In 1670, the otherwise healthy sons of Antoine Dreux d’Aubray, a wealthy and powerful counselor of state in Paris, died within weeks of each other. The two young men had shown no signs of illness, and their sudden passing in the summer of that year sparked immediate suspicion. An investigation followed, but nothing was uncovered, and no charges were brought. It would take two more years, a dead lover, and a hidden chest of poisons before the truth emerged: the woman responsible was their own sister, Marie-Madeleine, the Marquise de Brinvilliers.
Born on July 22, 1630, Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray was the eldest daughter of Antoine Dreux d’Aubray, a man who held several influential offices within the French government, including counselor of state and master of requests. These positions controlled access to the French court and were highly lucrative, bringing in regular bribes and payments. As a result, the family was extremely wealthy. But Marie-Madeleine was not male, and under the laws of the time, that meant she could not inherit the bulk of her father’s vast estate when he died.
That circumstance would eventually prove fatal for her family. In 1651, at the age of twenty-one, Marie-Madeleine married Antoine Gobelin, Baron de Noyel, a minor noble from a family that had run a famous tapestry workshop for generations. Shortly after the marriage, Gobelin was made a marquis, and Marie-Madeleine became the Marquise de Brinvilliers. But the marquis was a dissolute man, an inveterate gambler who squandered both his inherited wealth and the massive dowry of 200,000 livres he had received from his father-in-law.
By the 1660s, the couple was drowning in debt. The financial problems were mirrored by the state of the marriage. The couple had an open arrangement, and the marquise carried on a long-running affair with an officer named Godin de Sainte-Croix, a man she had been introduced to by her own husband. She bore seven children, but it was widely suspected that at least three of them were fathered by Sainte-Croix or other lovers.
Her father, Antoine Dreux d’Aubray, learned of the affair by the early 1660s and was deeply troubled. A public scandal involving his daughter and her lover could ruin the family’s reputation in Parisian high society. In an effort to end the relationship, he obtained a letter from King Louis XIV ordering Sainte-Croix’s arrest on unspecified charges. Sainte-Croix served a considerable sentence at the Bastille in the mid-1660s.
The father’s action infuriated the marquise. Combined with the family’s spiraling financial situation, it created a toxic situation that would lead directly to her crimes. It was during the mid-1660s that she developed the idea of poisoning her father and siblings to acquire the family’s vast wealth. Various theories emerged about how she learned to do it.
One suggested that Sainte-Croix, while imprisoned at the Bastille, came into contact with individuals skilled in the art of poisoning. Another claimed the marquise tested different poisons on sick patients at Parisian hospitals. Some even speculated she experimented on her own household servants, and that she may have been responsible for killing as many as thirty people in all. But there is little concrete evidence to support these claims, and if servants had regularly fallen ill, it would have aroused considerable suspicion.
What is clear is that with the aid of Sainte-Croix, who had served his prison sentence, the marquise began poisoning her father in 1666. She was a regular guest at his household and easily administered an arsenic-based poison disguised in his food and drink. He died on September 10, 1666, and an investigation concluded that he had died of natural causes. No autopsy was performed.
Her brothers would now inherit the bulk of their father’s estate, so she quickly determined to poison them as well. This was more difficult. Her father had been aging, and as a supposedly doting daughter, she had easy access to his food. Her brothers were a different matter.
She hired a man named Jean Amelin, commonly known as La Chaussée, to work in the family home and administer poison whenever opportunities arose. It was a tricky undertaking. The first brother, Antoine, was killed in June 1670, and the second died in September of that same year. This time, the deaths of two young, healthy men within weeks of each other prompted a far more comprehensive investigation by medical and civil authorities.
Many suspected foul play, but nothing sinister was uncovered, and no charges were brought. For some time, it appeared the marquise had gotten away with her crimes. She was soon enjoying her newfound wealth. The plan unraveled in 1672, when Sainte-Croix died suddenly.
The cause was perhaps illness, though it has been speculated that he accidentally poisoned himself. Whatever the cause, his death was sudden enough that he had not removed a large amount of self-incriminating evidence from his residence. When Parisian police investigated, they discovered a chest in his apartments containing samples of the poisons he and the marquise had used over the years, along with a series of letters between the two. The letters did not openly state their crimes, but they provided sufficient grounds for considerable suspicion.
The investigation into the deaths of the marquise’s father and brothers was reopened. When she learned what had been found, she fled Paris. Further damning evidence came in early 1673, when La Chaussée was apprehended. After extensive questioning, he laid out the entire details of what had taken place, including his own role in the poisoning of the two brothers.
Poisoning was considered a particularly heinous crime in early modern France, and La Chaussée was tortured before being executed on March 24, 1673. The marquise spent the next three years on the run, though she did not venture far. She first took refuge in England, then lived in exile just over the northeastern border of France, in the region that is now Belgium but was then part of the Spanish Empire. It was in the town of Liège that she was finally apprehended in 1676 and extradited to France.
She had already been found guilty in absentia following her flight in 1673, but a new trial was nonetheless held. It was effectively a show trial. The marquise was not inclined to cooperate. At first, she outright denied any involvement in the poisoning of her father and siblings, despite considerable evidence and witnesses that left little doubt about her guilt.
Faced with her unwillingness to confess, the authorities decided she should be tortured. The method chosen was the water cure, a procedure in which the victim’s mouth is forced open with a wedge, and copious amounts of water are poured relentlessly into the mouth, causing gastric distension, drowning, and even death if applied long enough. It is related to the modern practice of waterboarding. On July 16, 1676, faced with the prospect of this torture, the marquise confessed to her crimes.
Nevertheless, she was put through the water cure for four hours to determine if there were further crimes or plots of which the authorities were unaware. It revealed little of real substance. She was then taken to the Place de Grève, a regular site of public executions in early modern Paris, where the Hôtel de Ville stands today. There, on July 16, 1676, Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers was executed by having her head cut off with a sword.
Her body was then burned. The marquise’s death did not end the matter. It ushered in a period in French social and political history known as the Affair of the Poisons, which continued for six more years until 1682. The affair arose largely out of increasing paranoia among the Parisian aristocracy and elite about other possible attempts to poison individuals involved in succession disputes.
King Louis XIV was particularly perturbed. Numerous further trials followed, often on dubious grounds, while the police and security forces of the capital rounded up fortune tellers, alchemists, and others suspected of producing poisons. Others implicated included high-ranking members of the French aristocracy, such as Olympia Mancini, the Countess of Soissons, who was exiled from France as a result, though not executed. Before the affair ended in 1682, it resulted in the execution of thirty-six individuals, while a further twenty-three people were exiled.
At one point, hundreds of individuals were under suspicion or had warrants issued for their arrest. The actions of Madame de Brinvilliers had created a major controversy within French society that reached far beyond her own deeds. Her story proved so compelling that it was later memorialized in works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexandre Dumas, both of whom composed pieces based on her life and crimes.
