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

By Anne Somerset

The Affair of the Poisons, as it became known, was an extraordinary episode that took place in France during the reign of Louis XIV. When poisoning and black magic became widespread, arrests followed. Suspects included those among the highest ranks of society. Many were tortured and numerous executions resulted.

The 1676 torture and execution of the Marquise de Brinvilliers marked the start of the scandal which rocked the foundations of French society and sent shock waves through all of Europe. Convicted of conspiring with her adulterous lover to poison her father and brothers in order to secure the family fortune, the marquise was the first member of the noble class to fall.
In the French court of the period, where sexual affairs were numerous, ladies were not shy of seeking help from the murkier elements of the Parisian underworld, and fortune-tellers supplemented their dubious trade by selling poison.

It was not long before the authorities were led to believe that Louis XIV himself was at risk. With the police chief of Paris police alerted, every hint of danger was investigated. Rumors abounded and it was not long before the King ordered the setting up of a special commission to investigate the poisonings and bring offenders to justice. No one, the King decreed, no matter how grand, would be spared having to account for their conduct.

The royal court was soon thrown into disarray. The Mistress of the Robes and a distinguished general were among the early suspects. But they paled into insignificance when the King's mistress was incriminated. If, as was said, she had engaged in vile Satanic rituals and had sought to poison a rival for the King's affections, what was Louis XIV to do?

Anne Somerset has gone back to original sources, letters and earlier accounts of the affair. By the end of her account, she reaches firm conclusions on various crucial matters. The Affair of the Poisons is an enthralling account of a sometimes bizarre period in French history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781466862807

Anne Somerset

Anne Somerset was born in 1955 and read History at King's College, London. Her first book, ‘The Life and Times of William IV’, was published in 1980. This was followed in 1984 by the bestselling ‘Ladies-in-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day’, an acclaimed biography of Elizabeth I in 1991, and ‘Unnatural Murder: Poison in the Court of James I: The Overbury Murder’ in 1998. Her most recent work is ‘The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV’.

Book preview

ONE

MME DE BRINVILLIERS

At seven o’clock in the evening of 17 July 1676 a small woman in her mid-forties was led out of the Conciergerie prison in Paris. A tumbril stood in the courtyard, waiting to take her to the Place de Grève, the usual site for public executions in Paris. The woman, whose hands were bound, was barefoot and clothed in the traditional garb of a condemned prisoner. A coarse linen shift concealed her trim figure and her chestnut hair was covered by an unbecoming hood fastened under the chin. Although she was to be beheaded, rather than hanged, a noose had been placed round her neck to symbolise the death sentence that had been passed on her.

Despite the oppressive heat, a huge crowd had massed in the prison courtyard, where they had been waiting for several hours. The entire route from the Conciergerie to the Place de Grève was likewise thronged with spectators intent on catching a glimpse of the prisoner as she passed. It was later estimated that 100,000 people had turned out to witness the spectacle. The mood of most of them was unmistakably hostile, for though the Parisian populace generally evinced compassion for offenders on their way to execution, this woman’s crimes had inspired such repugnance that scarcely anyone felt any sympathy for her. Instead, she was reviled as an ‘enemy of the human race’ who deserved to be held ‘in execration by all men’.¹

At first sight the prisoner appeared an inoffensive person. She was tiny and slender-boned with huge blue eyes, which struck an observer as ‘gentle and perfectly beautiful’. Her appearance was indeed so deceptive that one person commented that ‘nothing proves better that … the science of physiognomy is false’. For, in fact, this innocuous-looking woman had slowly poisoned her father and two brothers, inflicting the most frightful sufferings on them before they died. Nor was this all. She had also administered poison to her husband and eldest daughter, though admittedly in both cases she had subsequently regretted her action and given them antidotes. She had furthermore intended to murder her sister and sister-in-law, who had only been saved because her crimes had come to light before she could effect her plans. In the words of a shocked contemporary, ‘Medea did not go that far!’²

As if this was not bad enough, she was widely believed to have acquired her expertise in poisons by conducting a series of fiendish experiments. It was said that she had visited paupers in the public hospitals and, under the guise of charity, had fed them poisoned food. She had then observed the effects so as to be able to calculate precise dosages when murdering her family.³ These stories, as it happened, were not true, but the fact that they were so widely credited naturally added to the hatred felt for her.

Even if one ignores these false reports, it is easy to understand why this case had created such a sensation. One aristocratic lady noted that for the past few weeks it had formed the sole topic of conversation in Paris, to the exclusion even of the war France was currently waging against the Dutch.⁴ The gender of the accused in part accounted for the excitement, for the fact that a woman had committed mass murder was deemed peculiarly monstrous. The obsessive interest had been heightened by details relating to the murderess’s sexual depravity. It was common knowledge that in a written analysis of her own shortcomings she had acknowledged gaining her first sexual experience at the age of seven and that, since that time, she had regularly committed adultery and incest.

The fact that poison was involved exacerbated the horror, for it was an accepted maxim that ‘a man is more culpable when he poisons than when he kills by the blade’. As the accused woman’s confessor had observed, when urging her final repentance, ‘Poison is held in horror everywhere and … poisoners are abominated by all the world.’ Needing guile and ruthlessness, rather than strength, poison was a weapon in some respects ideally suited to a woman and was the more to be dreaded on that account. It was true that in recent years there had been very few suspected instances of poison (the condemned woman’s confessor had told her, ‘Until now parricide has been very rare and poisoning almost unheard of’)⁵ but there was concern that this case might signify the start of an alarming trend.

There was another reason why this case had gained such notoriety. The condemned woman was no low-born wretch who had turned to crime to claw herself out of a desperate existence. She was, on the contrary, a person ‘of birth and condition’, a marquise, who had squandered a sizeable fortune and was related to some of the most influential people in France.

*   *   *

The woman’s name was Marie Madeleine Gobelin, Marquise de Brinvilliers. Born in 1630, she was the eldest of Antoine Dreux d’Aubray’s five children. In 1643 Dreux d’Aubray had been appointed Civil Lieutenant of the city of Paris, an immensely lucrative and powerful post. With his counterpart, the Criminal Lieutenant, the Civil Lieutenant was one of the two most important magistrates in the Parisian law courts, which were based at the Châtelet. Robed in scarlet, he presided there as a judge of appeal as well as adjudicating on other major cases. Besides this, he enjoyed various privileges and administrative responsibilities. These included the right to proclaim war and peace in Paris, and to oversee the provisioning of the capital in times of dearth. He was, in short, one of the most influential and highly paid officials in the country.

In 1651 Marie Madeleine d’Aubray was married to Antoine Gobelin. He was a descendant of the dye-manufacturing dynasty, which had established the Gobelin tapestry workshops. Having made a fortune several generations earlier, the family had abandoned industry and commerce to pursue more socially acceptable occupations within the administrative hierarchy. Antoine’s father held the remunerative position of President of the Chamber of Accounts and, although Antoine was a younger son, he was extremely well provided for. He had an income of 30,000 livres a year and, since his bride brought with her a dowry of 150,000 livres – soon swollen by an inheritance of 50,000 livres from her grandmother – the young couple’s joint wealth was considerable.⁶ In 1660 their status was further enhanced when they entered the lower ranks of the nobility. Gobelin’s fiefdom of Brunvilliers was elevated to a marquisate (in France titles were attached to properties rather than being conferred on individuals) but, because the scribe who recorded the details made a clerical error, Gobelin and his wife were henceforth known as the Marquis and Marquise de Brinvilliers.

We do not know if Marie Madeleine’s inclinations were taken into account when a husband was selected for her. A defender of Mme de Brinvilliers later claimed that the early years of the union ‘were marked by the greatest happiness and tenderness’ but there is no way of verifying this. In 1658, however, Mme de Brinvilliers’s destiny was transformed when she embarked on an affair with the man later described as her ‘evil genius’.⁷

M. de Brinvilliers was an officer in the French army. Soon after his marriage he became colonel of the Normandy regiment and it was while on active service that he made the acquaintance of another officer named Gaudin de Sainte-Croix. Sainte-Croix was, by his own account, the illegitimate offshoot of an illustrious Gascon family. Presumably they had given him money to purchase a commission in the army, for he was a cavalry captain in the Tracy regiment. Sainte-Croix was an immensely attractive man. Handsome, witty and unscrupulous, he possessed a vitality and charm that many found irresistible. While entering with enjoyment into most forms of dissipation, he retained a capacity for serious conversation which gave the impression that he was an upright character. Unfortunately, ‘beneath the appearance of a wise and good-natured man he concealed a most black and detestable soul’.⁸

M. de Brinvilliers liked Sainte-Croix so much that he invited him to stay at his house in the Rue Neuve Saint-Paul in Paris. This was a mistake. According to one account Mme de Brinvilliers was already dissatisfied with her husband as he had been unfaithful to her and thus proved highly susceptible to Sainte-Croix’s ‘artful and insinuating manners’. Before long Sainte-Croix’s ‘assiduities towards the husband were transferred to the lady’. Her discontent with M. de Brinvilliers reinforced the attractions of her admirer, ensuring that Sainte-Croix ‘did not sigh for long’.⁹

M. de Brinvilliers was a somewhat lethargic man who appears to have made little protest about his wife’s liaison with Sainte-Croix. Her family, however, were less supine about the attachment. Her two brothers made plain to her their disapproval and her father demanded that she break off the relationship.¹⁰ When his daughter ignored him Dreux d’Aubray retaliated in the way open at that time to all persons in authority in France whose family honour was being undermined by troublesome individuals. He obtained a lettre de cachet – a sealed order issued in the King’s name which enshrined a direct expression of the royal will – ordering the arrest of Sainte-Croix.

On 19 March 1663 Sainte-Croix was arrested in Mme de Brinvilliers’s coach and taken to the Bastille. His confinement there was not particularly arduous. Prisoners in the fortress were generally well fed and cared for and, unless orders were given to the contrary, they were permitted to have books, to associate with other inmates and to play cards and chess. Furthermore, although the lettre de cachet had not specified the length of his detention, Sainte-Croix was freed after only six weeks, on 2 May. Even so, Mme de Brinvilliers was incensed by the manner in which her father had exercised his paternal authority. She later recorded that she had murdered him to gain revenge for her ‘vexation at this man’s imprisonment’. At another time she mused, ‘One should never annoy anybody; if Sainte-Croix had not been put in the Bastille perhaps nothing would have happened.’¹¹

*   *   *

It is possible that Sainte-Croix’s stay in the Bastille had other unforeseen consequences. Mme de Brinvilliers later said that while there Sainte-Croix encountered Egidio Exili, an Italian who knew more about poison than almost anyone in the world. During one interrogation she said that after being released from the Bastille, Exili stayed in Sainte-Croix’s house for six weeks. She also told a witness who subsequently testified against her that she had given Sainte-Croix a large sum of money to enable him to purchase Exili’s secret recipe for poison.¹²

It is true that Sainte-Croix was imprisoned in the Bastille at the same time as Exili, who had been taken into custody on 2 February 1663, shortly after his arrival in France. Exili was in the service of the former Queen Christina of Sweden, who was currently on strained terms with the French court, and Louis XIV had ordered his arrest because he wanted to find out the reason for his presence in his kingdom. He remained in the Bastille till 27 June while enquiries were made about him, but there is no reason to think that these uncovered anything which suggested he might be a poisoner or, indeed, a criminal of any sort.

This does not exclude the possibility that Exili was knowledgeable about poison and he may have discussed the subject with Sainte-Croix while they were in the Bastille, but it would have been difficult for him to impart much highly specialised information without access to a laboratory. On Exili’s release, orders were given for his immediate deportation and he was escorted to Calais so that he could sail to England. It is conceivable that he subsequently returned and went to stay with Sainte-Croix but we only have Mme de Brinvilliers’s word for this and on balance it seems implausible.

Despite the paucity of the evidence, the claim that Exili was a key figure in the Brinvilliers murder case was readily accepted, for it accorded neatly with French prejudices. Within France there was a widely held preconception that the Italians were a devious and untrustworthy race who habitually despatched their enemies by covert means. One French pamphlet asserted that in Italy poisons were ‘the surest and most common aids to relieving hatred and vengeance’, and added that Italians mocked Frenchmen for being so simple as to kill people without the requisite degree of subterfuge, which invariably resulted in their being brought to justice.¹³

Italians were thought not only to be predisposed to employing insidious methods but were also regarded as experts on toxicology, a devastating combination in French eyes. Wildly exaggerated notions were held about Italian prowess in this field, for the French believed that their neighbours had developed secret formulas for poisons that worked through inhalation, or proved fatal if they came in contact with the skin. When Mme de Brinvilliers mentioned the subject of poison to one young man of her acquaintance he had remarked that, like most Frenchmen, he knew little about it, ‘but it was said that in Italy there were many very subtle sorts of poison and that they poisoned using gloves and bouquets’. A tract issued shortly after Mme de Brinvilliers’s trial likewise stressed that the Italians had an unrivalled mastery of poison and that ‘by dint of hard work and study they have composed such subtle and well-disguised types of poison that they baffle the skill and capacity of doctors. Some are slow … others prompt and violent, but none leave the slightest trace that might reveal their presence.’ The statement typifies attitudes at the time and helps explain why the mythic status of ‘a great artist in poison’ was so readily conferred on Exili.¹⁴

*   *   *

When Sainte-Croix was released from the Bastille he shrugged off the interruption and renewed his links with Mme de Brinvilliers. However, despite his hedonistic existence, he still found time for other pursuits. At some point he rented a property in the Place Maubert, which he converted into a laboratory. This in itself was not necessarily suspicious for at the time, Paris abounded with workshops where individuals could carry out experiments. Sainte-Croix ostensibly used these premises for alchemical research, an activity which obsessed many of his contemporaries. At a time when the boundaries of knowledge were being constantly expanded it seemed perfectly possible that the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone – a miraculous substance that would permit the conversion of base metals into silver or gold – would soon be discovered. Accordingly, a surprisingly large number of people were preoccupied by the search for it and Sainte-Croix was apparently among them.

Sainte-Croix encouraged the belief that he was close to making great discoveries in this field. He showed one person the results of an experiment which had supposedly caused mercury to solidify after being processed in a ‘digestion oven’. It may be, however, that his professed interest in the subject was entirely fraudulent. There is some evidence that suggests that what he was really doing at the Place Maubert was counterfeiting coins. Alternatively, like many others who professed to know alchemical secrets, he may simply have aspired to persuade gullible people to part with large sums of money in the hope of making a handsome return on their investment. With hindsight, however, another possibility was put forward. Suspicions were later voiced that Sainte-Croix’s alchemical experiments had merely formed a cover for more sinister activities and that he was using his knowledge of Exili’s ‘detestable secrets’ to perfect new varieties of poison. One person suggested that this had always been his ultimate goal and that, as far as Sainte-Croix was concerned, ‘the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone was poison’.¹⁵

*   *   *

However, Mme de Brinvilliers would later allege that Sainte-Croix obtained his best poison from another source altogether, for shortly before her execution she claimed that a Swiss chemist based in Paris named Christophe Glaser had been Sainte-Croix’s principal supplier. This was a startling claim, for Glaser – who had died some years before, possibly in 1672 – had been a scientist of some distinction. It was he who had identified impure sulphate of potassium and in recognition of his achievement this substance was always known as ‘Glaser’s salt’ until the reform of chemical nomenclature. Furthermore, thanks to the patronage of the King’s physician, Dr Vallot, by 1663 Glaser had not only become ‘apothecary-in-ordinary’ to both King Louis XIV and his brother, the Duc d’Orléans, but he had also been appointed resident lecturer at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Paris. These gardens were an impressive institution, which reflected the King’s interest in scientific progress. Four thousand plant varieties were cultivated there, some of which, of course, were poisonous, though many others had therapeutic qualities. There was also a workshop where Glaser held chemistry classes for members of the public and it is possible that Sainte-Croix had attended these.

Some indication of Glaser’s knowledge is given by his book on chemistry, which was published in France in 1663 and subsequently translated into English under the title The Compleat Chymist. This gave instructions for procedures such as the purification and calcination of metals and metallic elements like gold, silver, tin, lead and mercury, and also provided information on practical matters such as laboratory equipment and the construction of furnaces and stills. Besides this, the book contained recipes for various outlandish concoctions, which Glaser recommended for medicinal purposes such as a sal volatile prepared from ‘the skull of a man dead of a violent death’. Glaser praised these salts for their ‘very great virtues’, extolling them for the way ‘they penetrate to the places furthest removed from the first digestion and dissolve all viscous and tartarous matters, open all obstructions, heal all fever … preserve from plague and strongly resist all putrefaction’. Other formulations that Glaser considered efficacious included a salt made from the flesh of disembowelled vipers and a solution distilled from the ‘fresh urine of children from eight till twelve years of age’, which he found excellent for alleviating stiffness of the joints and

Reviews for The Affair of the Poisons

[Ronnie Rife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Exceptional study of the Affair of the Poisons. Good study of all those involved and their motives.

[jaime_gonzale_485926 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great read

[philsyphe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My main reason for reading this was for the opening section on Madame de Brinvilliers of whom I’ve been fascinated by for several years now. I was, therefore, disappointed with the short amount of space given to La Brinvilliers, especially when two whole chapters in this book have next to nothing to do with the Affair of the Poisons.The two chapters in question feature irrelevant info like this:“A performance of Alceste then took place in the marble courtyard, converted for the evening into a sumptuous theatre, decorated with orange trees in tubs on marble pedestals and lit by crystal chandeliers. Five days later a concert was held in the Primi Visconti observed that though the King occasionally appeared relaxed in private, he would instinctively straighten his bearing and assume a more dignified expression if he thought there was any chance he could be glimpsed through an open door.”Louis XIV’s court and his mistresses are a backdrop and it’s pure filler material to devote one chapter to his court and another to his mistresses. Granted, Madame de Montespan features in the Affair of the Poisons, but we don’t need to know her life story; focus on her involvement with anything poison-related.I am interested in Louis XIV and France’s Bourbon kings, as I am with the likes of La Montespan, Madame de Maintenon, et al., but when I choose to read a book on a specific topic, I expect it to be about that specific topic, not about info that has little or nothing to do with it.Going back to my main point of interest, namely Madame de Brinvilliers, I feel this could’ve been much better presented. As someone who likes their history presented chronologically, I don’t like that it opens with La Brinvilliers’s trip to the scaffold.Hugh Stokes’s bio on La Brinvilliers might’ve been published in 1912, but it’s in-depth and lively detail is a much more entertaining read than this book. He puts quotes from La Brinvilliers’s torture session and trial in dialogue, whereas Ms Somerset uses reported speech, which makes for passive prose. Very dry.I realise, of course, that Stokes’s tome was all about La Brinvilliers, so I didn’t expect too many pages dedicated to her in this book; however, as already mentioned, it could’ve been expanded if those two irrelevant chapters were cut.I did, at least, glean a couple of new things about La Brinvilliers's life that weren’t featured in Stokes’s bio, as certain topics – namely incest – would’ve been too taboo in the 1910s.After the two irrelevant chapters we get on with the Affair of the Poisons. I was interested in this period of history before I started reading this book, particularly in La Voisin, and therefore expected to be engaged throughout. Sadly, I found it very hard going.With so much detail, it proved an exhausting read, and I found it hard to remember who was whom. It doesn’t help that the author refers to people by their title one minute and by the first name the next. With so many people involved, this really confuses matters. Also, filler material keeps creeping in, which slows an already slow-paced narrative. While I enjoyed this in parts, it was overall too dry and descriptive with way too much irrelevant information.

[jbd1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An almost-too-thorough blow-by-blow account of the Affair of the Poisons, a scandal at the heart of the French court in the late 1670s and early 1680s. Lots (and lots, and lots) of names and dates and crimes and accusations to keep track of, but if you're keen on the topic and willing to wade through it all, there's quite a fascinating story in here.

[lorelorn_2007 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very well written historical account of a major scandal in seventeenth century France. The insights into the investigative and interrogative processes and procedures used in this period of history are the most fascinating part of the book.