Back in the day no one got married for love. Marriage was a business deal. Little hit, that makes for unhappy marriages. Unhappy marriages make for cheating. Everyone had a mistress, and I guess “misters” for the lady people. And because divorce wasn’t a thing (because catholicism) how do you get rid of an unwanted spouse??? Poison, that’s how. Witchcraft, too. Lets go ahead and throw in some black masses and infanticide while we are at it.
But first! The beginning
The beginning actually starts with a woman named Madame de Brinvilliers. She hates her husband, and has a mister who just so happens to be an alchemist. Alchemy is real science of the day. Anywho, she hates her husband, wants to marry her mister, but her mister is like “what if you kill your dad for his money, and then kill your husband”. She thinks this is a great idea. Brinvilliers goes to her father while he is already sick to nurse him to “health”. In reality she is poisoning him to death. She poisons him over the course of eight months. After he dies, Brinvilliers brothers are very suspicious of their sister, but with no evidence, they can’t do anything. A little later on, she manages to poison one of her brothers. And now we only have one brother left. She hires a servant, gifts the servant to her alive brother, and pays the servant to poison him. She is getting away with all of it.
Fast forward, she attempts to poison her sister-in-law, other servants, her husband (whom her mister is giving an anecdote) and she finally gets caught (1672).
During her “trial”,which involves torture, she “confesses”(under torture) that she has been poisoning and killing all sorts of people. It baffles all of France and is the trial of the century. She is executed (1676).
Fast forward a couple of years(1677), the Paris Chief of Police, La Reynie, is hard on crime. He is turning Paris around, and a priest approached him with an anonymous letter that was left in a confessional. The letter contained details to assassinate the king via poison. It also happened that a lot of people (noble people) were confessing to poisoning.
Also concerning, children are going missing left and right, people are really mad. La Reynie combats the disappearances by installing street lights throughout the city.
La Reynie galloped over to Versailles to let the King know about the letter as well as the concerns that people were poisoning each other willy nilly. The King (who does not take assasination lightly) gave La Reynie a lot of freedom to investigate the claims.
The investigation leads to two women, Vigoureux & Bosse(1679). These are women who sell “potions”, tell fortunes, make astrological charts, and sell chachkis, and according to La Reynie, witches (but not alchemists). These women are taken to what is called La Chambre Ardente, which is the burning chamber.
This is a “court of law” created by Louis XIV and La Reynie specifically for trying people involved in the affair of the poisons. It is separate and secret from Parliament to “save the poor people and the women” who may have harsher sentencing from parlement. This is an idea from La Reynie, because he grew up poor, and understood the plight of the “peasant” population. However, we will learn that La Reynie quickly abandons his sympathetic leanings in favor of complete authority to enforce French Law.
Vigoureux and Bosse were tortured and confessed to providing potions as well as poisons to nobility at court, ranging from Love Potions to Spousal-b-gone Potions. They also name their clientele; one woman whom was accused of attempting to poison her husband and sent to a convent because her husband couldn’t actually prove it.
Another name they mention is Madame Voisin, another woman of the same profession. Voisin, was a big big bigbigbgigbigbig fish to catch. Voisin’s clients ranged from the king’s mistresses chamber maid to former “friends” of the king, Mazarin’s Nieces, to Madame de Montespan herself.
When Voisin was taken in for questioning, she gave up names, no problem, gave up all the information she had without any real resistance. Even with her full cooperation, she was still tortured. The entire time she is pointing out “Why dont you care about the people who actually bought these poisons????”
King Louis is extremely disturbed by all these names being released and the range of nobles who have sought out these potions and remedies, and even more disturbed by the fact that people are referencing black masses and children being sacrificed. This is all going on right under his nose. Especially since he had been gracious enough to allow astrological readings and fortune telling at court.
Parliament eventually had to get involved, and summarized the affair in three simple lines: Summary of the great Affair. Three kinds of crimes divided by three distinct periods are involved.
The first, set forth by Lesage in 1667 and 1668: Impieties, Mariettes ceremonies at Saint-Germain
The second in the following year, abominations, Masses... Sacrifices of children whose throats were cute.
The third: attempt on the king's person, by poison.
(1680-1682)people were implicated, imprisoned, and even executed. Many were charged with witchcraft and wizardry, and there was an edict put into place that only scientists were allowed to have labs after this incident.
In a strange turn of events XIV burned records that pointed any guilt to Mme Montespan. Probably to save face, and also Montespan remained Louis Main piece until she was set aside for Maintenon.
442 people were tried
36 people were sentenced to death.
I found some really good books at the library about other subjects, but mentioned the Affair of the Poisons. There were a couple of places online to read about it, but a lot of my base information came from The Strange & Unusual Podcast and their three part series on the affair. It really gave me a great giant stepping off point. There is also a lot of confusing information that points in 50 million different directions and gives so much information that seems irrelevant until it isn't. As well as a billion different names that weren't even kind of touched on. There is also a lot of information that has either been proven incorrect or has been abandoned by historians, due to the French being known as a bit dramatic, but for some reason is still being told as fact. This is a completely complex and confusing, twisted subject, and while we did our best to cover our subject (Versailles) in this crazy story, but we did have to start in a strange place (Paris)