The Marquise de Brinvilliers—Homicidal mania—Mysterious death of her father, M. D’Aubray—Death of her eldest brother and her second brother—Sainte Croix’s sudden death—Fatal secret betrayed—Marchioness flies to England—Brought to Paris—Her trial—Torture and cruel sentence—Others suspected—Pennautier—Trade in poisoning—The Chambre Ardente—La Voisin—Great people implicated—Wholesale sentences—The galleys, or forced labor at the oar a common punishment—War galleys—Manned with difficulty—Illegal detention—Horrors of the galleys.

Paris was convulsed and shaken to its roots in 1674, when the abominable crimes of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers were laid bare. They have continued to horrify the whole world. Here was a beautiful woman of good family, of quiet demeanor, seemingly soft-hearted and sweet tempered, who nevertheless murdered her nearest relations,—father, brother, sisters, her husband and her own children by secret and detestable practices. It could have been nothing less than homicidal mania in its worst development. The rage to kill, or, more exactly, to test the value of the lethal weapons she recklessly wielded, seized her under the guise of a high, religious duty to visit the hospitals to try the effects of her poisons on the sick poor. There were those at the time who saw in the discovery of her murderous processes the direct interposition of Providence. First, there was the sudden death of her principal accomplice, and the sure indications found among the papers he left; next, the confirmatory proofs afforded by a servant who had borne the “question” without opening his lips, and only confessed at the scaffold; last of all, the guilty woman’s arrest in LiÉge on the last day that the French king’s authority was paramount in that city; and more, there was the fact that when taken, she was in possession of papers indispensable to secure her own conviction.

Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray was beautiful, the daughter of the d’Aubray who filled the high legal office of Lieutenant-Criminel, and she married the Marquis de Brinvilliers at the age of twenty-one. She was possessed of great personal attraction: a small woman of slight, exquisite figure, her face round and regular, her complexion extraordinarily fair, her hair abundant and of a dark chestnut color. Everything promised a happy life for the young people. They were drawn together by strong liking, they were fairly rich and held their heads high in the best circle of the court. They lived together happily for some years, and five children were born to them, but presently they fell into extravagant ways and wasted their substance. The Marquis became a rouÉ and a gambler, and left his wife very much alone and exposed to temptation, and especially to the marked attentions of a certain Godin de St. Croix, a young, handsome and seductive gallant, whom the Marquis had himself introduced and welcomed to his house. At the trial it was urged that this St. Croix had been the real criminal; he is described as a demon of violent and unbridled passion, who had led the Marchioness astray, a statement never proved.

The liaison soon became public property, but the husband was altogether indifferent to his wife’s misconduct, having a disreputable character of his own. The father and brothers strongly disapproved and reproached the Marchioness fiercely. The elder d’Aubray, quite unable to check the scandal, at last obtained a lettre de cachet, an order of summary imprisonment, against St. Croix, and the lover was arrested in the Marchioness’ carriage, seated by her side. He was committed at once to the Bastile, where he became the cellmate of an Italian generally called Exili; although his real name is said to have been Egidi, while his occult profession, according to contemporary writers, was that of an artist in poisons. From this chance prison acquaintance flowed the whole of the subsequent crimes. When St. Croix was released from the Bastile, he obtained the release also of Exili and, taking him into his service, the two applied themselves to the extensive manufacture of poisons, assisted by an apothecary named Glaser. St. Croix was supposed to have reformed. When once more free, he married, became reserved and grew devout. Secretly he renewed his intimacy with the Marchioness and persuaded her to get rid of her near relatives in order to acquire the whole of the d’Aubray property; and he provided her with the poisons for the purpose.

M. d’Aubray had forgiven his daughter, and had taken her with him to his country estate at OffÉmont in the autumn of 1666. The Marchioness treated him with the utmost affection and seemed to have quite abandoned her loose ways. Suddenly, soon after their arrival, M. d’Aubray was seized with some mysterious malady, accompanied by constant vomitings and intolerable sufferings. Removed to Paris next day, he was attended by a strange doctor, who had not seen the beginning of the attack, and speedily died in convulsions. It was suggested as the cause of his death, that he had been suffering from gout driven into the stomach.

The inheritance was small, and there were four children to share it. The Marchioness had two brothers and two sisters. One sister was married and the mother of two children, the other was a Carmelite nun. The eldest brother, Antoine d’Aubray, succeeded to his father’s office as Lieutenant-Criminel, and within four years he also died under suspicious circumstances. He lived in Paris, and upon entering his house one day called for a drink. A new valet, named La ChaussÉe, brought him a glass of wine and water. It was horribly bitter to the taste, and d’Aubray threw the greater part away, expressing his belief that the rascal, La ChaussÉe, wanted to poison him. It was like liquid fire, and others, who tasted it, declared that it contained vitriol. La ChaussÉe, apologising, recovered the glass, threw the rest of the liquid into the fire and excused himself by saying that a fellow servant had just used the tumbler as a medicine glass. This incident was presently forgotten, but next spring, at a dinner given by M. d’Aubray, guests and host were seized with a strange illness after eating a tart or vol au vent, and M. d’Aubray never recovered his health. He “pined visibly” after his return to Paris, losing appetite and flesh, and presently died, apparently of extreme weakness, on the 17th of June, 1670. A post mortem was held, but disclosed nothing, and the death was attributed to “malignant humours,” a ridiculously vague expression showing the medical ignorance of the times.

The second brother did not survive. He too was attacked with illness, and died of the same loss of power and vitality. An autopsy resulted in a certain suspicion of foul play. The doctors reported that the lungs of the deceased were ulcerated, the liver and heart burned up and destroyed. Undoubtedly there had been noxious action, but it could not be definitely referred to poison. No steps, however, were taken by the police to inquire into the circumstances of this sudden death.

Meanwhile the Marchioness had been deserted by her husband, and she gave herself up to reckless dissipation. When St. Croix abandoned her also, she resolved to commit suicide. “I shall put an end to my life,” she wrote him in a letter afterwards found among his papers, “by using what you gave me, the preparation of Glaser.” Courage failed her, and now chance or strange fortune intervened with terrible revelations. St. Croix’s sudden death betrayed the secret of the crime.

He was in the habit of working at a private laboratory in the Place Maubert, where he distilled his lethal drugs. One day as he bent over the furnace, his face protected by a glass mask, the glass burst unexpectedly, and he inhaled a breath of the poisonous fumes, which stretched him dead upon the spot. Naturally there could be no destruction of compromising papers, and these at once fell into the hands of the police. Before they could be examined, the Marchioness, terrified at the prospect of impending detection, committed herself hopelessly by her imprudence. She went at once to the person to whom the papers had been confided and begged for a casket in which were a number of her letters. She was imprudent enough to offer a bribe of fifty louis, and was so eager in her appeal, that suspicion arose and her request was refused. Ruin stared her in the face, she went home, got what money she could and fled from Paris.

The casket was now opened, and fully explained her apprehensions. On top was a paper written by St. Croix which ran: “I humbly entreat the person into whose hands this casket may come to convey it to the Marchioness Brinvilliers, rue Neuve St. Paul; its contents belong to her and solely concern her and no one else in the world. Should she die before me I beg that everything within the box may be burned without examination.” In addition to the letters from the Marchioness, the casket contained a number of small parcels and phials full of drugs, such as antimony, corrosive sublimate, vitriol in various forms. These were analysed, and some portion of them administered to animals, which immediately died.

The law now took action. The first arrest was that of La ChaussÉe, whose complicity with St. Croix was undoubted. The man had been in St. Croix’s service, he had lived with Antoine d’Aubray, and at the seizure of St. Croix’s effects, he had rashly protested against the opening of the casket. He was committed to the ChÂtelet and put on his trial with the usual preliminary torture of the “boot.” He stoutly refused to make confession at first, but spoke out when released from the rack. His conviction followed, on a charge of having murdered the two Lieutenants-Criminel, the d’Aubrays, father and son. His sentence was, to be broken alive on the wheel, and he was duly executed.

This was the first act in the criminal drama. The Marchioness was still at large. She had sought an asylum in England, and was known to be in London. Colbert, the French minister, applied in his king’s name for her arrest and removal to France. But no treaty of extradition existed in those days, and the laws of England were tenacious. Even Charles II, the paid pensioner of Louis and his very submissive ally, could not impose his authority upon a free people; and the English, then by no means friendly with France, would have resented the arbitrary arrest of even the most dastard criminal for an offence committed beyond the kingdom. History does not say exactly how it was compassed, but the Marchioness did leave England, and crossed to the Low Countries, where she took refuge in a convent in the city of LiÉge.

Four years passed, but her retreat became known to the police of Paris. Desgrez, a skilful officer, famous for his successes as a detective, was forthwith despatched to inveigle her away. He assumed the disguise of an abbÉ, and called at the convent. Being a good looking young man of engaging manners, he was well received by the fugitive French woman, sick and weary of conventual restriction. The Marchioness, suspecting nothing, gladly accepted the offer of a drive in the country with the astute Desgrez, who promptly brought her under escort to the French frontier as a prisoner. A note of her reception at the Conciergerie is among the records, to the effect, that, “La Brinvilliers, who had been arrested by the King’s order in the city of LiÉge, was brought to the prison under a warrant of the Court.”

On the journey from LiÉge she had tried to seduce one of her escort into passing letters to a friend, whom she earnestly entreated to recover certain papers she had left at the convent. These, however, one of them of immense importance, her full confession, had already been secured by Desgrez, showing that the Abbess had been cognisant of the intended arrest. The Marchioness yielded to despair when she heard of the seizure of her papers and would have killed herself, first by swallowing a long pin and next by eating glass. This confession is still extant and will be read with horror—the long list of her crimes and debaucheries set forth with cold-blooded, plain speaking. It was not produced at her trial, which was mainly a prolonged series of detailed interrogatories to which she made persistent denials. As the proceedings drew slowly on, all Paris watched with shuddering anxiety, and the King himself, who was absent on a campaign, sent peremptory orders to Colbert that no pains should be spared to bring all proof against the guilty woman. Conviction was never in doubt. One witness declared that she had made many attempts to get the casket from St. Croix; another, that she exulted in her power to rid herself of her enemies, declaring it was easy to give them “a pistol shot in their soup;” a third, that she had exhibited a small box, saying, “it is very small but there is enough inside to secure many successions (inheritances).” Hence the euphemism poudre de succession, so often employed at that time to signify “deadly poison.”

The accused still remained obstinately dumb, but at last an eloquent priest, l’AbbÉ Pirot, worked upon her feelings of contrition, and obtained a full avowal, not only of her own crimes, but those also of her accomplices. Sentence was at once pronounced, and execution quickly followed. Torture, both ordinary and extraordinary, was to be first inflicted. The ordeal of water, three buckets-full, led her to ask if they meant to drown her, as assuredly she could not, with her small body, drink so much. After the torture she was to make the amende honorable and the acknowledgment, candle in hand, that vengeance and greed had tempted her to poison her father, brothers and sisters. Then her right hand was to be amputated as a parricide; but this penalty was remitted. The execution was carried out under very brutal conditions. No sooner were the prison doors opened than a mob of great ladies rushed in to share and gloat over her sufferings, among them the infamous Comtesse de Soissons, who was proved later to have been herself a poisoner. An enormous crowd of spectators, at least one hundred thousand, were assembled in the streets, at the windows and on the roofs, and she was received with furious shouts. Close by the tumbril rode Desgrez, the officer who had captured her in LiÉge. Yet she showed the greatest fortitude. “She died as she had lived,” writes Madame de SÉvignÉ, “resolutely. Now she is dispersed into the air. Her poor little body was thrown into a fierce furnace, and her ashes blown to the four winds of heaven.”

Another person was implicated in this black affair, Reich de Pennautier, Receiver-General of the clergy. When the St. Croix casket was opened, a promissory note signed by Pennautier had been found. He was suspected of having used poison to remove his predecessor in office. Pennautier was arrested and lodged in the Conciergerie, where he occupied the old cell of Ravaillac for seven days. Then he was put on his trial. He found friends, chief of them the reticent Madame de Brinvilliers, but he had an implacable enemy in the widow of his supposed victim, Madame de St. Laurent, who continually pursued him in the courts. He was, however, backed by Colbert, Archbishop of Paris, and the whole of the French clergy. In the end he was released, emerging as Madame de SÉvignÉ put it, “rather whiter than snow,” and he retained his offices until he became enormously rich. Although his character was smirched in this business he faced the world bravely to a green old age.

In France uneasiness was general after the execution of the Brinvilliers and the acquittal of Pennautier. Sinister rumors prevailed that secret poisoning had become quite a trade, facilitated by the existence of carefully concealed offices, where the noxious drugs necessary could be purchased easily by heirs tired of waiting for their succession, and by husbands and wives eager to get rid of one another. Within a year suspicion was strengthened by the picking up of an anonymous letter in the confessional of the Jesuit Church of the rue St. Antoine, stating that a plot was afoot to poison both the King and the Dauphin. The police set inquiries on foot, and traced the projected crime to two persons, Louis Vanens and Robert de la NurÉe, the Sieur de Bachimont.

The first of these dabbled openly in love philtres and other unavowable medicines; and he was also suspected of having poisoned the Duke of Savoy some years previously. Bachimont was one of his agents. From this first clue, the police followed the thread of their discoveries, and brought home to a number of people the charge of preparing and selling poisons, two of whom were condemned and executed. A still more important arrest was that of Catherine Deshayes, the wife of one Voisin or Monvoisin, a jeweller. From this moment the affair assumed such serious proportions that it was decided to conduct the trial with closed doors. The authorities constituted a royal tribunal to sit in private at the Arsenal, and to be known to the public as the Chambre Ardente or Court of Poisons. La Reynie and another counsellor presided, and observed extreme caution, but were quite unable to keep secret the result of their proceedings. It was soon whispered through Paris that the crime of poisoning had extensive ramifications, and that many great people, some nearly related to the throne, were compromised with la Voisin. The names were openly mentioned: a Bourbon prince, the Comte de Clermont, the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Princesse de Tingry, one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, and the Marchionesse d’Alluye, who had been an intimate friend of Fouquet. The Duc de Luxembourg and others of the highest rank were consigned to the Bastile. Yet more, the Comtesse de Soissons, the proudest of Cardinal Mazarin’s nieces and one of the first of the King’s favorites, had, by his special grace, been warned to fly from Paris to escape imprisonment.

No such favor was shown to others. Louis XIV sternly bade La Reynie to spare no one else, to let justice take its course strictly and expose everything; the safety of the public demanded it, and the hideous evil must be extirpated in its very root. There was to be no distinction of persons or of sex in vindicating the law. Such severity was indeed necessary. Although the King wished all the documents in the case to be carefully destroyed, some have been preserved. They exhibit the widespread infamy and almost immeasurable guilt of the criminals. Colbert stigmatised the facts as “things too execrable to be put on paper; amounting to sacrilege, profanity and abomination.” The very basest aims inspired the criminals to seek the King’s favor; disappointed beauties would have poisoned their rivals and replaced them in the King’s affections. The Comtesse de Soissons’s would-be victim was the beautiful La ValliÈre, and Madame de Montespan was suspected of desiring to remove Mdlle. de Fontanges. Madame La FÉron attempted the life of her husband, a president of Parliament. The Duc de Luxembourg was accused of poisoning his duchess. M. de FeuquiÈres invited la Voisin to get rid of the uncle and guardian of an heiress he wished to marry. The end of these protracted proceedings was the inevitable retribution that waited on their crimes. Two hundred and forty-six persons had been brought to trial, of whom thirty-six went to the scaffold, after enduring torture, ordinary and extraordinary. Of the rest, some were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, some to banishment, some to the galleys for life. Among those who suffered the extreme penalty were la Voisin, La Vigouroux, Madame de Carada, several priests and Sieur Maillard, who was charged with attempting to poison Colbert and the King himself. The Bastile, Vincennes and every State prison were crowded with the poisoners, and for years the registers of castles and fortresses contained the names of inmates committed by the Chambre Ardente of the Arsenal.

The edict which dissolved this special tribunal laid down stringent laws to protect the public against future poisoning. A clean sweep was made of the charlatans, the pretended magicians who came from abroad and imposed upon the credulity of the French people, who united sacrilege and impious practices with the manufacture and distribution of noxious drugs. Several clauses in the edict dealt with poisons, describing their action and effect,—in some cases instantaneous, in others slow, gradually undermining health and originating mysterious maladies, that proved fatal in the end. The sale of deleterious substances was strictly regulated, such as arsenic and corrosive sublimate, and the use of poisonous vermin, “snakes, vipers and frogs,” in medical prescriptions was forbidden.

A few words more as to the Comtesse de Soissons, who was suffered to fly from France, but could find no resting place. Her reputation preceded her, and she was refused admittance into Antwerp. In Flanders she ingratiated herself with the Duke of Parma, and lived under his protection for several years. Finally she appeared in Madrid, and was received at court. Then the young Queen of Spain died suddenly with all the symptoms of poisoning, and Madame de Soissons was immediately suspected, for unexpected and mysterious deaths always followed in her trail. She was driven from the country, and died a wanderer in great poverty.

No account of the means of repression of those days in France would be complete without including the galleys,—the system of enforced labor at the oars, practised for many centuries by all the Mediterranean nations, and dating back to classical times. These ancient warships, making at best but six miles an hour by human effort under the lash, are in strong contrast with the modern ironclad impelled by steam. But the Venetians and the Genoese owned fine fleets of galleys and won signal naval victories with them. France long desired to rival these powers, and Henry III, when returning from Poland to mount the French throne, paused at Venice to visit the arsenal and see the warships in process of construction. At that time France had thirty galleys afloat, twenty-six of the highest order and worked by convicts (galeriens). This number was not always maintained, and in 1662 Colbert, bidding for sea power and striving hard to add to the French navy, ordered six new ships to be laid down at Marseilles, and sought to buy a number, all standing, from the Republic of Genoa and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. These efforts were crowned with success. In 1670 there were twenty galleys under the French flag, and Colbert wrote the intendant at Marseilles that his Master, Louis XIV, was eager to possess one royal ship which would outvie any hitherto launched on the seas. The increase continued, and in 1677 the fleet numbered thirty, rising to forty-two by the end of the century.

It was not enough to build the ships; the difficulty was to man them. The custom of sending condemned convicts to ply the oar was ancient, and dated back to the reign of Charles VII. But it was little used until Francis I desired to strengthen his navy, and he ordered parliaments and tribunals to consign to the galleys all able-bodied offenders who deserved death and had been condemned to bodily penalties, whatsoever crimes they had committed. The supply of this personnel was precarious, and Colbert wrote to the judges to be more severe with their sentences, and to inflict the galleys in preference to death, a commutation likely to be welcome to the culprit. But some of the parliaments demurred. That of Dijon called it changing the law, and the President, protesting, asked for new ordinances. Colbert put the objection aside arbitrarily. He increased the pressure on the courts and dealt sharply with the keepers of local gaols, who did not use sufficient promptness in sending on their quotas of convicts to Marseilles and Toulon. Many escapes from the chain were made by the way, so carelessly conducted was the transfer.

This “chain,” a disgrace to humanity, was employed in France till quite within our own day. The wretched convicts made their long pilgrimage on foot from all parts of the country to the southern coast. They were chained together in gangs and marched painfully in all weathers, mile after mile, along their weary road under military escort. No arrangements were made for them by the way. They were fed on any coarse food that could be picked up, and were lodged for the night in sheds and stables if any could be found; if not, under the sky. Death took its toll of them ere they reached their destination. They were a scarce commodity and yet no measures were adopted to preserve their health and strength. The ministers in Paris were continually urging the presidents of parliaments to augment the supplies of the condemned, and were told that the system was in fault, that numbers died in their miserable cells waiting removal, and many made their escape on the journey.

Still the demands of the galleys were insatiable, and many contrivances were adopted to reinforce the crews. Colbert desired to send to them all vagabonds, all sturdy beggars, smugglers and men without visible means of support, but a change in the law was required and the authorities for a time shrank from it. Another expedient was to hire forcats from the Duke of Savoy, who had no warships. Turkish and Russian slaves were purchased to work the oars, and Negroes from the Guinea coast. As a measure of retaliation against Spain, prisoners of war of that nation were treated as galley slaves, a custom abhorrent to fair usage. It was carried so far as to include the Red Indians, Iroquois, captured in Canada in the fierce war then in progress. Numbers were taken by unworthy stratagem and passed over to France, and the result was an embittered contest, which endured for four years.

A fresh device was to seek volunteers. These “bonne-voglies,” or “bonivoglios,” the Italian form most commonly used, were so called because they contracted of their own free will to accept service in the galleys, to live the wretched life of the galley slave, to submit to all his hardships, meagre fare and cruel usage, to be chained to the oar, and driven to labor under the ready lash of the overseers. These free forcats soon claimed greater consideration, and it was necessary to treat them more leniently and in a way injurious to discipline in the opinion of the captains and intendants. The convicts were more submissive and more laborious, and still the authorities sought to multiply them. A more disgraceful system than any of these already mentioned was now practised,—that of illegal detention long after the sentence had expired. By an old ordinance, any captain who thus detained a convict was liable to instant dismissal. Other laws, however, fixed a minimum term of ten years’ detention, what though the original sentence was considerable. Under Louis XIII it was ruled that six years should be the lowest term, on the ground that during the two first years a galley slave was useless on account of weak physique and want of skill in rowing. Later a good Bishop of Marseilles pleaded the cause of convicts who had endured a term of twice or three times their first sentence. A case was quoted in which thirty-four, convicted between 1652 and 1660, and sentenced to two, three or four years, were still languishing in chains in 1674. An official document of that year gives the names of twenty who had served fifteen to twenty years beyond their sentence. The intendant of the galleys at Marseilles reports in 1679, that on examining the registers he had found a certain soldier still in custody who was sentenced by a military court in 1660 to five years, and who had therefore endured fourteen. Again, a man named Caneau was sentenced in 1605 to two years and was still in confinement twelve years later. True it was open to the galerien to buy a substitute, a Turkish or other “bonivoglio,” but the price, eight hundred or one thousand francs, was scarcely within the reach of the miserable creatures at the bagnes.

It is difficult to exaggerate the horrors of the galleys. No wonder that many preferred suicide or self-mutilation to enduring it! Afloat or ashore, the convict’s condition was wretched in the extreme. On board ship each individual was chained to his bench, day and night, and the short length of the chain, as well as the nearness of his neighbors, limited his movements. His whole clothing consisted of a single loose blouse of coarse red canvas, with neither shoes nor stockings and little underlinen. His diet was of brown beans cooked in a little oil, black bread and a morsel of bacon. Personal cleanliness was entirely neglected, and all alike suffered from scurvy and were infested with vermin. Labor was incessant while at sea, and the overseers, walking on a raised platform, which ran fore and aft between the benches of rowers, stimulated effort by using their whips upon the bending backs below them. At times silence was strictly required,—as when moving to the attack or creeping away from an enemy and the whole ship’s company was gagged with a wooden ball inserted in the mouth. In the barracks ashore, when the ships were laid up for the winter, the convicts’ lot was somewhat better, for they were not at the mercy of the elements, and there was no severe labor; but the other conditions, such as diet, clothing and general discomfort, were the same. Now and again if any distinguished visitor arrived at the port, it was the custom to treat them to a cruise in one of the great galleys. The ship was dressed with all her colors, the convicts were washed clean, and wore their best red shirts, and they were trained to salute the great folk who condescended to come on board, by a strange shout of welcome: “Hou! Hou! Hou!” a cry thrice repeated, resembling the roar of a wild beast.

The merciless treatment accorded by Louis XIV to the Protestants, who dared to hold their own religious opinions, will be better realised when it is stated that great numbers of them were consigned to the galleys, to serve for years side by side with the worst malefactors, with savage Iroquois and infidel Turks, and to endure the selfsame barbarities inflicted on the wretched refuse of mankind. No greater stain rests upon the memory of a ruler, whom the weak-kneed sycophants of his age misnamed La Grande Monarque, than this monstrous persecution of honest, honorable people, who were ready to suffer all rather than sacrifice liberty of conscience. How deep and ineffaceable is the stain shall be shown in the next chapter.