Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, was beheaded on the Place de Grève in Paris on July 17, 1676. The day before, the Parlement of Paris had declared her duly convicted of having her father poisoned, of having her two brothers poisoned, and of an attempt on the life of her sister. The judgment said she had acted out of vengeance and to have their property. She was the daughter and sister of senior Paris magistrates. Three years later the investigations that grew out of the same climate became the Affair of the Poisons, which reached people close to King Louis XIV.
What is known about her comes from a short list of documents and from historians who have read them. The judgment of July 16, 1676, survives. So do the letters of Madame de Sévigné, who followed the trial closely from her own circle in Paris and wrote about it to her daughter. Her confessor, the Abbé Pirot, left an account of her last days. Much of what was said about her in her own time was rumor.
She was born about 1630, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Benedetta Faedi Duramy, in a 2012 study in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, describes her as the eldest of five children of Antoine Dreux d'Aubray, seigneur of Offémont and Villiers and a councillor of state. Her father's family belonged to the magistracy, the class of royal judges and officials whose offices carried rank and prestige in seventeenth-century France. He was named a master of requests in 1638, civil lieutenant of Paris in 1643 and lieutenant general of the mines of France, according to the same study. The civil lieutenant was one of the chief judges of the Châtelet, the royal court of Paris.
Her elder brother followed their father into the office of civil lieutenant. Her younger brother became a councillor of the Parlement of Paris, the high court that would one day try her. Her sister Thérèse is named in the judgment.
In 1651 she married Antoine Gobelin, Marquis de Brinvilliers, Baron de Nourar. Britannica describes him as an army officer. Faedi Duramy writes that she was about seventeen and that the match was most likely arranged between the two families; Alban Dignat, writing for the French history site Herodote.net, puts her age at twenty-one. Dignat describes the marquis as a wealthy man who ran through his own fortune and her dowry, and writes that the couple had six children.
The man whose life became bound up with hers was an army officer, Jean-Baptiste Godin de Sainte-Croix. Britannica describes him as a friend of her husband, and Faedi Duramy writes that the marquis had met him in 1659. Sainte-Croix became her lover.
In 1663 her father obtained a lettre de cachet, a royal order of detention, and Sainte-Croix was arrested and taken to the Bastille. Faedi Duramy writes that he spent about three months there. Both she and Dignat report that in prison he met an Italian who was said to know poisons; she calls him Exili, and Dignat gives the name as Eggidi. On their account Sainte-Croix learned from him and came out of the Bastille with a new skill and a grievance against the man who had put him there.
Britannica writes that Sainte-Croix obtained his poisons with the help of one of the king's apothecaries. Madame de Sévigné, in a letter of July 17, 1676, named him: Glaser, whom she called "their poisoning apothecary." Erika Carroll, in a 2012 study in Chapman University's history journal Voces Novae, identifies him as Christophe Glaser, a Swiss chemist and apothecary who held the post of apothecary to Louis XIV and to the king's brother, the Duke of Orléans, and who gave public lectures in chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. He published a chemistry manual written for ordinary readers, the Traité de la Chymie, in Paris in 1672. Carroll writes that Sainte-Croix had attended some of his lectures and that the marquise later named Glaser as Sainte-Croix's main supplier and teacher. An apprentice from his shop testified about a preparation she had collected there.
Carroll's argument is that books such as Glaser's, and Nicolas Lemery's chemistry course of 1675, put practical knowledge of dangerous substances within reach of educated lay readers, and that the trial in turn spread that knowledge further. No charge or verdict against Glaser himself was reported.
Her father died in 1666. The judgment of 1676 found that she had had him poisoned, and the penance it ordered required her to declare publicly that she had poisoned him. Carroll, drawing on the published brief prepared for the prosecution, writes that he fell ill, left Paris to recover in the country, and that his daughter followed him there on the pretext of nursing him and went on giving him the poison in small doses. Madame de Sévigné reported on the day of the execution that the marquise had confessed to giving her father poison ten times in a row without being able to finish him.
Her two brothers died in 1670. The judgment names them only by their offices: one the civil lieutenant, the other a councillor of the Parlement. According to Carroll, the elder brother's death was followed about three months later by the younger brother's, with the same symptoms. Faedi Duramy writes that the autopsies put the deaths down to natural causes.
The man who carried the poison into the brothers' household was a servant named Amelin, known as La Chaussée, who is named in the judgment as "Amelin, dit Lachaussée." Carroll describes him as a lackey in the civil lieutenant's service who was paid by the marquise and Sainte-Croix to put the poison into the brothers' food and drink.
The judgment gave the motive in the words she was to speak at the door of Notre-Dame: she had acted "out of vengeance and to have their property." Faedi Duramy notes that her father had left the family fortune to his male heirs, and she quotes the marquise's later statement that she had acted out of ambition for her family and her children.
The court found that she had also attempted the life of her sister, Thérèse d'Aubray. Thérèse survived. The judgment stripped the marquise of any right to inherit from her father, her brothers or her sister, counted from the day of the crimes.
Sainte-Croix died in 1672. The French Ministry of Justice, in a history of the case published on its website, gives the date as July 31, 1672, and says he was found dead at his home and that his death was natural. Carroll and Faedi Duramy repeat the older story that he died during one of his own experiments; Faedi Duramy calls this probable, and no court ever ruled on it.
When his effects were inventoried, the officials found vials of poison and a small casket. The Ministry of Justice says the casket held nine letters from his mistress, the Marquise de Brinvilliers, in which she claimed to have poisoned her father in 1666 and her two brothers in 1670. It also held a note of debt connected with Louis Reich de Pennautier, receiver general of the clergy and a friend of the finance minister, Colbert. An apothecary who analyzed the substances found that they were strong poisons that left few traces in the body. Carroll, working from the prosecution brief, describes a sealed set of packets marked to be burned in case of death and a large bundle of letters addressed to the marquise.
The casket made La Chaussée a suspect. Carroll writes that he was arrested in 1673, questioned under the judicial question, and executed; she gives March 24, 1673, as the date of his arrest. The 1676 judgment ordered her to pay the costs of the earlier proceedings against him.
When she learned that the casket had been found, the marquise fled. The Ministry of Justice writes that she went to London, and that the war minister, Louvois, ordered Nicolas de La Reynie, the lieutenant general of police of Paris, to arrest her and gave him full powers to do it. In 1673 she was sentenced to death in absentia. Faedi Duramy writes that she moved on from London to Holland.
The ministry's history adds a political reading. On its account Louvois wanted to tie Pennautier to the case in order to damage his rival Colbert, and the rivalry between the two ministers shaped the way the inquiry was pursued.
She was finally taken in a convent at Liège. The Ministry of Justice gives the date as March 25, 1676, and says she was captured by an agent of La Reynie disguised as a priest. Dignat writes that the arrest came after Louis XIV's troops had occupied Liège and that Louvois had her taken from the convent. Faedi Duramy dates the arrest to 1675. The officer who made it was Desgrez; Madame de Sévigné reported in July that the marquise had called him "that rascal Desgrez who took me."
Among her papers was a long written confession. Madame de Sévigné, writing on April 29, 1676, reported what Paris had heard about it: that in it she accused herself of having poisoned her father, her brothers and one of her children, and of much else. The confession was the heart of the prosecution's case. Faedi Duramy writes that it was the only conclusive evidence against her.
She was brought back to Paris and held in prison. Her trial before the Parlement of Paris began on April 29, 1676, according to the Ministry of Justice. Faedi Duramy writes that it ran to twenty-two sessions over two and a half months and that she had no lawyer and defended herself.
Madame de Sévigné's letter of April 29 gives a glimpse of her in prison. The marquise, she wrote, was defending herself fairly well, and the day before she had asked to play piquet because she was bored. Shown the confession, she admitted that it was in her own handwriting. She said she had written it in a high fever, in a fit of frenzy, and that it could not be read seriously. Sévigné thought this a poor defense.
Faedi Duramy writes that in court she denied poisoning her father and brothers and laid the blame on Sainte-Croix, describing him as a man who had hidden a black soul. Carroll lists witnesses heard against her, among them a sergeant, the daughter of an apothecary, who described Sainte-Croix bringing his casket on his visits, the apprentice from Glaser's shop, and a woman of the marquise's household.
The judges were also looking past her. The Ministry of Justice writes that they focused on her links to Pennautier, who was accused and imprisoned. On July 10 Sévigné reported that the marquise had been brought face to face with him, and that people expected she might drag him down with her. She did not. The ministry writes that she never stopped affirming his innocence, and that he was released for lack of evidence. Sévigné predicted on July 22 that he would come out of the affair "a little whiter than snow," and noted that the public was not pleased.
Faedi Duramy writes that the court wanted her to name her accomplices and to reveal the secret of her poisons, and she quotes President Lamoignon of the Parlement of Paris as saying that it was in the public interest that her crimes should die with her.
The judgment was given by the Parlement with the Grand Chambre and the criminal chambers of the Tournelle sitting together, on the conclusions of the king's procureur general. It declared "the said d'Aubray de Brinvilliers" duly convicted of having had Maître Dreux d'Aubray, her father, poisoned, of having had her two brothers poisoned, one the civil lieutenant and the other a councillor of the Parlement, and of having attempted the life of Thérèse d'Aubray, her sister.
The court ordered that she be taken in a cart to the main door of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, barefoot, with a rope around her neck, holding a burning torch weighing two pounds, and there, on her knees, declare that she had wickedly, out of vengeance and to have their property, poisoned her father, had her two brothers poisoned and attempted her sister's life, that she repented of it, and that she asked pardon of God, the king and justice. She was then to be taken in the same cart to the Place de Grève, beheaded on a scaffold built for the purpose, her body burned and the ashes thrown to the wind.
Before that, the judgment ordered, she was to be put to the ordinary and extraordinary question, the judicial torture of the period, in order to obtain the names of her accomplices. It declared her stripped of the inheritances of her father, her brothers and her sister from the day of the crimes, and her property confiscated. From her goods the court took a fine of 4,000 livres to the king, 400 livres for prayers in the chapel of the Conciergerie for the souls of her father, brothers and sister, and 10,000 livres in reparation to Madame Mangot, together with all the costs, including those of the case against La Chaussée. Carroll identifies Madame Mangot as the widow of the civil lieutenant, the elder brother, and as the accuser named in the prosecution brief.
The sentence was carried out the next day. Madame de Sévigné opened her letter of July 17 with the words "At last it is done." She described the day as she had heard it. After the marquise made her confession, she was given the ordinary and extraordinary question in the morning all the same, and she said nothing more. She asked to speak with the procureur general and spent an hour with him; no one yet knew what they had said. She talked until five in the afternoon.
At six o'clock she was taken to Notre-Dame in the cart, in a plain shift and with a rope around her neck, with a confessor beside her, and made the public penance the court had ordered. Carroll identifies the confessor as the Abbé Pirot, who wrote an account of her final days. From Notre-Dame she was taken to the Place de Grève. Madame de Sévigné watched from the Pont Notre-Dame and saw only the headdress she wore. Her body was burned, as the judgment had ordered.
On July 22 Sévigné added details she had collected. On the way to the scaffold the marquise asked not to be made to look at Desgrez, the officer who had arrested her. On the day after the execution, Sévigné wrote, the common people were saying that she was a saint.
Dignat writes that among the spectators were the court painter Charles Le Brun, who made the only portrait of her, and Olympe Mancini, the widow of the Count of Soissons and a former favorite of the king.
Two kinds of statements come from her last days. The first are confessions about her own family, which Sévigné reported and which matched the court's findings. The second are hints about others. Britannica gives her words as: "Half the people of quality are involved in this sort of thing, and I could ruin them if I were to talk." Faedi Duramy gives two versions of the remark, one placing it during the trial and one just before the execution. Dignat writes that she made such a statement in her final interrogation by the procureur general, and that she refused to name names.
Sévigné also reported that the marquise had said a Monsieur Foucquet had sent Glaser to Italy to look for a plant used to make poison. Sévigné thought this suspect, and it led nowhere in court.
Paris believed a great deal more than the court found. Sévigné passed several of these stories on. On May 1 she wrote that the marquise had wanted to marry Sainte-Croix and had poisoned her husband many times for that purpose, and that Sainte-Croix kept giving the husband antidotes, so that he was poisoned and saved five or six times. On July 3 she repeated a story of poisoned pies that had killed several guests the marquise had not meant to harm, among them the commander of the city watch, who was said to have died two or three years later.
Faedi Duramy writes that the marquise confessed, before the question, to attempts on her sister-in-law, her husband and her sister, and that her husband survived. Dignat writes that she was suspected of planning to poison Sainte-Croix, one of her sisters and her own daughter, and Carroll notes that some documents suggest she also poisoned her daughters and husband but that the trial evidence did not support it. None of these deaths or attempts, apart from the attempt on her sister Thérèse, was part of the judgment.
The best-known claim about her is that she tried out her poisons on the sick poor of Paris before using them on her family. Faedi Duramy, citing the English biographer Hugh Stokes (1912) and the French historian Frantz Funck-Brentano (1928), writes that she tested poisons on her servants and on patients of the Hôtel-Dieu, the city's public hospital, where she visited as a charitable volunteer, giving them sweets, biscuits and wine. No figure for such deaths appears in the judgment, which deals only with her father, her brothers and her sister. The claim is unproven, and no court ever ruled on it.
Her sentence was the one reserved for a person of rank. Dignat writes that because she was noble she was simply beheaded, after the question and the public penance. The contrast with the later poisoning cases is plain in the record. Catherine Deshayes, the wife Monvoisin, known as La Voisin, a fortune teller of humble background, was burned alive on the Place de Grève on February 22, 1680, according to the Ministry of Justice and Britannica. Faedi Duramy's study argues that the courts of the period gave different responses to women poisoners according to class and social rank, and that blaming women for poisoning the country also served to cover the monarchy's own weaknesses.
The Ministry of Justice calls the Brinvilliers case the prelude to the Affair of the Poisons. La Reynie, who had pursued her, remained alert to poisoning after her death, and the same rivalry between Louvois and Colbert ran through both cases. Faedi Duramy writes that after the trial the king put La Reynie in charge of the inquiry into poisoning and that arrests of alchemists and poisoners followed. Dignat writes that La Reynie quietly searched the Paris underworld where poisons were traded. Carroll quotes Sévigné's prediction that the execution would set off a fashion for poisoning in France.
The ministry's history traces the next steps. In September 1677 an anonymous note about a plot involving a white powder was left in a confessional of the Jesuits in the rue Saint-Antoine, and La Reynie took up the inquiry. It led to a woman held at the Châtelet on a charge of poisoning her husband, and from her to Marie Bosse, who boasted of providing poison to aristocratic women of Paris. Bosse named La Voisin, who was arrested on March 12, 1679, with several others.
On April 7, 1679, at La Reynie's urging, Louis XIV created a special court to try "an affair of poisons," the Chambre ardente, named for its room hung in black and lit by torches. It sat at the Arsenal near the Bastille under Louis Boucherat, with Bazin de Bezons and La Reynie as rapporteurs. Between April 10, 1679, and July 21, 1682, the ministry writes, it heard 442 accused, ordered 367 arrests and kept 218 of them in force; it executed 34 people, sent 5 to the galleys and banished 23. Britannica gives the court 210 sessions, 319 arrest warrants and 36 death sentences. When the accusations reached Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress, the king had the evidence gathered in a sealed casket under his own control, and on July 21, 1682, he suspended the court. The remaining prisoners were held for life under royal orders. In July 1709, the ministry writes, Louis XIV burned the files himself.
Carroll records two more results. By 1681 there were 147 prisoners held in the Bastille and Vincennes on poison charges, and in 1682 a royal edict placed controls on arsenic and on laboratories, with certification for those who handled such substances.
These points are disputed or were never tried:
The deaths of hospital patients. The Hôtel-Dieu story is reported by Faedi Duramy from older biographies. The judgment does not mention it, and no count of such deaths appears in the record.
Her husband. Sévigné repeated the story that she poisoned him several times and that Sainte-Croix saved him with antidotes, and Faedi Duramy writes that she confessed to attempts on him. He was not named in the judgment, and he survived.
Her children. Sévigné reported that her confession spoke of poisoning one of her children. Dignat and Carroll mention suspicions about a daughter or daughters. No court ruled on any child.
The poisoned pies. Sévigné's story of guests dying after a meal was gossip she passed on, not a finding.
The source of the poisons. The story that Sainte-Croix learned poisoning from an Italian in the Bastille comes from historians and older accounts; the name is given as Exili and as Eggidi. Glaser was named by the marquise, according to Sévigné and Carroll, but no proceeding against him has been reported.
Pennautier. He was accused and imprisoned, and released for lack of evidence. She affirmed his innocence throughout.
Foucquet. Her claim, reported by Sévigné, that Foucquet sent Glaser to Italy for a poison plant was doubted by Sévigné herself and never tested in court.
Sainte-Croix's death. The Ministry of Justice calls it natural; the older story that he died during an experiment is unproven.
About 1630: Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray is born, the eldest child of Antoine Dreux d'Aubray.
1638: her father becomes a master of requests; in 1643 he becomes civil lieutenant of Paris.
1651: she marries Antoine Gobelin, Marquis de Brinvilliers.
1659: her husband meets Godin de Sainte-Croix, who becomes her lover.
1663: at her father's request, Sainte-Croix is taken to the Bastille under a lettre de cachet.
1666: her father dies; the court later finds that she had him poisoned.
1670: her two brothers, the civil lieutenant and a councillor of the Parlement, die about three months apart; the court later finds that she had them poisoned.
July 31, 1672: Sainte-Croix is found dead at his home; the inventory of his effects turns up the casket.
1673: La Chaussée is arrested (March 24, by one account), questioned and executed; the marquise, who has fled to London, is sentenced to death in absentia.
March 25, 1676: she is arrested in a convent at Liège.
April 29, 1676: her trial begins before the Parlement of Paris.
July 10, 1676: she is confronted with Pennautier.
July 16, 1676: the Parlement declares her duly convicted and sentences her to death.
July 17, 1676: she is questioned under the judicial question, makes public penance at Notre-Dame and is beheaded on the Place de Grève; her body is burned.
September 1677: an anonymous note left in a Paris confessional begins the inquiry that leads to Marie Bosse and La Voisin.
April 7, 1679: Louis XIV creates the Chambre ardente.
February 22, 1680: La Voisin is burned on the Place de Grève.
July 21, 1682: the king suspends the Chambre ardente.
July 1709: Louis XIV burns the sealed files of the inquiry.