II.2.4.d. A HINTERLAND FOR CRIMINALS, NOBLES AND THE GARMENT DISTRICT

MENU: 2.2.4.d. Crime. Nobles. Garment district

A NEW RAMPART PROTECTED THE CITY WALL AGAINST THE BANDS THAT THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR UNLEASHED

(BEGUN IN 1359; WAR, 1337-1453) 

Assassination of an English Knight, "Chronicles of English history"  toward 1450 / zoom 

   Paris in 1530 / zoom

With peace the Church dried up the swamp and established convents, while criminals came to avoid authorities.

That back country would be on the way to Versailles... .

A place where energies evolve

• Poisons and black masses

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court

• Nobles take over

• The garment district, offspring of the Boulevards and nobles 

• A once-seedy neighborhood and gentrification with character

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Poisons and black masses

POISONS AND BLACK MASSES

 

BEYOND THE COURT OF MIRACLES "THE STREET AT THE END OF THE WORLD"* SHOWS HOW DISTANT THAT OUTSKIRT SEEMED

*La Rue du Bout du Monde

The area was much more sinister than that of the Court of Miracles: "To get rid of your husband, give him bouillon of Saint-Denis," was a 1670's rumor.

-- The Affair of the Poisons by Arlette Lebigre, 1989 (in French)

Adapted from a map of 1676 / zoom

The red arrow shows our walk. The yellow one shows the street.

Users of dangerous substances — alchemists and counterfeiters — settled there (toward 1660):

    An Alchemist's Family by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1558 / zoom

Wives of former craftsmen* joined them, fortune-telling and selling aphrodisiacs...

*At least that is what we know of two women mentioned on the next page: Marie Bosse, whose drunken boasting triggered the police inquiry, was the spouse of a counterfeiter sent to the galleys and La Voisin's husband was a failed craftsman.

...then proximity to the alchemists / counterfeiters led to making poisons, which did not require strength and needed only a kitchen to produce.

Black masses needed only money.

 

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At the same time Louis XIV imposed a stifling ceremonial: A courtier said he loved watching dogs fight over a bone, because they were spontaneous. 

-- The Court Society by Norbert Elias, 1969

Louis XIV Grants the Cross of Saint Louis in 1693 (detail) by François Marot, 1709, zoom

Courtiers needed royal gifts to hold their rank, making the unbending ballet a bottomless pit of expense.*  

* It required constant changes of court outfits, an overpriced rental in Versailles or an impressive residence in Paris, a coach, horses, servants, liveries, sumptuous dinners to become part of a clan, gambling for the high stakes that the king encouraged... .

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At about the same time,* vast boulevards built on the sites of demolished ramparts gave direct access to Versailles, avoiding the center's maze of streets

* Louis tore down the ramparts in 1674, and transferred the court and seat of government to Versailles in 1682.

Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle by Edouard Leon Cortes, toward 1900 / zoom 

Courtiers came to the edgy hinterland to slum, have their fortunes told, obtain aphrodisiacs and for the thrill of danger.

They learned of "succession powders" that could dispose of jealous spouses, rivals in love or at court or hasten the demise of relatives from whom to inherit:

For a drama that is still remembered, 

please click on.

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Next,

Crime that shook the Sun King's court

CRIME THAT SHOOK THE SUN KING'S COURT

BELIEF IN THE DEVIL AND BLACK MAGIC DROVE COURTIERS...

"to run to a rogue priest for a mass to the Devil with slaughter of child. Sales of poison usually followed those rites: What the Devil had not managed, arsenic would." 

-- The King's Way, historical novel by Françoise Chandeneggor, 1981

Main sources:

             --The Affair of the Poisons: Alchemists and Sorcerers under Louis XIV by J-C. Petitfils, 1977 (in French).

-- Louis XIV and the Poison Affair: the Great Scandals of History /You/Tube (in French with English translation), 2020

Madame de Montespan, the King's Great Love, "Secrets d'histoire", YouTube (in French) 

Babies or small children were baptized before being slaughtered. Their blood was poured into a chalice and from it over the client's nude abdomen.

French texts use feminine forms to say "client" or "sponsor," which suggests that they were women. 

The priest who practiced these masses with La Voisin (mentioned below) butchered his own children. 

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 Rue Beauregard, on the town side of the boulevard:

              Carolyn Ristau

La Voisin lived at n° 24.

"La Voisin," the most notorious of France's few serial killers, bragged of committing 2500 murders through abortions,* poisonings and black masses. 

* Criminalized until 1975.

 Catherine Deshayes, Widow Monvoisin, called La Voisin, by Antoine Coypel, 1680-1682

• When a police spy heard a drunken woman boast of a clientele of "duchesses, marquises, lords and princes" an investigation began. Poisons were found in her dwelling and 200 people were rounded up.

• La Voisin was arrested on the steps of her parish church when leaving mass:

Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle

The medieval church burned (in 1821). This is its replacement.

A church-going serial killer? Black magic is a sacrilege, whose power depends on belief.

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An enigmatic death 

  -- Correspondence of Madame de Sévigny, February 23, 1680 (translation and italics mine)

 

• Between sessions of having water forced down her throat La Voisin sang and drank with her guards, and the night before being burned alive, "broken as she was, continued her scandalous debauchery."

• At the scaffold she spurned the usual speech of penitence and praise of the king, although that might have encouraged leniency to her imprisoned daughter.

She even refused confession to a priest, so choosing, as a believer, to damn her soul or eternity. She screamed and kicked at the hay until the end.

(Catherine Deshayes: La Voisin's maiden name)

"One of those miserable creatures, 

who was hanged the other day...

told M. de Louvois [the minister in charge of executions] that if her life were spared she would say strange things; she was refused. 'Well!' 'said she, 'be assured that no pain will cause me to say a single word.' She was given the questions ordinary, extraordinary and so extraordinary that she thought she would die, as another had, let me say in passing, as a doctor took her pulse. That woman suffered extreme martyrdom without talking. When she was taken to City Hall [next to the execution site], she said she wanted to speak: Gentlemen, she said, assure M. de Louvois that I am his servant [a common figure of speech] and that I have kept my word; let's get on with it.'  She was sent off in an instant. What do you say to that sort of courage? I have a thousand more agreeable little tales like that; but how say it all? "

It is thought that there will be great sequels that surprise us." 

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Suspicions concern the elite:

• Most accounts of the poisonings begin with the story of the marchioness of Brinvilliers, who poisoned members of her family after practicing on the sick at the City hospital.  

• Before her execution (in 1676) she said that many people in high positions were as guilty as she.

Marie-Madeleine Anne Dreux d'Aubrey, Marchioness of  Brinvilliers / zoom with a short account (in French)

After La Voisin's death a crime that has never been solved

led the king to stop the inquiry:

• Witnesses charged Madame de Montespan, the royal favorite, with sponsoring black masses and trying to poison Louis and his new mistress.

Portrait of a Lady, said to be Madame de Montespan by a follower of Pierre Mignard, 17th century / zoom 

Gorgeous, fiery and caustic, of a lineage superior to Louis's (his grandmother was the daughter of an upstart Medici banker), the Marquise de Montespan added to the éclat of the court...

"...but seriously, her beauty is astonishing [...] She was dressed completely in French point lace; her hair was dressed in a thousand curls ; two on her temples fell to her cheeks ; black ribbons on her head, pearls [...] diamond pendants of the greatest beauty [...] in a word, a triumphant beauty for all ambassadors to admire."  

-- Madame de Sévigny, July 29, 1676 

Madame de Montespan and her Children by Pierre Mignard, 1673 / zoom

La Montespan and the four surviving children of the seven she had with the king.

. But she had visited La Voisin for aphrodisiacs.

• To keep crime from spattering the throne Louis stopped the inquest and burned the records, not knowing that the police chief had kept detailed notes. They seem to inculpate the marquise's lady-in-waiting, who had had an affair with the king and was furious that he refuse to recognize their child. One understands her anger: He recognized 22 other bastards.

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Destinies 

• Louis did nothing to the mother of those children, but the marquise lost all influence and after a few years the king tells her indirectly that it would be best if she left Versailles. She lived in the château he had given her and would quite often return, "like those unfortunate souls who come back to the places they have lived to atone for their faults."
-- The Recollections of Madame de Caylus, 1770, Mercure de France, ed. 1986, p. 99 (in French).

A decade later she retired to a convent. When she spread out the jewels that the king had given her and could not recall the circumstances, she said that her life had made no sense.

• The lady-in-waiting retired with a pension. Her daughter knew she was of royal blood and even resembled the king, but had to accept a mediocre marriage.

• When in memory of a long-standing friendship Louis sent Olympe Mancini a messenger warning of her coming arrest, she put down her gambling cards, went straight to her coach and fled abroad, never to return. Other courtiers were banished (a gentle fate for murder, especially since the king might forgive).  
  

• A few underclass prisoners were freed, but 68 spent the rest of their lives chained to dungeons' walls. The last died in 1725.

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Those dramas...

• Brought the first law regulating the sale of toxic products (in 1682). It is still on the books. 

It was one reason why mass poisonings ceased. Other reasons: The removal of many criminals, their horrific punishment and especially, medical advances that made it easier to identify poison during autopsies.  

• Show the nightmarish underside of the time when France's classic culture, supposed to be one of glory, equilibrium and reason, took its lasting shape

Jean Prevost Hida, Canalblog

•  Is La Voisin the witch in Snow White? 

The Disney movie

The scandal was so notorious that throughout Europe all French people were believed to be poisoners. Narrators must have thought of La Voisin in fleshing out the story.

-- All French believed poisoners: Petitfils

Internet, source not said

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 The tea shop facing the church

suggests a reassuring present.

Les 2 au Coin

 7 rue Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle

Or so we hope.

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Next,

Nobles take over