Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (44 page)

The King exploded. ‘What do I care about who succeeds me? Even if the Duchesse de Bourgogne never has another child, the Duc de Berry is of an age to have children. As to the miscarriage, since it was going to happen, thank God it is over! I shall no longer be nagged by doctors and old women. I shall come and go at my pleasure and be left in peace.' An appalled silence fell; in modern terms the courtiers were gob-smacked. Saint-Simon put it more elegantly: ‘You could hear an ant walking …’
³⁶
After a while the King leaned over the balustrade and made some remark about the fish.

This episode does of course primarily illustrate the frightful selfishness of Louis XIV these days where his own routine was concerned; it is thus on a par with the icy fresh air from open windows which tortured rheumatic Françoise, or the hideous journeys court ladies were obliged to make, compulsory eating and drinking throughout, with no comfort stops provided since the King majestically never needed them. (In one notorious episode, the wretched Duchesse de Chevreuse scarcely endured the journey, such was her agonising need for relief; on arrival she rushed to the chapel and made speedy use of the font.) But there is also something in it of his frustration where Adelaide was concerned: why could she not be the perfect little girl of the past, at his beck and call with no womanly duties to distract her? The little girl who never had a cold when it was a question of going out with the King … As well as somehow providing healthy heirs on the side … Why did she gamble so recklessly with unwise gentlemen who risked Louis's disfavour? Why did she hunt, go to parties …?

In the early summer of 1708 the King took a step which at the time seemed to offer Bourgogne, his shy and austere grandson, an opportunity to shine in the conventional manner for a royal prince, that is in the field of battle. Louis told Adelaide of his intention in a special courtesy visit after stag-hunting, and then announced it to the court on 14 May. Saint-Simon noted rather gloomily that the day marked the anniversary of the death of Louis XIII and the assassination of Henri IV; but that was after the event. At the time the real problem lay not in the coincidence of unfortunate anniversaries but in the tricky problem of royal princes' authority versus that of commanders in the field. Bourgogne was being sent to Flanders, where Vendôme was now in charge. It was not a match made in heaven, nor was it likely to work on the battlefield. Bourgogne was young, untried except for a brief venture to war a few years earlier, and, as has been noted, lacked confidence.

Nevertheless he greeted the news with delight; he would no longer ‘have to stay idle at Versailles, Marly and Fontainebleau'.
³⁷

Vendôme, now in his fifties, was seasoned and successful, in fact the most successful living French general.
*
He was immensely popular with the army, while at court he leaned towards the Dauphin and Meudon set. He was also exceptionally debauched (some found Sodom a convenient rhyme for Vendôme), and in the past had needed a cure for syphilis.

It can never be known for sure – since much obfuscation ensued – whether the third colossal French defeat at Oudenarde on 11 July was the responsibility of Bourgogne, of Vendôme, or of some innate problem of communication between the two of them. With what the Princesse des Ursins once described to Madame de Maintenon as
‘l'audace de Milord Marlbouroug' (sic),
the English commander had moved his forces from Brussels with such enormous speed that he took the French by surprise.
³⁸
Vendôme launched straight into battle on the right wing. But Bourgogne, whether owing to cautions advisers or to ignorance of Vendôme's intentions, failed to support him on the left. He stayed entrenched. Six thousand French were killed or wounded, seven thousand taken prisoner. Afterwards Vendôme, smarting with military humiliation, and forced to order a retreat to Ghent, accused Bourgogne of cowardice in failing to follow his commands.

The news of the defeat itself reached Versailles on 14 July. Previous rejoicings over the taking of Ghent died away. Madame de Maintenon told the Princesse des Ursins in Spain that the King was enduring this latest mischance ‘with full submission to the will of God’, displaying his usual calm courage.
³⁹
The recriminations between Vendôme and Bourgogne were much more difficult to endure. Vendôme's point of view, which was quickly expounded in a plethora of highly combative correspondence, backed by the Cabal at Meudon, was dogmatic: had Bourgogne advanced to support him, as he had the right to expect, a great French victory must have followed. Thus Bourgogne was delineated as a coward and also as a failure. He suffered in particular from his grandfather's lack of faith in him, believing that Louis XIV was taking Vendôme's version of events for granted with all too much ease.

Adelaide was the one who sprang to Bourgogne's defence. Their relative characters can be judged by the fact that Bourgogne wondered whether it was not ‘un-Christian' for her to do so. She might have gone ‘a little too far' in certain speeches. Maybe Madame de Maintenon should rein her in? At the same time he was charmed by her ‘affection and trust'; Adelaide was not a troublemaker by nature; she lacked what Bourgogne called a mischievous ‘woman's spirit'; she had on the contrary ‘a solid mind' – masculine, presumably – ‘much good sense and an excellent and very noble heart'.
⁴⁰

Certainly Adelaide was forthright in her opposition to Vendôme. And she refused to be reined in: Vendôme was ‘a man for whom she would always feel the greatest loathing and contempt'. Adelaide the frivolous, who had loved nothing so much as to gamble, now spent hours in vigils in the chapel when she was supposed to be asleep. In the meantime Lille fell to Marlborough on 23 October, increasing the dismay at court. When Bourgogne himself returned to Versailles it was to the sound of ribald verses from Madame la Duchesse with lines like this: ‘For he's a coward / And a bigot too …' As Françoise commented to the Princesse des Ursins: ‘He [Bourgogne] will need all his religious faith to sustain the unjust attacks of the world.'
⁴¹
Moreover, Vendôme was back too, but he was the centre of a very different kind of attention.

The lauding of Vendôme, both by the King and at Meudon, was a source of terrible anguish to Adelaide. She wept in Françoise's arms: ‘Oh, my dear Tante, my heart is breaking.' Finally she prevailed over Vendôme, but not before the King had criticised his darling sharply for not showing the usual relentless gaiety which was demanded as of right at Versailles. Depression in public was not an option: ‘The King was irritated and more than once harshly reprimanded her for displaying ill-humour and chagrin.' Nevertheless Adelaide continued to earn the plaudits of Saint-Simon (who was an admirer of Bourgogne) for being ‘indefatigable' and ‘full of strength'.
⁴²

It was at Marly that Adelaide got her revenge. Invited to make up a table for the game of
brelan
in which Vendôme was taking part, she pleaded to be excused: Vendôme's presence at Marly was sufficiently distressing already, she explained, without playing cards with him too. In the end, with the aid of Madame de Maintenon, a deal was brokered by which Vendôme was allowed to Marly one more time, but then understood himself to be excluded. Presently Adelaide also managed to eject him from Meudon, too, on the grounds of her distress (the Dauphin was after all the humiliated Bourgogne's father). As Saint-Simon wrote in admiration: ‘One saw that huge monster blown over by the breath of a brave young princess.' It was Liselotte who commented that the years after 1708 saw at last Adelaide truly in love with her husband.
⁴³
The protective instinct turned out to be the strongest one in her nature – she who had been protected, often artificially so, most of her life.

Adelaide began, in the nicest possible way, to dominate the unassuming Bourgogne. He nicknamed her ‘Draco' after the famously severe Athenian legislator with his ‘Draconian' code, but gallantly saluted his subordination: ‘Draco, how sweet it is to be your slave …'
⁴⁴
When it was decided – not before time – to give Bourgogne a proper military education, Adelaide was included in the lessons: there is a vignette of the two of them poring over maps. All this was a good omen for the time in the distant future when Bourgogne, a good weak man, would be King of France: but he would have his Draco beside him as a far more redoubtable Queen than anyone had supposed. It was unfortunate that Bourgogne never actually received his new command: the need for economy meant that it was out of the question to pay for the expensive trappings needed when a Child of France went to war.

In the meantime a sudden spell of bitter cold, its severity ‘beyond living memory', gripped the country at Twelfth Night 1709 and lasted for two months. Adelaide told her grandmother that it was 102 years since there had been such devastating weather in France. Every river was frozen, and what no one had ever seen before, the sea itself froze hard enough ‘to bear transport all along the coasts'. Worse than the original frost was the sudden complete thaw, followed by another big freeze which, if not quite so long as the first, kept the vegetables, the fruit-trees and the crops totally icebound. Indoors, even the bottles of eau de cologne froze in the cupboards and the ink froze on Liselotte's pen as she wrote.

Outdoors, as she reported, ‘as soon as you leave the house, you are followed by the poor, black with hunger'.
^45
*

There was a bleak parallel here with the fortunes of France and her King. A further defeat at Malplaquet in September 1709 saw nearly five thousand Frenchmen killed and eight thousand wounded. All the ladies at court were weeping on behalf of husbands and sons. Adelaide was among those whose ‘huge eyes' frequently filled with tears. The court prayed the whole day of the battle: alas, their prayers were not heard. Marie-Jeanne d'Aumale's brother was wounded with ‘everything to be feared'. Also wounded, hanging ‘between life and death', was Philippe Marquis de Courcillon, son of the Marquis de Dangeau and Sophie.
⁴⁶

Although the King might choose to go hunting, leaving the lists of casualties to be read only on his return (gross insensitivity or magnificent aplomb according to taste), he could not avoid the sight of the Dangeau son and his like on their eventual return. While there began to be a noted contrast in the complexions of the courtiers: ‘black and red' indicated those who had fought, while skins ‘too white' were frowned upon as betokening lack of service. Unfortunately all too many of the noble ‘black and red' brigade were visibly mutilated.
⁴⁷

‘Princes never want to envisage anything sad,' wrote Maintenon bitterly to the Princesse des Ursins. The selfishness of men, especially royal men, was a persistent theme in her correspondence by this time: since she could not let go in front of the King, she took refuge in her letters for a continuous kind of moan. Courcillon however stood for the many members of the court who had been mutilated: at the age of twenty-two, following two operations, he returned without a leg. Courcillon's irrepressible high spirits saved him: he made little
pantalonnades
(farces) with his wooden leg. But he had to be pardoned the omission of his sword and hat at court, since he could not manage them.
⁴⁸
And there were many other Courcillons in what Maintenon described as ‘this tragic year'.

* This male birth was important in the Bourbon dynasty: with Adelaide still childless, the infant Duc de Chartres ensured the continuation of the Orléans branch of the dynasty. The baby was of course Louis's great-nephew, but also his grandchild, via his legitimised daughter Françoise-Marie.

* The fine memorial to James II displaying the royal arms of England, still to be seen in the church at Saint-Germain, was erected in 1824 by George IV, who had a sentimental attitude to his Stuart relations, now beyond claiming the throne. The text, in French and English, describes James as ‘welcomed to France by Louis/Lewis XIV’.

* It is important to note Adelaide's ‘French' patriotism, displayed throughout her correspondence, and her total lack of political support for Victor Amadeus, in view of the French historian Michelet's hostility to her in the nineteenth century, including accusations of treachery for which there is absolutely no evidence.

* His grandfather was César Duc de Vendôme, Henri IV's bastard, who had been legitimised; Vendôme was thus the first cousin once removed of Louis XIV.

* It has been estimated that 800,000 people died of cold and famine.

CHAPTER 15
We Must Submit

‘Lalande, we must submit.’

– Louis XIV to the composer, pointing to the sky, 1711

S
ophie de Dangeau consoled herself for the grievous wounding of her son at Malplaquet with thought of the King, and ‘that it was for him that my son risked himself.’ Others were not so loyal or so resigned. The Dangeaus had been among the first to give up their silver vessels for the war effort: now the courtiers who had done likewise began to complain about the intolerable ‘dirtiness’ of using mere pewter and earthenware.
¹

There was no doubt that by the end of 1709, as Adelaide told her grandmother, the War of the Spanish Succession had lasted so long that there was no one who did not wish it was over, while Françoise told the Princesse des Ursins: ‘Our woes augment every day.’ Françoise herself had a naturally pacifist temperament and was far from encouraging the King in his pursuit of war. Her own feeling for the sufferings of the poverty-stricken country was so strong that she tried (in vain) to dissuade the King from building himself a magnificent new chapel at Versailles. Marie-Jeanne d'Aumale reported that Françoise ‘more than doubled’ her charities. Far from avoiding the ragged crowd of dirty, half-naked child beggars, she increasingly disliked Marly because it was cut off from them: there was no one to whom she could give money.
²

Where once Louis had been satirised (and more than half admired) for his priapic adventures, now he was attacked for his failures in battle and the economic state of the country. Even his previous reputation for virility was used against him: ‘The French King's Wedding’ of 1708 described him as impotent nowadays – at war and in bed. ‘The Plagues of War and Wife consent / To send the King a packing. / You cannot give your spouse content …’ Another satirical rhyme ran: ‘Our father that art in Versailles / Thy name is no longer hallowed / Thy Kingdom is no longer so great / Thy will is no longer done either on earth or sea / Give us our daily bread which we can no longer obtain / Forgive our enemies who have beaten us …'
³
The fact that France now had a King in his early seventies whose immediate heir, the Dauphin, was, as immediate heirs of senior parents tend to do, beginning to eye the throne, did not increase contentment.

It was against the background of ‘these recent and unhappy years’, in Françoise's phrase to Maréchal de Villeroi, that the battle of the marriage of the Duc de Berry, youngest son of the Dauphin, was fought. Adelaide managed to give birth to another healthy boy on 10 February 1710 shortly after the third birthday of Bretagne; he was created Duc d'Anjou, the traditional title of the second son, which Philip V had enjoyed before his accession to the Spanish throne. Her labour was long and intense, her sufferings so great that those males present by tradition retreated from the room. However, high infant mortality meant that the succession was not necessarily secure with two knaves in the hand; Berry's future, bringing hope of more children, was also important.

The King had announced that there was to be no question of a match with a foreign princess, given the international situation, and the economic realities of the time. The Stuart princess, Louisa Maria, was Madame de Maintenon's candidate, as being the daughter of her adored Mary Beatrice, but nobody else thought that was a solution. Taking into account the real possibilities at Versailles, it was Adelaide who took a prominent part in advocating the candidature of Philippe and Françoise-Marie's daughter Marie-(Louise)-Élisabeth. Her motives for this, a campaign which would lead in the end to disaster all round, were not of the finest. Her chief aim was to keep out the daughter of Madame la Duchesse, known as Mademoiselle de Bourbon. Both these girls were granddaughters of Louis XIV, via their legitimised mothers. But their characters were very different.

Marie-Élisabeth was fifteen. She was her father's favourite out of his numerous daughters.
⁴
*
Unpleasant gossip gathered around their too-intimate relationship; certainly she consoled him for the loveless marriage he had been forced to make. Marie-Élisabeth had also been brought up by her father to despise her mother for ‘the defilement of her adulterous birth’, an act of revenge on his part. The girl was from the start highly unstable, with a violent temper whenever her will was crossed; no one had ever tried to control her – not her notoriously lazy mother and certainly not her doting father, whom she treated ‘like a negro slave’ and ruled much as Françoise ruled the King according to Saint-Simon. Vivacity was Marie-Élisabeth's strong suit, that, and a certain wit, reminding courtiers that she was Athénaïs's granddaughter.

Physically however she allowed her appetites to hold sway: Marie-Élisabeth became grossly fat quite young, so that the King shuddered with distaste. Once upon a time when she had been a little girl, Marie-Élisabeth had charmed him, like other little girls; at the age of twelve after hunting she had been invited to dine with him, an unusual honour for a person of her rank. Now he suggested that she was so fat that she might be infertile. Liselotte's pen portrait of her granddaughter was not flattering: pale blue eyes with pink rims, a short body with long arms, a clumsy walk and in general lacking any grace in anything that she did; only her neck, arms and hands were flawlessly white. Nevertheless the tyrannical Marie-Élisabeth must have had something: Liselotte had to admit that her son Philippe was convinced ‘Helen was never so beautiful’.
⁵

Adelaide's refusal to back the far more suitable Mademoiselle de Bourbon, aged seventeen in 1710, was partly based on her strong dislike of her mother. Madame la Duchesse had scorned the little Princess of Savoy from the start, the pretty child who had displaced her as the young star of the court; and then there was Madame la Duchesse's unforgivable behaviour over Bourgogne's military troubles. But as Adelaide headed towards thirty – the age at which she had decided to give up dancing – she also feared that Mademoiselle de Bourbon, with her charming teasing ways, would replace her in the old King's affections. She certainly employed her own apparent naïvety in the cause of Marie-Élisabeth. Adelaide observed innocently out loud on one occasion what a lovely bride the Orléans princess would make for the Duc de Berry, and then stopped as though aghast at her own temerity: ‘Tante, what have I just said? Did I say something wrong?'
⁶

As Adelaide supported Marie-Élisabeth (who went on a special diet, eating only when she was walking to improve her chances), the two mothers in question, Françoise-Marie and Madame la Duchesse, were also locked in a poisonous struggle. Old sibling rivalries came into it – Madame la Duchesse's humiliation at having to yield precedence to her younger sister for example. And then the Dauphin, as father of the bridegroom, had some say in it all, even if the King gave the ultimate verdict.

The matter was concluded when Philippe was persuaded by Saint-Simon to write a letter to the King proposing Marie-Élisabeth as a bride for Berry, with Saint-Simon advising on its contents. A moment was chosen to present this letter when the King was reported by one of his doctors to be in a good mood; he took it away unopened. The next day Louis announced that he agreed in principle, but needed some time to talk round the Dauphin, which he proceeded to do ‘in the tone of a father, mixed with that of King and master.’ This was a different approach from the one he had recently taken over the sons of Maine and Bénédicte: then ‘that most severe and tyrannical of parents’ had humbled himself to the Dauphin and Bourgogne in order to establish that the boys should have the same rank as their father.
⁷
The whole matter of the bastards, their descendants and their degree was a delicate one, as time would show. But Louis was on surer ground when it came to the marriage of a (legitimate) grandson.

Up till now, no one had thought to ask the opinion of Berry himself. Aged nearly twenty-four, he had grown up from his mischievous boyhood into being a mild-mannered and good-natured young man who was especially devoted to his brother Bourgogne (and to Adelaide, whom he had known since childhood). He certainly displayed no jealousy of his two elder brothers' superior destinies. When Philip was made King of Spain, Berry sensibly announced: ‘I will have less trouble and more fun than you,’ and gave as an example that he would now be able to hunt the wolf ‘all the way from Versailles to Madrid.’ Somehow his education had been neglected, perhaps because the Dauphine's death had left ‘my little Berry’ motherless at the age of three and a half. He was certainly not as intelligent as Bourgogne or Philip V, and tended to be inarticulate in public as well as terrified of his grandfather (just as the Dauphin had been). Nevertheless, with his fine head of fair hair and his fresh complexion, Berry was positively handsome by the standards of a Bourbon prince; quite apart from his rank, Marie-Élisabeth could be pleased with her catch. As for his own feelings, Berry, told by his grandfather that Marie-Élisabeth was the highest-ranking princess in France, was uneasily non-committal.

So the betrothal was announced on 5 July 1710. The event led to glacial exchanges between the sisters. It was even suggested to Madame la Duchesse by Françoise-Marie – surely a gratuitous act of triumph – that another Orléans daughter might marry a Bourbon-Condé son. Madame la Duchesse merely replied that her son would not be of an age to be married for a long time and besides he had only a small fortune. But worse lay ahead for her. At the formal ceremony, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the slighted fiancée, was next in rank and thus by etiquette had to carry the train of Marie-Élisabeth. This was intolerable!

The King, who believed in etiquette but was also kind-hearted where these matters were concerned, suggested that Marie-Élisabeth's younger sisters should be hauled back from their convent to perform the task (their rank being higher than that of Mademoiselle de Bourbon). At least that pleased the two little girls in question, known respectively, as Mademoiselle de Chartres and Mademoiselle de Valois, who at eleven and nine had bewailed their incarceration. The decision to put them in a convent was generally ascribed to Françoise-Marie's laziness over her maternal duties, and the girls were so upset passing through Paris, that the curtains of their coach had to be drawn. Although the times did not ‘permit much entertainment’, the wedding was described by Adelaide to her grandmother as being as magnificent as policy permitted.’
⁸

Unfortunately this brilliant marriage – in worldly terms – had the effect of encouraging Marie-Élisabeth in her vile behaviour, and Berry had no resources to cope with it. At first he was quite mesmerised by his bride, according to Liselotte, although the passion wore off thanks to her behaviour. The rest of the court was more horrified than mesmerised. ‘Terrifyingly bold … wildly proud, vulgar beyond the bounds of decency': these were some of the descriptions she merited from Saint-Simon. She gorged prodigiously in public (gone were the days of the diet) and scarcely ever failed to drink herself unconscious, ‘rendering in all directions the wine she had swallowed.’ Having no religion herself – she proclaimed she did not believe in God – she mocked those like her husband who did. At one particular supper-party given by Adelaide at Saint-Cloud, Marie-Élisabeth became so ‘sottish’ that the effects, ‘both above and below’, were embarrassing to all present. Her father was also drunk on the same occasion – but the daughter was the drunker of the two.
⁹

Liselotte tried to take a hand in the education of her wayward granddaughter, calling her ‘my pupil.’ It is true that Marie-Élisabeth showed a rare graciousness in her reluctance to take precedence over her grandmother (which as the wife of the Duc de Berry she was now entitled to do): ‘Push me forward, Madame, so as to propel me in front of you. I need time to grow accustomed to that honour …’ But when it came to a question of a beautiful necklace of pearls and yellow diamonds which had belonged to Anne of Austria, which she coveted for a court ball, Marie-Élisabeth's behaviour to her mother was the reverse of gracious. When her mother refused to hand it over, Marie-Élisabeth insolently pointed out that the necklace belonged to her father by descent from Monsieur and he would certainly let her have it.

Sure enough, in a moment of weakness Philippe did. But the matter did not rest there. Françoise-Marie complained bitterly and Liselotte took a hand, going to the King herself. Louis hated this kind of trouble among women and was furious. In the end Marie-Élisabeth was induced to apologise to her mother and the matter was smoothed over. The whole unpleasant incident, so trivial and yet so important by the values of Versailles, made it clear that Marie-Élisabeth was more than unruly: she was quite out of control, and even the King found it difficult to check her.

Furthermore, there was no large, consoling brood of royal children to make it all seem worthwhile in dynastic terms. A year after her marriage, the Duchesse de Berry miscarried: because ‘it had been female’, wrote Saint-Simon, ‘everyone was soon consoled.’
¹⁰
All the same, it was to be well over a year before Marie-Élisabeth conceived again, and by then the balance of power at court had been radically altered.

Sudden death is ‘the ruffian on the stair’ where hereditary monarchy is concerned.
¹¹
Nobody would have predicted in the spring of 1711 that the Dauphin, a healthy, well-set-up man in his fiftieth year, would fall victim to smallpox, although it was the universal and egalitarian killer of the time. He is supposed to have caught the infection by kneeling at the wayside when a priest was passing carrying the sacred host. The Dauphin was unaware that the priest in question had just visited a victim of smallpox.