Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King

by Antonia Fraser

  Royal procreation, even outside marriage, like royal virility, was somehow different. There was a primitive instinct to regard a fertile king as symbolic of a fertile and successful country. The archetypal monarch Henri IV had left enough bastards for the survivors to be among the honoured members of society, even if Louis XIII had not added to their number. In 1663 you found César Duc de Vendôme, son of the fabulous mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, and his sister the Duchesse d'Elboeuf; the Duc de Verneuil, Governor of Languedoc, was Henri's child by another woman and Jeanne-Baptiste, the powerful Abbess of Fontevrault (appointed as a mere child), by yet another. Rank was not an issue. Under the entry ‘Royal bastards' Antoine Furetiere's magisterial Dictionnaire Universel stated baldly: ‘the bastards of kings are princes.'

  Louise, a girl without a husband, may possibly have tried to avoid conception by some of the whispered artificial expedients, although coitus interruptus was surely not part of the Sun King's vision of himself. It is more likely that she accepted the inevitable consequences of the King's sinful (but rapturous) love-making as part of the price. This would have been combined with just a soupçon of pride: after all, her children would be royal, and they would be his children. In a muddling way fertility was also considered one of the female virtues, even if the consequences might be awkward: as a saying on the subject had it, ‘A good land is a land that gives a good harvest.' Similarly, abortifacients, like contraceptives, were known since ancient times and passed from generation to generation of women: wormwood, hyssop, rue and ergot were all believed to be effective.8 But there is no evidence that anyone ever tried to abort one of the King's children, regardless of the mother's marital status. What did happen in Louise's case was an attempt at concealment.

  At the Ballet of the Arts, performed in the early part of 1663, Louise was still being described, in the lines of the poet Benserade, as the most beautiful shepherdess in the show, with that special ‘sweet languor’ in her melting blue eyes.9 But as her pregnancy advanced before an expected birth-date in December, Louise was bought a house in Paris where she passed her time entertaining the court and playing cards. Did Queen Anne know? Most likely some rumour reached her. And Marie-Thérèse? Probably not. In any case the Queen herself was similarly occupied. After the births of her first two children, a boy and a girl of whom only the Dauphin survived, Marie-Thérèse would give birth to another daughter Marie-Anne in 1664 who died after six weeks, yet another in January 1667, a little Marie-Thérèse known as ‘the Petite Madame', and the desired second son Philippe Duc d'Anjou in August 1668. With La Vallière entering the maternal lists, the King would be found by August 1668 to have been responsible for no fewer than nine royal or quasi-royal births in six and three-quarter years.

  Leaving aside the paternity of their offspring, however, the experience in childbirth of the two women, the wife and the mistress, was very different. The accouchement of the Queen of France was witnessed by as many people as could cram into the chamber: that was the custom. When the Dauphin was born, Louis himself flung open the window to the waiting crowds in the courtyard and shouted: ‘The Queen has given birth to a boy!'

  On 19 December, Louise also gave birth to a boy, but in the greatest secrecy in a house in Paris. There was a story that the fashionable doctor Boucher who attended was escorted in an anonymous carriage and entered though a garden gate with his eyes bandaged. There he helped a masked lady give birth10 … It was a story told of more than one mysterious beyond-the-law-of-the-Church birth. In the case of Louise, it may even have been true.

  What is certain is that the boy was smuggled away by the loyal minister Colbert and his wife. It was Colbert who sent a note to the King: ‘We [sic] have a boy' – contradicting reports that Louis was actually present, lurking, also masked, in a corner of the room. The baby was baptised Charles, registered under a false surname, given suitably obscure parentage and brought up far from his mother. Louise returned to the court and, only a few days after a long and painful labour, was back in attendance at the midnight Mass on the eve of Christmas. Not for Louise the long lying-in period of recovery granted to the Queen of France, who would recline, surrounded by congratulatory crowds, for several weeks. Even Madame de Sévigné's daughter did not move till the tenth day, a period of rest generally thought essential to the preservation of youth and beauty, especially a graceful figure.

  This child Charles died some two years later, not of neglect, but the victim of one of the many childhood maladies which plagued rich and poor alike. Nevertheless, there is evidence from her later life that Louise always regarded the children of her sin with more pious regret than maternal solicitude. She was soon back in her way of life as the King's pliant, submissive and allegedly secret mistress.

  *

  The year which followed was cruelly frustrating for the virtuous at court. None of the issues, foremost among them the King's adultery but including Louise's status, was either resolved or put aside. Louise for her part angrily spurned the idea of an arranged marriage to some complaisant nobleman of a certain age. This suggestion was not quite as gross or insensitive as it might seem, especially when Louise became pregnant with her second child in April. Kings and others were expected to provide cover – or security – for their unmarried mistresses. For example, the Duke of Savoy was congratulated by one of his ambassadors for having married off Gabrielle de Marolles so well: not only was his behaviour generous in itself but it might act as a ‘fish-hook’, pulling in future mistresses.11 But the whole idea upset Louise's romantic susceptibilities. As a married woman she too would have been committing adultery (like the King) and the whole fantasy of her quasi-holy devotion to the King would be shown up for what it was.

  At Easter for the first time the King did not make his public Communion. Father Annat, worldly-wise but not a cynic, threatened to give up his post as confessor if such a blatantly false penitence was proposed on the part of his royal master in order to receive the Sacred Host at Communion. Luckily the royal pew at St-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the palace of the Louvre, had heavy curtains so that the royal embarrassment, if revealed on his face, was concealed from the congregation.

  As if in defiance of the holy laws, the prolonged and glorious Fête entitled The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle took place in early May. It was planned and carried out by Louis XIV ‘in the manner in which he did everything, that is to say the most gallant and the most magnificent way you could imagine', in the words of Bussy-Rabutin. The planning also showed Louis XIV's attention to detail: he was personally shown a mock-up of the stage machinery which was intended to be a startling feature of the celebration, and all the outdoor stages proposed. Only then did he hand matters over to the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the Comte de Saint-Aignan.12 This early facilitator of life with Louise was a noted impresario of the ballet. The theme chosen was from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and the Fête was supposed to be dedicated to the two Queens, Marie-Thérèse and Anne. But everyone knew the true dedicatee was Louise, in attendance as one of the maids-of-honour of Henriette-Anne.

  Apart from the gorgeousness of it all, and the titillation of Louise's presence, there was a special excitement to be had because this was the first official court entertainment held at Versailles. Ironically enough – in view of what was to become of it – the charm of Versailles at this point was its modesty. Since there was limited accommodation, only those who were nominated by the King were present: as the Grande Mademoiselle reflected, this made Versailles particularly agreeable. Certainly it was convenient for Louis to use it to entertain his intimates, including Louise; it was no wonder that by 1663 he was reported as having ‘a special affection' for the place. Queen Anne was beginning to love it too, for her apartments were decorated with two things for which she had a passion: gold filigree and jasmine plants.13*

  Modest as Versailles might be at this stage, by the standards of the future, the gardens, designed by Le Nôtre, were already ravishing and there was already a delightful mena
gerie full of rare birds, pelicans and ostriches, to be viewed from a balcony; wild animals would be added later. And already the King had been seized by the mania for building which would hardly leave him in the course of his reign, so that as in some Sisyphean labour he would turn a modest château into a vast palace, only to resent the lack of privacy, and start all over again with a modest château …

  In the three years up to the end of 1663, Louis had spent 1,500,000 livres on Versailles (about 5 million pounds in today's money). The winter of 1663 was a hard one and the deep frost delayed the plasterers. Undeterred by religious observance, Louis sent a message to the parish priest of Versailles to ask him to let the men work on the Feast days of the Church which were normally holidays. In 1664 alone he would spend nearly 800,000 livres. And the pillaging of Fouquet's creative legacy continued while the erstwhile minister languished in captivity.

  Louis XIV, a fanatical gardener, had a special interest in orange trees, whose subtle but distinct perfume he adored. Perhaps the golden globes were connected to his self-mythification as the Sun King. Now twelve thousand seedling orange trees were transferred for the new orangery at Versailles, designed by Le Vau. As time went by, the King's gardeners would keep a number of them in bloom all the year round, replacing them at fifteen-day intervals; specimens would be brought from Flanders and even Santa Domingo. And they were not cheap: the Duchesse de La Ferté was paid 2,200 livres (over seven thousand pounds in modern money) for twenty orange trees. One, known as Le Grand-Bourbon, traditionally planted in 1421 by the Princess of Navarre, was moved by François I to Fontainebleau and by Louis XIV to Versailles.14*

  The pleasures of the ballet's enchanted isle – allegedly it lay somewhere off the coast of France – were supposed to be enjoyed by a company of knights held there in a rather agreeable form of captivity by the enchantress Alcina. Louis, flashing with the jewels which studded his silver breastplate, flame-coloured plumes nodding from his head, took the role of their leader Roger, and rode the finest horse among his troop. Saint-Aignan played Gaudon the Savage and the Duc de Noailles Olger the Dane. ‘A small army' of actors, dancers, musicians and stage-hands also took part. The vast number of tapers and candles needed to light the whole proceedings over days had to be protected from the wind by a specially made dome.16

  There was a tournament at which Louise's brother, the Marquis de La Vallière, won the prize of a bejewelled sword, presented by Queen Anne. There was a play written specially for the occasion by Molière, The Princess of Elide, in which the playwright acted. And there was a new ballet composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who since 1662 had been in charge of all the music and musical activities at court.

  Louis's heartfelt patronage of these two artists may be seen in the fact that he volunteered to act as godfather to the sons of both men (a coveted honour). In the case of Lully, this patronage survived the composer's extramarital dalliance in the Paris underworld: a bon mot by Saint-Évremond on the difference between Orpheus and Lully suggested that Lully would have picked up some criminal young man and left Eurydice behind.17 As for the theme of Molière's play, that was very much to Louis's current taste, for it celebrated young love – in royalty. A courtier went so far as to commend the hero, Euryale, King of Ithaca, for his passionate nature, ‘a quality I like in a monarch' and especially ‘a prince of your age'. A shepherd's song proposed that ‘There is nothing that does not surrender / Before the sweet charms of love.’18

  At the end of the festival, there was a huge display of fireworks. Alcina's palace, dome and all, was reduced to cinders and vanished into the waters of the ornamental lake where it stood.* Everyone talked of the marvels of these feasts, wrote the poet La Fontaine, the palace which had become gardens, the gardens which had become palaces and the suddenness with which it had all happened. Certainly that notorious Fête of La Fontaine's former patron Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte in August 1661 was thoroughly eclipsed – that was surely part of the point.

  And still the jollity was not over. The King decided to hold an extravagant Court Lottery at the end of dinner, on a scale to match the splendour of what had gone before. These lotteries were in effect a gallant way for the Pasha Louis XIV to present some favourite ladies of his Seraglio with cash, jewels, or even on occasion silver and furniture. Thus in 1659 Marie Mancini, at the height of her influence, had won some awesome rubies in a Court Lottery.19 On this occasion the number of billets heureux (lucky tickets) equalled that of the ladies present, although Queen Marie-Thérèse got the biggest prize – five hundred pistoles (over fifteen hundred pounds today).

  On 12 May 1664, as the Fête ended, Molière presented another play, entitled Tartuffe. King Louis found it ‘most amusing', this study of the impostor and hypocrite who managed to dupe the foolish Orgon (played by Molière himself). But it was symbolic of his growing differences with his mother that Queen Anne on the contrary found the piece deeply shocking. A prodigious row ensued in which the highly vocal ultra-devout party represented by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament (to which Bossuet ministered) shared the Queen Mother's point of view and denounced ‘this wicked play'. In the end Louis compromised. Tartuffe was banned from public performances: however, private performances were permitted on the élitist grounds that the aristocracy could cope with satire where the ‘little people' could not.20 the Prince de Condé became a patron, and five years later the Grande Mademoiselle offered a performance to celebrate the wedding of a lady-in-waiting.

  In the event, Molière did not suffer from the gesture of demi-banning by which the King tried to conciliate the devots and his mother. In August 1665, his troop of actors was made into the King's Company. No doubt Louis appreciated the lines of Tartuffe's supposedly happy ending when the hypocrite is unmasked: ‘We live under a King who hates deceit / A King whose eyes see into every heart / And cannot be fooled by an impostor's art.’21

  Queen Anne was not so easily mollified. In June mother and son had a painful, angry showdown in which both sides wept copiously: but unlike that previous encounter, five years earlier, when Louis had given way over Marie Mancini, he did not now give way over Louise de La Vallière. Instead he talked honestly enough about the ‘passions' which possessed him and were too strong for him to control: yet he loved his mother as much as ever and had not been able to sleep all night on hearing that she wanted, out of sheer misery, to withdraw from court to the convent of Val-de-Grâce. Anne for her part harped on the gloomy theme of Louis's eventual ‘salvation', which was in grave peril; how would God judge him if he died in a state of mortal sin? And she threw in some harsh maternal words on the subject of Louis's overweening sense of his own grandeur (although Anne of all people should not have complained of what she had inculcated in her son since his earliest days).

  In the end Anne was the one who weakened. ‘Oh these sons, these sons,' she moaned to the Duchess of Molina. But she told the Duchess that she could not bear to be estranged from either of them (Monsieur's dalliance with his elegant male favourites such as the Chevalier de Lorraine was hardly more to her taste). In spite of their sins, they brought her more consolation than suffering.22

  The Queen Mother's best hope lay in time: advancing years would perhaps diminish the unlawful ardour of the gallant King. It was a point he made himself to his wife, who, heavily pregnant, flew into a jealous passion at the thought of an expedition to Villers-Cotterets from which her condition barred her. (It did not bar Louise, a mere six months on her way.) Louis promised Marie-Thérèse that when he reached thirty, he would quit acting the gallant and act instead the good husband: this was the age in men when ‘the flower of life' was considered to be over and in principle at least, promiscuity was supposed to wither away too.23 In the event things did not quite work out like that. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that even at this point, when he was in his mid-twenties, Louis, the sincerely religious man, only too conscious of his wrongdoing but unable to give it up, had in mind some vague notion of eventual reform.

  The troubl
e was that such a reformation would very likely come too late for Queen Anne to witness and rejoice. The Queen's health had been frail for some time: the previous year she had felt a great ‘lassitude', with aches and pains in her limbs and a fever which made it difficult to fast severely in Lent according to her usual custom. Louis, ever the devoted son, had watched over her on that occasion, spending several nights on a mattress at the foot of her bed, a revival of his childhood intimacy. Now, in May, shortly before the battle with her son which she had lost, Queen Anne showed the first symptoms of the breast cancer which would almost inevitably – at that time – kill her. Fearfully apprehensive on her behalf, with an attack of nerves his doctors called ‘vapours', Louis took refuge in swimming to try and calm himself.

  The treatment for tumours of this sort was rudimentary: bleeding and purges (the usual prescriptions for every illness), which were supposed in theory to restore the natural balance of the body, but in practice merely weakened the patient. Some medical textbooks mentioned the possibility of a mastectomy, but what Queen Anne actually endured was less radical: the application of hardening agents such as burnt lime paste so that the diseased tissue could be gradually cut away.24

  At Christmas, the doctors pronounced the cancer incurable. In a moving scene the Queen Mother broke the news to her two sons: she was determined to be steadfast in her coming suffering. Although the pain made sleep almost impossible, she decided at first that it was ‘by the orders of God' that the remedies of man were useless in trying to cure her body; later she believed that she was being punished for the pride she had always felt in her own beauty. The following year was marked by a series of hideous ordeals in which even such a pious woman's resolution was tested to the utmost; by the summer erysipelas – inflammation of the skin – covered half her body and her arm was so swollen that the sleeve of her chemise had to be cut off. An attempt at lancing the visible tumour ended in disaster and caused yet more suffering. In all this time her courage never deserted her, nor, touchingly, did her feminine love of fine things: she could bear only the finest batiste against her skin. This recalled an erstwhile joke by Cardinal Mazarin, that if she went to hell, there would be no greater torture for her than being made to sleep in coarse linen sheets.25