The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV

by Anne Somerset

  Having interviewed Magdelaine de La Grange, Louvois notified the King, who ordered that she should be transferred to the Bastille for further questioning. Louvois then instructed the Chief of the Paris Police, M. de La Reynie, to assume personal charge of the interrogations. While acknowledging that de La Grange might be lying in order to delay her forthcoming trial, Louvois explained that it was impossible to be too careful when it came to the sort of matters of which she had spoken.4

  There could be no doubting the efficiency of Nicolas Gabriel de La Reynie, the taciturn and sombre figure who had been Chief of the Paris Police for the past ten years. Now aged fifty-one, La Reynie had started his career serving in provincial government before purchasing a post as a Maître de Requêtes in the Paris Parlement. As such he had both served as an appeal court judge and had given legal advice to the Crown, tasks he had carried out so ably that he had attracted the notice of Colbert. The latter had, indeed, been on the verge of putting him in charge of admiralty reform and harbour regulation when La Reynie had been entrusted with a still greater challenge. In his capacity as a crown lawyer he had attended the meetings held in 1666 to discuss the policing of Paris and there it had been decided that a new post, the Lieutenant-General of the Paris Police, should be created. On 15 March 1667 La Reynie was given this position by the King, who declared he had chosen him because he did not know ‘a better man or a more hardworking magistrate’.5

  The King made it clear that he would do everything possible to uphold the new Police Chief’s authority. He wrote to Colbert, ‘I shall submit myself to the rulings of this police and I intend that all shall respect and obey them as I will.’ Such royal support was vital, for the task that confronted La Reynie was daunting. Colbert commented to the King that the Police Chief would have to be ‘unflinching as a magistrate and intrepid as a soldier. He must not pale before the river in flood or plague in the hospitals any more than before popular uproar or the threats of your courtiers, for it must be expected that the court will not be the last to complain of the useful rigour of a police, carried on in the interests of the well-being and security of all.’6 These were prophetic words, for La Reynie’s handling of the Affair of the Poisons would indeed bring him into confrontation with some of the most high-born and influential figures in the country.

  La Reynie’s responsibilities were multifarious and extended to many areas which today are not regarded as the province of a police force. It has been suggested, indeed, that in some ways his role was more akin to that of a modern mayor or chief executive of a great city than a present-day chief of police.7 Great importance was attached to the control of public order by prohibiting the unauthorised carrying of weapons and suppressing civil disturbances, but La Reynie was also charged with dealing with emergencies such as fire and floods. Besides this, it fell upon him to monitor the capital’s food supplies and prices in times of scarcity, repress vagrancy and prostitution, regulate the traffic, institute precautions against the plague and enforce censorship. In addition he oversaw numerous administrative tasks, such as improving hygiene in streets and public places, inspecting hostelries, inns and taverns, and ensuring that commercial regulations were observed.

  La Reynie had achieved an enormous amount in a short time and in some respects had transformed Paris. Prior to his appointment Paris had the reputation of being the filthiest city in the world, clogged by stinking mud that made walking an ordeal and stained clothes indelibly. La Reynie effected a marked improvement, partly through the simple expedient of forcing householders to clean the space in front of their property. He lessened the risk that Paris might be consumed by a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Fire of London by obliging householders to maintain their backyard wells in good working order. Perhaps most commendably of all, he introduced an extensive system of street lighting, arranging in 1667 that 6500 lanterns should be strung across the city streets. This was not merely a desirable amenity but drastically reduced nocturnal crime. Primi Visconti noted that, whereas before Paris was looked on as ‘a nest of thieves and murderers’, by 1676 it was considered safe to move about it at two in the morning.8

  In addition to all this, in 1674 the King had put La Reynie in charge of the special commission that had investigated and tried a treasonous conspiracy led by the Chevalier de Rohan, and Louis had been much impressed by the efficient way La Reynie conducted the case. At the time La Reynie had told Colbert that he had made it a priority to punish only the most important culprits, rather than to pursue all the ramifications of the affair. He explained that while he had been careful not to overlook anything of importance, he had become concerned that if the prisons of Paris were filled with too many suspects, people would begin to think that the innocent were being caught in the net along with the guilty.9 It would, perhaps, have been desirable if La Reynie had kept these precepts in mind when he came to deal with the Affair of the Poisons, for the inquiry into that became alarmingly diversified, with a consequent loss of focus.

  La Reynie has invariably received favourable treatment from historians. This is partly on account of his undoubted achievements but also because he was eulogised in the memoirs of Saint-Simon. When La Reynie retired in 1697 Saint-Simon praised him for the equity and impartiality he had always shown, noting that while he had always performed his duty with the utmost exactitude, he had harmed people as little and as rarely as possible. In conclusion, Saint-Simon declared that he was ‘a man of great virtue and capacity who … should have attracted the hatred of the public, but who acquired universal esteem’.10

  This panegyric was not strictly accurate for, during the Affair of the Poisons, La Reynie was regarded with loathing by many people at court. This, of course, can be taken to demonstrate that his unflinching integrity led him to do his duty even in the face of opposition in high quarters, but one should be cautious of assuming that La Reynie had right on his side at all times. Some of those who came under suspicion during the affair claimed that he distorted evidence against them and put pressure on witnesses to incriminate them, and these allegations cannot be automatically dismissed.

  It should be borne in mind that Saint-Simon was particularly favourably disposed to La Reynie on account of the fact that the latter was an executor of a contested will of which Saint-Simon was ultimately a major beneficiary. During the Affair of the Poisons La Reynie may also have been influenced by political considerations. At the time of his appointment he was looked on as a protégé of Colbert’s but in the intervening years he had drawn closer to Louvois and he undoubtedly considered it desirable to uphold the latter’s interests. One cannot even exclude the possibility that at times during the affair he was pursuing an agenda of his own. Following his second marriage, La Reynie had become embroiled in a legal dispute with the Bouillon family over his wife’s inheritance and it is permissible to wonder whether this affected his treatment of the Duchesse de Bouillon.11 While this can never be more than a suspicion, it is indisputable that La Reynie’s personal prestige became bound up with the outcome of the Affair of the Poisons and there were times when this clouded his judgement.

  * * *

  As Louvois requested, La Reynie questioned Mme de La Grange at the Bastille. Moving beyond her earlier claim that she knew about an espionage ring that threatened France, she now started implying that both the King and the Dauphin were in danger of assassination. She produced little evidence for this but stated that her lover, Faurye, had been poisoned (though not by her) for ‘secret reasons’ connected with the royal family’s safety.12 Despite their flimsy nature, her warnings were passed on to the King. He found them disturbing, but when she failed to reveal anything more under repeated probing he lost patience. In June Mme de La Grange was transferred back to the Conciergerie to await trial. From there she continued to write to Louvois but her letters were ignored.

  Then, at the beginning of October, an anonymous letter was found in a Paris church, which seemed to confirm that the King or the Dauphin was in danger. It was apparently wr
itten by a widow to an admirer who had told her of his intention to place a ‘white powder’ on the napkin of an important person. The writer feared this would be the undoing of them both, for she could not believe that such a deed would escape detection. She lamented that her own downfall would come about simply because she had been aware of her admirer’s plans, for while with all other crimes one had to be an accomplice before one could be punished, with ‘this one’, mere knowledge was sufficient to secure a conviction.13 Since this only applied in cases of treason, the implications were alarming.

  Although there was obviously a possibility that the letter had been deliberately planted in order to ensure that Mme de La Grange’s warnings were taken seriously, dismissing it as a hoax might have fearful consequences. Accordingly, de La Grange and her clerical associate Nail were repeatedly questioned about the letter but they both insisted they knew nothing about it. Their denials made it pointless to delay their trial any further and later that autumn their case came before the Châtelet. Having been found guilty on all charges, Mme de La Grange and Nail were sentenced to torture and execution. However, as was normal in such cases, both defendants lodged appeals. While they were waiting for their case to be heard by a higher court, fresh developments occurred, which seemingly underlined that powerful figures were vulnerable to poisoning. Because it was arguably imprudent to execute two people who might hold the key to the mystery, de La Grange’s and Nail’s appeals were delayed.

  * * *

  Matters had taken a new direction with the arrest of Louis Vanens, one of the most intriguing and enigmatic figures to feature in this affair. A thirty-year-old who originated from Arles, Vanens was of sufficiently high social status to be officially classified a ‘gentleman’, although he preferred to style himself the Chevalier de Vanens. He was not initially suspected of involvement with poison and even today it remains impossible to determine whether he was a killer or merely an accomplished conman.

  On 5 December 1677 Vanens was seized in an early-morning raid. Louvois had ordered his arrest after receiving intelligence that after boasting he knew how to formulate gold, Vanens had been seen in possession of a bill of exchange worth the enormous sum of 200,000 livres. Various associates of Vanens were also taken into custody, including his manservant, Jean Barthominat (known as La Chaboissière) and a forty-year-old banker named Pierre Cadelan, in whose name the bill of exchange had reportedly been drawn.

  When questioned about his dealings with Vanens, Cadelan explained that Vanens had come into his life by selling him some home-made medical remedies. Once they were acquainted, Vanens had persuaded him that he had a secret method of making gold. The manufacturing process involved the distillation of herbs on a massive scale, and Cadelan had assisted Vanens to obtain equipment for this and to set up furnaces. Cadelan denied that he had furnished Vanens with more than everyday expenses but he agreed that he had made arrangements whereby a large sum could be deposited in a bank account set up in his name at Venice. He said he had done this because Vanens had told him that another friend who knew how to make gold needed to transfer funds to Italy but, in fact, the money had never materialised. However, Cadelan’s interrogators were sceptical that ‘an intelligent man of business’ would have invested so much effort in so fanciful a scheme and were sure that ‘some other matter’ must be at the root of it.14

  Cadelan’s story was undermined by the fact that Vanens was meanwhile maintaining that large sums had indeed been deposited in Venice and had then been withdrawn on Cadelan’s instructions. This seems unlikely to have been true: Louvois ordered the French ambassador in Venice to look into the matter and he could find no record of these transactions. Vanens also claimed that at the time of his arrest he had been carrying a bill of exchange for 20,000 livres from Cadelan, which he had destroyed in panic. While this was a much lesser sum than the 200,000 livres originally mentioned, it was still a significant amount. If Cadelan had been prepared to part with it, it was undeniably mysterious.

  Meanwhile Vanens’s servant La Chaboissière was making alarming statements. On 13 April 1678 he told his interrogators that, provided he was offered a pardon, he had ‘important things to say which concerned the King’ and which might ‘save the life of fifty people a year’.15 It was an echo of the sort of thing that Magdelaine de La Grange had been saying and which had been considered so ominous.

  More members of Vanens’s circle were now taken into custody. These included a thirty-five-year-old blind man named Dalmas, who had reportedly lost his eyesight conducting alchemical experiments, and his mistress, Louise Dusoulcye. La Chaboissière’s girlfriend Catherine Leroy was also arrested and, under questioning, these two women became extremely voluble. Catherine Leroy said she had seen La Chaboissière boiling up herbs in a great cauldron to which he had added mysterious powders. This had produced a solution which had been bottled in phials and sent abroad. La Chaboissière had later told Catherine that Cadelan had been well paid for this.

  Still more worryingly, La Chaboissière had said that as a result of their activities ‘a big cheese’ from abroad ‘had gone to carry letters to the late King’.16 M. de La Reynie (who was co-ordinating the inquiry) deduced from this that Vanens and La Chaboissière had been commissioned to manufacture poison for Cadelan, who then sold it to foreigners so they could assassinate major political figures.

  Further testimony suggested that, not content with being at the centre of an international poisoning network, Vanens had been in the habit of eliminating people who were unwise enough to cross him in daily life. A former employee of Vanens, Petit Jean, and another acquaintance named the Abbé Chapelle, had both died unexpectedly; in 1676 a former landlady of Vanens who had been indiscreet about his activities had perished, along with five members of her household, in an unexplained tragedy. When questioned about this Vanens protested that Petit Jean had died of the pox, while his landlady had poisoned herself by unwisely adding a secret solution to sour wine in the hope of making it drinkable. This failed to allay the suspicions against him.

  According to Catherine Leroy, practically everyone who associated with Vanens had an equally cavalier attitude to the sanctity of human life. She claimed that La Chaboissière had been so fearful that she would betray his secrets that he had once tried to poison her by tricking her into taking some greyish and black grains, which had made her very ill. Despite that, she had not only continued to live with him but had herself murdered two women on his orders. The first was a seller of eau-de-vie named la Regnault whose dish of skate and eggs had been poisoned by Catherine Leroy when they dined together; the other was a Mme Carré, who died four days after Catherine had fed her poisoned wine and poisoned jam. Furthermore, at the behest of Dalmas, Louise Dusoulcye had killed a woman called la Levasseur by giving her plums dipped in poison.

  It is certainly odd if Catherine Leroy was making all this up but on the other hand her testimony cannot be accepted uncritically. La Regnault had died three or four months after their dinner together, so it is by no means clear that poison was responsible. As for Mme Carré, she was a frail woman of eighty whose death was so clearly imminent that it was surely unnecessary to hasten it by poisoning. Yet to M. de La Reynie this did not seem significant. Instead, he was appalled by the glimpses he had gained of a world where poison formed part of the culture and where murder was routinely perpetuated without fear of retribution.

  Catherine Leroy gave additional tantalising hints that in between doing away with these lowly individuals Vanens and La Chaboissière had targeted more eminent victims. She reported that after the death of Chancellor d’Aligre in October 1677 an unidentified relation of the Chancellor had paid La Chaboissière 300 livres. Could this have been a reward for hastening d’Aligre’s end? At the time d’Aligre’s death had been attributed to apoplexy and had not been considered suspicious – which was scarcely surprising as he had been aged eighty-five – but this new information aroused belated misgivings. Catherine Leroy also said that La Chaboissière had
had meetings with the Comte de Saint-Maurice who in 1675 had been sent to France on a special embassy to announce the death of the Duke of Savoy. This strengthened the perception that Vanens and his band were engaged in commerce with important foreign clients.

  To compound the unease, Catherine Leroy repeated several disquieting statements uttered by La Chaboissière. He had often declared that ‘la Brinvilliers was not dead … She had left behind heirs.’ He had also boasted that Vanens had the ability to kill people in a week, a fortnight or whatever period he chose. If time was at a premium, he could murder them very speedily with a bouquet of poisoned flowers.17

  * * *

  As concern mounted over Vanens’s activities, everyone known to have consorted with him came under scrutiny. Some years before, Vanens had spent a great deal of time with Robert, Seigneur de Bachimont, and his wife, Marie. On learning that this couple were now living at Ainyé Abbey, near Lyon, Louvois ordered their arrest. He believed there was ample reason to investigate them: not only had Mme de Bachimont’s first husband died in mysterious circumstances, but his mother and sister had followed him to the grave in quick succession. Besides this, Mme de Bachimont had been suspected (though never convicted) of coining false money.18

  By 17 May Bachimont and his wife had been put in prison in Lyon, and there they were questioned intensively. Bachimont explained that he had befriended Vanens in 1674, drawn together by a mutual interest in alchemy. For years Bachimont (who then lived in Paris) had dreamt of attaining the Philosopher’s Stone, so he had been intrigued when Vanens had told him he had a secret formula to transmute copper into gold. Vanens had promised that if they worked together they would make 3 million livres and Bachimont had become convinced of this after he and his wife had been privileged to witness Vanens converting base metal into gold.