A cloud of dust rose behind the King’s horsemen as they rushed down the road from Paris to Versailles, sabres at their belts and muskets on their shoulders, to hand over a sealed letter to the King on a hot June day in 1709. They did not know what it said, but they were ready to strike down anyone who got in their way. After galloping for several hours, the palace appeared in the distance. It was the most magnificent building in France, and the horsemen unwittingly held their horses so that they could approach with due reverence the place from which their king ruled the country. Once a humble royal hunting lodge, it was now a magnificent palace and home to Louis XIV. It was built half a century ago, just a few months after the 23-year-old ascended the royal throne.
The horsemen galloped off and one of them climbed the grand monumental staircase to the chambers of the King’s most loyal minister, Louis Pontchartrain. He was the most powerful man in Versailles and all correspondence addressed to the King passed through his hands. He took the letter and immediately recognised Nicolas Reynie’s handwriting. It was a letter from a dead man.
Reynie was the first police chief of Paris for more than 30 years. He and Pontchartrain did not particularly like each other, as Pontchartrain advised the King to replace him with a younger and more dynamic police chief. He knew many secrets of the nobility and of the monarchy that some people wanted to forget: crimes of passion, incest, murder, sins of greed. Prostitutes told him about the sexual practices of their powerful clients, nuns and midwives about the true identity of orphans.
Pontchartrain broke the seal and a key fell from the letter into his lap. He quickly scanned the writing and immediately rushed to the King. Reluctantly, he pushed his way through the crowd of nobles milling outside the King’s chambers, waiting for him to offer his services. In his reception room, the aging king sat slowly at his desk and nodded to the assembled ministers that he was ready to hear the day’s report. Pontchartrain quickly walked up to him and handed him an open letter. The King scanned it, nodded and returned it to his minister. There was no need to talk, the minister knew what he had to do.
A few days later, the royal notary placed a large sealed leather box covered with cobwebs in front of Pontchartrain as proof that its contents had not been touched for thirty years. The Minister put the key in the lock and found hundreds of reports on the French nobility inside. Next to some of the names were notes such as death, poison or murder. The King came into the room and Pontchartrain lit a fire in the fireplace on that hot June day. He threw a few letters into the fire. The written evidence of the poison affair was gone, leaving only a pile of black ashes. The King was convinced that he had thus pushed the horrors of the affair into oblivion and silenced the cries of the victims.
Paris in the late 17th century was not a city for the squeamish. Shouting and swearing echoed through the narrow streets, fights between neighbours were the order of the day, the contents of pots of human excrement were mostly emptied out of windows, and coachmen chased each other off the streets. Dogs barked incessantly and dead cats lay everywhere. Several times a week the city was flooded with herds of cattle destined for the city’s slaughterhouses, and then the streets were red with blood.
Overcrowded and dirty, Paris also faced daily violence. People often settled disputes with weapons – knives and rapiers. The availability of firearms, especially pistols that could be concealed under clothes, made life on the streets of Paris risky even in the daytime. People locked themselves in their houses at night and did not let anyone else in until the morning. Although the King issued an order in 1660 forbidding anyone in the city to carry a weapon except soldiers, judges and nobles, the situation did not improve significantly.
Paris did not have a centralised police force until the late 17th century. Order was supposed to be maintained by 48 commissioners, each one in the quarter where he lived, but their job was merely to bureaucratically find out what had happened where. On the left bank of the Seine stood the Châtelet, a castle-like building that housed both courts and dungeons, and two commissioners – one to settle civil disputes and the other to have jurisdiction over criminal acts – but both were murdered, one shot and the other poisoned.
Paris became a real embarrassment for Louis XIV. The King knew that a ruler who did not control the capital was considered incompetent and weak. He therefore instructed his finance minister, Colbert, to reform the police. The latter was overwhelmed by financial issues and quickly decided that a lawyer from Limoges and the head of the Bordeaux courts was best suited to the task, as his reports were always clear and concise and without embellishments. Thus, on 20 March 1667, at Colbert’s suggestion, the King appointed Reynie Chief General of the Police.
In his desire to turn Paris into a “new Rome” reflecting the glory of the Sun King Louis XIV, Reynie was given broad powers. As chief of police, he was able to invade even the darkest corner of Parisian life. Residents who dared not leave their houses at dusk were cheered by lanterns at every crossroads. Thanks to the new fountains, they no longer had to go to the Seine every day to fetch water. Reynie’s insatiable appetite for information also contributed greatly to his success. Couriers brought him reports virtually 24 hours a day on what was happening in the overcrowded prisons, whose names of Châtelet, Bastille and Vincennes filled the Parisians with horror. He also received reports from all 48 Parisian commissioners, so that he was kept informed of daily activities in the local communities. The most precious messages were brought to him by a small army of spies, all of whom he personally read and annotated.
Law and order; this maxim applied from day one until his retirement 30 years later. He started implementing it on the very first day, when he defined who was in charge of “street cleaning” and introduced a “litter tax”, levied according to the length of the facade of each building. Every morning at seven o’clock sharp, hundreds of men marched into the streets of Paris, ringing bells and calling on the residents to sweep the rubbish from their doorsteps into the middle of the street. Half an hour later, thousands of sweepers arrived with baskets and began to remove them.
Reynie knew that where there is darkness, there is crime, theft and murder. That’s why he decided to install public lighting. “On the last day of October, candles must be lit in all streets and public places,” he ordered. The lanterns he ordered had a metal casing and were built into the facades of houses. Thousands of them were erected across Paris. All these measures have significantly reduced the crime rate in the city and made it brighter and cleaner.
The quarter of beggars, thieves and poisoners
Although Reynie managed to change many things in Paris, there were many things he could not put right. One of those things was the Montorgueil district on the outskirts of the city, where some 500 beggars, cripples, murderers and thieves lived in underground tunnels. Every morning they would crawl out of their dwellings and head into the city. Allegedly mutilated children begged, hunchbacks showed their humps and thieves waited for their chance.
In the centre of Montorgueil stood the house of Catherine Voisin, fortune-teller, fortune-teller and poison-maker. She was called the Witch and her frequent clients were noblewomen. They would come with their faces covered and ask her for advice about unfulfilled love, a desire for revenge or infertility. Voisin squeezed a handful of ground and dried herbs into her fist, mixed with mouse droppings, dried parts of pigeon hearts, crushed flies and menstrual blood. Her love potions were highly prized. She mixed the aphrodisiac Spanish fly with other substances believed to increase amorous passion.
She knew how to help pretty girls who were in trouble. They had to take off their skirts, lie down on a wooden table covered in blood and uncross their legs. Some moaned, others screamed, but the unplanned foetus was gone. But in her hearth, the blackened remains of children’s bones could be found, sometimes even parts of skulls. In theory, such abortions should be punishable by death, but Catherine Voisin was not deterred, even though some of her clients did not survive the procedure.
Voisin had a daughter, Marguerite, who once saw an unknown woman in an expensive dress come to her mother’s house in a special room full of various bottles of liquids. She stripped naked and lay down on the bed with her head and legs hanging over the edge. Her mother put a cloth on her stomach and a cross on top of it, put a goblet next to her and began to sing mysteriously. It was Marguerite who distributed her mother’s concoctions and detailed instructions on how to use them in the palaces and manor houses.
But Voisinova was not only a love potion maker, she was also a skilled poison maker. If a wife wanted to get rid of her husband, she had to bring his shirt and Catherine would wash it with arsenic-based soap. In Europe at that time, arsenic was available in pharmacies and could be used for domestic purposes. If a client used it in small amounts over a long period of time, it was almost impossible to prove in the event of death, and the signs of illness were similar to those of food poisoning, stomach churning and diarrhoea. Her favourite place to make love potions was where she performed abortions, and her favourite ingredient was toads. Different toads gave the drink different potencies.
In June 1667, two months after Reynie was appointed Chief of Police, King Louis XIV travelled in a carriage through Belgium and the Netherlands, celebrating his victory over the Spanish and declaring the two territories his own in the name of his Spanish wife, Marie-Thérése , who was sitting in the carriage with him. Marie-Thérése was a plump, unattractive-looking woman, always dressed in clothes that had been out of fashion for some years. She spoke poor French and did not take part in the conversations. This dynastic marriage did not bring Louis any pleasure, but it was politically very important.
The royal couple were accompanied in the carriage by the King’s brother Philippe and his wife Henriette-Anne. Philip, as the second child, had to live in his brother’s shadow, but it hurt him even more than that to see the King stalking his wife not too secretly. There was still room in the carriage, so, to the Queen’s indignation, the King invited Louise Valliére, his former mistress and the mother of the King’s illegitimate children, and Athénaise Montespan, his otherwise married new lover, to join him.
The caravan, accompanied by 3000 soldiers and a crowd of courtiers and servants, stopped for a while every afternoon, and tents were pitched for them in the place they arrived and a sumptuous dinner was prepared. The Minister of War, Louvois, was most concerned about the correct arrangement of the tents in which the “three queens”, Marie-Thérése, Louise Valliére and Montespan, were staying. The King ordered the Queen to visit the newly conquered towns and monasteries and to familiarise herself with the newly acquired provinces, while he remained in the camp and spent pleasant hours with his two mistresses.
At the beginning of September, the royal procession returned home, the King was back in his chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, going about his usual business: dancing, riding, hunting, entertaining and other pleasant things.
Suspicious deaths
As much as Louis loved his château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he wanted a larger residence to suit his position. As early as 1664, he extended the gardens at Versailles, where his father had a hunting lodge. He then ordered the architects to extend the avenue behind the château, to add numerous fountains and plantations of artificially pruned trees and shrubs, to build a canal and aqueducts. The Minister of Finance, Colbert, was disappointed, hoping that the château would one day return to Paris and the Louvre. But Louis only waved his hand, and the construction of the Palace of Versailles continued unabated, becoming the largest building project in France.
In July 1668, the King invited 1500 guests to visit the gardens and fountains of Versailles. Tables were heaving with cold cuts, and for dessert, a large fountain made of marzipan was prepared. Among the ladies invited was Reynie’s new bride, Gabrielle Garibal. Twenty years after his wife’s death, Reynie felt it was time to remarry or people would not take him seriously.
In Paris, there was a pharmacy in the Latin Quarter called the Poisoner of Gold, which was frequented by Parisians and royalty alike. It was run by Moyse Charas and his wife. Charas was an expert on snakes, and had several in his flat above the pharmacy. He made powders for menstrual cramps, fever, epilepsy and infections, but also poisons and antidotes. He crystallised the venom from snake tooth roots and mixed it with wine, honey and beaver oil. He claimed that poisons and antidotes have the same effect on the human body.
In May 1670, Reynie accepted his invitation to see how he made his antidotes with the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, two professors and a representative of the pharmacists’ association. Snake teeth, skin and flesh were, of course, the basic tools for the job. He explained to the guests that snakes should be treated with respect, as this is how you get more venom from them. Above all, he preached that snakes should not be boiled, as such a stew no longer had any medicinal effect.
But Charas was not only concerned with snake venom. He had 65 different medicinal powders and ointments in his pharmacy, so the medicine-making demonstration lasted for hours. Reynie nodded, but it was more than obvious that he was in a hurry. A pile of reports was waiting for him on his desk. Finally, he hastily handed Charas a written certificate attesting to the authenticity of the medicines and the correctness of their preparation. Charas proudly hung it in the window of his pharmacy. He knew that when death visited Paris, his door would be crowded.
Henriette-Anne, the wife of the King’s brother, has not been feeling well for several weeks. She had a stomach ache and refused to eat. “He’s a dressed-up dead man with some powder on him”, whispered the court. After a few days, she collapsed and a servant offered her a cup of chicory, but it caused her even more pain. A doctor came, found that she was suffering from indigestion and began to leak blood. “They poisoned me. I won’t see the morning,” she screamed, gasping for air.
The King came from Versailles and found a priest at her bedside, already saying his prayers. Her breathing slowed, her fingers grew cold. The King turned his eyes to heaven, said his prayers and left. A few moments later, Henriette-Anne said goodbye to life.
Rumours began to spread at court. Was she poisoned by her jealous husband, the King’s brother Philip? England was also in the news, as Henriette-Anne was the sister of King Charles II of England, and Louis XIV ordered an autopsy. When the doctor cut into her body, it stank disgustingly, her liver was grey-green, her stomach full of bile. “She was in poor health,” said the final report of the medical team, which was unable to determine the true cause of death. This was the first of the suspicious deaths.
Godin Sainte-Croix died in 1672, and his death would have gone unnoticed had he not gone bankrupt beforehand. In addition to the widow, his lawyer and the creditors’ lawyer, two notaries and the local administrative agent, Picard, were therefore present in his apartment. After a brief inspection of the apartment, there was no doubt that the deceased had been engaged in alchemy. A priest then knocked on the door and handed Picard the key, claiming that Sainte-Croix had given it to him a few days before his death.
The key opened the door to a small room where Sainte-Croix kept important documents. They all first looked inside the leather box. When they opened it, they found bags of various powders and bottles of coloured liquids, as well as a letter in which the deceased had asked for all these to be handed over to the Marquise Brinvilliers. Picard, who was a man of many moneylenders, percussionists and distillers, thought it best to inform the police of the discovery. He placed all the suspicious items in a small box, sealed it and handed it to his assistant.
The Marquise Brinvilliers quickly exchanged her grief at Sainte-Croix’s death for a desire to survive. Four years after her husband died of poisoning, she became Sainte-Croix’s lover, and he promised to keep all evidence of their dark deeds carefully guarded in a leather box. So now she hurries to her dead lover’s house to claim it for herself. But in the meantime, the box has already been taken away.
Brinvilliers may have been skilled at mixing poisons, but she was completely inept in her dealings with the police. She offered Picard 50 livres for a box, but he refused, and that was when she realised she was in great danger. An hour later, she had fled France with some emergency luggage.
Someone else became interested in the contents of the box. He was not an important man, but just a servant of a lawyer. Chaussée approached Picard, claiming that he had lent Sainte-Croix a large amount of money and that it might be stored in a leather box. Picard told him only that many strange things had been found in the house, Chaussée turned pale, turned around and ran away. He hid during the day, wandered the dark streets at night. Reynie wanted to question him and put out an APB. He was arrested in the street and found with a large number of letters and a small bottle of suspicious liquid.
Reynie was convinced that the contents of the leather box and the bottle found at Chaussée were linked. The powders and liquids in the leather box were highly toxic – including arsenic. The animals used for the toxicity tests died the next day, but no signs of disease were found during autopsies.
The bottle Chaussée was carrying also contained poison. He was tortured horribly and sentenced to death. In the end, he confessed that the Marquise Brinvilliers had given him the poison she had received from Sainte-Croix and that he had poisoned her father and, later, her brothers with it. He mixed the poisons with water or put them in food.
In the following years, the Marquise would be seen in England and Germany, but would change her name. In reality, she was hiding all this time in a monastery in Liège, which was then an independent principality. The French Minister of War, Louvois, wrote a letter asking the Principality of Liège to hand over the poisoner to France. The request was granted.
In desperation, the Marquise tried to take her own life, but to no avail. Her trial, which began in June 1676, was the number one event of the year in Paris. King Louis XIV made it clear that he wanted a trial without mercy, as he was still haunted by memories of Henriette-Anne’s last moments. He had several reasons for doubting a natural death. Although the doctors claimed that she had died of illness, the rumours of poisoning refused to die down. One witness even confirmed that she had seen Sainte-Croix, the Marquise of Brinvilliers and the apothecary Prince Philippe together. The court sat twenty-two times, and after hearing the witnesses, they became more and more convinced that the Marquise was a witch.
She was sentenced to death by beheading. On 17 July, she was taken away, wearing a sackcloth dress and holding a candle as a sign of penance. She was led first to the Church of Notre Dame, where she said her prayers, and then to the Place de la Greve. Along the way, there were many Parisians who wanted to see the last moments of the famous poisoner. The Marquise laid her head on the floor, the executioner tied her hands behind her, bared her neck and raised his axe high in the air. Her head and body were then burned and the ashes scattered.
Reynie was not satisfied. The Marquise Brinvilliers had said many things in her cell before she died. She muttered that she was not the only one who had used poison and that half the nobility were doing the same. “If I had spoken, I would have destroyed them all” were her last words.
When you read it, burn it
Madelaine Grange, “the most wicked and treacherous person in the world”, as Reynie called her, was a beautiful widow whose husband was hanged for roguery. She was left without an income and decided to cash in on her beauty. She had the services of Faurye, a lawyer who was richly rewarded by her company, but who refused to marry her. She knew she had to act. One day she appeared before a notary, accompanied by a stranger who claimed to be Faurye, her husband, and who produced a marriage certificate to prove it. “Transfer all my property to my wife immediately”, he demanded, and the notary, who did not think anything was wrong, did so. Strangely enough, the real Faurye died suddenly a few days later. His nephews, of course, disputed the transfer of the property to his mistress and Grangeva found herself in the Châtelet dungeon.
A report of her interrogation was brought to Reynie, which included her claim that a plot was being hatched against the King. They wanted to poison him, the prisoner claimed. Reynie had to question her, even though he was convinced that she was only trying to delay the trial with this story. Even after the interrogation, it was impossible to find out who threatened the King and when. “Just fairy tales,” Reynie was convinced. He hoped he would never see Grangeve again. But this was only the beginning of their strange relationship.
In the autumn of 1678, a carriage pulled up in front of the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis near the Bastille in an elegant quarter of Paris. A well-dressed woman got out, quickly entered the church and sat down in the confessional. She did not say a word, just pushed a crumpled piece of paper through the screen to the priest. No sooner had he begun to read it in the semi-darkness than an avalanche of words poured out of her. She had found it in the palace, she told him, but now she didn’t know what to do with it. People often left written messages in and around the palace, usually declarations of love, but the priest saw at once that this was not a matter of the heart. “You have entrusted me with a secret that I would like to forget for the sake of peace of mind. I hope that he who does what is written on paper will never carry it out.”
The priest wanted to see who the unknown woman was, but she had already disappeared. When he looked again at the written page, he noticed a note at the end: ‘When you read it, burn it’. The letter was sent to Reynie through the Bishop of Paris and the King’s confessor. His first thought was that he had to question Grange again. Her account was consistent with the contents of the letter. But it was not so simple. The court proceedings were already under way and the prosecutor did not allow any interference.
In December 1678, his assistant Desgrez told Reynie an interesting story. A younger lawyer, Perrin, came to see him, having dined with Marie Vigoureux on several occasions. Over wine and good food, everyone’s tongue was loosened, and one day Marie Bosse was with them. She prophesied their fate from the palm of her hand. That evening, she told them something that made Perrin come to Desgrez.
Madame Poulaillon had recently come to her and asked to look at her hand and tell her if her husband was about to die. She had a young lover who wanted money, but only her husband had it. She asked if she could help her to get rid of her husband, even if it meant killing him. Marie Bosse did not know what happened next, but said that she only needed three more clients with a similar request and she would be rich.
In the early hours of the morning in early January 1679, the police surrounded Marie Vigoureux’s house and arrested her. A short time later, Marie Bosse was also arrested and both were imprisoned in the Vincennes fortress. During the search of the house, many unusual powders and liquids in small bottles were discovered. All of this was carefully packed, sealed and sent to the police for investigation.
Before the court moved to Paris, the royals often stayed in the fortress of Vincennes, but now it was one of the darkest dungeons in France. The cells were narrow, the staircases curtained, and in January it was bitterly cold. Reynie had to travel frequently from Paris to Vincennes.
The questioning of Marie Vigoureux has clarified almost nothing. She only said that women who had problems with their husbands often came to Marie Bosse. Reynie then questioned Marie Bosse. In the middle of the questioning, he asked her unexpectedly, more by intuition than by design: “Do you know Madame Grange?”
Bosse shuddered and said no. Reynie gave her a nasty look and she knew he wasn’t happy with her answer. She quickly corrected herself and told him that she had met her a few years ago at Catherine Voisin’s. As far as the many powders and liquids were concerned, they had only found a few of her unsuccessful attempts at alchemy. Reynie thought, “Catherine Voisin?” He had never heard of her, but he knew she would be next on his arrest list.
In February 1679, Grange and her “husband” were sentenced to death. Reynie hurried and quickly wrote a letter to the Minister of War, Louvois. In it, he demanded to hear them before they were executed. Louvois told him the same day that the King had postponed the execution and ordered that if they said anything new, something he did not yet know, he would not execute them at all.
Reynie could not take part in the hearing, as it was a matter for the court, but he was told that Grangeva had frightenedly denied any knowledge of the letter and its contents. The interrogators did not believe her and told her that her “husband’s” handwriting was identical to that in the mysterious letter. She remained silent. “Have you ever mixed poisons?” the interrogators were relentless. “Never,” she replied.
Asked if she knew Marie Bosse and if they had worked together on poisons, she replied that she had not seen her for 10 years and that she had never mixed poisons with her. She also denied knowing anything about the plot against the King. The interrogators nodded: “So you refuse to confess. We will use other means.” They stuffed her legs between two thick pieces of wood, wrapped them with leather straps and tightened them as much as they could. The clerk came closer and leaned in close to her, so as not to miss a word of her confession.
Grangeva still denied it, and every time she answered, a new wedge was driven between her legs. She howled in pain. The doctor, who had always been present during the torture, finally declared that continuing the torture could endanger the life of the prisoner. Grange was taken unconscious to a cell. Reynie read out the interrogation report in frustration. He was convinced that the interrogators had been too soft and that other methods of torture should have been used. King Louis XIV, however, ordered that no further torture was necessary and that Grange and her “husband” should be executed immediately, at night and without spectators, in accordance with the judgment.
So they were both taken to the Place de Greve, along the same route that the Marquise de Brinvilliers had taken three years earlier. Grange had to be carried, as her legs were broken. The executioner raised his axe and two heads fell into the basket. Reynie was present at the execution, convinced that this was not the end of the matter and that something much bigger and more important was on the way.
A month later, Madame Poulaillon was arrested. They also questioned her maid, who explained how Madame Poulaillon had stolen her husband’s money. She also told them that on several occasions her mistress had handed her a small bottle containing an unknown liquid and told her to pour the contents into her husband’s soup so that he would sleep better. However, the maid always poured the bottled liquids out into the street, which still made Mr Poulaillon feel well.
The results of the tests on the mysterious powders and liquids used by Marie Bosse and Marie Vigoureux were finally known. They contained a lot of arsenic, as well as other ingredients used to terminate pregnancies. They also found traces of dried menstrual blood, which, in fact, was always part of the poisons.
Now it was time for another arrest. On the 12th of March 1679, Catherine Voisin was arrested by a small group of policemen outside the church after Mass and taken to the dungeons of Vincennes. Another group went to her house, where she was met by her husband Antoine and her now 21-year-old daughter Marguerite. But the police were disappointed to find almost nothing in the house except furniture and distillation equipment, and above all no powders or bottles of unknown liquids. Catherine Voisin obviously knew she was about to be arrested, so the visitors found and confiscated only a few papers and a large wooden chest, also full of papers. It is not known whether the police also searched the small shed in the garden, which contained a stove, a cauldron and the remains of small bones turned into ashes.
Panic in Paris
Reynie examined the papers seized from Catherine Voisin. Nothing but beauty recipes with astrological signs and some requests for help from wives to regain control over the “heart and will” of their husbands or lovers.
Five days later, he started questioning her. She showed absolutely no fear. “My husband is a pure loser and after the birth of our daughter Marguerite, we had to make a living. I knew something about palm reading and healing. The law doesn’t forbid it and we live on it,” she told him freely. She confessed that she knew Marie Bosse, who had also fallen on hard times, and as a compassionate soul, she allowed her to live with her for a while. What Bosse did after that, she does not know. She does not know Marie Vigoureux and has never met her.
Reynie strongly doubted this claim, as the trio were moving in the same circles. He then asked her if she knew anything about the rumours going around that women were performing “novenas” in churches for a fee. In the Catholic tradition, these were prayers on nine consecutive days, a kind of message to God, a lament for the dead or penance for sins. No, she replied, that was what Marie Bosse did, and that was for wives whose husbands were dying. Bosse did it for Madame Philbert and Madame Ferry. Reynie put both names down on a list of those who were yet to be arrested. It seemed to him more and more that Madame Poulaillon was not the only person from the court involved in a network of witches, poisoners and thieves.
The next day, he confronted Marie Bosse and Catherine Voisin and immediately saw that they were opponents. Bosse refuted everything Voisin had said about her. “Voisin sold Madame Philbert’s poison in Notre Dame Cathedral, namely diamond dust.” Diamond dust was the most lethal and expensive poison at the time, destroying the victim’s digestive system and leaving no trace behind.
The women then started arguing and giving the names of all those who had helped them to remove their husbands. They also mentioned the names of Madame Leféron and Madame Dreux, both of whom were senior judges, but the Dreux family was linked to some of the most powerful names in the royal court, including the King. Now the Minister of War himself, Louvois, intervened on the King’s behalf, demanding that Reynie should provide solid evidence before questioning them. Over the next two weeks, Reynie issued arrest warrants for more than thirty suspects whose names he had obtained during the interrogations. He had no hard evidence, only the oral statements of Cahterine Voisin and Marie Bosse, but that was enough for the time being.
A series of arrests in Paris has sparked a panic in all social classes. Almost every death was now attributed to poison. Fathers feared that their sons would poison them, mothers watched over their daughters, husbands and wives began to prepare their own food. During the interrogations, more and more names surfaced of people who had visited the poisoners, astrologers and magicians in the Montorgueil district.
In April 1679, Madame Leféron and Madame Dreux were also imprisoned. They both confessed to having met Catherine Voisin on several occasions, but she had only foretold their fate and nothing else. The dungeons were filling up with famous names and that was all that was being talked about in Paris. In May, fifty people were arrested over the poison affair. The King wanted to play it down, so he decided that it would be dealt with by a special court sitting in the Arsenal fortress. This increased Reynie’s role considerably. He was no longer just a detective and prosecutor, but also decided on the likely sentence.
Marie Bosse was the first to meet her fate in this secret court. Once a strong and trim woman, she was now weak and frightened. Madame Ferry and Marie Vigoureux were soon tried, and all three were found guilty. Marie Bosse and Vigoureux were to be burned alive, and Madame Ferry was to be hanged, before one of her arms was cut off. All three were also tortured before their sentences were carried out.
News of the convictions caused alarm in the Vincennes dungeons. Horror stories circulated about what was happening to the defendants at Arsenal. Some feared the hearing more than the sentencing itself. Madame Dodeé committed suicide in prison out of fear, cutting her throat. The atmosphere calmed down a little only when Madame Poulaillon appeared before the judges in June 1679. Despite having spent several months in prison, she was carefully coiffed and dressed.
After the death penalty was imposed by beheading, the judges became indecisive and changed their minds. They decided that Madame Poulaillon would spend the rest of her life in prison. But if she was spared, the others were not.
“Voisin has begun to talk,” the Minister of War reported to King Louis XIV. Reynie met with her several times and finally she told him, “I don’t want to hide anything anymore. I will tell everything to relieve my conscience and my soul, I commend it to God’s protection and I hope that the King will be merciful to me and my family.”
Confrontations with the accused showed that Voisin was involved in one way or another in almost all the poisonings in Paris, especially among the nobility. In 1675, she made several trips to Saint-Germain, where she gave some arsenic to one of the King’s mistresses, Mademoiselle Oeillets. The money travelled in the opposite direction.
The War Minister rushed to reassure the King, promising to keep all this information secret. But the news was bad for the King. The husband of one of the King’s first mistresses, Olympe Mancini, was found dead in a carriage, the autopsy showed nothing, and there were rumours that he had been poisoned. There was also evidence that the Duke of Luxembourg had visited Voisin on several occasions. For several months, the name of the Duchess of Bouillon also came up in the hearings. The Duchess was a person who lived on scandal and men were always involved. Bosse and Vigoureux rarely agreed on anything, and both claimed that the Duchess had come to them because she wanted to get rid of her husband.
Now the King was seriously worried and summoned Reynie and the members of the Arsenal tribunal to Saint-Germain. After a sumptuous dinner – the King never dined alone, but always with a number of courtiers – he beckoned them to follow him to his private chamber. The meeting did not last long, but the King’s wishes were clear: “For the public good, I expect you to put an end to this unfortunate poison affair as soon as possible and to eradicate it completely.” He ordered Reynie and the judges to judge fairly, regardless of the social status of those involved. He then graciously dismissed them.
In January 1680, the Duchess of Bouillon came to the theatre to see a performance of The Seer. She had always been a supporter of the arts and the theatre and her house was full of artists, poets and actors. The story of The Seer was partly based on events that took place in the Arsenal. It was a modern play, full of visual effects. Actors flew through the air, smoke curtains covered the stage, the fortune teller made fun of the nobles and a big black devil appeared on stage.
Duchess Bouillon laughed out loud at the frivolous nobles on stage, unaware that she herself would soon be sitting in front of the Arsenal judges. Two weeks after this incident, the King wrote to the Arsenal authorities authorising the arrest of the Duchess of Bouillon and Olympe Mancini. They were sisters. The Duchess of Bouillon responded so arrogantly that the judges were left breathless. Seeing that they were going to achieve nothing, the hearing was soon brought to an end.
Olympa Mancini took a different route and fled. Informed by her father-in-law that she was at risk of arrest, she hastily gathered a few belongings, money and jewellery, and fled across the border at 3am with her children and a few maids. Arsenal decided to try her in absentia and did not accept her proposal to return to France if she was not imprisoned. It was rumoured in Paris that the King himself had informed her of her arrest and recommended that she flee.
The nobility was upset and offended. Madame Sévigné, a well-known letter-writer, complained: ‘Today we are all talking about the innocence of the accused and the horrible slander. No one is talking about anything else. In a Christian court of law, you would be hard pressed to find a similarly scandalous case.”
Burned at the stake
Voisin was brought to trial in February 1680, a full eleven months after her arrest. The next day she was sentenced to death at the stake. Before her death, they wanted to rip out her tongue and cut off her arm, but changed their minds, as this might have aroused sympathy for her among the spectators. Before she was burned, she was tortured in prison, demanded to make a full confession and asked to describe once more her relationship with Grange, Bosse, Vigoureux, the noblewomen Leferon and Dreux and others. “I have nothing new to tell you,” she told them before the torture began.
They slowly broke her legs with a hammer, and then the hearing was over. She was left lying on the floor of the cell, her body floating in a pool of congealed blood. When the judges came into her cell, she started mumbling unintelligible words. She spoke indistinctly about how she had cheated her daughter to make money from abortions and finally said: ‘I must tell you that everyone who came to me was looking for death. It was always because of debauchery.”
The same day, it was transferred to a small chapel in Bastille. She was made to kneel and read the death sentence again, but refused to confess. She was put on a cart and a procession marched through the streets, past Notre Dame, to the Place de la Greve. Despite the poisonous cold, the streets were crowded with people. The executioner showed her no mercy and chained her to a block of wood while she spat and cursed. She tried to throw herself from the pyre, but was already engulfed in fire. Madame Sévigné also watched the execution and wrote dryly: “With her soul she gently gave herself to the devil in the midst of the fire. All she had to do was to walk from one fire to the other.”
But her death did not mark the end of the affair. It only added to the fear that this was just the beginning. Soon afterwards, the trials of the noblewomen Leféron, Dreux and Philbert began. Given their social position, the sentences were light, with Madame Leféront banished from Paris for nine years and Madame Dreux and Fhilbert even acquitted.
While Voisin was engulfed in flames, her daughter Marguerite waited in Vincennes dungeon to be questioned. Reynie could hardly imagine how Voisin’s role as a mother could have affected the timid Marguerite. However, Marguerite soon spoke up and began to tell him, not timidly, that she had secretly watched her mother on several occasions placing wax figures wrapped in a shroud on a kind of altar in the back corner of the house, singing in an unknown language. Once she accompanied her on a visit to a beautiful rich woman, they met in the garden, sang for a while and then buried the wax figure in the ground.
Of all the visitors to her home, the one she remembered most was the lady she called the Woman with Two Tails because of her extravagant dress. Once, her mother only spoke her name: Mademoiselle Oeillets, former mistress of the King.
She also remembered a man called Romani who, together with her mother, had been hired to murder Mademoiselle Fontanges, a woman whom the King had met in 1678, when she was an innocent 17-year-old girl, and desired. She was a true peasant girl and that was what attracted him to her. Madame Montespan was pregnant again at the time, and he wanted a young woman to compensate for his loss of physical pleasures. The girl could not resist him for long, and soon after she gave in, the King made her Countess and gave her the manor.
The murder was to take place without anyone noticing. A pair of poisoned gloves were to be given to the former mistress of the King. Madame Montespan was, of course, the client of the murder. “Whenever Madame Montespan felt that the King’s affection for her was threatened by a rival, she came to my mother for medicine,” Marguerite confirmed. She continued: “As the years passed, these remedies worked less and less well and Madame Montespan hired my mother to do more and more disgusting things.” When that didn’t help, Voisin made a waxwork of the Queen, which Montespan then stabbed with a knife in a rage. Her mother sang, “This is the body, soul, heart and mind of Louis of Bourbon. Let him neither go nor come, let him neither rest nor sleep, until he has heard the wishes of her to whom he belongs.”
Reynie now knew that Montespan had been in contact with poisoners, witches and fortune-tellers in the Montorgueil district. But this was only circumstantial evidence, which he had received from unreliable people. He still did not know how important a role she had played in the story. Only a court of law could establish the real truth. But King Louis XIV did not agree. He had always been loyal to the women who had meant something to him in his life. He decided that this matter was not for the public. Montespan had been out of favour with the King for some time, as he had already had a new mistress.
The police chief wanted to know everything about what was happening at the court. He ordered the arrest of one of the maids at the home of a relative of Montespan’s. The unmarried Filastre was telling him strange things. She had attended a black mass held by Father Guisbourg in the church of Saint-Denise. She then became pregnant by a servant and, when she was seized by labour cramps, was kidnapped and brought to the home of the witch Simone. There, she was to be placed on the floor, the witch was to place candles around her in the shape of a pentagram, put a black candle in her hands in honour of the devil and start singing disgusting songs. After the birth of the child, the witch would put the placenta in a small bag and take it away with the newborn. She never saw the child again.
Father Guisbourg was also arrested and he had many interesting things to say. Filastre was supposed to sell the baby for money, and a black mass was to be performed with the placenta placed on the altar. The placenta was then sold as an aphrodisiac. Guisbourg performed a special ceremony at Voisin’s for Mademoiselle Oillets. He had her fill a beaker with her menstrual blood. He then disappeared behind a curtain and masturbated in the same beaker. He mixed all this with dried bat powder into a kind of cream. This was to be a love potion for the king.
It was not possible to find out how they wanted to give it to him and when. When Reynie reported this to the King, he was furious and demanded to investigate further. Filastra was sentenced to death and tortured before being executed.
Neonatal deaths were common at the time. Marguerite Voisin recounted that one day a mother appeared with a newborn baby in her arms. In the evening, Marguerite attended a black mass. A naked woman was lying on the bed, and Voisin took the newborn out of her bag and gave it to Father Guisbourg. He took it in his arms, pulled out a small knife and cut its neck. Voisin held a beaker dripping with the baby’s blood as his life drained away. Guisbourg then blessed the cup, dipped the host into it and offered it to the naked woman. Finally, he cut out the newborn’s heart and placed it in a crystal bowl, which Madame Montespan – for she was the naked woman on the bed – took with her.
Reynie wanted to hear the other side of the story. But it was very dangerous and impossible to question Montespan. With Madame Oeilllets, it was a different story. She had already left the court three years earlier when the King told her that he no longer needed her services. She could be questioned discreetly. But even here Reynie was cautious. He asked the Minister of War for help and he met the Duchess at her home. He asked her how she was and what she was doing and finally told her what they were saying about her. She was, of course, outraged and denied everything and was prepared to confront those who claimed to have seen her at Voisin’s. And indeed she did come to confront her in Vincennes dungeon. Three witnesses recognised her, but not Maguerite, Voisin’s daughter, although she later denied this, saying she was afraid.
Epilog
The King asked Reynie for a detailed report on the interrogations and wanted to hear his opinion on who was guilty and who was not. This was a gigantic job, as there were 150 people imprisoned in Vincennes prison and 454 people involved in the poison affair. After several weeks of work, the report to the King was complete. The King read it and returned it to him, and Reynie put it all in a large leather box and closed it with a key, which he handed to his faithful notary.
The trial began in the spring of 1682. The court was ordered to try only those cases that were easy and clear and did not endanger public order. The court files did not include the cases against Montespan and Oeillets. 88 people were brought to trial, but only a few dozen were convicted of minor crimes as a warning to those who might want to go their way. Sixty-one were eventually released and expelled from France. Thirty-five remained who were too dangerous to walk around freely. They were sent by royal order to remote fortresses, castles and labour camps, where they were to live out their days.
Marguerite, Voisin’s daughter, is sent with 11 other women to an abandoned convent on an island off the coast of Brittany. They were accompanied by a letter of instruction to the convent administrator: “His Majesty commands you to treat them very strictly.” Condemned to hard labour on an island buffeted by the winds, they tried to survive on bread and water, dressed in sackcloth, without heating or water. Soon, one by one, they died.
Most of the men were transported to a fortress near Besançon, close to the Swiss border. Their legs and arms were shackled. Louvois informed the governor of the fortress: “The prisoners say crazy things about Madame Montespan, but the rumours are not true. Punish them very severely for any offence.”
The King has made it clear that the poison affair is over for him. “We will no longer talk about poisons. The word is banished from Versailles and from France”, wrote Madame Sévigné. In 1682, Louis XIV announced that Versailles would become his permanent home, as the construction of the palace was almost complete. Madame Montespan continued to live at Versailles for another eight years, but saw that she had less and less influence on the King and left in 1691. The King did not even persuade her to stay.
One day in May 1707, while the King was on a hunting trip, he was informed of the death of Madame Montespan. The aging King nodded his understanding, got into his carriage and drove off.
