by Michael Hone
Erlanger gives more detail, saying that Louis did indeed take Cinq-Mars to see Hautefort, who begged him to tell her why they were separating. Louis just answered, ‘’Get married and I’ll provide for you.’’ Hautefort persisted, ‘’What do you want to happen to me?’’ Louis’ response, ‘’What would have happened had you left the Court every time you threatened to do so.’’ Erlanger’s source was Henri Arnauld, a Catholic bishop, who had witnessed the scene. And Louis did take care of her, giving her 100,000 écus and the port of Neuilly for 30 years. Her time was indeed over, but Hautefort, only 23 and still luscious, was one of those women who would mature well, becoming a sophisticate who would replace beauty as an attraction to young men by the wisdom and experience that would draw them to her bed, even at an advanced age.
Not stopping there, if sources can be believed, Louis took the extraordinary step of going to Cinq-Mars’s mother’s residence, Chilly Castle, where he ordered her to give up her son’s personal effects, like a boy going to his girlfriend’s ex-lover and demanding that he turn over what she’d left in the closet, in which case besotted was a euphemism. If the secret of love is to make one’s self desired, then Cinq-Mars should have been awarded a doctorate in that particular science. (It does seem far-fetched that Louis, wealthy, would ask his favorite’s mother to return his belongings.)
Louis topped this off with an offer Cinq-Mars could not refuse, the honor of becoming his First Equerry, a prized position Louis had bestowed on Baradas and Saint-Simon.
But having now gained exclusive rights to the king’s bed, Cinq-Mars decided he would reach for the heavens, for a position that Baradas and Saint-Simon would never even have dreamed of possessing, that of Master of the Horse. The idea may have been Cinq-Mars’s alone, or he may have been counseled by Fontrailles for what Fontrailles could get out of it, or was perhaps encouraged by de Thou who believed Cinq-Mars deserved the position. But for most of the court, and especially for Richelieu, the boy was being impossibly presumptuous, he was, as the French so perfectly put it, farting higher than his ass.
The Grand Equerry of France (also translated as Grand Squire) was an invention of Henri III for the benefit of his lover, Roger de Saint-Lary de Bellegarde, the man Louis XIII wished to replace with Cinq-Mars. It was true that the Grand Equerry oversaw the royal stables, but he was also responsible for military academies, the education of young nobles, sexual fodder that he could send directly to the monarch (after passing through Bellegarde’s personal casting couch, if he so wished). He was also in charge of the transportation of the king, and of those who would accompany him, from his guards to musicians to court jesters, part of his majesty’s entertainment. And when the king died, the Master of the Horse was given every horse and its equipment, a princely fortune. Finally, it was he who carried the king’s sword in ceremonies. Bellegarde was the perfect example of court omnisexuality. Brought to Paris by his cousin and lover Épernon, and presented to Épernon’s lover Henri III, Bellegarde soon found himself sharing Henri III’s bed. The Master of the Horse was referred to, by the court, as Monsieur le Grand.
The royal couple retired to Versailles, a hunting lodge, where their Eden continued, at least as far as Louis was concerned. As for Cinq-Mars, he was now Master of the Horse, Monsieur le Grand. And he had just turned twenty.
Richelieu was a man who maintained his power into old age, long enough to bury them all with the exception of Louis who would nonetheless soon follow, Richelieu in 1642, Louis in 1643. But in the year of our Lord 1640 all must have seemed lost. The boy who had been entrusted to Richelieu by his mother had developed into an ungovernable monster, and everywhere Richelieu looked there were ruins. Cinq-Mars’s playmate and Richelieu’s spy Chémerault had been exiled; the queen had served her purpose in bringing forth a son and could now be totally ignored; and Cinq-Mars’s mother, Richelieu’s natural ally, had been reduced to packing her son’s bags in his absence, which left Louis in a bed with Cinq-Mars that had no room at all for Richelieu. Richelieu’s anger at the time was reported as worthy of the Titans, and his valets avoided him, especially his cane, which he used even against the furniture. Richelieu had no choice but to remain in the shadows, tapis dans l’ombre, as the French say.
Now only Cinq-Mars himself could make a mistake, although up to here his performance had been impeccable.
Yet he did the unforgivable. Months of pent-up desire had him furiously riding to Marion’s side the moment he had reached Paris and had tucked in the old man, hungry for her thighs and the release he sought again and again. The girl, ecstatic, let all Paris know that her lover was back, virile and unquenchable.
Overnight she became Madame La Grande.
Cinq-Mars had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it had the taste of lead. The father he loved gave him the chateau from which he took his name, the Chateau of Cinq-Mars with huge domains that included 25 towns. But his father, Antoine d’Effiat, died too soon and Cinq-Mars was left in the iron grip of his mother, Marie de Fourcy, whose brother had been Henri III’s Secretary of State. Cinq-Mars’s father had been a soldier who had placed himself, when it wasn’t fashionable, under Richelieu. He rose through the ranks to become Superintendent of Finances, and had been entrusted to take Louis’ sister Henriette to England for her marriage to Charles I. He was made a marshal and governor of Auvergne before dying of scarlet fever, as had Luynes. He had had two other sons, the youngest, a priest, disgraced in ways one ignores, and the eldest who went mad.
Chateau de Cinq-Mars, aquarelle by François-Roger de Gaignières.
While his father was still alive the Effiat chateau was noted for its wonderful festivities, centered around a huge room with Simon Vouet’s painting The Loves of the Gods. Because his father had served Richelieu so well, Richelieu became his children’s protector, visiting the family chateau so often he considered it his second home. Because Richelieu wanted to know what the sphinx-like king was thinking and perhaps scheming, he came up with a plan to have Cinq-Mars, who seemed devoted to him, placed next to Louis as Richelieu had done with Baradas and Saint-Simon, putting them in Louis’ bed, but failed to make them perfect spies. Yet Cinq-Mars was so outstandingly beautiful that Richelieu was willing to try still again. He offered the boy, at age 15, command over a company of guards and entry into Louis’ court.
When Cinq-Mars joined the court he found the panier de crabes that I described earlier: everyone crawling over everyone else, like crabes, for position, for advancement, for gains of every nature, the least of which was sex, because sex was so easy and ubiquitous. Keeping a girl virgin to ensure a good marriage, that was the challenge, the reason lips were true second sexes, a painted vagina that freed the boys from effort while they explored naked female bodies with their fingers, if they so wished. Everything in court was in abundance, every delicacy, every pastime; forests, lakes, fencing, horsemanship; and the best teachers in the art of war or in art itself. Didn’t Louis find fulfillment in cooking, gardening, working molten metal and even weaving fishermen’s nets? When a court lad eventually became satiated in court pleasure, so blasé he was reduced to spending his time playing cards, there were other sites, like the Marais and its Libertines who reveled in composing poems, discussing philosophy and debauching themselves in orgies to the extent that even these became boring. Luckily there was always war somewhere, or duels, or street brawls.
After Luynes’ death Louis had promised to dedicate himself wholly to his kingdom, just as Elizabeth had become the Virgin Queen, England itself her husband. But his inner emptiness needed someone, someone who was certainly not Richelieu whom he may have really detested as most writers claim. Richelieu was aware of the void, as vast as the emptiness of space, and knew just the lad to fill it. To what extent Louis also needed sex will never be known.
Cinq-Mars refused the position of Grand Master of the Wardrobe, the most intimate of those involving the king, because he would be open to both verbal and physical abuse. But he also knew about the king’
s mores, as did all the boys at court, mores they snickered at, if not openly guffawed, even by those who shared them, and it was largely that the reason for Cinq-Mars’s refusal. And anyway, even boys who preferred boys would have no sexual attraction to the pasty, physically unpleasing monarch, a sufferer of headaches and diarrhea, who stuttered through double teeth.
Richelieu went to Cinq-Mars’s mother, whose burning ambition to be part of Louis’ court encouraged her to put full pressure on her son. During this time Richelieu had numerous courtiers--all of whom would have killed father and mother to gain his favor--tell the king that among his guards there was a young man, handsome, witty and elegant, who was head and shoulders above the others. The king took notice and was instantly seduced. He spoke with the boy and found him every bit as intelligent as he’d been told he was. Richelieu reminded the king that the office of Grand Master of the Wardrobe was still open, even though Louis had promised it to another. Cinq-Mars’s mother threatened the lad, then 17, with utter financial destitution should he refuse the post. Richelieu pretended to step in to broker peace between the two, both of whom he had known and frequented since before Cinq-Mars’s birth. On the lad’s 18th birthday he was named Grand Master, thanks to which he would lose his beautiful head 4 years later, at age 22.
As Cinq-Mars had imagined, the king was rough, but one wonders if it were not a way of playing with the boy, as one who doesn’t want to appear too willing. Louis had admitted to his former lover Saint-Simon that in affaires of the heart his life was not the simplest, because he knew, thanks to his position, that he could have whomever he wanted and, he continued to confess to Saint-Simon, ‘’I must nonetheless not forget that while I am king and they must obey, I must also remember that God forbids this.’’ At the same time, Louis continued, he was subject to his senses. Louis was never accused of religious hypocrisy as Henri III had been, and would spend hours laying hands on his subjects who really believed the kings had curative powers. Erlanger gives a description of Louis that I find apt: ‘’He was timid but given to terrible fits of violence. He was an oversensitive, suspicious, jealous despot who practically abdicated to his Minister. He was indecisive but stubborn, a rigid moralist with a taste for puerile pleasures, a wounded soul given to passing stringent judgment on others, a compound of anguish and conviction, pride and self-effacement, dynamism and submissiveness.’’
Richelieu – Louis - Cinq-Mars by Claudius Jacquand.
As for Cinq-Mars, he was a breath of fresh air, all light and charm, always happy, able to give himself pleasure whenever he wished because not only were the girls at court available, they vied with one another for the ardor concealed in his satin breeches. His exploits were on all lips and there were certainly boys as jealous as girls, but other than Louis himself, whom he could not avoid due to his power and inexhaustible source of wealth, there was not a hint of his frequenting other lads. Cinq-Mars was fulfilled, and Louis, who had not yet access to him, was certainly both envious and admiring. One of the girls, Marion de Lorme was said to have been a dazzling beauty, wrote La Rochefoucauld (see Sources), adding that her intellect was no less pleasurable. In time she would become an experienced courtesan, perhaps thinking back to Cinq-Mars as women of a similar time would remember Barry Lyndon. In any case, he spent his nights with Marion, his mother said to have been apoplectic, but he ignored her.
His best friend, Ruvigny, whom he admired because of his sexual and military prowess, had a secret lover Cinq-Mars suspected was the Duchess of Chevreuse, hardly an exploit for those who knew of her availability. Louis d’Astarac, Marquis de Fontrailles, another friend, was an ugly hunchback who made his way into the world of the beautiful thanks to his intellect. He was obsessed with avenging his repulsiveness and especially hated Richelieu who never ceased to remind him of it, to the point that Fontrailles would have gleefully cut out his heart, were Richelieu not always surrounded by his well-paid and superbly dressed musketeers. Fontrailles was forced by his physical disgrace to become a world-class conspirator. Because Cinq-Mars was close to Louis, Fontrailles cultivated his friendship in a thousand flattering ways. Soon they were best friends and Fontrailles could drop in on Cinq-Mars at any time unannounced. (It was Fontrailles that Cinq-Mars sought when Richelieu forbad him from taking part in council meetings, even though Louis had given his permission, saying Cinq-Mars could instruct himself and later be of aid to the king. Richelieu got Louis to rescind the permission, barring the doors to Cinq-Mars who ran to see Fontrailles, sobbing, and, of course, Fontraille blew on the coals, as the French say when one does his best to worsen a situation.)
François-Auguste de Thou was a third major friend of Cinq-Mars, a boy of such intelligence that at age 19 he became a councilor to the Paris parliament, having already traveled from England to the Levant. Richelieu had loved and been spurned by the ubiquitous Chevreuse, as related, and his hatred of her (after learning that she had doubled over in laughter when told of Richelieu’s obsession) spilled over to de Thou, when the young man advanced her funds so she could escape court after one of her numerous intrigues. Richelieu saw to it that de Thou was appointed Master of the King’s Library, a deliberate insult for a man of his intelligence and potential. De Thou was described by all as being thoroughly honest and religious, and set, as one of his major goals, the purification of his boyhood friend Cinq-Mars.
Both de Thou and Fontrailles set out to use Cinq-Mars as a way of freeing the world of the presence of the nefarious Richelieu, the first step of which was saving Louis by killing the cardinal, of whom Louis himself had said to Richelieu, at the entrance of a room, ‘’Go ahead, as everyone says it’s you the true king,’’ to which Richelieu had replied, ‘’I’ll enter first, but only to light the way for you.’’
One author claims that both de Thou and Fontrailles convinced Cinq-Mars to play the girl and seduce the king, so that they could bring their plans to fruition and Cinq-Mars, empty-headed, did so. Cinq-Mars had his reasons for making himself accessible to Louis, but they were certainly his reasons. The truth seems to be that little by little Louis began to confide in the boy who was far more intelligent and understanding than one gave him credit for, and Cinq-Mars came to fill the king’s loneliness since the loss of Luynes. A cheerful welcome, an understanding listener, a compassionate, beautiful face, would find an entry into anyone’s heart. It had certainly not been easy to enter a soul such as Louis’, but once the dam was pierced the flooding was both total and devastating.
During the Renaissance omnisexuality was the rule (6). Only in our times are people divided into homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual, categories that are rather firm but are completely unique in the history of the world, when in all past times people were omnisexual by nature. In Greece women counted only as child bearers. In Rome women were of importance but wives were only one sexual outlet, while girls and boys were another. When a Roman wanted sex he took what was at hand, be it male or female. The Renaissance had laws, due to religious nonsense, that could see lovers of boys burned at the stake. But the reality was that men caught with boys were simply fined. Henri III was notoriously and openly homosexual, and Louis’ half brother César was nearly exclusively homosexual. But it’s highly likely nonetheless that Cinq-Mars was heterosexual, as Luynes had universally been said to have been. In this case adapting to Louis and Louis’ mores and Louis’ physical decay could not have been easy.
Then followed Louis’ offer to make Cinq-Mars First Equerry, a position he had bestowed on Baradas and Saint-Simon. What happened next is a different version from the one I previously gave, brought to us by Erlanger and may really have taken place, although it seems too Machiavellian for one as young as Cinq-Mars. Richelieu wanted Cinq-Mars to accept the position of First Equerry that Louis offered but Cinq-Mars decided the moment had come to free himself from Richelieu’s influence by showing them all that he had ascendance over even Louis. He decided that he wanted to become Master of the Horse, a far more prestigious charge than First Equerry, the
holder of which was referred to as Monsieur le Grand. He spread the rumor that he was planning to marry Marion de Lorme, the girl he’d been riding off to see nearly every night after putting Louis to bed. His mother believed the rumor and filed charges against de Lorme, accusing her of raping her son. Erlanger describes Louis as being distraught, Richelieu furious and Cinq-Mars sulky. When Louis asked the boy how he could settle matters, Cinq-Mars asked Louis to name him Master of the Horse, as even a mere page could be First Equerry. Louis acquiesced immediately. Cinq-Mars then told Louis that he had never really planned on marrying de Lorme, and would remain exclusively with him, which did not keep the boy bedding other girls, those who met the standards of his new, exulted position.