September 21, 2009 • 25 mins
As the Sun King, Louis XIV ruled France for over 70 years. Yet even a king can't get everything he wants. Learn about Louis' secret marriage to Madame de Maintenon -- and why it was secret -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert, joined today by Sarah Dowdy. How are you, Sarah?
I'm great, Katie. How are you click? Um. Today we're
(00:20):
gonna be talking about the ultimate rags to riches story,
So pretty excited. Everyone likes a rags to riches story.
And today we've got Madame de Montenal, the mistress or
was it wife of Louis the four team, But she
wasn't born Madame de Montenal. She was born Francoise d'aubigner
(00:42):
in November of six and at the time her father
was actually in the in a prison. Her mother was
the daughter of his prison guard. Um. Although Madame de
marten or Francoise at the time, was not actually born
in prison. That's a little his historical myth that you
might hear toss you're busting you're busting it. And though
(01:04):
I believed it earlier in the day. Her father was
in prison for a conspiracy against Rigelio, but he'd also
been accused of abduction and rape. So he's really not
a stand up guy. He's kind of a loser, even
though his father is a pretty impressive guy, is a
celebrated poet. Yeah, Huguenot soldier companion of Henry the fourth,
(01:26):
but those traits were not passed on to his son,
and being a Huguenot made them something of an outsiders. Then.
You know, France was very Catholic, but her mother was Catholic,
so she got a Catholic baptism, even though she was
raised Protestant, which turned out to be fortunate later in life. Yeah.
So she's raised with her relatives until about age seven
(01:49):
when the family all ups and moves to the island
of Murray Gallant, which is, you know, on the other
side of the ocean. Her father hoped he was going
to get a governor a position, but when they get there,
you know, oops, there's no position. It's not vacant. So
he heads back to France and leaves them behind. Thanks.
(02:11):
So that wasn't really good fortune for them, and Francoise's
childhood at this point had been not so great. When
she was living with relatives, she was definitely treated as
their their poor relation, and she wore their cast off
clothes and didn't have a fire in her room, so
she was well acquainted with what poverty looked like and
in contrast, what a nicer life looked like. Definitely, But
(02:35):
by the time she's back in France, when you know,
she and her mother and brothers finally leave Martinique Um.
She goes back to live with her aunt, but because
her aunt is Protestant, another Catholic aunt ends up claiming
her and moves her. Yes, I think a relative of
her godmother actually, So she takes her to Paris at
(02:58):
the age of sixteen, and she's raised pretty sternly by
this relative. Yes, she's not worldly at all at this point.
And she goes there and she's very eager to please,
and she's pretty, if she's a bit too tan for
the standards of the time. And she's also very feminine.
So after her mother dies, her guardian is faced with
(03:19):
this orphan teenage orphan decides she's going to try to
unload or try to marry her off. Along comes a
satirical writer, Paul Scoun, who was twenty five years older
than France Swaws and also severely crippled by arthritis. Right,
and he wasn't again a real stand up guy. He
(03:41):
was kind of shady judging from what we read, I
keep on seeing his name linked with the word rascal,
which is what you want for a sixteen year old girl.
In her marriage in sixteen fifty two, he made her
an offer which was marry me or I'll give you
the dowry you need to be in a convent, and
France Laws had no interest in being a nun. She
(04:03):
later said, I preferred to marry him rather than a convent,
so she chose the marriage, and she wasn't particularly pleased
with marriage. She's quoted as saying, don't hope for perfect
happiness from marriage to someone else's advice. And no one
knows if their marriage was actually consummated. No. Once again,
he had very bad arthritis, but um, judging by his rascal,
(04:27):
I don't behavior. No one's quite sure. They think if
there may have been attempts made at least, but she
wasn't interested in sex after that, so I'm assuming it
didn't go well for little France Laws. But she does
end up nursing him and running his salon, where she
meets a lot of very influential important people, and she
(04:49):
learns to become a very good conversationalist and an even
better listener, which again will serve her well because those
were considered great virtues and woman at the time as
they are now. Who doesn't want to have a good conversation. Um,
So obviously, this teenage girl married to this crippled satirical
writer uh presiding over his saloon, has a lot of
(05:11):
offers or flirtations from his visitors, but most people think
she resisted that, although she sort of perfected the art
of flirtation, but she kept her reputation largely intact, which
served her well later. Again, yes, she was a forward
thinker from Salas Dubner well, I guess from Slis Garran
(05:33):
at this point. But eight years into their marriage, Paul
Scarand dies and there are some scirless rumors that pop
up yet again that after his death, perhaps she had
engaged in a little bit more than flirtation. One source
said she even considered becoming a courtesan, but ended up
taking a room at a convent and sort of becoming
(05:55):
a saloon lady instead of respectable, well read woman of culture.
She may have had lovers at this point though, although
if she did, she was very discreet and almost considered
somewhat of a prude or at least extremely devout. Right,
we came into we came to blows about this earlier.
(06:17):
That's not entirely true, because I was reading Antonia Fraser's
Love and Louis the fourteenth, which is what I was
doing a lot of my research on, and Sarah had
different sources, and a lot of them disagree. So Sarah's
going to go ahead and say that she had lovers,
and I am going to maintain that she did not.
She discreet with her lovers. But she was also known
(06:37):
for being very virtuous, and she really loved children, which
was actually unusual at the time because childhood hadn't been
so sentimentalized as it is now, so people didn't think
that women should fall and over children. It wasn't really expected.
But she really loved being around them and teaching them
to read and teaching them their catechism. And this is
how her next opportunity comes up. Well, and before we
(07:00):
even go into that, she really walked the line quite
well between uh, this motherly devout persona and something a
little more sensual, and she maintained a friendship with the
most famous courtisan at the time and still managed to
you know, come out of that with a solid reputation,
you know, in part because of this very motherly um
(07:25):
face she put forward. Well, and I love the detail
that she apparently loved fine petticoats. And she went to
her confessor one day and he'd said, you know, I
know you say you always wear normal things, but I
can tell by the russell you know you're wearing something
nice through the screen under the dress. So she wasn't
(07:45):
immune from vanity. So Francois great opportunity comes in sixteen
sixty eight when her friend Marie de Montespa, who was
the king's favorite mistress at the time, gets pregnant and
she was offered the position of taking care of the
royal bastards because they were, you know, the King's kids,
(08:10):
but they were also supposed to be a bit out
of a spotlight. So he ended up buying a house
for her to take care of all of them in.
And she asked her confessor, the abbeg o Blam, whether
she should do this or not, you know, do you
take the post as governess? And he said yes, that
it was her duty or possibly even her holy destiny. Again,
according to the book I was reading, and this is
(08:32):
where her good reputation in her discretion really come into play. Uh,
Marie de Montespa was married, obviously the king was married,
so these kids were We're more secret than you might expect.
Francois's role is literally like whisking away these children to
(08:52):
their new residents and caring for them. And that made
for a bit of friction between her and the royal
stress because it's always hard, I think child care when
someone's with your children all day long and you were not,
So they didn't necessarily get along as much as one
would have hoped. And apparently fran sUAS thought about quitting
(09:13):
or maybe even becoming a nun, and we know how
she felt about that. It must not have been very
fun for her. Now, plus the king is starting to notice,
uh the widow scarone a little more, and he's making
his visits. He's you know, he's visiting his kids, and oh,
their lovely governess also happens to be there. So they're
(09:34):
starting to get to know each other but well, and
she is so different from Marie de Montespond because she
is so very motherly, whereas you know, his mistress is
very very sensual and very sexual and demanding and demanding
fran sUAS is subservient and motherly, and he'd come to
see her, you know, and she'd have children in her lash.
(09:55):
She's very serious, very good, intelligent. You could kind of
imagine them having a quiet conversation, right. She wasn't necessarily
very funny, maybe or even extremely entertaining, but she was
clearly a sweet woman and one who had her head
on straight. So in sixteen seventy four, the King gives
(10:15):
from sUAS quite a bit of money, and as a reward,
she buys land at Mantena, which is about twenty five
miles from their side, because it reminded her where she
used to live when she was a kid with her relatives.
And this is when she gets her title Madame de Montenen,
which the King gives her permission to use, because you
can't just do that on your own. And I like
(10:35):
the detail, according to Fraser's book, that she insisted her
Linen's bestored with lavender as her fragrance instead of rose petals,
which is sounds lovely. It was usually it does sound lovely,
and for people who are wondering if you know, the
King promoting her in this way kind of out the
whole secret household of his illegitimate children. He had actually
(10:57):
recognized his his illegitimate children the year before, so they
were getting titles and more out in the open than
they had been, and he had quite a few of them.
He had a lot, was very fertile, and it wasn't
just two or three kids in a house. We're talking
a lot of kids. And their family tree gets so
confusing at this point if you try to go and
(11:18):
look at one. But a change comes in the king's
relationship with his mistress in the Easter of sixteen seventy
five when a priest refuses to give absolution to the
king's mistress and he and the mistress end up breaking
up because they both think that they're going to be damned.
(11:39):
But the king and his mistress were a pretty good couple,
and he was still in love with her, and he
spent a lot of money on her property. He tried
to have other affairs to sort of stay away from her,
you know, too, didn't occur to him to stop having
sex rebound rebound affairs. Um. But the two and back
(11:59):
and up back together and they have even more kids
and um after those last kids are born. Though the
sexual relationships stops and from sUAS at this point is
also very worried about the king's salvation. Like this had
become a nationwide thing. People in France were talking about
the king and whether he was going to hell for
having this mistress, because adultery was considered so much worse
(12:23):
than fornication. They were both people exactly engaging in the
sexual relationship, and people truly thought, you know, their king
was going to hell. So no one knows quite when
fran sUAS and the King became lovers. Originally she tried
to be his friend, but she was very concerned with
(12:43):
the idea of salvation, and at some point must have
realized that unless she was sleeping with the king, someone
else was going to be. Yeah, there needed to be
that extra dimension to their relationship, so she stepped up. Yeah,
even though it's ironic that at the time she's also
persuading the king to sort of rekindle his romance with
(13:06):
his wife, which made the Queen Marie Torre very happy.
You know, she had very much missed her husband, and
that just sort of goes along with francois a virtuous thing.
She thought it was very important that he was involved
with his wife. And if she thought she could save
him and having a sexual relationship with him was necessary,
then the means at some point justified the ends, and
(13:28):
she wrote to her confessor that maybe her small acts
of charity made up for some of the bad things
that she was doing. So obviously things are winding down
with the king's former mistress, Marie de Montespa, and that
really comes to a close when she's accused of participating
in a black mass and buying poison. This was a
(13:50):
while back, and it's very sensationalized and just a lot
of rumors flying, but it's further bad press basically to
their already stormy relationship, and it's so tabloid scandalous it's ridiculous,
like all the poison she bought and her designs upon
the king, when it would have made no sense for
(14:11):
her to poison the king at all, because that's how
she had what she had, so why would she even
want to do that? Um And at the same time,
people in the court are really confused about what's going
on with Francoise and the king. You know what, what
kind of relationship are they actually Are they even having
a sexual relationship or is she really just she that devout.
(14:32):
Are they just friends? Is she his you know, spiritual
advisor or is something else going on? And she has
this weird set of rooms at fair Side. They are
very tiny and they aren't well heated, and at this
point she's starting to develop arthritis, so it's really not
comfortable for her. And this is in contrast to like
his mistress's rooms or the queen's rooms, which are sums.
(14:55):
Some historians think six eight two is when her rel
fationship began with a king, because she started kind of
freaking out about making her Easter in six eight three.
Because I'm still a little confused about this. I'm not
going to lie, but it was very public and you
had to go do your penance, you know, in your
(15:15):
confession beforehand, and then make this public appearance. And if
you were, say, living in sin, then you wouldn't want
to be doing It's a religious right, oh yes, but
also a very public one. So she was really uncomfortable
with that right then. So we're thinking something had started
at that point, and there's a big development in s Yes,
(15:38):
the poor neglected queen dies and um Louise actually early
sad about it. He says that that was the most
dying is the most trouble she ever gave him. But
she sat at the picture and um, Louie is ready
to move on. And her last words, as a side note,
(16:00):
I think you're so sad. Supposedly she said, since I
have been queen, I have had only one happy day.
It is and I think his is even sadder. That's
the only trouble she ever gave it. And did given
him more trouble, Marie Tourne. So the king isn't super old,
and um, the kingdom wants him to marry again, and
(16:21):
he seems like he doesn't want to or did because
he said to have engaged in a Morganatic marriage with
from squaws. And if you've never heard of it, it's
a marriage that was legal within the church but not
the state. So you get married in a chapel with witnesses,
but then you don't register it anywhere, so legally it's
(16:44):
not recognized, but it is sanctioned by the church. It's
for two parties who are not social equals. Right, so
in the eyes of God, you're married, whereas the eyes
of the public would think it was a ridiculous match.
I think you should be marrying some princess us oversimplify it, right,
and your kids wouldn't inherit your title or anything if
you had a Morganatic marriage, But that wasn't really an
(17:07):
issue by then anyways, since from sUAS is in her
early fifties and she's past the point of having children.
And we think this might have happened in October of
that year in the old chapel at Versailles, because after
this she had a new status from Suaz could sit
down in the presence of royalty, and the pope showed
(17:29):
her respect and sent her gifts, so he must have
known about the relationship, or obviously he wouldn't have been
doing it. And she also got better rooms in the palace.
And she also, you know, obviously had an ear with
the king and increasingly influenced his religious behavior and the
court life that vers i. Um it's less like the
(17:52):
glorious Versailles son King court that you imagine at this point.
It's more toned down. Um. But a lot of historians
debate how much influence she really had. Politically, she was
sort of demonized after her death for you know, just
convincing him to make all these awful mistakes and do
(18:14):
all these awful things. Um, but it's pretty likely she
didn't have much to do with anything before Sevre at least,
and certainly didn't have anything to do with the um
revocation of the Edictive Knots, which denied the denied rights
to all the Protestants in France. It was a pretty
(18:34):
pretty big deal when she thought. She's recorded as saying
something along the lines of, you know, if you want
a better life in this world and the next, maybe
you'd better be Catholic. Because clearly it was in one's
bust interests in France at the time to convert to Catholicism.
So she was fairly practical about that sort of thing.
And also, again her personality was pretty subservient. She was
(18:57):
obedient to the king, so it's not like she was
going to go requesting favors from him all the time.
In six she found a school for impoverished noble women. Um.
It's usually just called sacr um, but she really got
to go back to her motherly teaching inclinations. Here another
(19:21):
things she loved taking care of children and raising them.
The teachers of the school were known as the dom
and the students were called the demoiselle. Of Salois, And
this is when the king kind of gets to switch
to a patriarchal role instead of his former rather lecherous one,
because he was known for how much he loved young women,
but there was nothing untoured about his relationship with the
(19:45):
girls at Saints Here, and Francois cared about every detail
of this school. She provided dentistry services to the girls,
and she was interested in details from everything to themingerie
to their food. And the object of this school, you know,
is to make them good Christian women. And she told
them to be cheerful and to learn to speak French
(20:06):
with the correct accent and study religious texts. But they
were also allowed to study theater because the king was
such a big fan. And they even have a racine
writes esther for the school, and they perform it a
bunch of times. But it's so kind of parallel to
the King's life that he has to add a prologue
at the end to let this is not actually about
(20:31):
the son king, but his health starts to decline quite
a bit in sixteen eighties six, not that it was
all that great to begin with. His idea of dinner
was a pheasant, a partridge, four kinds of soup, a
large salad, two slices of ham mutton with gravy, a
plate of sweet cakes, fruit, and hard boiled eggs. Something
(20:52):
about the eggs at the end of the meal, just
like puts it over the final straw, but imagining eating
all that and then topping a few hard boiled eggs.
So by this time he's being purged once a month
and given enemas of milk, honey and almond oil. He
has a boil on his thigh and has a terrible
(21:12):
case of gout. He could hardly walk, and gout is
incredibly painful. If you don't know any rich food, we'll
do it shellfish and drinking. And then he got an
anal fistula which had to be operated on, and there
was no anesthetics, so surgery was painful, more painful than
I would even like to imagine. Let's let's move on
from so, moving on to her health, which is a
(21:37):
little less gory um but still very disabling. She suffered
from rheumatism, and the King insists on having all the
windows open, which is not the most cozy environment for
someone with rheumatism, and the cold especially it was really
hard for her. But more health troubles hit in seventeen
eleven and seventeen twelve, when smallpox and means hit the
(22:00):
royal family and kill quite a few members all in
a row, and it was absolutely devastating for the king
and for everyone else, sudden, very sad deaths. And by
the summer of seventeen fifteen, Louis is starting to look
pretty sick. And I was really surprised to learn this,
but bookies actually start taking bets on whether he would die.
(22:23):
Oh yeah, it's like some kind of death watch website
or something. Now we have those now, and we had
them in the seventeen hundreds. So he has gout hardening
of the arteries, and his leg has um started to
get a case of gang green, which I mean, all
you can do is amputate at that point once it's
(22:45):
gotten that bad. And they didn't want to amputate the
king's leg. But he was still participating in festivals and things,
or at least trying to oversee them, and he said,
I have lived among the people of my court. I
want to die among them. They have followed the whole
course of my life. It is right that they should
witness the end of it, and he started declining pretty quickly,
and told the five year old Duke d'Anjou that he
(23:08):
would make a good king, and then also told him
to remain at peace with your neighbors, because Louis the
fourteenth had quote loved war too much unquote and the
king in France walls have a few interactions kind of
in this decline. She comes and visits him from the
school um, and he was actually worried about her because
(23:30):
she didn't really have anything in terms of money now,
and he hadn't lavished money on her as he had
with didn't just ask for it. She didn't even want
it with us. What she did have a lot of
it she donated to charity or put into the school.
Her her house she had given to her niece and um.
She was very generous, but not that demanding herself. The
(23:52):
king gave her a rosary and she helped him burn
his papers, and he carried a miniature of a portrait
of her in his westcoat pocket it until he died,
which I think is a very sweet detail. And he
died September one, seventeen fifteen, and as a true marker
of her position as the king's wife, if not the Queen.
(24:15):
Foreign dignitaries end up sending her letters of condolence, the
type of letters that you would send to the queen,
and mentioning her very special loss and how hard they
knew it must be for her. She's been in his
life for a long time, thirty plus years. So she
went on to live at the school, and Peter the
Great came to visit her, apparently, and she died at
(24:36):
eighty four, and as a true measure of her standing,
her ashes were disentered during the French Revolution, just like
all the other royals, so she got the same scanual treatment.
If you want to hear more about where things went
from that point, check out how the French Revolution worked,
(24:56):
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(25:19):
com and be sure to check out the stuff you
missed in History Class blog on the how Stuff works
dot com home page,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert, joined today by Sarah Dowdy. How are you, Sarah?
I'm great, Katie. How are you click? Um. Today we're
(00:20):
gonna be talking about the ultimate rags to riches story,
So pretty excited. Everyone likes a rags to riches story.
And today we've got Madame de Montenal, the mistress or
was it wife of Louis the four team, But she
wasn't born Madame de Montenal. She was born Francoise d'aubigner
(00:42):
in November of six and at the time her father
was actually in the in a prison. Her mother was
the daughter of his prison guard. Um. Although Madame de
marten or Francoise at the time, was not actually born
in prison. That's a little his historical myth that you
might hear toss you're busting you're busting it. And though
(01:04):
I believed it earlier in the day. Her father was
in prison for a conspiracy against Rigelio, but he'd also
been accused of abduction and rape. So he's really not
a stand up guy. He's kind of a loser, even
though his father is a pretty impressive guy, is a
celebrated poet. Yeah, Huguenot soldier companion of Henry the fourth,
(01:26):
but those traits were not passed on to his son,
and being a Huguenot made them something of an outsiders. Then.
You know, France was very Catholic, but her mother was Catholic,
so she got a Catholic baptism, even though she was
raised Protestant, which turned out to be fortunate later in life. Yeah.
So she's raised with her relatives until about age seven
(01:49):
when the family all ups and moves to the island
of Murray Gallant, which is, you know, on the other
side of the ocean. Her father hoped he was going
to get a governor a position, but when they get there,
you know, oops, there's no position. It's not vacant. So
he heads back to France and leaves them behind. Thanks.
(02:11):
So that wasn't really good fortune for them, and Francoise's
childhood at this point had been not so great. When
she was living with relatives, she was definitely treated as
their their poor relation, and she wore their cast off
clothes and didn't have a fire in her room, so
she was well acquainted with what poverty looked like and
in contrast, what a nicer life looked like. Definitely, But
(02:35):
by the time she's back in France, when you know,
she and her mother and brothers finally leave Martinique Um.
She goes back to live with her aunt, but because
her aunt is Protestant, another Catholic aunt ends up claiming
her and moves her. Yes, I think a relative of
her godmother actually, So she takes her to Paris at
(02:58):
the age of sixteen, and she's raised pretty sternly by
this relative. Yes, she's not worldly at all at this point.
And she goes there and she's very eager to please,
and she's pretty, if she's a bit too tan for
the standards of the time. And she's also very feminine.
So after her mother dies, her guardian is faced with
(03:19):
this orphan teenage orphan decides she's going to try to
unload or try to marry her off. Along comes a
satirical writer, Paul Scoun, who was twenty five years older
than France Swaws and also severely crippled by arthritis. Right,
and he wasn't again a real stand up guy. He
(03:41):
was kind of shady judging from what we read, I
keep on seeing his name linked with the word rascal,
which is what you want for a sixteen year old girl.
In her marriage in sixteen fifty two, he made her
an offer which was marry me or I'll give you
the dowry you need to be in a convent, and
France Laws had no interest in being a nun. She
(04:03):
later said, I preferred to marry him rather than a convent,
so she chose the marriage, and she wasn't particularly pleased
with marriage. She's quoted as saying, don't hope for perfect
happiness from marriage to someone else's advice. And no one
knows if their marriage was actually consummated. No. Once again,
he had very bad arthritis, but um, judging by his rascal,
(04:27):
I don't behavior. No one's quite sure. They think if
there may have been attempts made at least, but she
wasn't interested in sex after that, so I'm assuming it
didn't go well for little France Laws. But she does
end up nursing him and running his salon, where she
meets a lot of very influential important people, and she
(04:49):
learns to become a very good conversationalist and an even
better listener, which again will serve her well because those
were considered great virtues and woman at the time as
they are now. Who doesn't want to have a good conversation. Um,
So obviously, this teenage girl married to this crippled satirical
writer uh presiding over his saloon, has a lot of
(05:11):
offers or flirtations from his visitors, but most people think
she resisted that, although she sort of perfected the art
of flirtation, but she kept her reputation largely intact, which
served her well later. Again, yes, she was a forward
thinker from Salas Dubner well, I guess from Slis Garran
(05:33):
at this point. But eight years into their marriage, Paul
Scarand dies and there are some scirless rumors that pop
up yet again that after his death, perhaps she had
engaged in a little bit more than flirtation. One source
said she even considered becoming a courtesan, but ended up
taking a room at a convent and sort of becoming
(05:55):
a saloon lady instead of respectable, well read woman of culture.
She may have had lovers at this point though, although
if she did, she was very discreet and almost considered
somewhat of a prude or at least extremely devout. Right,
we came into we came to blows about this earlier.
(06:17):
That's not entirely true, because I was reading Antonia Fraser's
Love and Louis the fourteenth, which is what I was
doing a lot of my research on, and Sarah had
different sources, and a lot of them disagree. So Sarah's
going to go ahead and say that she had lovers,
and I am going to maintain that she did not.
She discreet with her lovers. But she was also known
(06:37):
for being very virtuous, and she really loved children, which
was actually unusual at the time because childhood hadn't been
so sentimentalized as it is now, so people didn't think
that women should fall and over children. It wasn't really expected.
But she really loved being around them and teaching them
to read and teaching them their catechism. And this is
how her next opportunity comes up. Well, and before we
(07:00):
even go into that, she really walked the line quite
well between uh, this motherly devout persona and something a
little more sensual, and she maintained a friendship with the
most famous courtisan at the time and still managed to
you know, come out of that with a solid reputation,
you know, in part because of this very motherly um
(07:25):
face she put forward. Well, and I love the detail
that she apparently loved fine petticoats. And she went to
her confessor one day and he'd said, you know, I
know you say you always wear normal things, but I
can tell by the russell you know you're wearing something
nice through the screen under the dress. So she wasn't
(07:45):
immune from vanity. So Francois great opportunity comes in sixteen
sixty eight when her friend Marie de Montespa, who was
the king's favorite mistress at the time, gets pregnant and
she was offered the position of taking care of the
royal bastards because they were, you know, the King's kids,
(08:10):
but they were also supposed to be a bit out
of a spotlight. So he ended up buying a house
for her to take care of all of them in.
And she asked her confessor, the abbeg o Blam, whether
she should do this or not, you know, do you
take the post as governess? And he said yes, that
it was her duty or possibly even her holy destiny. Again,
according to the book I was reading, and this is
(08:32):
where her good reputation in her discretion really come into play. Uh,
Marie de Montespa was married, obviously the king was married,
so these kids were We're more secret than you might expect.
Francois's role is literally like whisking away these children to
(08:52):
their new residents and caring for them. And that made
for a bit of friction between her and the royal
stress because it's always hard, I think child care when
someone's with your children all day long and you were not,
So they didn't necessarily get along as much as one
would have hoped. And apparently fran sUAS thought about quitting
(09:13):
or maybe even becoming a nun, and we know how
she felt about that. It must not have been very
fun for her. Now, plus the king is starting to notice,
uh the widow scarone a little more, and he's making
his visits. He's you know, he's visiting his kids, and oh,
their lovely governess also happens to be there. So they're
(09:34):
starting to get to know each other but well, and
she is so different from Marie de Montespond because she
is so very motherly, whereas you know, his mistress is
very very sensual and very sexual and demanding and demanding
fran sUAS is subservient and motherly, and he'd come to
see her, you know, and she'd have children in her lash.
(09:55):
She's very serious, very good, intelligent. You could kind of
imagine them having a quiet conversation, right. She wasn't necessarily
very funny, maybe or even extremely entertaining, but she was
clearly a sweet woman and one who had her head
on straight. So in sixteen seventy four, the King gives
(10:15):
from sUAS quite a bit of money, and as a reward,
she buys land at Mantena, which is about twenty five
miles from their side, because it reminded her where she
used to live when she was a kid with her relatives.
And this is when she gets her title Madame de Montenen,
which the King gives her permission to use, because you
can't just do that on your own. And I like
(10:35):
the detail, according to Fraser's book, that she insisted her
Linen's bestored with lavender as her fragrance instead of rose petals,
which is sounds lovely. It was usually it does sound lovely,
and for people who are wondering if you know, the
King promoting her in this way kind of out the
whole secret household of his illegitimate children. He had actually
(10:57):
recognized his his illegitimate children the year before, so they
were getting titles and more out in the open than
they had been, and he had quite a few of them.
He had a lot, was very fertile, and it wasn't
just two or three kids in a house. We're talking
a lot of kids. And their family tree gets so
confusing at this point if you try to go and
(11:18):
look at one. But a change comes in the king's
relationship with his mistress in the Easter of sixteen seventy
five when a priest refuses to give absolution to the
king's mistress and he and the mistress end up breaking
up because they both think that they're going to be damned.
(11:39):
But the king and his mistress were a pretty good couple,
and he was still in love with her, and he
spent a lot of money on her property. He tried
to have other affairs to sort of stay away from her,
you know, too, didn't occur to him to stop having
sex rebound rebound affairs. Um. But the two and back
(11:59):
and up back together and they have even more kids
and um after those last kids are born. Though the
sexual relationships stops and from sUAS at this point is
also very worried about the king's salvation. Like this had
become a nationwide thing. People in France were talking about
the king and whether he was going to hell for
having this mistress, because adultery was considered so much worse
(12:23):
than fornication. They were both people exactly engaging in the
sexual relationship, and people truly thought, you know, their king
was going to hell. So no one knows quite when
fran sUAS and the King became lovers. Originally she tried
to be his friend, but she was very concerned with
(12:43):
the idea of salvation, and at some point must have
realized that unless she was sleeping with the king, someone
else was going to be. Yeah, there needed to be
that extra dimension to their relationship, so she stepped up. Yeah,
even though it's ironic that at the time she's also
persuading the king to sort of rekindle his romance with
(13:06):
his wife, which made the Queen Marie Torre very happy.
You know, she had very much missed her husband, and
that just sort of goes along with francois a virtuous thing.
She thought it was very important that he was involved
with his wife. And if she thought she could save
him and having a sexual relationship with him was necessary,
then the means at some point justified the ends, and
(13:28):
she wrote to her confessor that maybe her small acts
of charity made up for some of the bad things
that she was doing. So obviously things are winding down
with the king's former mistress, Marie de Montespa, and that
really comes to a close when she's accused of participating
in a black mass and buying poison. This was a
(13:50):
while back, and it's very sensationalized and just a lot
of rumors flying, but it's further bad press basically to
their already stormy relationship, and it's so tabloid scandalous it's ridiculous,
like all the poison she bought and her designs upon
the king, when it would have made no sense for
(14:11):
her to poison the king at all, because that's how
she had what she had, so why would she even
want to do that? Um And at the same time,
people in the court are really confused about what's going
on with Francoise and the king. You know what, what
kind of relationship are they actually Are they even having
a sexual relationship or is she really just she that devout.
(14:32):
Are they just friends? Is she his you know, spiritual
advisor or is something else going on? And she has
this weird set of rooms at fair Side. They are
very tiny and they aren't well heated, and at this
point she's starting to develop arthritis, so it's really not
comfortable for her. And this is in contrast to like
his mistress's rooms or the queen's rooms, which are sums.
(14:55):
Some historians think six eight two is when her rel
fationship began with a king, because she started kind of
freaking out about making her Easter in six eight three.
Because I'm still a little confused about this. I'm not
going to lie, but it was very public and you
had to go do your penance, you know, in your
(15:15):
confession beforehand, and then make this public appearance. And if
you were, say, living in sin, then you wouldn't want
to be doing It's a religious right, oh yes, but
also a very public one. So she was really uncomfortable
with that right then. So we're thinking something had started
at that point, and there's a big development in s Yes,
(15:38):
the poor neglected queen dies and um Louise actually early
sad about it. He says that that was the most
dying is the most trouble she ever gave him. But
she sat at the picture and um, Louie is ready
to move on. And her last words, as a side note,
(16:00):
I think you're so sad. Supposedly she said, since I
have been queen, I have had only one happy day.
It is and I think his is even sadder. That's
the only trouble she ever gave it. And did given
him more trouble, Marie Tourne. So the king isn't super old,
and um, the kingdom wants him to marry again, and
(16:21):
he seems like he doesn't want to or did because
he said to have engaged in a Morganatic marriage with
from squaws. And if you've never heard of it, it's
a marriage that was legal within the church but not
the state. So you get married in a chapel with witnesses,
but then you don't register it anywhere, so legally it's
(16:44):
not recognized, but it is sanctioned by the church. It's
for two parties who are not social equals. Right, so
in the eyes of God, you're married, whereas the eyes
of the public would think it was a ridiculous match.
I think you should be marrying some princess us oversimplify it, right,
and your kids wouldn't inherit your title or anything if
you had a Morganatic marriage, But that wasn't really an
(17:07):
issue by then anyways, since from sUAS is in her
early fifties and she's past the point of having children.
And we think this might have happened in October of
that year in the old chapel at Versailles, because after
this she had a new status from Suaz could sit
down in the presence of royalty, and the pope showed
(17:29):
her respect and sent her gifts, so he must have
known about the relationship, or obviously he wouldn't have been
doing it. And she also got better rooms in the palace.
And she also, you know, obviously had an ear with
the king and increasingly influenced his religious behavior and the
court life that vers i. Um it's less like the
(17:52):
glorious Versailles son King court that you imagine at this point.
It's more toned down. Um. But a lot of historians
debate how much influence she really had. Politically, she was
sort of demonized after her death for you know, just
convincing him to make all these awful mistakes and do
(18:14):
all these awful things. Um, but it's pretty likely she
didn't have much to do with anything before Sevre at least,
and certainly didn't have anything to do with the um
revocation of the Edictive Knots, which denied the denied rights
to all the Protestants in France. It was a pretty
(18:34):
pretty big deal when she thought. She's recorded as saying
something along the lines of, you know, if you want
a better life in this world and the next, maybe
you'd better be Catholic. Because clearly it was in one's
bust interests in France at the time to convert to Catholicism.
So she was fairly practical about that sort of thing.
And also, again her personality was pretty subservient. She was
(18:57):
obedient to the king, so it's not like she was
going to go requesting favors from him all the time.
In six she found a school for impoverished noble women. Um.
It's usually just called sacr um, but she really got
to go back to her motherly teaching inclinations. Here another
(19:21):
things she loved taking care of children and raising them.
The teachers of the school were known as the dom
and the students were called the demoiselle. Of Salois, And
this is when the king kind of gets to switch
to a patriarchal role instead of his former rather lecherous one,
because he was known for how much he loved young women,
but there was nothing untoured about his relationship with the
(19:45):
girls at Saints Here, and Francois cared about every detail
of this school. She provided dentistry services to the girls,
and she was interested in details from everything to themingerie
to their food. And the object of this school, you know,
is to make them good Christian women. And she told
them to be cheerful and to learn to speak French
(20:06):
with the correct accent and study religious texts. But they
were also allowed to study theater because the king was
such a big fan. And they even have a racine
writes esther for the school, and they perform it a
bunch of times. But it's so kind of parallel to
the King's life that he has to add a prologue
at the end to let this is not actually about
(20:31):
the son king, but his health starts to decline quite
a bit in sixteen eighties six, not that it was
all that great to begin with. His idea of dinner
was a pheasant, a partridge, four kinds of soup, a
large salad, two slices of ham mutton with gravy, a
plate of sweet cakes, fruit, and hard boiled eggs. Something
(20:52):
about the eggs at the end of the meal, just
like puts it over the final straw, but imagining eating
all that and then topping a few hard boiled eggs.
So by this time he's being purged once a month
and given enemas of milk, honey and almond oil. He
has a boil on his thigh and has a terrible
(21:12):
case of gout. He could hardly walk, and gout is
incredibly painful. If you don't know any rich food, we'll
do it shellfish and drinking. And then he got an
anal fistula which had to be operated on, and there
was no anesthetics, so surgery was painful, more painful than
I would even like to imagine. Let's let's move on
from so, moving on to her health, which is a
(21:37):
little less gory um but still very disabling. She suffered
from rheumatism, and the King insists on having all the
windows open, which is not the most cozy environment for
someone with rheumatism, and the cold especially it was really
hard for her. But more health troubles hit in seventeen
eleven and seventeen twelve, when smallpox and means hit the
(22:00):
royal family and kill quite a few members all in
a row, and it was absolutely devastating for the king
and for everyone else, sudden, very sad deaths. And by
the summer of seventeen fifteen, Louis is starting to look
pretty sick. And I was really surprised to learn this,
but bookies actually start taking bets on whether he would die.
(22:23):
Oh yeah, it's like some kind of death watch website
or something. Now we have those now, and we had
them in the seventeen hundreds. So he has gout hardening
of the arteries, and his leg has um started to
get a case of gang green, which I mean, all
you can do is amputate at that point once it's
(22:45):
gotten that bad. And they didn't want to amputate the
king's leg. But he was still participating in festivals and things,
or at least trying to oversee them, and he said,
I have lived among the people of my court. I
want to die among them. They have followed the whole
course of my life. It is right that they should
witness the end of it, and he started declining pretty quickly,
and told the five year old Duke d'Anjou that he
(23:08):
would make a good king, and then also told him
to remain at peace with your neighbors, because Louis the
fourteenth had quote loved war too much unquote and the
king in France walls have a few interactions kind of
in this decline. She comes and visits him from the
school um, and he was actually worried about her because
(23:30):
she didn't really have anything in terms of money now,
and he hadn't lavished money on her as he had
with didn't just ask for it. She didn't even want
it with us. What she did have a lot of
it she donated to charity or put into the school.
Her her house she had given to her niece and um.
She was very generous, but not that demanding herself. The
(23:52):
king gave her a rosary and she helped him burn
his papers, and he carried a miniature of a portrait
of her in his westcoat pocket it until he died,
which I think is a very sweet detail. And he
died September one, seventeen fifteen, and as a true marker
of her position as the king's wife, if not the Queen.
(24:15):
Foreign dignitaries end up sending her letters of condolence, the
type of letters that you would send to the queen,
and mentioning her very special loss and how hard they
knew it must be for her. She's been in his
life for a long time, thirty plus years. So she
went on to live at the school, and Peter the
Great came to visit her, apparently, and she died at
(24:36):
eighty four, and as a true measure of her standing,
her ashes were disentered during the French Revolution, just like
all the other royals, so she got the same scanual treatment.
If you want to hear more about where things went
from that point, check out how the French Revolution worked,
(24:56):
and if you have any questions, you can email us
at his Street podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and don't forget to check out the blog and also
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
(25:19):
com and be sure to check out the stuff you
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