Louis had vanquished his enemies at home and placed himself in a position to dominate those abroad; he had a queen who had secured his throne by giving him a dauphin. The day of the Sun King had dawned.
ELEVEN
Le Château de Cartes
At the dawn of 1662, Louis was already beginning to mark out those he deemed worthy of receiving his favor. He created sixty knights of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit, the ceremony taking place as it always did in the church of the Augustins.1 He also selected sixty courtiers who would have the right to join him on all the journeys he took for pleasure without first asking permission. These privileged people, among them Louise, were allocated a kind of uniform consisting of a jacket of blue watered silk embroidered with gold and silver, which was similar to the king’s own.2
Louis liked to walk with Queen Marie-Thérèse during the winter months, and he accompanied her two or three times to Saint-Germain. This picture of apparent domestic bliss, however, was soon overshadowed by another intrigue as sharp-eyed courtiers observed that Louis had taken an interest in another lady, Anne-Lucie de La Motte-Houdancourt.
The driving force behind this affair was, once again, the mischievous comtesse de Soissons, who, frustrated in her first attempt to replace Louise de La Vallière with a new lady, had decided to try once again. La Motte-Houdancourt, one of the queen’s ladies, was not considered the most radiant beauty at court, although it was said that she managed to attract lovers away from the exquisite Catherine de Menneville.3 Mme de Soissons introduced her to Louis during one of his retreats to Saint-Germain rather than at Paris, because that way she hoped to escape the watchful eye of the duchesse de Navailles.
As he had done with Henriette d’Angleterre and Louise de La Vallière, Louis found that he had a rival as he began to court La Motte-Houdancourt. Unlike Guiche and Brienne, however, the self-important chevalier de Gramont felt that a lady so favored by the king must be fully deserving of his own attention, and he began to court her too. When his rival refused to step aside, Louis coolly exiled him.4
As it was, Louis quickly encountered an even more formidable foe than the insolent chevalier. The duchesse de Navailles, who was justly proud of her reputation for propriety, heard disturbing rumors of the king’s new passion. One story that was circulating among the ladies of the court had it that Louis had been seen speaking to La Motte-Houdancourt through her chamber window. Another tale went further, insisting that the king had actually entered the lady’s chamber and had offered her a pair of diamond earrings. The story went that La Motte-Houdancourt had thrown the earrings back in Louis’s face, exclaiming, “I care neither for you nor your pendants, unless you will give up La Vallière.”5
The indignant duchesse de Navailles took matters into her own hands. On a recent visit to Paris with the queen mother, she had visited a casuist, M. Joly, who advised her to “do her duty and resist the king, even if it should bring her disgrace.”6 When the duchesse found out that Louis and some of his companions had been seen scurrying along the roof and making their way towards the ladies’ chamber, she knew exactly what to do. She arranged to seal the doors and windows with iron bars, after which she went to bed satisfied with her day’s work. The following morning, however, she awoke to find the bars torn away and scattered about the courtyard below. At dinner, Louis could not resist having a little joke with the duchesse de Navailles: “It must be ghosts,” he told her, “for the door was shut, and your guards saw no one come in.”7
Marie-Thérèse had already guessed that Louis was having an affair with Louise de La Vallière, although she kept her knowledge to herself. Her conjecture was confirmed during an interview with the comtesse de Soissons, who had accompanied her to the Carmelite convent on the rue de Bouloy. The two ladies were visiting Anne of Austria, who was staying at the convent to convalesce after a recent illness. Marie-Thérèse nevertheless harbored hopes that she had been wrong in her assumption until Soissons told her the truth, and “the certainty of which caused her to shed many tears.”8 There was worse to come, because at the same time she found out about La Motte-Houdancourt. Upon her return to the Louvre, the inconsolable queen poured out her heart to Doña Molina, the only person she felt she could trust.
Now that the relatively open secret about Louise was officially out, Louis no longer concealed his liaison. Instead of telling the queen that he had just come from visiting Henriette, he openly admitted that he had been seeing Louise.9 It was said that Marie-Thérèse hated La Motte-Houdancourt even more than she did Louise, “for she would rather have witnessed his making open love to the former than allow him to pay the least attention to the latter.”10
As it was, those in the know understood perfectly that Louis had only pretended to take notice of La Motte-Houdancourt in order to hide his passion for Louise.11 Confirmation of this came when La Motte-Houdancourt sent Louis a letter. Warned by Queen Anne that the letter would urge him to abandon Louise, Louis read it and found that his mother had spoken the truth. Moreover, it bore all the hallmarks of having been dictated to La Motte-Houdancourt by Mme de Soissons. Louis burned the letter, “and from that moment La Motte ceased to exist for him.”12
Shortly after this diversion, Louis became a father for the second time when Marie-Thérèse gave birth to a daughter on November 18, 1662. The king immediately sent out couriers to carry the good news to all the courts of Europe, while foreign kings, dukes, and princelings rushed their ambassadors to France with their congratulations. However, even as the first of them arrived, it was too late. The little princess, Anne-Elisabeth de France, had died on December 30. The poor child barely made an impact on the world; and, as the custom in France and Spain dictated, she was scarcely mourned by the court because she was less than seven years old.13
As 1663 dawned, Louis found himself surrounded by men who wanted to use his grandeur and opulence for their own ends and women whose hearts were agitated by his many fine qualities. A prince, however, can offer only “limited favor, and can only love imperfectly,” so that “these desires and these benefits, which bear their poison with them, often fill with bitterness those who, in the vanity of their thoughts and desires, seek only their own satisfaction.” Yet, enclosed though he was on all sides by ambitious courtiers, Louis was happy. His kingdom was at peace; his enemies, at home and abroad, were subdued, while his armies were prepared to fight; his world was filled with pleasure, but “he was a Christian; and that one word enclosed all that in the future he had to fear.”14
The apparent serenity of Louis’s life was seriously tested soon afterwards, when his mother became ill at Eastertime 1663. At first she tried to make light of it, but she quickly succumbed to a tertian fever accompanied by drowsiness, a feeling of oppression, and headaches. Louis was naturally anxious, while Philippe’s heart was gripped with fear. The whole court was in a state of sadness.15
One day, the ninth of her illness, Anne was bled once again, but she had lost so much blood by repeated bleedings that she fainted. As she fell, Philippe slipped beneath her so she would fall on him and not hurt herself. Marie-Thérèse gave way to her fear and ran into the bathroom where Louis was. She cried that the queen mother “was lost, that her mother was dead.”16 Louis, “who in all the queen mother’s illnesses, and especially this one, showed the feelings of a son who was full of affection,” ran back into his mother’s room and helped to lift her back into bed. As Anne recovered from her faint, Louis brought the still-weeping queen back to her bedside, where “they remained, very uneasy at her state.”
As Anne’s condition worsened, she had a long, private interview with Louis, after which she asked her confessor to visit her every day. As the days went by, her fever became double tertian. Louis kept vigil by her bed and even ordered a mattress to be brought and laid on the floor at the foot of her bed, where “sometimes he threw himself down all dressed upon it.” One night, Mme de Motteville watched the king’s face as he slept:
I admired the tenderness of his heart combined with
so many great qualities not usually to be found with kindliness; and in spite of my sadness and anxiety I recalled, as I looked at him, those heroes that romance depicts lying in a wood or on the sea-shore; and passing on from those futile thoughts to others more solid and more suited to the then state of things, I could not help wishing for him all the blessings of heaven in time and in eternity.17
Louis helped to change his mother’s bed and “served her better and more adroitly than any of her women.” Then, after nearly eight weeks had passed, the king begged her to take an emetic, which the doctors had prescribed, but which she had persisted in refusing. After Louis’s pleading and the reassurance of her confessor, Anne finally took the emetic and was completely cured.
One evening, as Anne of Austria played host to Louis and the rest of her family in her chamber, the conversation turned to women’s jealousy. Marie-Thérèse asked Henriette if she would be jealous if Philippe gave her cause to be. Henriette said she would not, because “in truth it was useless to be so,”18 adding that “the sensitiveness of women only hardened the heart of husbands, and what ought to be agreeable to them as a mark of affection, displeased and importuned them.” Louis then asked Mme de Béthune if she had ever been jealous of her husband, but the lady said she had not. At this point Marie-Thérèse laughed and rose to go to supper, saying as she did so that Mme de Béthune “seemed the silliest person in the company; and for her part she could not say as much.” This removed any remaining doubt in Louis’s mind that the queen knew about his affair with Louise and that her silence had been “more the result of discretion and the fear of displeasing him than of ignorance.”
During this time, Louis’s physician, Vallot, monitored the king closely and came to the conclusion that he was suffering from “dull, sick headaches, with an inclination to dizziness; some heart trouble, weakness, and depression.” His opinion was that Louis hunted too much and that he “did not have all the sleep he needed.” Louis reluctantly agreed to get more sleep, and, even more reluctantly, he submitted to the various treatments the good doctor inflicted on him. The potions, bleedings, and purges, however, were sweetened by a concoction specifically invented for him, which consisted of peony heads, red roses, prepared pearls, and refined spirit of vitriol.19 Despite Vallot’s attentions, Louis recovered from these ailments.
Possibly one of the things that kept Louis awake at night was his concern over extending the terms of the Concordat of Bologna20 to the new provinces of Artois, Roussillon, and the Three Bishoprics.21 Pope Alexander VII, however, declared that Louis should not have the right to appoint his own bishops and abbots. Louis was on the point of accepting this decision when reports of a new diplomatic incident arrived.22
It was understood that Alexander VII did not have much longer to live, and Louis had sent his first gentleman of the bedchamber, the duc de Créqui, to Rome as ambassador extraordinary. His primary mission was to see what he could do to secure the appointment of a pope sympathetic to France in the imminently expected conclave. In the meantime, Créqui was to assure Alexander of Louis’s veneration for his person and the fervor of his opposition to the heretical Jansenists and Huguenots. More delicately, Créqui was to skate over the issue of France’s attitude towards the League of Christian Princes against the Turks. Although Louis was adamant not to join the league, he was eager not to let the pope know this.23
Créqui arrived at the Palazzo Farnese in Rome on June 2, 1662 to find that relations between the French guards and the pope’s Corsican guards were less than cordial. It was only a matter of time before violence broke out between them, and this occurred on August 20, when the Corsicans beset the French at the barracks close to the palace. The ensuing argument quickly escalated into a scuffle; the French brandished their swords and the Corsicans fired their arquebuses seemingly aimlessly as they cried, “Kill them, they are French!”
As this was going on, Créqui returned home from a visit to the prince Borghese. He managed to get safely inside the Palazzo Farnese, but when he and his wife went out onto the balcony, they were showered by a hail of bullets, one of which came so close to the duke that it swept his hair. As the brawl escalated, several people in the street were killed or wounded, and the diplomatic immunity of France was seriously compromised.
When news of the incident reached Louis, he demanded an immediate apology from Alexander, only to be rebuffed. The pope’s nephew, Cardinal Flavio Chigi, stepped in to offer his services, saying he would call upon Créqui if he could be assured he would be treated with courtesy. Créqui took exception to this and pointed out that he was a gentleman and therefore incapable of acting indecorously. Chigi, authorized by the pope to convey an apology, arrived at the Palazzo Farnese five days later. The angry duke, however, found the apology unsatisfactory, since it merely excused the behavior of the Corsican guards by explaining that they could not be overmastered. Little attempt was made to punish the offenders; rather, they were allowed to leave Rome if they chose. Some thirty-two guards did so choose, leaving the French to surmise that the papal court secretly supported their actions.
When Louis wrote to Alexander, his anger was barely concealed. In his letter, which was dated August 30, 1662, he notified the pope that as a result of the violent incident, he was withdrawing his ambassador from Rome so that “his person and our dignity would no longer remain exposed to such outrage which, until now, there have been no examples even among the barbarians.” He wanted to know if the pope approved of the incident at the barracks and if he planned to give Louis “reparation proportionate to the greatness of the offense which not only violated, but shamefully overturned the right of the people.” Louis, however, did not demand anything of the pope, who had, he wrote, “for so long made a habit of refusing us everything, and has shown up to now such aversion to anything regarding our person and our crown that we believe it best to defer to his own discretion his resolutions upon which we will be guided.”24
As Louis waited for his dispute with the pope to be resolved, he turned his thoughts to his own reign and how he might document its history. One of the ways he would do so was by minting commemorative medals, and in February 1663, he ordered Colbert to establish a new institution, the Académie des Inscriptions. Otherwise known as the Petit Académie because it initially had only four members, its purpose was to record the history of Louis XIV’s reign in inscriptions, mottoes, and medals commemorating various military victories and other special events. It would also organize and record royal festivities, as well as oversee court ballets and operas. One of the original four members was Louis Douvrier, who had created Louis’s Sun King medal.25
Another means of documenting the glory and achievements of Louis’s reign was in tapestry. In June 1662, Colbert had purchased the Gobelins manufactory, and three weeks later, on June 20, Louis had ordered all the looms, tools, tapestries, and materials to be transferred there from the workshop established by Foucquet at Maincy.26 Foucquet had employed some 209 people, among whom were nineteen Flemish tapestry-weavers, who worked under Le Brun’s supervision as they transformed his cartoons into magnificent works of art.27 Several of the tapestries that were sent to the Gobelins had been specially designed for Foucquet, but these were easily adapted for the king’s use by replacing Foucquet’s squirrel device with Louis’s monogram.28 Now, on March 8, 1663, Charles Le Brun was formally appointed director of the Gobelins, a position he would hold until 1667, when he was made director of the royal manufactures of the crown furniture, established at the Gobelins.29 With these new establishments firmly under control, Louis decided it was time to visit Versailles.
Louis was still dauphin when he first saw Versailles. His father’s hunting lodge was known affectionately as the château de cartes because the red of the brick, the white stone, and the black slate roof reminded onlookers of the colorful backs of playing cards. Louis XIII had acquired the nearby village and other properties, including the hamlet of Trianon, from the Gondi family, and it would be on this land that his son
would build the famous park.30
As a child, Louis had made the occasional hunting excursion,31 but other than that, he had shown no particular interest in the little hunting lodge. It was not until he was twenty-three that he set about transforming it into the beautiful palace that would glorify his reign. He did so for two main reasons: he wanted a place to which he could escape with Louise, and he was anxious to eradicate all memory of the magnificent fête presented by Foucquet. The spectacular at Vaux-le-Vicomte aroused jealousy in the young king, who was affronted by Foucquet’s power, wealth, and excellent taste, but it also stimulated within him a sense of rivalry, and his desire was not to emulate the superintendent’s achievements but to surpass them. Another reason would emerge more gradually: Versailles was to become the new seat of government in France; but more than that, it was to be a gilded cage in which Louis could hold, tame, and control his relatives and courtiers. It would be populated by the nobility, who would be so afraid of losing his favor that they would allow themselves to become dependent on him for everything.
Not everyone thought Versailles was a suitable place to build a magnificent château. If Saint-Simon, admittedly writing at a later date, is to be believed, the area was most unsuitable. Versailles, he wrote, was “the most thankless of places; without view, without woods, without water, without soil, for all is either sand or bog, and consequently with an air that cannot be pure.”32
Louis, however, could see its potential, and renovation work had begun almost immediately after Foucquet’s arrest. He employed the people who had created Vaux-le-Vicomte for the ex-superintendent: Louis Le Vau, the architect; André Le Nôtre, who designed the gardens; and Charles Le Brun, the interior designer and painter. Over the next two years, some of the apartments were repaired, and two painters, Charles Errard and Noël Coypel, were given the job of decorating them. A special apartment was prepared for the dauphin, while the buildings surrounding the forecourt were demolished to make way for larger ones.33
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