Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIVFunck-Brentano, Frantz
History
Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV
Funck-Brentano, Frantz
France -- Court and courtiers; France -- History -- Louis XIV, 1643-1715; Poisoners
'The king having thought fit to send to the château of St. André de
Salins some of the people who were arrested in virtue of warrants of the
court that dealt with the matter of the poisons, his Majesty has
commanded me to inform you that his intention is that you prepare two
rooms in the said château, so that six of these prisoners may be kept
safely in each of them, the which prisoners are to have each a mattress
in the place arranged for them, and to be fastened either by a hand or a
foot to a chain which shall be fastened to the wall, the said chain
however to be long enough not to prevent them from lying down. As these
people are criminals who deserve extreme penalties, the intention of the
king is that they be thus fastened for fear they should injure the
people set to guard them, who will go in and out to bring them food and
attend to them generally. His Majesty's intention is that you prepare
two similar rooms in the citadel of Besançon, so that twelve of the
prisoners may be kept securely there. You will observe that these rooms
are to be so situated that no one can hear what these people say.'
Auzillon, one of the staff of the provost of the Isle de France,
escorted the principal sorceresses, Pelletier, Poulain, Delaporte, the
girl Monvoisin, and Catherine Leroy, to the citadel of Belle-Isle-en-Mer.
La Chappelain, the companion of La Filastre, was imprisoned in the
castle of Villefranche, where she died forty years later, on June 4,
1724. She lived there in company with another sorceress who, like her,
had been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Chambre Ardente, and for
the same reasons--namely, La Guesdon.
The governor of Villefranche wrote in August 1717, that 'of two old
prisoners of state for poison, the survivors of four who had been locked
up there for thirty-six years, La Guesdon died on the 15th instant,
leaving forty-five livres in silver, which she had saved during that
time out of her eight sous a day for food: of these she instructed her
surviving companion to take what she needed for her personal use, and
to use the balance in paying for prayers for her--this is one pensioner
the less for the king. The woman was seventy-six years old; the survivor
(La Chappelain) is no younger. They were in the same room.'
Finally, a few prisoners at the Bastille and Vincennes, wholly ignorant
of the poison affair, and others whose innocence was recognised by the
commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, had been shut up, unluckily for
themselves, in the same room with prisoners implicated in the crimes of
Madame de Montespan. This chance meeting condemned them to perpetual
confinement.
'Manon Bosse,' writes La Reynie, 'was sent to the nuns of Baffens, at
Besançon, under the name of Mademoiselle Manon Dubosc, where the king
pensioned her to the tune of 250 livres; she was never liberated,
because she had been locked up with the daughter of La Voisin, who had
told her everything.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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