingers.
When he died of scarlet fever, Antoine Effiat left six children in his wife’s care, three sons and three daughters, one daughter who died young, another forced to enter a convent (a kind of Aztec sacrifice in which the victim kept its heart but became basically brain-dead), and Marie, given to a man at age 9 who respected her virginity and whom she loved (a girl’s virginity was normally respected until she was around 15, but many men jumped the gun). Then Richelieu, like the Wicked Warlock of the West, had the marriage annulled when a cousin of his, the Duc de La Meilleraye, saw the girl and wanted her. Her parents realized the immense benefits of having Richelieu in the family, by way of his cousin, and so he was given Marie who died in childbirth at age 18, some say mad from the loss of the man she loved.
Little is known about Effiat’s eldest son Martin, heir to the Effiat domains, who died certifiably mad in 1645. The youngest son, Jean, joined the orders, but involved in some scandal (unknown to us), he was shunned by court and family.
Cinq-Mars had been the second son. His Christian name Henri, he was given the castle that became known as the Château de Cinq-Mars, a veritable fortress, plus 25 towns and villages surrounding it, over which Cinq-Mars had sovereignty at age 10. Had his life not ended at age 22, at 25 he would have inherited the title of Effiat with the death of his brother Martin, and the family fortune.
Cinq-Mars’s mother Marie asked Richelieu to become protector of her children at the death of her husband, and Richelieu became a regular visitor. It was then that he reportedly used a nearby building with an oubliette too torture and kill enemies of the kingdom. He was said to have ordered the construction of a chair that tipped backwards, perhaps the inspiration for the Tim Burton film Sweeney Todd, sending its occupant down a well where the fall broke his neck.
Cinq-Mars grew to manhood between the two faces he did his best to please, his dominant mother and Richelieu, whose demand for obedience was sensed by the boy, even if outwardly Richelieu was all benevolence. Richelieu had everything of the Italian, who hold their enemies closer to their breasts than their friends, the easier to smother them. He was Machiavelli incarnate, and certainly Machiavelli could have written a second tome had he known Richelieu in person. What motivated Richelieu will never be known because he was beyond the circle of common humans. Like the very young and the very old, nothing could really touch him, although as we’ll see in his chapter, he may have been tempted by the charms of certain women, a certain Chevreuse among them, the wife of Luynes, Luynes who was Louis’ first great love. Chevreuse traveled the length and width of Europe to spread her legs for the men she desired, one of whom was Buckingham that she went to London for the express purpose of (successfully) nailing. Only Richelieu was refused access to her charms, to the masked guffaws of Louis’ court.
But Richelieu was no François I or Henri IV, the first who specialized in virgins, the second who literally robbed the cradle (down to bedding the two daughters of his mistress, girls said to not have been his own) (4). It would seem logical that if Richelieu were capable of tenderness towards an occasional woman, he may have been capable too of friendship towards Cinq-Mars’s father and for Cinq-Mars himself, the boy in the crib, the only member of the Effiat family to resemble Antoine Effiat, the same beauty, an identical charm, innate intelligence, but his father, a boy’s natural pilot through life, was no longer there to teach him the finer points of survival in royal courts, and Richelieu had only his own interests and motivations in his heart of stone, and it was he, Richelieu, and only Richelieu, who eventually forced Louis to deprive the boy of his head, when normally Cinq-Mars would have simply been sent away in exile to his estates.
Richelieu had his fingers in every pie, more even than the future Henry Kissinger, Richelieu’s powers extending far beyond Louis’ court. He had spies in every major country, feeding him information like England’s Walsingham. This, the invisible part of his power, was supplemented by what the king and people could see: the construction of ports and ships, the maintenance of roads and bridges. He invented new awards and founded academies like the one run by de Benjamin, rue Vieille-du-Temple, where he sent Cinq-Mars at age 15. There, Cinq-Mars learned court etiquette, fencing, horsemanship and the use of arms, and geography, mathematics and dancing were also part of the curriculum. When he entered Louis’ realm it would not be as a dolt.
Richelieu had demanded detailed reports on Cinq-Mars’s progress and interests, and it was Richelieu the marionettist who decided that the time had come for the lad to enter the court with the title of commander of a company of guards. Richelieu personally introduced him to the king, one of the hundreds of boys who came his way daily in the guards that Louis himself had founded in 1622, consisting of musketeers and cavalry. They were his personal Garde du corps, 150, that Richelieu so appreciated he founded a guard of his own.
Philippe Erlanger wrote, in his excellent The King’s Minion, that Louis wore a perpetual sphinxlike mask, but i
t was no mask, it was his real persona. He didn’t express emotions because he had none, or few left (his childhood and youth had been as different from adulthood as a handsome chrysalis from an ugly moth, as the reader will see in Louis’ chapter). He did know when he was disrespected, but only when Cinq-Mars exaggerated his contempt and displayed his loutishness to the point that Louis would have had to have been blind or deaf not to see Cinq-Mars’s scorn, something that had never taken place before among the other lads that had shared the king’s intimacy. Louis played the role of sphinx so well that even Richelieu didn’t always know when the king was being sincere or facetious, as when Louis wrote Richelieu that he was the only person he would love until his last breath. Only Cinq-Mars succeeded in bringing Louis out of himself, and indeed the king was so eager to have the boy that he would order him, before witnesses had time to leave the room, to quickly come to bed. One of Cinq-Mars’s closest friends, de Thou, the boy with whom he’d share the executioner’s platform, had been with Cinq-Mars while he was being rubbed with jasmine oil. The king entered and, seeing him naked, rushed to his side and took a hand that he kissed, all before de Thou could leave the royal presence. Then Cinq-Mars would turn cold, and the king would have only Richelieu to fall back on, pleading with the cardinal to do something that would make Cinq-Mars welcome his presence. Louis hated Richelieu, a fact we known from innumerable sources, yet he needed him to run his kingdom, to procure his boys, and especially to arrange things with this boy. And Richelieu, stone hearted though he was, was beside himself with happiness when Louis suffered from the indifference of Cinq-Mars, because it would bring the king closer to Richelieu himself, the sickeningly sick symbiosis of two old men, the victim of whom would eventually be an essentially carefree young man. ‘’I will love you until my last breathe’’ would repeat Louis in writing, words that made Richelieu mad with gratitude, or brought shivers up his spine when he realized the mocking intent behind them--Richelieu never knew which. Louis had nothing of the Italian ability to kiss a foe in order to better stab him from behind. This demanded forethought and planning, as when Cesare Borgia convoked his captains to a dinner and excused himself, the time to relieve a natural urge, finding them all dead on his return, looking on with pleasure while he retied the ribbons of the cloth that concealed his intimacy. Or when king Ferrante of Naples had his dinner guests poisoned and then stuffed, his companions until they disintegrated into dust (6). No, Louis’ way was to rid himself of someone by brute force, as he had done with Concini, as we shall see in Louis’ chapter, and Richelieu knew that nothing more than a nod would be needed for the king to rid himself of the cardinal too, a man no one at court liked and all feared.
De Thou
No one and nothing is more dangerous than the weak, and Louis was weakness personified, backed by the power of the throne, the armies of the throne, the wealth of the throne. A throne where he had been placed through the accident of birth, as is still the case in England.
Richelieu had already won certain gratitude from, and ascendance over, the king by introducing him to Baradas and Saint-Simon, a boy of great beauty, father of the immense memoirist of the same name, who had started out as a mere stable hand, today a wealthy landed duke.
Now was the time for a new favorite, the beginning of Cinq-Mars’s martyrdom.
Louis spent his time hunting and card playing when rain made fields too marshy to move through. Richelieu was there to relieve Louis’ boredom, for the cardinal’s mind was always in movement, writing edicts, meeting ambassadors, reading and answering stacks of correspondence. Louis amused himself with pastimes such as gardening, room decoration, repairing fishermen’s nets or taking over the making of preserves, certainly to the surprise of his cooks. This was superficially similar to the early life of Peter the Great, who would take up any and every trade, learn as a humble apprentice until he received diplomas in everything from shipbuilding to watch repair, anything that would eventually be of use to his native Russia, while Louis was amateurishly fooling around.
Chevreuse, Richelieu’s lost love, about whom we’ll learn a great deal later, called Louis ‘’that idiot’’ and she was right in the sense that he dampened life at court, despite the entertainment he allowed to go on, and he did employ musicians and artists in great number. He personally remained ascetic, dressed in black, stoic, the image of a Protestant pastor, the basis of Richelieu’s idea to offer Cinq-Mars the job of Master of the Wardrobe, as Cinq-Mars, Mister Fashion himself, would be able to enliven the king’s tastes in clothing (all the while procuring information for the cardinal). Louis was painfully shy, a huge difference from his childhood when he took pleasure in showing the court his boyish weenie, the French equivalent of zizi, and allow court ladies to fondle it, although he’d turn his head in repugnance when they tried to kiss him. Shy, reserved, expressing himself with difficulty, his speech halting, tense, up-tight in today’s parlance.
There were women in Louis’ life, beginning with his wife Anne of Austria, developed in Louis’ chapter, but, sexually, of little importance except in producing an heir, which she did twenty-two years after their marriage (although she did have three miscarriages). Some historians claim she loved him, but it’s clear that at one point she attempted to replace him in her bed with Louis’ brother Gaston, in what has become known as the Chalais plot, named after Henri de Talleyrand-Périgord, comte de Chalais, the man who served as a go-between between two camps, those who hated Richelieu and had no respect for Louis and those who supported the king, if not Richelieu (historically it is extremely hard to find anyone in the corner of the arrogant, know-it-all cardinal). The basis of the plot was to replace Louis with his spaced-out brother Gaston, who would then marry Louis’ wife Anne of Austria. The virile young man, 17 at the time and supported in the plot by his two half-brothers, would then produce the heir the kingdom had been long in need of.
But there were too many cooks involved in the scheme, even Chevreuse, who loved attracting new blood by whispering deep secrets in their ears during pillow talk, revealed every detail to those who bedded her. Gaston was the first to learn of the leaks and threw himself on the mercy of Louis, begging for forgiveness by giving up the names of the conspirators. Chalais was arrested and beheaded, Chevreuse, who knew everything about everyone, and apparently knew someone important enough to spare her from being smothered or otherwise silenced, was exiled to her estates. Gaston and Louis’ two half-brothers were also expulsed from Paris and relations between Louis and his wife Anne, never good, freed him from visiting her once a week (something he did out of respect for her being queen, not necessarily a conjugal visit), although a warming up must have taken place sometime afterwards because of the birth of Louis XIV. (Naturally, the baby could have been sired by another, although it is unlikely that Louis would have accepted it had he not ‘’honored’’ Anne on at least one occasion nine months prior to the baby’s birth. Then again, he could have welcomed even another man’s child because it freed him from sleeping with the person who had set out to--at the very least--topple him, replacing him with a 17-year-old nonentity. As Eleanor d’Aquitaine famously said when she and her sons revolted against her husband and their father, Henry II of England, What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?)
As for Cinq-Mars during this time, he and his friends slummed around the area of the Palais Royale, where nobles, writers, playwrights and even valets gathered for orgies, especially in the vicinity of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, places he introduced to his new girl, Marion Delon de Lorme, once he had had her often enough to envision sharing her with others. Drinking with friends was a form of foreplay, centered about cabarets like the Pomme de Pin in the rue de la Juivrie, Coffier’s in rue du Pas-de-la-Mule and Cormier’s, rue des Fossé-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Girls could be humped in the shadows for a few sous while his companions looked on, as drunk as he, or, better still, their doing the same, to his right and left. There were duels to distract young men, the cause of which was anything from r
obbing a noble of his mistress to a man looking at another man a nanosecond too long, an outrage at the time, an instinct that exists in the animal kingdom where one can never look a gorilla in the eyes without provoking an attack. Cinq-Mars was involved in several duels, a capital offense in the court of Louis, one dealt with with great severity under Richelieu who tried to protect France’s elite from extinguishing itself. We know Cinq-Mars fought against Louis Foucault, comte du Daugnon, a man well known for his competence in arms, and won.
His closest friend was Henri de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny, who, along with Cinq-Mars, formed the jeunesse dorée of the times, boys of noble birth free to roam the streets, drunk, taking part in escapades struck from the records should they be stopped by gendarmes thanks to the intervention of Richelieu. This was freedom Cinq-Mars was in no way willing to give up, even when Richelieu suggested he become Grand Master of the Wardrobe, a hugely prestigious and highly remunerated position, one that was bought in gold and sold at the holder’s retirement for enough to see him into a richly decorated tomb. Richelieu often tried the soft approach first in his dealings with others, in this instance he told Cinq-Mars that a boy of such refined tastes in clothing as he, owed it to his king to share his sophistication, because Louis was the laughing stock of the court’s wonderfully attired youth. But Cinq-Mars had been at court long enough by then to know, intimately, every nook and cranny, and the least of all jobs desired was that of Grand Master of the Wardrobe, where he would be at the complete beck and call of the king, serving him twenty-four hours a day if such were the royal desire, the king’s whipping boy, beaten when Louis was frustrated or unhappy, and Cinq-Mars knew that at the moment Louis was going through a rough period, supposedly because his mistress Marie de Hautefort was not giving him her complete attention. Normally Louis would have gone to Richelieu to ask him to intervene on his behalf with Hautefort, but Hautefort was Queen Anne’s best friend and both hated Richelieu. So Louis chose a certified virgin from his court and courted her, with the age-old intention of making Hautefort jealous. Instead, Louis fell in love with the girl, Louise de La Fayette, and the two became inseparable. Except that La Fayette was virgin too to all forms of dishonestly, and she set, as her life’s goal, the salvation of Louis’ soul by having him reunite with his wife Queen Anne. Richelieu decided to latch on to La Fayette as a way of separating Louis from Hautefort. The cardinal would make La Fayette his thing, the aim being to use her to convince Louis to follow all of Richelieu’s plans. Instead, La Fayette rebuked Richelieu and showed her determination to lead a virtuous life by entering a convent, St. Mary of the Visitation. It was said that if Louis hadn’t had a worthless brother as heir to the throne, he would have abdicated for her, or entered a monastery.
