Louis XIV

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Louis XIV Page 22

by Josephine Wilkinson


  Louis left Saint-Germain on May 16, arriving at Amiens on the twentieth. Here, he spent the next four days reviewing his troops before heading for Compiègne the next day. The king’s troops were under the command of Turenne, although Louis took personal charge of certain operations. In several cases, French troops vastly outnumbered the Spanish, and as the sieges got underway, many towns capitulated within days. As town after town fell, Louis received the surrender and made a formal entry, although it is true to say that resistance was often token, so Louis had little in the way of victory to celebrate.

  On June 22, Louis conducted the siege of Tournai, with the town surrendering on the twenty-fifth, and its castle the next day. July 6 saw the fall of Douai, which capitulated after a five-day siege, with Louis making a discreet entrance on the seventh. Two weeks later, he and Marie-Thérèse made their formal entry, where the Te Deum was sung along with the celebrations. Louis took Alost on August 8, and at the end of the month, Lille fell after a monthlong siege.

  Throughout, Louis did not shy away from danger but often placed himself within range of enemy cannon. He shared the victories and the hardships with his men, and never failed to stay overnight in the camp with them, despite the rain and the fact that he suffered from toothache for more than a fortnight.32 The king’s direct approach and personal interest in his armies should come as no surprise: he confided to “a person he esteemed,” that if he ever made war, he “would go to it in person.” His anonymous confidant answered that it would be a great imprudence, even a fault in a king to risk his life in such a way, noting that France had once suffered from the imprudence of François I. Louis replied, “Imprudent if you please; but all the same, that imprudence put [François] in the rank of the greatest kings.”33 At Lille, however, his troops refused to allow him to join them in the trenches, warning that it was too dangerous. Louis reluctantly agreed, with the stipulation, “Since you want me to take care of myself for your sakes, I also want you to look after yourselves for mine.”34

  Louis wore buff, lost a little weight, and caught the sun during the campaign. He continued to take care of his appearance, having his hair curled, taking a long time to dress, and spending half an hour in front of his mirror each day curling his mustache and arranging it with wax. This preening did not go for nothing, however; at intervals, Louis sent for Marie-Thérèse, who hastened with her ladies to Compiègne, where she would meet the king as he returned from the front to celebrate his latest victories.

  The first such occasion took place on June 9. As Marie-Thérèse set out, the almost forgotten Louise, left alone at Versailles, decided to break etiquette and journey out to join the court. Riding in her new ducal carriage, she caught up with the queen’s party at La Fère, where it had stopped for the night. When she turned up unannounced in the queen’s dressing room, Marie-Thérèse made it clear that she was unwelcome.35 The queen issued orders to the officers of her escort to allow no one to leave before her the next morning, so that she would be the first to reach the king. However, as the court approached the rendezvous point at Avesnes, Louis was spotted awaiting his queen on the rising ground. At that point, Louise’s carriage suddenly raced across the fields before anything could be done to stop her.36 Louis’s greeting was icy, and as the court settled at Avesnes, he paid Louise only the most formal of visits.

  Louise, having broken the most rigid royal protocols by approaching Louis in advance of the queen, now compounded her error by upsetting Louis’s strictly laid-out social arrangements by not joining the court for supper that evening.37 As to Louis, his sharp-eyed cousin of Montpensier had noticed that he had other matters on his mind than the unhappy Louise,38 for among those who watched the proceedings with interest was Mme de Montespan, better known as Athénaïs.

  Born into a proud but impoverished aristocratic family that could trace its ancestry back to 1094, Françoise de Rochechoart de Mortemart, marquise de Montespan, had made her social début in 1660, when she entered the court under the name Mlle de Tonnay-Charrante.39 Her mother, a member of Anne of Austria’s household, had assisted Athénaïs in gaining an appointment as maid of honor to Marie-Thérèse. Athénaïs made one of her earliest court appearances at the age of twenty in Benserade’s Hercule amoureux, in which Louis danced the parts of Mars and the Sun.

  Athénaïs was cultured, intellectual, a lover of music, dance, and literature. Attracted to salon society, she became a regular at the salon of the maréchal d’Albret, and it was here that she changed her name from Françoise to the more classical-sounding Athénaïs, naming herself after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, virginity, and victory. The salon also introduced her to a new friend, Mme Scarron, the widow of the poet Paul Scarron.

  Athénaïs married Louis-Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, marquis de Montespan, whose family was as impoverished and aristocratic as her own, on February 6, 1663.40 The wedding took place at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, and the couple set up home in the rue Tarenne in the district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.41

  Athénaïs continued in her position at court, and two weeks after her marriage, she took part in a new ballet at the Louvre, dancing alongside Louise de La Vallière. However, Athénaïs’s life was not entirely carefree: her husband was the nephew of the staunchly Jansenist archbishop of Sens, and so was unwelcome at court. If the family was to gain any social advancement, Athénaïs would have to be the one to work for it. Moreover, their financial problems were worsened by the marquis’s love of gambling, which caused him to amass debts at an alarming rate. Seeing that he was unable to make his way at court, Montespan left to join the army. This was no great blow to Athénaïs however, as the first few months of their living together had brought her to the realization that she was no longer in love with him; indeed, she felt that he was beneath her. As things would turn out, Montespan’s debts would increase still further as the result of his need to purchase his uniform, equipment, and weapons, as well as to finance his gambling habit, which he could not give up.

  Athénaïs had become pregnant almost straightaway, and she gave birth to her first child, Marie-Christine, who was baptized at Saint-Sulpice on November 17. With her pregnancy came the forfeiture of her post as maid of honor, so Athénaïs now found herself in need of employment. She applied to become a lady-in-waiting to the queen, and it appears that she secured the post thanks to the intervention of Philippe, who was a close friend of Athénaïs’s sister, Madame de Thianges. Despite the coldness between Athénaïs and her husband, she managed to become pregnant again and, on November 5, 1664, gave birth to a son, Louis-Antoine, marquis d’Antin.

  Quite when Athénaïs de Montespan caught Louis’s attention cannot precisely be known. Mademoiselle thought that Louis had taken her as a mistress during the Flanders campaign in 1667. When Louise had been discovered in the queen’s dressing room, Mesdames de Bade and Montausier voiced their commiserations with Marie-Thérèse. Mme de Montespan interrupted them, exclaiming perhaps a little too loudly, “Heaven defend me from being mistress to the King; but, were such a misfortune to befall me, I should certainly not have the effrontery to appear before the Queen.”42

  One night, Mme de Montespan asked Mademoiselle to hold her cards for her while she remained in her chamber. This was near the king’s own rooms, and it was noticed that a sentinel who was usually posted on the stairs between the two apartments had been removed and placed below to prevent anyone ascending. Louis spent almost the entire day in his chamber with the door locked. For her part, Mme de Montespan failed to appear at the queen’s card table, and she did not accompany her on her promenades as she usually would.43

  Mademoiselle was not the only one to notice. Marie-Thérèse received an anonymous letter informing her that the king was in love with Mme de Montespan. The queen could not believe it, and the news seemed even less credible when she was told that Mme de Montausier was conducting the intrigue and that Louis had spent almost the whole time they were at Compiègne in La Montespan’s chamber. Sensing that some
one was trying to cause trouble between the queen and her ladies, it was agreed that the letter must have been written by Mme d’Armagnac.44 Marie-Thérèse sent the letter to Louis, and to show that she “entirely discredited the accusation, the Queen treated Madame de Montespan with even greater consideration.”45 The queen was right to be cautious, for no one could tell at this stage whether the king’s liaison with Mme de Montespan would be nothing more than a dalliance, and had not Louis, who was now twenty-nine, promised Marie-Thérèse that he would settle down at the age of thirty?

  FIFTEEN

  The Triple Alliance

  Louis’s sudden and decisive victories in the Spanish Netherlands frightened the English and the Dutch into a truce. Meeting at Breda, the two former enemies agreed to a rapprochement, and when they were joined by Sweden in May 1668, the Triple Alliance of The Hague was formed. The new alliance wasted no time in threatening France with war if Louis refused to relinquish the conquests he had acquired during the Devolution War.1 Louis, however, had anticipated this threat, and even before the alliance had formed, he was deep into his counterstroke. He had ordered his ambassador to Venice, de Grémonville, to negotiate a secret partition treaty with Emperor Leopold.

  While Grémonville’s talks were still ongoing, Louis pressed ahead with his plans to seize Franche-Comté. Condé was appointed general for this campaign, and he arrived at Dijon in December 1667 to begin his preparations. When Louis arrived in the province on February 7, 1668, Besançon had already surrendered without a shot having been fired. At Dôle, which capitulated after a four-day siege, Louis and his general attended a Te Deum to celebrate the victory before moving on to Gray. With the fall of that town on February 19, Louis made his way back to Paris.

  Within days of Louis’s return, peace talks began. The capture of Franche-Comté gave Louis a valuable bargaining chip, allowing him to conclude a favorable peace. The Dutch acted as mediators, Jan de Witt, grand pensionary of the United Provinces, being inclined to satisfy the French in the face of Spanish intransigence. At Saint-Germain, Louis advocated peace, against the advice of Louvois, Turenne, and Condé, who desired to continue the war.2

  The preliminary peace accords were signed on April 15, and the treaty ratified at Aix-la-Chapelle on May 2 after a series of intense negotiations.3 Under the terms of this treaty, Louis returned most of the towns he had conquered in the recent Devolution War to Spain, but the twelve towns he retained left the Spanish Netherlands exposed to further attack. These were fortified by Vauban to form part of a protective ceinture de fer, or ‘iron belt.’ Louis had no real interest in extending his borders to natural boundaries but to those he could best defend.

  Louis was now in a position of strength, not least because several German states and princes left the League of the Rhine, causing it to collapse. This greatly concerned the Dutch, while the English feared French expansionism.4 Meanwhile, Louis’s partition treaty with Leopold had been signed.5 His seizure of Franche-Comté had been intended to force Spain to recognize the provisions of the partition treaty; once Spain did so, the province was returned to them.6

  Louis’s invasion and seizure of the Franche-Comté had interrupted a carnival that he was planning for the entertainment of the court. He made up for the disappointment now by offering a fête at Versailles. Here, new developments in the gardens had seen the construction of a labyrinth. This was intended to be used for the instruction and amusement of the dauphin,7 and each fountain, complete with basin and shells, illustrated one of Aesop’s fables. The leaden animals were depicted in their environments and painted in natural colors. The work coincided with the publication of the six first books of La Fontaine’s Fables, one of the texts used by Bossuet as he taught the dauphin.8

  The fête took place over several days during the third week of July. Its theme was the celebration of nature under the command of the king, and it was every bit as sumptuous as the court had now come to expect. There were fireworks, music, and endless suppers. Louis was accompanied at the table by Louise and her sister-in-law, the marquise de La Vallière; Athénaïs had to make do with sitting among the queen’s ladies, but this was a calculated strategy on Louis’s part, for he could watch her every move, her every expression from a safe distance.

  Louis still loved Louise, but he was no longer in love with her, a subtle distinction. Seeing that she was no longer the object of his passion, she dared to confront him.9 Louis hated scandal, and he responded coldly, saying that he was “too sincere to deceive her any longer; but that, nevertheless, he had not ceased to feel for herself a very sincere affection.” He believed that she had every reason to be satisfied with all that he was doing for her, adding that “she was too intelligent not to be aware that a King of his type did not like to be under any kind of constraint.” Her tears failed to move him; indeed, he told her that if she wished “to retain his affection, she must ask nothing from him that he did not give of his own free will.” Instead, she should “continue to live with Mme de Montespan as she has hitherto done.” Louis threatened to “take other steps” if Louise showed any hostility towards Athénaïs, but the truth was that he needed Louise to remain at court, no matter how unhappy she might be. As Bussy-Rabutin put it, Louis “needed a pretext for madame de Montespan.”10 This was, therefore, Louise’s primary function now. Louis kept her at court in order to conceal his relationship with Athénaïs, much as Louise had been intended to conceal Louis’s relationship with Henriette. Louise also acted as an unwilling decoy in order to discourage Athénaïs’s husband from causing trouble.

  Naturally, dancing formed part of the entertainments, and Louis danced in the ballet Triumph of Bacchus. Another highlight was Molière’s Georges Dandin, or the Astonished Husband, set to music by Lully and presented as a drama-ballet. This told the story of a country gentleman who had married above his station and who was astonished when his wife betrayed him with another man. Initially, the cuckolded husband threatened to drown himself in a fountain, but he settled instead to drink away his sorrows.

  The theme of Molière’s play coincided rather neatly with the experience of another betrayed husband, albeit one of higher birth. This was the marquis de Montespan, Athénaïs’s husband, and as luck would have it, the marquis selected that moment to launch an attack on Louis.

  Montespan was already blazing his way through Parisian society, slandering the king to anyone who would listen. Now he cornered Mademoiselle and showed her the text of a harangue he intended to read out to Louis. Here, Louis was likened to David, who seduced Bathsheba; the harangue also warned the king of the divine retribution that would surely rain down upon him, and it ended with the demand that Athénaïs be returned to him. The bemused Mademoiselle told him he must be mad to even contemplate reading the harangue to Louis. She added that no one would believe that he had written it himself, but would instead attribute it to the archbishop of Sens, Montespan’s uncle, who had no love for Athénaïs.11

  The following day, Mademoiselle went to Saint-Germain, where she took Athénaïs for a private walk. She warned Athénaïs that she had seen her husband and that he was as mad as ever, adding that she had told him to keep his mouth shut or he would end up in prison. Athénaïs’s reply was a show of bravado that concealed the fear she felt. Just then, a messenger came to say that Montespan had come to the palace and had managed to get inside the duchesse de Montausier’s apartment. He had learned that the duc de Montausier had been appointed governor to the dauphin and guessed that the appointment had been an expression of Louis’s gratitude for the role the duchess had played in the early stages of his affair with Athénaïs. Now Montespan accused the duchess of abetting the affair, and his abusive manner had reduced the elderly lady to tears. “He said the most insulting things to me,” she sobbed. “I thanked God that there were only women here; if there had been any men, he would have been thrown out of the window.”12

  As outraged as Louis was, there was little he could do about Montespan’s gasconnades,13 even if they did
disturb the peace of the court. A man was perfectly within his rights to yell at, rape, or otherwise abuse his wife. Eventually, though, Louis was forced to act, and on September 22, he issued a lettre de cachet14 ordering Montespan’s imprisonment in the For-l’Eveque “for having criticized unfavorably the King’s selection of M. de Montausier.”15 After several days, Montespan was released on condition that he would trouble his wife no more, but instead would withdraw to his father’s estates in Guyenne, there to remain until Louis granted him permission to leave. As he kicked his heels in the country, Montespan’s anger lost much of its fire, although he expressed his displeasure in other ways. As though a widower, he wore mourning and forced the couple’s children to do the same, and even held a mock funeral for his wife. Visiting a nearby church, he announced that the side door was too small to allow his cuckold’s horns to go through, so he insisted upon entering through the main door instead. Naturally his exploits reached Paris, where they became a source of amused gossip.16 “Now that he has buried you,” Louis told Athénaïs, “it is to be hoped that he will let you rest in peace.”17

  In the meantime, as September drew to a close, Louis took the court to Chambord.18 This magnificent but aging château on the banks of the Loire was well known to Louise, who had spent part of her childhood there. Here she reproached Louis for his love for Athénaïs in the subtlest of ways. She knew of a couplet that had been etched into a windowpane by François I: Souvent femme varie; mal habit qui s’y fie, ‘Woman is often fickle; foolish the man who trusts her.’

 

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