"Authentic proofs exist," says Taine, "demonstrating that Madame de Pompadour cost Louis XV. a sum equal to about seventy-two millions of present value (£2,880,000)." She would examine the plans of campaign of her marshals in her boudoir, and mark with patches (_mouches_) the places to be defended or attacked. Such was the foolish extravagance of the court that to raise money recourse was had to an attempted taxation of the clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Grève, where he was lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses, and the fragments burned to ashes. A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use of their ascendency at court to awaken in the king's mind some sense of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis, urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies; the Parlement suppressed the Society in France, secularised its members and confiscated its property.