January 19, 2011 • 24 mins
From hemlock to cyanide, poison has unfortunately played an integral part in many of history's great sagas, But in 17th-century France, the scandal over poisoning reached an unprecedented level. Tune in and learn more.
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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 fair Dowdy and I'm delanea Trumper Bardy. And when
we left off with the Bourbon series last, Louis the
thirteenth and his chief advisor, Cardinal Rishilu, who is also
(00:22):
known as the Red Eminence, had passed away just within
a few months of each other in sixteen forty two
and sixteen forty three, making Louis the fourteenth King, and
much like Rishilu, Louis the fourteenth, who's also known as
the Sun King or the Grand Monarch. You could probably
do an entire series just about him, his wars, his
expansion of French territory, and of course his mistresses. But
(00:46):
the truth is, since he's one of France's most famous monarchs,
you've probably come across at least some of that info before.
I mean, it probably is not something that you missed
into history class. Yeah, probably not. But as we mentioned
in the last episode, you can't you a series on
the Bourbon family and leave out Louis the fourteenth because
I mean, he essentially defines the family. So in this
(01:08):
episode we're going to focus on his court at first side,
during the very height of his reign, and how it
reflects some of his contributions to French society. But we're
also going to focus on a dark scandal which I
guess sort of shows the underside of his reign of power,
and mystery of sorts called the Affair of the Poisons.
(01:29):
I don't if that doesn't make you intrigue, I don't
know what will. And this little mystery completely shocked and
disturbed the French court at this time, and um also
marked a turning point for the king. So but before
we get there, as usual, we're gonna start at the beginning,
just give a little bit of background on Ali the fourteenth,
even though you may know some of this, we just
(01:50):
want to kind of set the scene for this Affair
of poisons so that you know maybe what led up
to and what was going on at the time. So
just a little recap from last episode. Louis the fourteenth
was born September five, six thirty eight, and at the
time he was called God Given. It was a really
big deal at the time because it came after a
pretty big dry spell for his mother, who was Anne
(02:12):
of Austria. And Louis the thirteenth. They hadn't had any
children up to that point, so people considered Louis the
fourteenth a visible divinity, almost they thought that his his
birth was almost a miracle, and since he was only
five when his father died though, and ruled as regent
alongside Prime Minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who she had hand
(02:34):
picked to advise her. So it's interesting. It's kind of
the same setup that Louis the thirteenth had when he
became king, coming to the throne as a young boy,
with his mother serving as regent, with an advisor who
had a whole lot of power. The big difference here, though,
is that unlike riche lu Mazarin wasn't falling in and
(02:55):
out of favor with the Queen um. He did have
a lot of enemies though, and namely those enemies where
the French nobles. We know, the nobles, they're always stirring
up trouble, we are, and a lot of this trouble
started under Richelieu, whose policies of the monarchy reduced the
influence of the nobility, you know, I mean he was
(03:15):
all about the absolute power of the king, so exactly
so some of the nobility and the judicial bodies, such
as the parliaments, we're feeling a little bit disenfranchised, like
they had sort of lost out, and they're ready to
get a little something back. So they decided to do
something about it, and they staged a series of civil
wars known as the Frond against the Crown. And though
(03:39):
the Frond was ultimately unsuccessful, Louis had to grow up
in the midst of all this. He grew up in
the midst of nobles rebelling against him, and this atmosphere
definitely made an impression on him. And by most accounts,
he was neglected also as a child, brought up mostly
by servants, so it definitely colored his vision. I think
(03:59):
of the few sure and how he wanted to rule.
He wanted to be secure and powerful in his future,
and that's definitely going to come into play. But Mazarina
continued to rule even after Louis the fourteenth came of age.
But after Mazarin died in sixteen sixty one, Louis shocked
the country by telling everybody, all of his ministers, everyone,
(04:20):
that he intended to rule for himself. Um, this is
unheard of. The king was supposed to maybe dabble in
ruling or have certain strong suits if it's like economic stuff,
military stuff, but then spend a lot of his time
enjoying being king. To decide to take it all on
himself sounded ridiculous, right, But from his perspective, Louis the
(04:43):
fourteenth saw himself as God's representative here on earth, and
you know, maybe because he had heard similar things to
that from a young age, but he basically thought that
this gave him the right to rule as a dictator,
essentially an absolute monarch, and from that point on he
really set out to control every aspect of what was
going on in France, the military decisions, the economy, the
(05:05):
cultural life, and he does. You know, obviously he has
some advisers, he has a few ministers around him to
help him out, but he really works hard. He works
at it like a full time job, spending eight hours
a day just devoting himself to all the little details
of what's going on in the kingdom, right, and it
was really every little detail. So, as we mentioned, Louis
(05:29):
the fourteenth was known for a lot of things, including
going to war a lot, especially with the Netherlands, in
an attempt to expand his territories on his deathbed. In fact,
he was remembered as saying, I have loved war too much.
But he's also credited with bringing a contemporary conception of luxury,
probably a lot of how we think of France, especially
Paris today, I think to the country. I saw it
(05:51):
described in one source as actually elevating lifestyle to fine arts,
which I thought was a nice way to put it.
So he brought some fanciness into it. Yeah, there's there's
a store down the road on Peachtree that sells like
lifestyle goods, and I just I'm somebody who has no
conception of what that even means. I think Louis would know. Though, Um,
(06:12):
he's interesting though you know this this you mentioned. He
he thought he could rule like a dictator that extended
to all sorts of things, not just control of the country.
But he imposed his artistic taste on all of France.
He nurtured talents of the writer Moliere and made him
right all this stuff that was supporting the monarchy and
(06:33):
supporting the king. Um, he supported the painter Wegou. And
in doing this, A lot of people say that Louis
helped French culture attain the same level of respect that
the Italians had. It it elevated the country. True, and
it seems that he wasn't just a dilettante and doing
all this either. He seems to have actually had a
(06:54):
true love for the arts. Fun fact, he himself was
an accomplished ballet dancer and even performed at written costume
and everything, which I mean just imagining this king who
participates in wars and fights and on the side, he's
also a very elegant artist. I've actually seen a picture
of him as a teenager dressed in his son king costume,
which is like a gold flaming costume with points radiating
(07:18):
out from it. I wonder if it was ballet costume
could have been so again, he had control over every
little detail. He decides, not only when they go to
war and economic things, but he decides what's beautiful and
what etiquette should be, and he imposes these tastes on everybody,
and he also uses it in a way to get
what he wants politically. Yeah, so we're going to go
(07:38):
back to those nobles who rose up when he was
a young boy against the monarchy, and Louis didn't forget
these guys, and he didn't forget the circumstances that created
a problem like that. So he drew the nobleman into court,
and he tried to keep them there, and he tried
to keep them occupied with frivolous things like gambling, and
(07:59):
he really took note careful note of who was there
and who wasn't. So if you were usually there and
then one day you were missing, Louis demanded to know
why you had been gone. If you were in and
out all the time, he needed a good excuse from you.
And if you weren't around it all, you were in
trouble that was really really bad. There was probably no
(08:22):
good excuse for being constantly absent from court. Yeah, and
if you were one of those people who was never there,
you would have a really hard time getting what you wanted,
because that's kind of how the king decided things. He
would if you approached him, for example, and you said
I need more land or something. But if you were
one of those people who weren't around a lot, he
(08:43):
was known to say things like he is a man
I never see, and that would sort of be the
end of it. You wouldn't get what you wanted because
you hadn't been in the favor of the king, might
as well just stay at your castle at that point. Um,
So being at court and sticking to the king's rules
of etiquette became really a essential for nobles who wanted
to get anywhere in life. You you couldn't essentially be
(09:05):
your own king anymore, with your own vassals and your
castle and your land and your army. You had to
be at court watching Louis eat right, So it just
basically made nobles less of a presence in politics. All
of this becomes even more complicated when he moves the
court from Paris to Versailles. In Versailles, it was easier
(09:25):
for him to keep track of people there, and it
made the court more isolated too. Yeah. So he started
going to Versie originally to carry out a love affair
with his mistress, Mademoiselle de la Valliere. And uh, I
mean he was quite the womanizer. I think that's one thing.
Even though he was already married. He was married, um
to the daughter of the King of Spain. Um. But
(09:47):
at that point when he was visiting Versailles, the structure
was basically a hunting lodge. That sounds more rustic than
it is. It's still a fabulous country house, but still
it's not like the Versailles you might give his it today.
And so in the sixteen sixties Louise starts transforming it
into this enormous palace and architectural wonder, and you have
(10:09):
to think, you know, part of it is to bring
the nobles there, but also so he has his own stronghold,
he's not in danger like he was as a child
in Paris. Yeah, he feels a bit uncomfortable there, so
Versailla is sort of an escape for him. But he's
often criticized for this because Versailla was so extravagant, the
palace at Versailla, that is, and it cost so incredibly much.
(10:30):
Some say that it practically ruined the nation. It was
somewhere around the price of a modern airport, so just
imagine that for a second. But actually nobody knows for
sure how much it costs, because the king is rumored
to have destroyed the bill after he saw how much
it was and realized that, oh my gosh, I spent
way too much on this thing. I feel like that
something Blondie would do. Um. But even even so, you think,
(10:53):
if it costs as much as a modern airport. All
of the nobles who were staying there would be in
pretty nice quarters. At least that wasn't the case. I
mean it was the lap of luxury for the royal family,
but the other guests and sometimes there were as many
as one thousand people there, uh, were put into these
really small, cramped rooms that were too hot or too
(11:13):
cold for the season. I mean, this is not the
servants were talking about. These are people who are used
to living in palaces themselves. Yeah, and it almost seems
I'm sure it wasn't that bad, but it almost seems
like a slum to live right on top of each other.
Remember your place, definitely. So this is just all to
set up the scene for the king at the height
(11:34):
of his rule by the sixteen seventies, round sixteen eighty
or so. He's been doing well in wars, he's adored
by his court, and he's just generally living large out
in Versailles Um. But we're going to backtrack just a
little bit to explain sort of his situation with his
mistresses and everything that's going on. So back in sixteen
sixty seven, he'd taken on a new mistress, the Marquise
(11:54):
de Montespam, and they've been together for years, and they
even had seven kids together, one of whom died, so
the remaining six kids they are legitimized. And she had
been a lady in waiting to the Queen and she
was married to the Marquis de Montespan, with whom she
had two kids. Also, her husband didn't really like what
was going on between her and the king and apparently
(12:15):
expressed that somehow, because he was exiled to Guyan in
sixteen sixty eight and legally separated from her shortly after that.
The King and the Marquise de Montespan go on to
be together for about thirteen years, but it really doesn't
last when Montespan is implicated in a scandal, one of
the most notorious criminal cases of the seventeenth century, in fact,
(12:36):
the Affair of the Poisons. So this whole scandalous episode
actually starts back in sixteen seventy three, when the contess
lesson who's the husband of olymp Mansigni, who's the former
favorite of Louis the fourteenth, And if you're really going
to keep track of everything, the niece of Cardinal mazarin Um.
So when the contess Lesson dies in these strange circumstances,
(13:00):
circumstances that suggested poisoning. People start talking. You know, it's
it's interesting news. So right around the same time as
this Contes Sisson story, another big case was going down
in Paris. The Marquise de brun Viller, who was an aristocrat,
had been found to have poisoned her father and her brothers,
(13:21):
and to have made attempts on other members of her family,
including her husband. Essentially, it seemed like she was trying
to kill every male family member and get their money. Um.
And there was a lover who left behind evidence incriminating
both of them, and Bronvillier had also knocked off a
few inmates in the charity hospital, testing out her poisons
(13:41):
on them. You know, poising is this do good or
noble woman walking through the of the charity hospital really
seeing if her if her stuff was potent enough to
kill her own family. Um. So those are two big
story these guy. You can imagine today they'd be on
the cover of all the tabloids that people are obsessed
(14:05):
with at the time. And just so you understand the
situation a little better, there are a couple of things
that are going on around this time. Also that sort
of set up the scene a little bit. Poisons, for one,
are more readily available, especially arsenic, and these poisons are
also very hard to detect because there's no really, there's
no pathology around at the time. There's no C. S. I,
(14:25):
there's no bones, and so nobody really um it's very
easy to both use it as a way to kill
somebody and also just use it as a possible accusation
against somebody. For example, somebody dies and you could just say, oh,
I think they were poisoned, because there's no really way
to prove whether or not they were. Um. So there's
a lot of this going on, So it's an upgrade
(14:47):
from the tutor pushing them down the stairs method. And
also the other thing going on is that these nobles
we mentioned whose fates were so closely tied to the
king's favor, they started turning to fortune teller's magician, renegade priests, conjurors,
basically the occult in general to try to improve their
fortunes and also thwart their enemies at court. And this
(15:08):
was probably especially true for women at the time, just
because for a lot of them this was the only
way for them to be free and wealthy becoming a widow. Yeah,
so getting rid of your husband or other male family members.
So Bronviller is caught in sixteen seventy six and she's
tried and executed, but before she dies, she said to
(15:31):
have said something kind of interesting and kind of scary
to a lot of people in France. She said, quote
half the nobility are at it as well. If I
wanted to speak out, I could destroy them, yeah, exactly.
So suddenly people are suspicious, who is she talking about?
(15:51):
Who else is at it? Right? So a couple of
sort of shady situations happened in the meantime. I think
that after that there's an attempt on the king and
nothing really comes of it. But then this situation, the
affair of the poisons, erupts into a full blown scandal
in sixteen seventy nine when the police apprehend a couple
of working class women who claimed to have been selling
(16:12):
poisons to duchesses, marquises, princes and lords, and they immediately
begin to implicate other people in their class, including a
fortune teller known as love Voissance. She was a fortune
teller to some of the most illustrious names in France,
so this was a problem. Yeah, and these three ladies
start mentioning some other very important names. This, this story
(16:34):
keeps spreading, so basically, Louis and his people decide they
need to do something about it. So, with Louie's approval,
one of his ministers sets up a secret investigative tribunal
known as the Commission of the Arsenal, and the goal
there is to look into and try some of the
cases involving the more important names involved. And this was
both to preserve discretion in these situations and also to
(16:56):
prevent the guilty from escaping justice because they were so
close to they can't. So essentially, you don't want this
to get out to just everybody and their brother in
Paris because it's just going to cause a lot of
commotion and terribly embarrassing, right, So they want to keep
it on a down low. They set up this tribunal
and start trying people, but they also don't want somebody
(17:19):
to get away with poisoning their whole family just because
they happened to be the king's friend. But then in
September sixty nine, the Marquis de mon Spahn's name starts
being thrown around in connection with this whole affair. So
this has gotten very serious all of a sudden, very
close to Yeah, the woman who is just about the
(17:40):
closest person in the world to the king is linked
to this shady underworld of poisons and alchemy and all
sorts of things, and her accusations go pretty deep. She's
accused of four things. She's accused of buying love potions
from love as to retain her hold over the king.
(18:01):
She's also accused of participating in black masses, which were
basically blasphemous burlesque type masses performed by Satanic cults. And
in those black masses, she was accused of having a
priest cut the throats of children over her, basically using
her naked belly as an altar, and the purpose was
the same to retain the king's favor. The third accusation
(18:25):
was that she had attempted to kill one of her
rivals using a pair of poisoned gloves. Some reports also
reported that it was with poisoned milk that she attempted
to poison arrival. And the fourth accusation was that she
had attempted to kill the king himself. So that was
kind of the most serious one, and I still can't
get over the black math of one. Yeah, that's pretty
pretty serious and gross. But now I suspected that the
(18:48):
accusers cooked up a lot of this because they knew
that Louis wouldn't let anything happen to the mother of
his kids, this woman who was so publicly linked to him,
And I mean they might have been right to a
certain extent. He he didn't want her name to get
out so much with say, a public execution of some
of these serving class women who were involved. So I
(19:10):
guess they played their cards. They definitely did, and and
I think you were right. I think they were absolutely
correct on what they did. Louis had everything covered up.
He had notes from interrogations that were kept on separate
sheets instead of a ledger. He specifically ordered for that
to be that way, and of course most people suspect,
and I think this actually happened or supposed to happen,
(19:32):
that he destroyed the sheets later on to destroy the evidence.
And on October one, six eighty, following the execution of
a Madame Philostra, Louis decided to suspend sessions of the
Commission of the Arsenal and many believe this is because
Philostra made damaging allegations against montes Baugh. So yeah, it
(19:52):
wasn't just love with talking about her anymore. It was
a noble woman and things were getting out of Louis
control role. Um. By then, the Commission of the Arsenal
had already judged a hundred and four cases, and thirty
four if the accused were executed, two were condemned in absentia,
and four were sent to the galleys. Thirty four sentences
(20:14):
involved banishment or financial amends, and thirty were acquitted. So
pretty serious results from this tribunal. But it takes a
couple of years to wind down. It takes a while
to finish up all the executions and the sentencing of
people who were guilty and send them to their various
prisons and places that they need to go. But by
(20:35):
six eighty two there was also a sort of positive
result of this affair of the poisons. It led to
the first legal restrictions on the sale of poisons in France,
so something good got to come out of it anyway. Yeah,
I couldn't go poisoned the people in the poor hospital anymore,
quite so easily. Um, it's still a mystery how guilty
(20:57):
the Marquise de Montpa really was. I mean, most people
now think that she probably didn't have any designs on
killing the king. That sounds extremely reactionary. I mean, she
would have nothing to gain from killing the king. In fact,
she would probably lose most of what she had as
mistress is often did. But she probably did drink love
potions and participate in some of these black masses. A
(21:20):
lot of people think that. Lot of people think yeah.
But either way, her relationship with the king definitely ended
shortly after this whole thing blew up. I guess perhaps
he couldn't trust her anymore, or he lost interest after
finding out about all of the blood and the altars. Well,
I think he just needed to change his image a
(21:41):
little bit. He was getting get away from that bad
reputation and he was a devout Catholic and really needed
to kind of rein it back in. Yeah, and his
reputation definitely did change. In fact, the way court ran
started to change a lot too. Gambling and entertainment up
still took place, but they took place underneath this veneer
(22:03):
of propriety. Um. It's a little hypocritical, but Louis himself
was getting older too, and yeah, just trying to change
his image and reform publicly at least. Yeah, so I've
seen it described. He actually renounced his pleasure but kind
of funny if you think of it. At the same time,
he took up a new mistress, so I don't know
how that works, but Katie and I talked about her
(22:25):
in an earlier episode, um Madame de montinal and it's interesting.
They're not quite sure if if he took up a
mistress or if they were secretly married before anything started happening.
But um, anyways, they they lived together until until his death. Yep.
But he dies in seventeen fifteen at the age of
(22:47):
seventy seven, and he actually lives so long. He's been
on the throne for so long that he's outlived his
son and his grandson. Um. So leaving the question of
who will become air and that takes us good to
a good stopping place, I think for our next installment,
which may or may not have something to do with Louie.
Their keep going on, these numbers who just keep trucking along.
(23:10):
I mean, there's so much you can do. We could
probably turn this into a year long series. Don't worry,
we probably won't, but there just seems to be a
lot of good ideas, Like talking about the royals in
the winter. For some reason, it just feels right knowing
they're probably all cold and firs side shivering in their
rooms without heat, were cold and cold in Atlanta. But um, yeah,
(23:34):
I guess that about wraps it up for the sun King. Um.
We've recommended how Royalty works so many times now, so
I don't know. You can just just how front how
the French Revolution works. Yeah, that's good. Okay, Okay, So
I guess that about wraps it up for the Sun
King and the affair of the poison. Um. But you
can always suggest more Louie topics or more Bourbon topics
(23:57):
to us on Twitter at Miston History on Facebook, or
by emailing us at History Podcast at how stuff works
dot com. And if you want to jump ahead see
what happens a little bit, we do have an article
called how the French Revolution Worked. You can find it
by searching for French Revolution on our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(24:23):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm delanea Trumper Bardy. And when
we left off with the Bourbon series last, Louis the
thirteenth and his chief advisor, Cardinal Rishilu, who is also
(00:22):
known as the Red Eminence, had passed away just within
a few months of each other in sixteen forty two
and sixteen forty three, making Louis the fourteenth King, and
much like Rishilu, Louis the fourteenth, who's also known as
the Sun King or the Grand Monarch. You could probably
do an entire series just about him, his wars, his
expansion of French territory, and of course his mistresses. But
(00:46):
the truth is, since he's one of France's most famous monarchs,
you've probably come across at least some of that info before.
I mean, it probably is not something that you missed
into history class. Yeah, probably not. But as we mentioned
in the last episode, you can't you a series on
the Bourbon family and leave out Louis the fourteenth because
I mean, he essentially defines the family. So in this
(01:08):
episode we're going to focus on his court at first side,
during the very height of his reign, and how it
reflects some of his contributions to French society. But we're
also going to focus on a dark scandal which I
guess sort of shows the underside of his reign of power,
and mystery of sorts called the Affair of the Poisons.
(01:29):
I don't if that doesn't make you intrigue, I don't
know what will. And this little mystery completely shocked and
disturbed the French court at this time, and um also
marked a turning point for the king. So but before
we get there, as usual, we're gonna start at the beginning,
just give a little bit of background on Ali the fourteenth,
even though you may know some of this, we just
(01:50):
want to kind of set the scene for this Affair
of poisons so that you know maybe what led up
to and what was going on at the time. So
just a little recap from last episode. Louis the fourteenth
was born September five, six thirty eight, and at the
time he was called God Given. It was a really
big deal at the time because it came after a
pretty big dry spell for his mother, who was Anne
(02:12):
of Austria. And Louis the thirteenth. They hadn't had any
children up to that point, so people considered Louis the
fourteenth a visible divinity, almost they thought that his his
birth was almost a miracle, and since he was only
five when his father died though, and ruled as regent
alongside Prime Minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who she had hand
(02:34):
picked to advise her. So it's interesting. It's kind of
the same setup that Louis the thirteenth had when he
became king, coming to the throne as a young boy,
with his mother serving as regent, with an advisor who
had a whole lot of power. The big difference here, though,
is that unlike riche lu Mazarin wasn't falling in and
(02:55):
out of favor with the Queen um. He did have
a lot of enemies though, and namely those enemies where
the French nobles. We know, the nobles, they're always stirring
up trouble, we are, and a lot of this trouble
started under Richelieu, whose policies of the monarchy reduced the
influence of the nobility, you know, I mean he was
(03:15):
all about the absolute power of the king, so exactly
so some of the nobility and the judicial bodies, such
as the parliaments, we're feeling a little bit disenfranchised, like
they had sort of lost out, and they're ready to
get a little something back. So they decided to do
something about it, and they staged a series of civil
wars known as the Frond against the Crown. And though
(03:39):
the Frond was ultimately unsuccessful, Louis had to grow up
in the midst of all this. He grew up in
the midst of nobles rebelling against him, and this atmosphere
definitely made an impression on him. And by most accounts,
he was neglected also as a child, brought up mostly
by servants, so it definitely colored his vision. I think
(03:59):
of the few sure and how he wanted to rule.
He wanted to be secure and powerful in his future,
and that's definitely going to come into play. But Mazarina
continued to rule even after Louis the fourteenth came of age.
But after Mazarin died in sixteen sixty one, Louis shocked
the country by telling everybody, all of his ministers, everyone,
(04:20):
that he intended to rule for himself. Um, this is
unheard of. The king was supposed to maybe dabble in
ruling or have certain strong suits if it's like economic stuff,
military stuff, but then spend a lot of his time
enjoying being king. To decide to take it all on
himself sounded ridiculous, right, But from his perspective, Louis the
(04:43):
fourteenth saw himself as God's representative here on earth, and
you know, maybe because he had heard similar things to
that from a young age, but he basically thought that
this gave him the right to rule as a dictator,
essentially an absolute monarch, and from that point on he
really set out to control every aspect of what was
going on in France, the military decisions, the economy, the
(05:05):
cultural life, and he does. You know, obviously he has
some advisers, he has a few ministers around him to
help him out, but he really works hard. He works
at it like a full time job, spending eight hours
a day just devoting himself to all the little details
of what's going on in the kingdom, right, and it
was really every little detail. So, as we mentioned, Louis
(05:29):
the fourteenth was known for a lot of things, including
going to war a lot, especially with the Netherlands, in
an attempt to expand his territories on his deathbed. In fact,
he was remembered as saying, I have loved war too much.
But he's also credited with bringing a contemporary conception of luxury,
probably a lot of how we think of France, especially
Paris today, I think to the country. I saw it
(05:51):
described in one source as actually elevating lifestyle to fine arts,
which I thought was a nice way to put it.
So he brought some fanciness into it. Yeah, there's there's
a store down the road on Peachtree that sells like
lifestyle goods, and I just I'm somebody who has no
conception of what that even means. I think Louis would know. Though, Um,
(06:12):
he's interesting though you know this this you mentioned. He
he thought he could rule like a dictator that extended
to all sorts of things, not just control of the country.
But he imposed his artistic taste on all of France.
He nurtured talents of the writer Moliere and made him
right all this stuff that was supporting the monarchy and
(06:33):
supporting the king. Um, he supported the painter Wegou. And
in doing this, A lot of people say that Louis
helped French culture attain the same level of respect that
the Italians had. It it elevated the country. True, and
it seems that he wasn't just a dilettante and doing
all this either. He seems to have actually had a
(06:54):
true love for the arts. Fun fact, he himself was
an accomplished ballet dancer and even performed at written costume
and everything, which I mean just imagining this king who
participates in wars and fights and on the side, he's
also a very elegant artist. I've actually seen a picture
of him as a teenager dressed in his son king costume,
which is like a gold flaming costume with points radiating
(07:18):
out from it. I wonder if it was ballet costume
could have been so again, he had control over every
little detail. He decides, not only when they go to
war and economic things, but he decides what's beautiful and
what etiquette should be, and he imposes these tastes on everybody,
and he also uses it in a way to get
what he wants politically. Yeah, so we're going to go
(07:38):
back to those nobles who rose up when he was
a young boy against the monarchy, and Louis didn't forget
these guys, and he didn't forget the circumstances that created
a problem like that. So he drew the nobleman into court,
and he tried to keep them there, and he tried
to keep them occupied with frivolous things like gambling, and
(07:59):
he really took note careful note of who was there
and who wasn't. So if you were usually there and
then one day you were missing, Louis demanded to know
why you had been gone. If you were in and
out all the time, he needed a good excuse from you.
And if you weren't around it all, you were in
trouble that was really really bad. There was probably no
(08:22):
good excuse for being constantly absent from court. Yeah, and
if you were one of those people who was never there,
you would have a really hard time getting what you wanted,
because that's kind of how the king decided things. He
would if you approached him, for example, and you said
I need more land or something. But if you were
one of those people who weren't around a lot, he
(08:43):
was known to say things like he is a man
I never see, and that would sort of be the
end of it. You wouldn't get what you wanted because
you hadn't been in the favor of the king, might
as well just stay at your castle at that point. Um,
So being at court and sticking to the king's rules
of etiquette became really a essential for nobles who wanted
to get anywhere in life. You you couldn't essentially be
(09:05):
your own king anymore, with your own vassals and your
castle and your land and your army. You had to
be at court watching Louis eat right, So it just
basically made nobles less of a presence in politics. All
of this becomes even more complicated when he moves the
court from Paris to Versailles. In Versailles, it was easier
(09:25):
for him to keep track of people there, and it
made the court more isolated too. Yeah. So he started
going to Versie originally to carry out a love affair
with his mistress, Mademoiselle de la Valliere. And uh, I
mean he was quite the womanizer. I think that's one thing.
Even though he was already married. He was married, um
to the daughter of the King of Spain. Um. But
(09:47):
at that point when he was visiting Versailles, the structure
was basically a hunting lodge. That sounds more rustic than
it is. It's still a fabulous country house, but still
it's not like the Versailles you might give his it today.
And so in the sixteen sixties Louise starts transforming it
into this enormous palace and architectural wonder, and you have
(10:09):
to think, you know, part of it is to bring
the nobles there, but also so he has his own stronghold,
he's not in danger like he was as a child
in Paris. Yeah, he feels a bit uncomfortable there, so
Versailla is sort of an escape for him. But he's
often criticized for this because Versailla was so extravagant, the
palace at Versailla, that is, and it cost so incredibly much.
(10:30):
Some say that it practically ruined the nation. It was
somewhere around the price of a modern airport, so just
imagine that for a second. But actually nobody knows for
sure how much it costs, because the king is rumored
to have destroyed the bill after he saw how much
it was and realized that, oh my gosh, I spent
way too much on this thing. I feel like that
something Blondie would do. Um. But even even so, you think,
(10:53):
if it costs as much as a modern airport. All
of the nobles who were staying there would be in
pretty nice quarters. At least that wasn't the case. I
mean it was the lap of luxury for the royal family,
but the other guests and sometimes there were as many
as one thousand people there, uh, were put into these
really small, cramped rooms that were too hot or too
(11:13):
cold for the season. I mean, this is not the
servants were talking about. These are people who are used
to living in palaces themselves. Yeah, and it almost seems
I'm sure it wasn't that bad, but it almost seems
like a slum to live right on top of each other.
Remember your place, definitely. So this is just all to
set up the scene for the king at the height
(11:34):
of his rule by the sixteen seventies, round sixteen eighty
or so. He's been doing well in wars, he's adored
by his court, and he's just generally living large out
in Versailles Um. But we're going to backtrack just a
little bit to explain sort of his situation with his
mistresses and everything that's going on. So back in sixteen
sixty seven, he'd taken on a new mistress, the Marquise
(11:54):
de Montespam, and they've been together for years, and they
even had seven kids together, one of whom died, so
the remaining six kids they are legitimized. And she had
been a lady in waiting to the Queen and she
was married to the Marquis de Montespan, with whom she
had two kids. Also, her husband didn't really like what
was going on between her and the king and apparently
(12:15):
expressed that somehow, because he was exiled to Guyan in
sixteen sixty eight and legally separated from her shortly after that.
The King and the Marquise de Montespan go on to
be together for about thirteen years, but it really doesn't
last when Montespan is implicated in a scandal, one of
the most notorious criminal cases of the seventeenth century, in fact,
(12:36):
the Affair of the Poisons. So this whole scandalous episode
actually starts back in sixteen seventy three, when the contess
lesson who's the husband of olymp Mansigni, who's the former
favorite of Louis the fourteenth, And if you're really going
to keep track of everything, the niece of Cardinal mazarin Um.
So when the contess Lesson dies in these strange circumstances,
(13:00):
circumstances that suggested poisoning. People start talking. You know, it's
it's interesting news. So right around the same time as
this Contes Sisson story, another big case was going down
in Paris. The Marquise de brun Viller, who was an aristocrat,
had been found to have poisoned her father and her brothers,
(13:21):
and to have made attempts on other members of her family,
including her husband. Essentially, it seemed like she was trying
to kill every male family member and get their money. Um.
And there was a lover who left behind evidence incriminating
both of them, and Bronvillier had also knocked off a
few inmates in the charity hospital, testing out her poisons
(13:41):
on them. You know, poising is this do good or
noble woman walking through the of the charity hospital really
seeing if her if her stuff was potent enough to
kill her own family. Um. So those are two big
story these guy. You can imagine today they'd be on
the cover of all the tabloids that people are obsessed
(14:05):
with at the time. And just so you understand the
situation a little better, there are a couple of things
that are going on around this time. Also that sort
of set up the scene a little bit. Poisons, for one,
are more readily available, especially arsenic, and these poisons are
also very hard to detect because there's no really, there's
no pathology around at the time. There's no C. S. I,
(14:25):
there's no bones, and so nobody really um it's very
easy to both use it as a way to kill
somebody and also just use it as a possible accusation
against somebody. For example, somebody dies and you could just say, oh,
I think they were poisoned, because there's no really way
to prove whether or not they were. Um. So there's
a lot of this going on, So it's an upgrade
(14:47):
from the tutor pushing them down the stairs method. And
also the other thing going on is that these nobles
we mentioned whose fates were so closely tied to the
king's favor, they started turning to fortune teller's magician, renegade priests, conjurors,
basically the occult in general to try to improve their
fortunes and also thwart their enemies at court. And this
(15:08):
was probably especially true for women at the time, just
because for a lot of them this was the only
way for them to be free and wealthy becoming a widow. Yeah,
so getting rid of your husband or other male family members.
So Bronviller is caught in sixteen seventy six and she's
tried and executed, but before she dies, she said to
(15:31):
have said something kind of interesting and kind of scary
to a lot of people in France. She said, quote
half the nobility are at it as well. If I
wanted to speak out, I could destroy them, yeah, exactly.
So suddenly people are suspicious, who is she talking about?
(15:51):
Who else is at it? Right? So a couple of
sort of shady situations happened in the meantime. I think
that after that there's an attempt on the king and
nothing really comes of it. But then this situation, the
affair of the poisons, erupts into a full blown scandal
in sixteen seventy nine when the police apprehend a couple
of working class women who claimed to have been selling
(16:12):
poisons to duchesses, marquises, princes and lords, and they immediately
begin to implicate other people in their class, including a
fortune teller known as love Voissance. She was a fortune
teller to some of the most illustrious names in France,
so this was a problem. Yeah, and these three ladies
start mentioning some other very important names. This, this story
(16:34):
keeps spreading, so basically, Louis and his people decide they
need to do something about it. So, with Louie's approval,
one of his ministers sets up a secret investigative tribunal
known as the Commission of the Arsenal, and the goal
there is to look into and try some of the
cases involving the more important names involved. And this was
both to preserve discretion in these situations and also to
(16:56):
prevent the guilty from escaping justice because they were so
close to they can't. So essentially, you don't want this
to get out to just everybody and their brother in
Paris because it's just going to cause a lot of
commotion and terribly embarrassing, right, So they want to keep
it on a down low. They set up this tribunal
and start trying people, but they also don't want somebody
(17:19):
to get away with poisoning their whole family just because
they happened to be the king's friend. But then in
September sixty nine, the Marquis de mon Spahn's name starts
being thrown around in connection with this whole affair. So
this has gotten very serious all of a sudden, very
close to Yeah, the woman who is just about the
(17:40):
closest person in the world to the king is linked
to this shady underworld of poisons and alchemy and all
sorts of things, and her accusations go pretty deep. She's
accused of four things. She's accused of buying love potions
from love as to retain her hold over the king.
(18:01):
She's also accused of participating in black masses, which were
basically blasphemous burlesque type masses performed by Satanic cults. And
in those black masses, she was accused of having a
priest cut the throats of children over her, basically using
her naked belly as an altar, and the purpose was
the same to retain the king's favor. The third accusation
(18:25):
was that she had attempted to kill one of her
rivals using a pair of poisoned gloves. Some reports also
reported that it was with poisoned milk that she attempted
to poison arrival. And the fourth accusation was that she
had attempted to kill the king himself. So that was
kind of the most serious one, and I still can't
get over the black math of one. Yeah, that's pretty
pretty serious and gross. But now I suspected that the
(18:48):
accusers cooked up a lot of this because they knew
that Louis wouldn't let anything happen to the mother of
his kids, this woman who was so publicly linked to him,
And I mean they might have been right to a
certain extent. He he didn't want her name to get
out so much with say, a public execution of some
of these serving class women who were involved. So I
(19:10):
guess they played their cards. They definitely did, and and
I think you were right. I think they were absolutely
correct on what they did. Louis had everything covered up.
He had notes from interrogations that were kept on separate
sheets instead of a ledger. He specifically ordered for that
to be that way, and of course most people suspect,
and I think this actually happened or supposed to happen,
(19:32):
that he destroyed the sheets later on to destroy the evidence.
And on October one, six eighty, following the execution of
a Madame Philostra, Louis decided to suspend sessions of the
Commission of the Arsenal and many believe this is because
Philostra made damaging allegations against montes Baugh. So yeah, it
(19:52):
wasn't just love with talking about her anymore. It was
a noble woman and things were getting out of Louis
control role. Um. By then, the Commission of the Arsenal
had already judged a hundred and four cases, and thirty
four if the accused were executed, two were condemned in absentia,
and four were sent to the galleys. Thirty four sentences
(20:14):
involved banishment or financial amends, and thirty were acquitted. So
pretty serious results from this tribunal. But it takes a
couple of years to wind down. It takes a while
to finish up all the executions and the sentencing of
people who were guilty and send them to their various
prisons and places that they need to go. But by
(20:35):
six eighty two there was also a sort of positive
result of this affair of the poisons. It led to
the first legal restrictions on the sale of poisons in France,
so something good got to come out of it anyway. Yeah,
I couldn't go poisoned the people in the poor hospital anymore,
quite so easily. Um, it's still a mystery how guilty
(20:57):
the Marquise de Montpa really was. I mean, most people
now think that she probably didn't have any designs on
killing the king. That sounds extremely reactionary. I mean, she
would have nothing to gain from killing the king. In fact,
she would probably lose most of what she had as
mistress is often did. But she probably did drink love
potions and participate in some of these black masses. A
(21:20):
lot of people think that. Lot of people think yeah.
But either way, her relationship with the king definitely ended
shortly after this whole thing blew up. I guess perhaps
he couldn't trust her anymore, or he lost interest after
finding out about all of the blood and the altars. Well,
I think he just needed to change his image a
(21:41):
little bit. He was getting get away from that bad
reputation and he was a devout Catholic and really needed
to kind of rein it back in. Yeah, and his
reputation definitely did change. In fact, the way court ran
started to change a lot too. Gambling and entertainment up
still took place, but they took place underneath this veneer
(22:03):
of propriety. Um. It's a little hypocritical, but Louis himself
was getting older too, and yeah, just trying to change
his image and reform publicly at least. Yeah, so I've
seen it described. He actually renounced his pleasure but kind
of funny if you think of it. At the same time,
he took up a new mistress, so I don't know
how that works, but Katie and I talked about her
(22:25):
in an earlier episode, um Madame de montinal and it's interesting.
They're not quite sure if if he took up a
mistress or if they were secretly married before anything started happening.
But um, anyways, they they lived together until until his death. Yep.
But he dies in seventeen fifteen at the age of
(22:47):
seventy seven, and he actually lives so long. He's been
on the throne for so long that he's outlived his
son and his grandson. Um. So leaving the question of
who will become air and that takes us good to
a good stopping place, I think for our next installment,
which may or may not have something to do with Louie.
Their keep going on, these numbers who just keep trucking along.
(23:10):
I mean, there's so much you can do. We could
probably turn this into a year long series. Don't worry,
we probably won't, but there just seems to be a
lot of good ideas, Like talking about the royals in
the winter. For some reason, it just feels right knowing
they're probably all cold and firs side shivering in their
rooms without heat, were cold and cold in Atlanta. But um, yeah,
(23:34):
I guess that about wraps it up for the sun King. Um.
We've recommended how Royalty works so many times now, so
I don't know. You can just just how front how
the French Revolution works. Yeah, that's good. Okay, Okay, So
I guess that about wraps it up for the Sun
King and the affair of the poison. Um. But you
can always suggest more Louie topics or more Bourbon topics
(23:57):
to us on Twitter at Miston History on Facebook, or
by emailing us at History Podcast at how stuff works
dot com. And if you want to jump ahead see
what happens a little bit, we do have an article
called how the French Revolution Worked. You can find it
by searching for French Revolution on our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(24:23):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot
com to learn more about the podcast, click on the
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