Poison affair
The poison affair (French " affaire des poisons ") was a scandal in the years 1675 to 1682 over a series of murders in France during the reign of Louis XIV. During this time, numerous people, including celebrities and members of the nobility , were accused of poisoning , Witchcraft and other offenses to which z. B. abortions (= so-called " child murder ") belonged, suspected and / or convicted. How much of the allegations were based on facts and how much on inventions is still unclear.
prehistory
The series of trials began in 1675 after Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers and her lover, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, poisoned their father and had their brothers murdered. Your sister survived an attack. The Brinvilliers was burned at the stake . As part of the investigation, there were many rumors of other mysterious deaths.
Their trial drew attention to other mysterious deaths associated with celebrities. Even numerous people from the royal court in Versailles , from the high nobility and the king's immediate environment were drawn into the affair. A particularly fatal suspicion finally fell on the royal mistress Madame de Montespan , who u. a. with the help of love potions and black masses to have ousted their rivals in the heart of the king.
Finally, Louis XIV set up a commission known as the Chambre ardente (French: glowing chamber ), as its proceedings took place in a black-curtained, candle-lit room, and commissioned the Paris police prefect La Reynie to carry out the entire satanist circle blown up.
The investigations
The police were investigating a number of fortune tellers and alchemists who were suspected of not only conducting fortune telling and spiritualistic sessions, but also of selling aphrodisiacs and “inheritance powder” (ie poison ). Her customers wanted to get rid of either their husbands or their rivals at court.
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In 1677 La Reynie initiated rigorous investigations in the so-called Cour des poisons . This lasted until 1680. The affair quickly drew wider and wider circles. An alleged Parisian witches' circle was supplying France's aristocrats with poison and some members of the French court had already been poisoned. La Reynie exposed several members of the circle, including numerous nobles, a banker and a lawyer who were clients of the alleged witch and midwife Catherine Monvoisin Deshayes (also known as La Voisin).
The research was also directed against the respected pharmacist and chemist Christophe Glaser , from whose pharmacy the Marquise de Brinvilliers and the Chevalier Sainte-Croix had obtained the necessary ingredients. This was exonerated, but as a result pharmacists and druggists in France were legally required to keep a so-called poison book in which the names of the buyers of poisons had to be listed. La Reynie also had poison supplies hidden in various locations across France confiscated. However, he was unable to find any information about other accomplices.
By chance, a lawyer became aware of a fortune teller , Marie Bosse, who boasted that it only took three poisoning murders to retire. The lawyer then notified the police. In order to have something in hand against Marie Bosse, La Reynie set a trap for her. An agent playing a wife trying to get rid of her husband bought a bottle of poison from the suspect. The police then broke into the house and arrested Marie Bosse, another fortune teller, La Dame Vigoreux (the former lover of Bosses two former husbands), their daughter and two sons.
The two fortune tellers denied all allegations, accused each other, but gave the names of accomplices: a man named Vanens, the contact person for the poison ring, and the fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin, known as La Voisin. The fortune teller La Filastre confessed to having sacrificed her own newborn baby at a black mass. Another sorcerer, Lesage, was tortured to make a confession and denounced Father Davot and Abbé Mariette. Both are said to have read black masses over the bodies of naked girls in La Voisin's chapel. Father Touret is said to have had sexual intercourse with a girl in public. Abbé Guibourg was also charged with celebrating black masses with naked women. Under the torture, he confessed to the murder of a child whose throat he cut and the blood collected in a goblet. The heart and viscera were used in later masses. La Voisin's sixteen-year-old daughter and one of the Abbé's three mistresses confirmed this representation. At another mass, Guibourg mixed the menstrual blood of Mademoiselle des Œillets , Madame de Montespan's maid, with the semen of her companion and the dried blood of bats to make a potion that would increase her influence on the king. Poison was also sold to the widow of the late President of the French Parliament and the cousin of one of the judges in the trial.
The French court under suspicion
Since there were already rumors in 1670, after the sudden death of Henriette , the Duchess of Orléans, that she had been poisoned by her husband, the king's brother , and / or by his favorite, the Chevalier de Lorraine , La Reynie concentrated his investigations on the court society in Versailles .
First Madame de Poulaillon was exposed, who had tried to poison her old husband in order to get hold of his property. But he suspected the danger and fled to a monastery. Gradually higher and higher suspects were charged, among them the tragedy poet Jean Racine , who received a prison sentence but did not serve it. Madame de Lusignan was accused of jumping around naked in the woods with her priest and of abusing an Easter candle for obscene purposes.
On January 23, 1680 Olympia Mancini and the Duchess of Bouillon (both nieces of Cardinal Mazarin ) became the Marquise d 'Allnye, the Marquise of Polignac, the Count of Clermont , the Duchess of Angoulême , the Princess of Tingry , the Marquise of Roure , the Duke of Luxembourg and the Marquis de Feuquières arrested and imprisoned. But some of them managed to escape and leave the country.
Since the arrested people were of high class and members of the court, clear evidence had to be produced. So La Voisin and the others were forced to testify through the Spanish boot , the rack and the water torture . La Voisin insisted on not being a witch until the end .
La Reynie was so convinced of the confessions that he said:
"I have checked over and over again everything that could possibly be convinced me that the allegations were false, but such a conclusion is simply not possible."
However, the incriminating testimony was obtained through the torture , and many of the main witnesses had dubious reputations, contradicted themselves, or retracted their confessions at the stake (e.g. La Filastre). However, numerous pieces of evidence were found in the houses of the accused fortune-tellers, such as poisons, wax dolls, black candles and black magic books . This is why the majority of French society believed that witchcraft was clearly proven, and Louis XIV was forced to act to prevent an outrage directed against his court.
To this day, it is unclear whether the black masses of which the police became aware actually took place or whether they only collected sensational reports that were invented, among other things, to discredit high-ranking personalities who might belong to a different faction.
Punish
The charges were witchcraft, murder and much more. Most of the allegations were never really resolved, but in the course of the investigation there were 360 arrests, 218 interrogations, some of them involving torture and 110 judgments. Two suspects died under torture , 36 were executed by sword or at the stake , four were sent to the galleys, 34 exiled and 30 acquitted. Marshal Montmorency-Bouteville was briefly in custody in 1680, but then became captain of the guard as a free man. Others, like the Abbé Guiborg, were put in solitary confinement in dungeons.
On February 22, 1680, La Voisin, Marie Bosse and La Vigoreux were sentenced to death at the stake. Marie Bosse's son, François, was sentenced to death by hanging. Madame de Poulaillon was sent into exile.
Marquise de Montespan
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The Chambre ardente officially ceased its work in August 1680, whereupon Prefect La Reynie commented with the words: " The extent of their crimes gives them protection ". However, La Reynie had been instructed to investigate the testimony of Madame de Montespan in secret, since the name of her chambermaid, Claude des Œillets , often appeared in the testimony of the Chambre Ardente .
Only now did it become clear to Louis XIV why he woke up with a headache the next morning after every evening with his lover. He must have ingested tons of poison over the years. It was also alleged that, after being introduced to La Voisin and Abbe Guiborg's witch circles, the Montespan participated in various ceremonies in order to maintain her special status as the king's favorite.
Allegedly during these ceremonies, Madame de Montespan was laid naked on an altar while her requests for the king's favor were passed on to the Christian god and the gods of the underworld. She is even said to have allowed Guiborg to insert a host into her vagina and then have intercourse with her while he was praying.
The Marquise de Montespan was even suspected of being guilty of the sudden death of the king's mistress, Angélique de Fontanges . Several accomplices of Voisin, her own daughter, the valet Romani, his godfather Bertrand and Filastre, testified that the Fontanges were planned to be poisoned with cloth and gloves; and Romani tried to get into the Fontanges' house disguised as a cloth dealer. However, recent studies have shown that the Duchess of Fontanges died of pleurisy.
La Reynie spent two years gathering evidence against Madame de Montespan. But Madame de Maintenon , Minister Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois helped to cover up the affair, since the Montespan was the mother of the king's legitimate children and it would have been an embarrassment for Ludwig if it had been found out that he had been seduced by love potions . Madame de Montespan, however, had irretrievably lost the king's favor.
La Reynie was also advised to discontinue its further investigations, as it was feared that even more members of the nobility could be involved in a scandal in close proximity to the king.
consequences
The poison affair ended with a final execution in July 1683. A few days later the king passed a law regulating the trade in poisonous substances. Louis XIV had divination banned in all of France.
Witchcraft was declared deceitful and imaginary by a decree in 1682, thus heralding the end of the witchcraft madness in France.
supporting documents
- ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, pp. 77-83.
- ↑ Philip Jenkins : Satanism and Ritual Abuse. In: James R Lewis (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2004, p. 224.
- ^ Ulrich Karl Dreikandt (eds.) And Otto Schüngel: Black masses. Seals and Documents Zurich 1972. Dtv, 1975
- ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, pp. 180, 183, 187.
- ^ Gilette Ziegler: The court of Ludwig XIV. In eyewitness reports . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1964, p. 187.
literature
- Maximilian Jacta (alias Erich Schwinge ): Famous criminal trials . Special edition. Orbis-Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-572-01242-2 .
- Louis Lewin : The poisons in world history. Toxicological studies of historical sources in a generally understandable way. 3. Edition. Reprographic reprint of the edition by Springer, Berlin 1920. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1984, ISBN 3-8067-2013-4 .
- Frances Mossiker: The Affair of the Poisons. Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan, and one of History's great Unsolved Mysteries. Alfred A. Knopf, New York NY 1969.
- Éric Le Nabour: La Reynie. Le policier de Louis XIV. Perrin, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-262-00806-X .
- François Gayot de Pitaval : Unheard of criminal cases. A collection of famous and strange criminal cases. After the selection and translation published by Friedrich Schiller from 1792–1794, it was revised and compiled. Voltmedia, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-937229-03-5 .
- Anne Somerset: The poison affair. Murder, human sacrifice and black masses at the court of Ludwig XIV. Magnus, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-88400-441-7 .
Web links
- Jan von Flocken : 1679 - The Versailles poisoning scandal. On welt.de , January 9, 2008.