Like all her contemporaries, the new dauphine was subject to a variety of fevers, and the treatment for these consisted of bleeding and purging, a therapy which not infrequently impaired the patient’s recuperative powers. Even without a physician’s attendance, life in the early eighteenth century was often short, but doctors were often more to be feared - and more dangerous - than the multiplicity of current diseases. Thus, royal patients, who naturally were the most medicated of all, were also the least likely to survive any serious illness.
Still, no one worried when, in the afternoon of February 5, 1712, the duchesse de Bourgogne began to shake with fever. She went to bed, not attending the king after supper as was her invariable habit, but got up the next morning and seemed quite recovered. That evening, the sixth, the fever returned; by Sunday morning, it was much less intense, and by noon, it was assumed that the attack was over. That evening around six, however, she suddenly felt a headache; it was so painful that she asked the king, who was at her door, not to come in, and she suffered greatly all that night. She was bled twice in the morning, to no avail; then, on Monday afternoon, the eighth, the pain decreased but the fever returned, stronger than ever. As a result, she became quite weak; that night, and until the tenth, her condition remained much the same, except that she began showing the spots symptomatic of measles; an epidemic of that disease, conjoined with scarlet fever, was at this time sweeping Paris; it had already caused many deaths.
The treatment for this illness consisted of violent purgings and bleedings which, to the doctors’ surprise, in no way improved the patient’s condition; in fact, they must have weakened her considerably. From the very beginning, the duc de Bourgogne remained at his wife’s side. He was still there on the eleventh, when the fever went so high that it was thought prudent to administer the last rites. At seven o’clock that night, with the king in almost constant attendance, the duchesse was bled and purged yet again. By then, the duc had had to take to his bed with a violent fever. A little after eight the next evening, February twelfth, the young woman breathed her last. “Although you knew how very much I loved her,” the desperate king wrote his grandson in Spain, “you still cannot begin to imagine how deeply her loss afflicts me.”308
“With her,” Saint-Simon noted, “vanished joy, pleasure, amusements even, and graces of all sorts. Darkness covered the entire Court. She had animated it all by herself; she was everywhere at once; she fascinated everyone; she understood all its innermost secrets. If the Court survived her, it was only in the most languishing way. Never was a princess so missed, and so deservedly.”309
The distraught king immediately left with Mme de Maintenon for Marly, and on the thirteenth, the duc de Bourgogne, whose fever continued, joined them, largely so as not to hear the preparations for the funeral. The king, whom he visited, was appalled by the way he looked and called the doctors, who promptly sent him off to bed. Through the fourteenth and fifteenth, the fever grew worse, and the duc himself made it plain he did not expect to survive. On the sixteenth, the signs of measles appeared while the patient weakened. On the eighteenth, at eight-thirty in the morning, the duc de Bourgogne joined the wife he had so recently lost.
For the next eleven days, the king, who had never until now failed to hold Court, retired to his private apartment and saw no one except the ministers and Mme de Maintenon. He had barely gone through the funeral ceremonies before yet another death was announced, that of the Bourgognes’ eldest son, the six-year-old duc de Bretagne, of the same disease as his parents. There now only survived his younger brother, the two-year-old duc d’Anjou, and the doctors would no doubt have killed him as well, had his governess, Mme de Ventadour, not hidden him. Warmth, light food, and time did their work: Of all the king’s direct heirs, only he survived. How long he would continue to do so no one could tell: Infant mortality in the early eighteenth century was appallingly high.
“You will understand the excess of my sorrow,” the king wrote Philip V, “when I tell you that the Dauphin is dead. In a few days God has demanded of me two terrible proofs of my submission to his commands. I pray that he will keep me Your Majesty and console us of the tragedy I will feel acutely as long as it will please Him to keep me alive.”310 No king of France before Louis XIV had ever lived to see three generations descended directly from him; none had ever lost a son, a grandson, and a great-grandson in less than a year. With every prospect that the two-year-old dauphin would follow his parents, it seemed a distinct possibility that the duc de Berry, that nice but stupid and uneducated young man, would one day succeed his grandfather.
Ever since the early Renaissance, sudden and spectacular deaths in royal families had been attributed to poison - a wholly unnecessary explanation given the lack of all hygiene and the ghastly state of medicine. Already, earlier in the reign, poison had been a popular explanation for the first Madame’s death. Now, of course, more than ever, the rumors were rife. It seems obvious to us, in the twentieth century, that a severe attack of measles conjoined with scarlet fever represents a danger to life, and that, if the patient is pitilessly and constantly bled and purged, he or she is far more unlikely to recover. Indeed, the case of the little duc d’Anjou is exemplary: He alone was not hopelessly weakened by the barbaric treatment inflicted on his parents and elder brother; he alone survived.
In 1712, however, poison was the obvious answer. The rumors, no doubt, would have started without any assistance, but they were helped and encouraged by a dark and disgraceful plot. The duc du Maine was still the apple of Mme de Maintenon’s eye, and she longed to have him made a real prince, able to succeed the crown. The duchesse du Maine, a tiny, lively, and very bright young woman, who was born a Condé, was ferociously ambitious. When suddenly the heirs to the throne consisted of a two-year-old child, whom everyone assumed would soon be dead; the duc de Berry, that mindless and easily managed young man; and the duc d’Orléans, the strategy was obvious - especially since Mme de Maintenon and her whole circle already hated him. If, indeed, people were convinced that he had poisoned the Bourgognes and their children, he would never be able to inherit the crown. It was known that, among his many interests, was chemistry, so rumors started circulating that he had distilled a special poison with which he had killed his cousins.
Suddenly, the duc d’Orléans found himself a marked man. At Court, people shunned him; in Paris, the crowds jeered as his carriage drove past; the rumors intensified until almost everyone believed them. At that point, and very properly, Orléans went to the king who assured him that he had paid no attention to the rumors, went on to say that he believed in his nephew’s innocence and simply suggested he dismiss the chemist, Humbert, whom he kept as part of his household. Immediately, the duc answered that Humbert was as innocent as himself, and to prove his point, he asked the chemist to enter the Bastille voluntarily so that he could be officially questioned and declared blameless.
Madame tells us what happened next. “My son having sent his Humbert to the Bastille to be examined, the King forbade his being received there; first because His Majesty does not believe what is said about my son, and also because all the doctors who were present at the autopsy of the two bodies say that neither showed any trace of poison, that Mme la Dauphine died of measles, and M. le Dauphin of bad air and sorrow.”311 Slowly, the gossip died down, but once again, Louis XIV had shown that he was not easily swayed: With that admirable balance which so characterized him, and in spite of his own, bitter sorrow, he had seen through the plot. Besides, although hardly fond of his nephew, he knew him far too well to believe him capable of such horrors.
Of course, we do not know how far Mme de Maintenon may have gone in trying to convince the king that the rumors were true: She was both prudent and subtle, but she must have been as disappointed as the du Maines when the plot failed. What was at any rate clear, in the new state of the Court, was that the duc de Berry did not count for much and that, more than ever, the légitimés were moving forward. As for the king, although he now sp
ent more time than ever with Mme de Maintenon and thus avoided loneliness, there could be no doubt that he was a changed man. He worked as hard as ever; he held court; he walked in his gardens; he helped bring the war to a close. But that fierce energy, that delight in ruling had gone out of him. He continued being what he had been more from habit than internal necessity. What his seventy-four years had failed to do, the loss of the Bourgognes achieved in a moment: In February 1712, the Sun King turned into an old man.
The successive deaths which had harrowed Louis XIV and appalled his court were much discussed throughout Europe, but they did not slow down the admittedly leisurely pace of the negotiations at Utrecht; what finally speeded them up was the string of victories won by Villars throughout 1712. By the end of the year, the general shape of the new European settlement had been fixed by the negotiators; there remained one most important issue. When, in 1700, Louis XIV had accepted the Spanish Crown for his grandson, he had stipulated, in letters patent, that his elevation did not invalidate his rights of succession to the French throne. This always touchy issue took on still greater importance with the death of the three dauphins: If the current child-successor died, the duc de Berry would probably succeed although Philip V, as his elder brother had, strictly speaking, the better claim. In any event, should he die as well, then the king of Spain was the assured successor, at which, not unlikely point, the French and Spanish crowns would be united. This outcome was the very possibility England had always been determined to prevent. If, on the other hand, Philip V were to die childless, the duc de Berry and d’Orléans would, one after the other, succeed him, perhaps just as they inherited the French throne.
The English negotiators therefore made it an imperative condition for a peace settlement that Philip V should renounce his rights to the French crown, while the ducs de Berry and d’Orléans did the same for Spain, and that, furthermore, the three renunciations be publicly registered by the Parlement de Paris. Whether, in fact, this repudiation was possible under French law as it stood is open to question: Since the king did not own the throne, but merely occupied it for life, he could not legislate the succession, nor could inherent rights to it become obsolete. In any event, on March 15, 1713, the two French princes went to the Parlement in state, there to renounce all rights to the Spanish succession, while a message from Philip V abandoning all rights in France was read out. There was no longer any reason why the fighting should continue, and indeed, peace between France, Holland, and Great Britain was signed on April 11.
The Treaty of Utrecht formally recognized Philip V as king of Spain and the Indies, but the Spanish Netherlands were given to the emperor while their fortresses were to be garrisoned by the Dutch. Sicily went to the duke of Savoy, who took the title of King of Sicily; Naples was the emperor’s, who also kept Milan, Sardinia, and four ports on the coast of Tuscany.
England kept Gibraltar and the island of Minorca. It received large sections of Canada and Newfoundland, as well as a virtual monopoly of trade with the Spanish colonies in South America, and France recognized the Act of Settlement and the succession of the elector of Hanover to the English throne. As for Louis XIV, he gave up a strip of land on the Northern border, but was given back Lille and Bethune, and he undertook to destroy Dunkirk.
Given the years of defeats, and the European array it had had to fight, France did very well at Utrecht: It had lost very little of the land conquered under Louis XIV while insuring that Spain would never again be a menace. Even better, because the emperor refused to ratify the Treaty, Louis XIV kept Strasbourg, which he had been ready to give him. As it turned out, Charles VI soon realized that France’s exhaustion was more appearance than reality: All through August, September, and October of 1713, his armies were consistently beaten by Villars, and the peace which was finally concluded at Rastadt on March 6, 1714, gave the emperor nothing, while forcing him to return their states to the electors of Cologne and Bavaria.
Therefore, it must be concluded, on balance, that, in possibly the most fateful decision of his reign after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV had been right: France was better off in 1714 than it had been in 1700. As for the often repeated myth that the war had ruined France, it is nothing but the grumbling of a few chroniclers endlessly rehashed down the centuries. It is quite true that the Treasury was in a dire state, but the Treasury was not France. In 1714, the government’s impact on the country and its economy was still infinitely smaller than it is today. Thus, even if the king was deeply in debt, France could prosper, and so it proceeded to do: The great explosion of high living and high spending which followed Louis XIV’s death did not appear out of the void. More, the war created a whole new middle class. Men who had made profits in banking, army supplies, or military manufactures now joined other prosperous Parisians in furthering the development of French culture; their children were the enlightened public which helped spread French influence all through the eighteenth century.
There can be no doubt, however, that the Court, or more precisely the circle around the king, never recovered from the gloom following the Bourgognes’ deaths. “All is dead, here, life is gone,”312 Mme de Maintenon wrote, and as far as the king was concerned, it was undoubtedly true. There were no more appartements, virtually no festivities; yet, even at Court, splendor was still to be seen. The duchesse de Berry, now the First Lady, was young and thirsty for pleasure. She ate, she drank, she danced, she was unfaithful to her dull husband, and the group of courtiers which surrounded her was quite as animated as ever; the same was true of the Condés and the Contis; most often, their festivities took place, not at Versailles, but in their own palaces; the Court might be in mourning, the upper classes were not.
Even so, the great events of Court life were celebrated as ever: When, in the summer of 1713, Monsieur le duc married Mlle de Conti, while the prince de Conti married Mlle de Bourbon, the king spent half a million on presents alone, and the newlyweds and the duchesse de Berry were covered with diamonds. As for the duc and the duchesse du Maine, they were giving splendid parties in their sumptuous castle of Sceaux, and many courtiers prudently accepted their invitations. It might be said, in fact, that while there was darkness at the center, the brightest light shone elsewhere.
The gloom of the Court should not be exaggerated, however: Even if the king and his circle were rather mournful, they still lived in the most sumptuous palace in Europe. The Chapel, begun in 1701, to a design by Mansart, was completed in 1710 by Robert de Cotte* and provided a grand and solemn setting for the daily Mass. With its gallery of columns and its royal box on the upper level, its wide windows, its white and gold boiseries and its ceiling frescoed by Coypel, Jouvenel, and Lafosse, it is both grand and light, both impressive and civilized.
The rest of the Palace, too, was incomparably more sumptuous than it is today. In the cour de marbre, for instance, the area just below the king’s balcony, there was a white marble fountain with gilt bronze figures, while in each corner shell-shaped fountains with Tritons spouting water were topped by gilded birdcages; these last, however, were taken down in 1703.
In the king’s bedroom, the walls, bed, and seats were covered with gold-embroidered red velvet in winter, and gold and silver brocade in summer. Everywhere, masterpieces hung on the walls: From Leonardo through Titian and Veronese to Poussin, Reni and Domenichino, the best of Western painting adorned the Palace. Then there were the mirrors, not just in the Grande Galerie, but also, for instance, in the Council Room where they covered the walls and reflected gilt bronze consoles laden with vases of agate, lapis lazuli, and other semiprecious stones.
There were doors gilded and carved, fountains everywhere, statues, large silver vases, marbles and tapestries, the magnificent Gobelins which celebrated the great events of the king’s reign. The furniture was covered with a brocade of gold and silver flowers; the air of the Hall of Mirrors was sweetened by orange trees in bloom; its walls lined with gilded consoles; even if the silver furniture was gone, there were sti
ll tables of alabaster and porphyry and an infinity of vases and sculptures made of semiprecious stones.
The Throne Room was, of course, especially splendid, with its Egyptian marbles, its pilasters of gold cloth, its walls covered with festoons, vases full of flowers, the king’s arms and large nudes, all in high relief gold and silver embroidery, its curtains en suite, and the Guido Renis and Van Dycks hung all around. As for the king’s private apartments, the cabinets, Félibien, who tried to describe them, quite ran out of breath: “But how many other masterpieces does one not see there, in the cabinets, the gallery or the salons at either of its ends? It is impossible to describe the sumptuous furniture and the infinite riches to be seen there; for without even mentioning the antique marbles, the bronzes, the gold and silver medals both ancient and modern, it is there that one sees the greatest number of precious vases, made of agate, heliotrope, tourmaline, carnelians, emeralds and other oriental stones.”313
That magical setting did nothing to soften yet another blow, however. The duc de Berry was no great prize, but at least he was young, strong, and alive. His only child, the duc d’Alençon, had died within a month of birth, but there seemed to be every prospect that the duchesse would be pregnant again: If the little dauphin died, and the duc de Berry succeeded, he would, no doubt, have children capable of inheriting the crown. Thus, although no eagle, Berry was important. Unfortunately, he lacked both sense and restraint, in particular when hunting: So it was that he rode his horse too hard; the horse slipped, caught itself, straightened up and, in the process, the pommel of Berry’s saddle hit him violently in the stomach.
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