The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (42 page)

In August 1682 there were reports in France that the Comtesse was poised to return, but if the King had ever contemplated sanctioning this he ultimately thought better of it. Accordingly, Mme de Soissons’s exile continued. After travelling for a time in Germany, in 1686 she went to Madrid in hopes of arranging a prestigious match for one of her sons. There she struck up a friendship with the young Queen Marie Louise, a niece of Louis XIV’s who had married Charles II of Spain in 1679. When news of this reached Louis, he was appalled at the prospect of his inexperienced niece falling under the influence of a woman whom he viewed with such aversion. He ordered his ambassador in Spain, the Comte de Rebenac, to stay ‘well informed about [Mme de Soissons’s] intrigues in order to give the Queen advice on the matter that best suits her interests’.
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In October 1688 the Comtesse de Soissons became caught up in a fresh controversy. It would seem that the King of Spain suffered from premature ejaculation (in the delicate words of the French ambassador, he ‘had a natural debility, which was attributed to too much vivacity on the part of the King’) and this had prevented him from consummating his marriage. In the autumn of 1688 he suddenly decided that his incapacity had been caused by the Comtesse de Soissons bewitching him and consequently he sent orders that she should leave Spain. The Comtesse appealed to the Queen but, to her annoyance, Marie Louise said she should do as the King desired. Undaunted, the Comtesse gained the support of the Imperial ambassador in Madrid, the Comte de Mansfeld, and he evidently prevailed on the King to permit her to remain a while longer, for she did not leave Spain till the following summer.
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On 12 February 1689 Queen Marie Louise of Spain died after enduring ‘three days of continual vomiting and colic’. The circumstances were remarkably reminiscent of the agonising death of her mother, the Duchesse d’Orléans, nearly twenty years earlier, and though Marie Louise herself insisted that poison was not responsible it was inevitable that in France there were suspicions she had been murdered. In his memoirs Saint-Simon asserted that she was poisoned by the Comtesse de Soissons in league with the Comte de Mansfeld, who wanted to break the alliance between France and Spain. Saint-Simon stated that the Comtesse gave the Queen iced milk, which had been poisoned at the Imperial embassy, and then immediately left the country before the King could apprehend her.
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However, since the Comtesse remained in Spain till July 1689, the story is patently inaccurate.

The Comte de Rebenac did have grave concerns about the manner of the Queen’s death, but he believed the most likely culprits were the Spanish nobles the Count of Oropesa and Don Emmanuel de Lira, aided by the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, the Duchess of Albuquerque. Had the Comtesse de Soissons enjoyed access to the Queen, it is inconceivable that he would have failed to name her as a prime suspect but, when the Queen died, the Comtesse had been excluded from court for several months.
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One certainly cannot rule out that the Queen of Spain was poisoned in 1689. The faction at the Spanish court that desired closer links with Vienna undoubtedly had strong motives for wishing to be rid of her, and Marie Louise herself had reportedly expressed fears for her safety when writing home. She had requested that antidotes to poison be sent to Spain for her own use and a consignment from her father was said to have arrived there the day after she died.
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The available evidence is not sufficient to resolve the question once and for all (though, once again, porphyria has been posited as a possible cause of death) but one can at least be reasonably certain that Saint-Simon wronged the Comtesse de Soissons when he laid the blame at her door.

After leaving Spain the Comtesse de Soissons once again took up residence in Brussels. There are signs that she still pined for her former life in Paris and a letter she wrote in July 1692 also suggests that she recognised that her decision to leave France without facing trial had been a catastrophic error. By that time France was again at war and the Comtesse wrote to the Maréchal de Luxembourg (who was in charge of the army of Flanders) requesting that she should be permitted to travel unmolested about the environs of Brussels. ‘Who would have said in days gone by that I should be reduced to such an extremity,’ she lamented, ‘I, who was accustomed to receiving the favours of the greatest King in the world.’ Then, alluding to the fact that Luxembourg had been implicated in the Affair of the Poisons and had been vindicated at his trial, she noted that they had a mutual experience of misfortune, adding wistfully that her disgrace would doubtless have been as ephemeral as his if it had been fitting ‘for a woman like me to adopt the course you followed’.
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But though it is clear that the Comtesse de Soissons was still bitter at the way she had been forced to forsake her adopted homeland, it is not true, as Saint-Simon claimed, that her final years in Brussels were spent in penury and loneliness. To the end of her days she occupied an eminent position in Brussels society and, far from being ostracised, she welcomed at her salon French acquaintances from former years who were passing through the town. She no doubt also derived consolation from the knowledge that her younger son, Prince Eugène, had exacted a satisfying revenge for the humiliations she had endured. Denied a position in the French army by Louis XIV, the Prince had volunteered his services to the Emperor and, as commander of the Imperial forces in the War of the Spanish Succession, he inflicted a sequence of crushing defeats on the French.

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The Comtesse de Soissons was the grandest individual to be driven from France in January 1680, but she was not alone in thinking that exile was preferable to facing the justice of the
Chambre Ardente.
The Vicomtesse de Polignac was in the Auvergne when the warrant was issued for her arrest, but a detachment of guards was sent to escort her back to Paris. However, friends of hers sent an express courier to warn her that a prison cell awaited her there and she quit France before the officers of the law arrived. Unable to lay hands on her, the King had to content himself with seizing all the furniture in her Paris house, prompting furious if ineffectual protests from the Vicomte de Polignac, who had not accompanied his wife abroad.
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Despite the fact that on 18 July 1680 Mme de Polignac was officially declared contumacious, she seems to have taken the view that the fuss would die down in due course and that, after a discreet interval had elapsed, she would be able to slip back into the country. However, when in March 1686 she reappeared in Paris, intent on arranging a marriage between her eldest son and the Dauphine’s maid of honour, Mlle de Rambures, she discovered that the King’s indignation against her was undiminished. Louis sent word that he was astonished she dare show herself in Paris and he also did his best to dissuade Mlle de Rambures from proceeding with the marriage. When someone ‘took the liberty of representing to him that he was causing severe mortification to a man of rank [the Vicomtesse de Polignac’s son] who had never done anything to displease him’, the King answered coldly that ‘his aversion was directed not at Monsieur de Polignac, but rather at Madame his mother’. In the end Mlle de Rambures refused to abandon a match which, whatever its disadvantages, was undeniably prestigious and the King gave his consent. The Comte de Bussy commented that he was not surprised the King remained so hostile towards Mme de Polignac, for ‘His Majesty has reason to fear the dealings of a woman who wanted to give him a philtre to make him fall in love’.
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Because of his intransigence, the Vicomtesse could never return to Paris until after the King’s death.

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On learning of the warrant for his arrest the Marquis de Cessac had also opted to avoid imprisonment and trial by fleeing France. M. de La Rivière jeered, ‘By adding to his bad reputation as a gamester that of a poisoner he has strongly indicated his contempt for worldly esteem.’ However, Cessac’s decision to abscond was not universally condemned, for an influential body of opinion considered it commendable that he had opted against being dragged to prison as a public spectacle. Cessac headed for England, where he had already lived for a time during his first disgrace. The English ambassador to France sent his superiors fore-warning of his arrival, explaining that Cessac was supposed to have consulted a sorcerer in hopes of beating the Kings of France and England at cards. Clearly amused that such absurdities were taken seriously by the French, the ambassador commented jocularly, ‘I am sure that our master will easily forgive him, for the devil has never been able to make him play for high sums either with [Cessac] or anyone else.’
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Cessac was based in England for some years. In 1685 it was rumoured at the French court that he was planning to marry Mlle de Gramont on the understanding that her family would effect his return. Unfortunately, when the possibility was mentioned to the King he growled that nobody had consulted him about it, and in the end the match did not go ahead. Inexplicably, however, Louis proved more accommodating six years later. Presumably, by that time the King had decided that the accusation that Cessac had tried to murder his brother using witchcraft had been baseless, for by April 1691 Cessac had been authorised to return to France and to rejoin the army. Later in the month he came to court and was permitted to make his bow to the King. The following September proceedings were inaugurated to purge him of the stain of contumacity that still attached to him in consequence of his earlier evasion of justice. Matters were not finally resolved until nearly a year later, but after Cessac had presented himself voluntarily at the Bastille on 28 July 1692 a special hearing discharged him of his contempt and a week later he was freed.
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Cessac, who ‘accounted scorn and insults as nothing’, imperturbably resumed his life in Paris. Despite being a known cheat, he had no trouble attracting dedicated gamblers to his house to play for high stakes. Cessac’s willingness to hazard huge sums soon caught the attention of Monsieur, whose passion for gambling overrode all other considerations. Keen to try his luck against a man who would not place limits on his bets, Monsieur sought the King’s permission to invite Cessac to his house at Saint-Cloud. Louis agreed and soon the Dauphin also asked his father to let him entertain Cessac at his country house. In this way gambling, which had earlier brought Cessac into such disrepute, served to procure his rehabilitation. In June 1696 the King himself asked Cessac to stay at Marly, the exquisite retreat he had built near Versailles. He invited him because Monsieur was coming to visit and Louis wanted keen card players to be on hand for his brother’s amusement. Soon Cessac became a regular guest at the King’s house parties, an honour to which all courtiers ardently aspired, but which was only extended to an envied few.
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Flight had been the course favoured by several prominent figures facing arrest by the
Chambre Ardente,
but the Maréchal de Luxembourg proved less pusillanimous. For some months prior to January 1680 it had been rumoured that Luxembourg had links with prisoners detained at Vincennes. Luxembourg was vulnerable not merely on account of his 1676 encounter with Lesage at the house of the Marquise de Fontet, but also because his man of business, Pierre Bonnard, had had extensive dealings with the magician. The reason for this was that some years before, Luxembourg had sold a sizeable area of woodland for an inflated sum to a consortium of businessmen. The deal had been brokered by a middleman named Dupin, but when the purchasers realised they had been overcharged they sought to renege on their agreement. Anxious to complete the transaction, Luxembourg needed to repossess documents currently held by Dupin, which established that the lands had been overvalued. Luxembourg’s secretary Bonnard had undertaken to obtain the documents for him, but securing them proved more difficult than anticipated. Consequently, Bonnard had enlisted the help of Lesage, who promised that he would procure the documents by magical means.

With Bonnard’s enthusiastic concurrence Lesage had performed spells designed to enable Bonnard to acquire the documents. Lesage had also commissioned the priest Davot to pass notes under the chalice during mass, requesting the return of the papers. Lesage then informed Bonnard that if he wished to succeed, he must obtain a signed paper from Luxembourg, giving him Power of Attorney to proceed on the Maréchal’s behalf. Bonnard duly presented such a paper to his master and Luxembourg signed it, having first asked his legal adviser to verify that it contained nothing untoward. However, when Bonnard showed the deed to Lesage, the latter prevailed on him to add a clause empowering him to perform ‘all necessary conjurations’ to achieve the desired ends and mentioning a ‘donation to the spirit’.
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Lesage then took the paper to the lawyer acting for the businessmen who had purchased Luxembourg’s woods, calculating that they would pay him well if he provided them with a document that compromised the Maréchal. However, before he could profit from his action, Lesage was arrested in March 1679.

Shortly after this the lawyer who had been given the paper bearing Luxembourg’s signature contacted Luxembourg and suggested the Maréchal should sell his woodlands for a lesser sum than that originally agreed. As Luxembourg later recalled, the lawyer explained that in this way Luxembourg ‘would hide … a thing that would cause me harm in the world’, namely ‘that my man of business was making pacts with the devil in my name’. Fearful that he had been compromised by Bonnard’s indiscreet behaviour, Luxembourg went to Louvois and suggested that Bonnard should be arrested and questioned by the commissioners of the
Chambre Ardente.
Louvois rejected the idea, saying that the Chamber was only concerned with cases of poisoning, ‘and that if Bonnard had done something idiotic’, Luxembourg had merely to dismiss him.
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Accordingly, Luxembourg told Bonnard that he never wanted to see him again and he then met with Duparc, the lawyer who was acting for the purchasers of his land. An agreement was thrashed out between them regarding the sale of his woods but, foolishly, Luxembourg neglected to retrieve from the lawyer the signed paper that Bonnard had drawn up in his name. This later found its way into the hands of La Reynie and formed an important part of the evidence against Luxembourg.