Who was Louis XIV’s father?

Who was Louis XIV’s father?

by | Jun 30, 2012 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Sun Court Duet | 3 comments

A reader asked about Louis XIV’s father:

Has anyone given serious consideration to the possibility that Henri d’Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the biological father of Louis XIV?

 

Richelieu went to his close friend D’Effiat specifically to bring his handsome 18-year-old son into the court. Cinq-Mars was given the title “master of the wardrobe” which provided him access to the royal bedroom.

 

One year later, Anne was with child.  Cinq-Mars was accused of conspiring against the king (with Anne) and beheaded.

 

Cinq-Mars also was, coincidentally, “the Favorite” in the biblical sense with the gay Louis XIII.

A man suspected of being father to Louis XIV

Henri de Cinq-Mars

My go-to-person for questions regarding Sun Court history is historian Gary McCollim. He generously provided this answer:

The answer to the question is simple:

 

No one ever accused Cinq-Mars of being Louis XIV’s father because of a simple matter of dates.

 

Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638. Doctors had estimated in January that the queen was six weeks pregnant which meant that conception took place in late November 1637.  The king and queen had been at Saint-Germain-en-Laye throughout the month of November and returned to Paris on 1 December.  Doctors expected the child’s birth sometime between 23 to 28 August 1638.

 

Henri de Cinq-Mars was not appointed master of the king’s wardrobe until March 1638 when the queen was already pregnant.

 

While the appointment might have given Cinq-Mars access to the king’s bedroom, it did not give him access to the queen’s bedroom.  Also, Anne of Austria for reason explained below was reluctant to join any conspiracy after the birth of her son.  Some sources say she may even have been instrumental in exposing the Cinq-Mars conspiracy to Richelieu.

 

No serious historian today thinks that Louis XIV had any other father than Louis XIII.

 

Documentary evidence shows that Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria, made up their differences in August 1637. Anne confessed to her participation of in some of the plots around the throne and of communicating with her brother the king of Spain. She promised to cease such behavior. Her near brush with disgrace persuaded her to abandon her plots and become the wife of her husband in fact and deed, so to speak. Louis XIII was convinced by Richelieu that the plotting would continue as long as he had no male heir. Thus, marital relations resumed between the two people in late summer 1637. The king had dedicated his kingdom to the Virgin Mary in February 1637 while praying for a male heir.

 

It has been fashionable among people today at a time when gay rights are in demand to think of Louis XIII as a homosexual and thus imply that he was somehow unable to father a child.  We know that is not true. In fact, he was bisexual. He did have female favorites to whom he was loyal as well.

 

In any case, after the birth of Louis XIV the royal government put out the propaganda that his birth was miraculous, a result of prayers and supplications to God and the Virgin Mary.

 

Louis XIV was given the name Dieudonné (God-given).

 

There were many people who were surprised that the queen had gotten pregnant when she did, but no one at the time accused her of any improper behavior.  There were people, such as the king’s brother Gaston and his cousins the Condes who had strong reasons to be wary of a surprise pregnancy as they were the heirs to the throne.  Louis XIV’s birth pushed them further back in the line of succession.

 

Yet, Gaston and the Condes never made any accusations about Anne of Austira’s surprise pregnancy at the time or later during the Fronde.

 

A story emerged of the king Louis XIII being trapped in a terrible rainstorm on the night of 5 December 1637 and being forced to seek shelter in the Louvre where the only bed fit for the king was Anne of Austria’s.

 

Thus, implying that the conception took place that night. There is no proof that this story is true. Yet, it lives on in the popular imagination, plays have been written about it. In any case, Louis XIV grew up surrounded by this myth of his miraculous conception.

 

In the 1690s, however, when France was at war with all of Europe, his enemies the Dutch began to question the story and insinuated that Anne of Austria (who had died in 1666) had gotten pregnant from a man other than her husband.

 

One propaganda piece said the father was someone with the initials Le C. D. R. meaning Cardinal de Richelieu.  Soon other candidates were accused of being the real father.  Cardinal Mazarin was accused (he had died in 1661) but documentary evidence shows that he was in Italy from 1636 until 1640. Since the 1690s, historians have blamed other people, some famous like the Duke of Buckingham (died 1628) or the Duke of Beaufort (died 1669), and others less well known to be Louis XIV’s real father.

 

This whole story shows the power of propaganda to drive people’s imaginations without a shred of historical evidence.

 

In any case, Cinq-Mars has never been named as a possible father for the reasons I showed above.

Books that can shed light on this subject are:

Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Eminence (2011)

A. Lloyd Moote, Louis XIII, the Just (1989)

Ruth Kleinman, Anne of Austria, Queen of France (1985)

Claude Dulong, Anne d’Autriche (2000)

Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louis XIII (2008)

Gary is the author of: Louis XIV’s Assault of Privilege: Nicolas Desmaretz and the Tax on Wealth, published by the University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer.

His book discusses the difficult situation of royal finances at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, and how the king was forced to turn to Nicolas Desmaretz, a man who had been dismissed from the royal government in 1683 following the death of his uncle, the great Colbert.

Desmaretz had been critical of the royal government’s policies that increased the tax burden of the poorest elements of French society. He returned to the French government in 1703 as an assistant to the finance minister and became finance minister himself in February 1708. The book shows how Desmaretz and his staff were in contact with reformers and advocates of new policies. Out of this atmosphere of declining tax revenues, increasing defeats in the War of the Spanish Succession, and the refusal of France’s enemies to make a reasonable peace offer, Desmaretz decided to create a tax on the income produced by the ownership of property, in other words, a tax on the wealthiest elements of French society, to provide the funds necessary for France to survive the war and bargain for a reasonable peace.

After the war, Desmaretz was working to alleviate France’s debts in a way that could have changed the history of the eighteenth century except that Louis XIV died and Desmaretz was dismissed as the government turned to riskier schemes that boxed the royal government in for the rest of the eighteenth century leading to the Revolution.

About the author: Gary is a retired former employee of the US federal government  He was educated at Muskingum College and received his doctorate in history from The Ohio State University studying under John C. Rule, a recognized expert on Louis XIV.

As always: thank you, Gary!

See also: The conception of Louis XIV.

A treasury of information on daily life in 17th century Holland

A treasury of information on daily life in 17th century Holland

by | May 25, 2012 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Sun Court Duet | 0 comments

In researching 17th century maternity wear, I came upon a treasure-trove of information on 17th century daily life in Holland compiled by art historian Kees Kaldenbach. The facts of daily life were deducted in part from the detailed inventories of the Vermeer household and paintings.

Fascinating! Enjoy …

On courtship and making love

Childbirths, midwives, obstetricians

Maternity dress and trousseau

Children’s chair, potty chair

Baby child presented in a crisom

Feeding brest milk/mother’s milk

Vaginal syringe

Fire basket, fire holder

Mattress, bed, blanket. A bed was made of three layers:

  1. a flat mattress filled with bedstraw, horse hair or sea grass.
  2. a soft cover filled with feathers, down or “kapok” from silk-cotton trees. This is the layer a person would sleep on.
  3. sheets and blankets

Every day the sheets and blankets were folded so that the head-end and the foot-end did not touch. The pillows had to be shaken and aired for one hour, to dry the feathers, which tended to lump.

pillows (pillows, ear cushion, sit cushion, tapestry cushion — there were no chairs for the children. They were to use pillows when the adults used the chairs.); blanket,

bed cover: fascinating! The Vermeer household of 3 or 4 adults and 11 children had few blankets. People slept sitting up, two to a bedstead, propped up by pillows. The children slept in wheeled drawers which slid under the bed.

bedsheets, pillow cases, bed linen: 8 pairs of sheets were valued at 48 gilders — the equivalent of a workman’s wage for 24 to 48 days.

In the cooking kitchen

In the basement, or cellar

In the inner kitchen

Delft markets

Market bucket

Tables: fold-out table, pull-out table, round table, octagonal table, sideboard: This includes instructions on table manners. (“Do not propose to sing at the table oneself ; wait until one is invited repeatedly to do so and keep it short.”)

Trestle table

Foot stove: “One placed an earthenware container within the foot stove and filled it with glowing coals or charcoal. One then placed the feet on it. If a large dress was then lowered over it, or a chamber coat, it warmed both feet and legs.”

Tapestry table rug: “Only the most wealthy of Dutch households put Turkish rugs on the floor.”

Since I first posted this in 2012, the site moved and none of the links worked. I despaired! However, I emailed Drs Kees Kaldenbach and he kindly provided me with the new sites. Relief! This is one of the most illuminating accounts of daily life in the 17th century. For a historical novelist, it’s a gold-mine.

Brest pumps: 17th century style

Brest pumps: 17th century style

by | Apr 26, 2012 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Sun Court Duet | 6 comments

In researching pregnancy in the 17th century, I came upon a treasure-trove of information on 17th century daily life in Holland compiled by art historian Kees Kaldenbach.

The facts of daily life are deducted in part from the detailed inventories of the Vermeer household and paintings.

I intend to go into more detail later, but one historical tidbit I found fascinating.

If a baby does not suck strongly, a mother’s milk can begin dry up. That’s as true today as it was 1000 years ago.

We remedy this problem today with the use of breast pumps. In the 17th century, however (at least in Holland), one could hire certain elderly ladies to suck. It’s not known if the milk was then given mouth-to-mouth to the baby or put into a pewter feeding bottle.

For my recent blog posts on this theme:

Where are all the pregnant women?

Before “Babies ‘n Bellies,” what did pregnant women wear?

 

Where are all the pregnant women?

Where are all the pregnant women?

by | Apr 11, 2012 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Sun Court Duet | 6 comments

When studying history, one thing is clear: women were often pregnant. So why is it so rare to see pregnant women in paintings?

From a blog on Vermeer:

“There seem to be no depictions of pregnant women in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. Pregnancy was obviously considered as indecorous and not attractive and was thus kept out of public eye as much as possible.”

Perhaps that was true throughout Europe. Here are a few I found:

One painting, presumed to be of a pregnant woman, is Woman in Blue Reading a Letter by Vermeer.

Another, sometimes suspected, The Mama Lisa:

Yep, I think that’s her secret. What do you think?

Photo research diversion

by | Apr 5, 2012 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Game of Hope, The Josephine B. Trilogy | 4 comments

I’ve been on-line quite a bit selecting illustrations for my e-book publications (coming up!).

It’s wonderfully easy to get lost in this process. Side-tracked, in fact. Here are some rather surprising discoveries, specifically having to do with the people in the life of Josephine’s daughter Hortense (the subject of my next novel).

I’ve always been fond of this portrait of Alexandre de Beauharnais, Josephine’s first husband, because he’s posed with his hand in his vest — exactly as her second husband Napoleon will be portrayed.

And her son Eugène, for that matter:

Coincidental? (I think not!)

The portrait that took me aback was this grim one of Alexandre, which I’d never seen before:

My suspicion has always been that Alexandre might have been bi-polar — something he might have passed onto Hortense, in fact. It’s only a hunch, but this portrait would certainly confirm that he was not a happy man.

When a maid’s duties extend beyond making up the bed to getting in it

When a maid’s duties extend beyond making up the bed to getting in it

by | May 1, 2011 | Baroque Explorations, On Research, The Shadow Queen | 2 comments

The main character of the novel I’m writing now is relatively unknown. She was the daughter of a theatrical star and a maid to Madame de Montespan, the Sun King’s mistress (the woman we all love to hate).

As part of her duties, she was required to have sex with the King when Montespan was out of sorts.

This is not one of the duties mentioned in The compleat servant-maid, a 17th century book by Hannah Woolley on the work of maids, and dedicated to “all young maidens.”

I just obtained this invaluable guide for maid of all sorts: the Waiting-Gentlewoman, House-keeper, Chamber-Maid, Wet and Dry Nurses, House Maids (in “Great Houses”), Cook-Maids, Scullery-Maids, Laundry-Maids and Dairy-Maids.

Clearly: a lot of maids. “And they all hated me,” claimed my main character Claude, defending herself against accusations of murder and other indecencies.

I adore leafing through guides of this sort; one learns so much:

Do not put any Soap on your Tiffany…

To clean Points and Laces: Take white Bread of half a Day old, and cut it in the middle, and pare the Crust round the Edge, so that you may not damage your Point or Lace when you rube them…

Plus essential recipes for taking away freckles and making teeth white “when very foul or black.”

But nothing about sleeping with your employer’s lover … not one word. Much less what to do when you bear him a child or two. Tant pis.

{Painting: Madame de Montespan in her chateau at Clagny, near Versailles. This post was first aired on Hoydens and Firebrands, a group blog by writers who write novels set in the 17th century.}