Titillating Tidbits
Funny, sad and scandalous stories from the court of Louis XIV.
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Was Louis XIV illegitimate?
Versailles season 3 plays with the idea that Louis XIV, the great Sun King, was not legitimate. This idea is not new at all and pretty much as old as Louis XIV. If a child is legitimate, it means it is born to two people bound in marriage and those two people are the natural parents of the child. If…
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A Party At Vaux-le-Vicomte…
“On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody.” This quote by Voltaire sums the evening of 17 August in 1661 perfectly up. In the early evening hours of that warm summer day, Nicolas Fouquet’s star shone bright on the firmament over Vaux-le-Vicomte. Only a few hours later, he…
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The château de Marly and the “les Marlys”
In 1676, before the court moved to Versailles and while Versailles was a big construction side, Louis XIV bought two estates not too far away for another large building project… which would become a château of which many said it outshone Versailles. The Sun King bought two ancient seigneuries -fiefs- called Marly-le-Chastel and Marly-le-Bourg, located between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye in a…
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La ménagerie royale de Versailles
Not much is left of it today, but back in the days the ménagerie royale was one of the major attractions of Versailles. The court loved animals, which can already be seen when looking at the vast amount of pets that lived at the palace. Louis XIV and his court were especially fond of dogs. The Sun King loved Great Pyrenees,…
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Ten things you probably did not know about the château de Versailles…
Versailles, home to Kings, Queens and a whole lot of nobles. Millions of people visit the château every year and are in awe at the sight of its splendour. Here are ten more or less known facts about the château de Versailles. -The Opéra royal de Versailles was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel and inaugurated on 16 May in 1770 as part…
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Mouches
Mouches aka fake beauty spots were incredibly popular at the court of Louis XIV and worn by males and females alike. They were usually made of black silk, velvet, muslin or taffeta, but could also be made of leather or paper, and came in all sort of forms. The dot was the most common shape, followed by starts, little hearts,…
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Chaise à Porteurs
Chaise à Porteurs aka sedan chairs were an incredibly useful mode of transportation at the court of Louis XIV and especially at Versailles, where the distances between buildings were, and still are, rather huge. They were perfect for getting from one part of the palace to a other, or from one’s magnificent Hôtel in the city of Versailles to the…
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Le diamant bleu de la Couronne de France
What is a King without bling? Louis XIV was not a fan of wearing tons of it, but he certainly was an avid collector of all things sparkling, his favourites being diamonds. One of his special treasures is known under various names: Le Bijou du Roi, le bleu de France, le Violet de France, le Tavernier Blue…. You might know…
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Révolte des Lustucru
Louis XIV had to face his first revolt after the Fronde in 1662, one year after he took the reins of government into his own hands. The county of Boulonnais was of a strategic importance due to its closeness to the Spanish Netherlands. The people there suffered a lot during the war with Spain, that already raged since 1635, and…
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Lettre de cachet
Lettres de cachet were one of the most powerful tools of Louis XIV, for they could command, create… silence people or make people vanish forever. The power to issue lettres de cachet is a royal privilege and dates back to the 13th century on the grounds that Rex solutus est a legibus – the King is released from the laws.…
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The King’s Evil and the Royal Touch
A King, appointed by God and anointed with Holy Oil, is not a mere human being. He holds the well-being of his Kingdom and subjects in his regal hands and said hands are able to cure… or so many people believed. The English Kings and Queens as well as the Kings of France were the only Christian rulers who…
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La Grande Mademoiselle, le Duc de Lauzun and the woes of love…
Aging stoic woman, who happens to be the richest heiress in all of Europe, meets egoistic court buffoon and falls in love with him… what could possibly go wrong? La Grande Mademoiselle, cousin to Louis XIV, who has refused one marriage proposal after the next, while those she had in mind herself did not work out, met Antoine Nompar de…
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The Robe de Cour
Fashion was something very important at Louis XIV’s court. While the fashion for the gentleman of quality did not change too much over the years, those of the ladies of quality changed quite often. Some of these fashions were not that appreciated by the great Sun King. Especially the looser sitting form of gowns, called mantua, the ladies adored so…
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La Révolte de Roure
Vivarais, spring 1670. After a hard winter had destroyed all the olive trees of Languedoc, from Montpellier to Aubenas, rumours of new taxes sparked a revolt. The chronicler Dourille put it like this: “every day one talked of new taxes, real or not, that threatened to plunge the people of Vivarais into their final misery.” Taxes on various items, like hats,…
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La Cour des Miracles
Although 17th century France had a Sun King, not everything was rainbows and sunshine. There places in various cities, were only the brave dared to walk and which the royal rays of Sun did not penetrate. For a 17th century noble, everything that was not in the immediate surroundings of Paris was often considered province. Thus is it no…
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The War of Devolution
Lasting from 24 May 1667 to 2 May 1668, the War of Devolution was Louis XIV’s war. His first chance to win glory on the battlefield and that he did. It all pretty much began with Louis’s wedding and the marriage contract. The Infanta Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche married the King of France in June 1660 to seal the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended…
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The gruesome death of Louis, le Grand Dauphin
In the last years of his reign, Louis XIV had to witness the demise of a lot of his family members. The one of his only son, the person supposed to become King as Louis XV after him, was particularly awful. On April 8 in 1711, Wednesday in Easter week, Monseigneur, as the Dauphin was called, left the…
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Ice cream for the Sun King
Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of ice cream on a hot summer’s day? Louis XIV certainly did. Eating ice became a fashion at the Sun King’s court in the 1660’s. The Italians did it for a while already and Louis was immediately taken with the idea as he heard of it. A certain Monsieur Audiger, who spent time in Genoa to get…
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The secret second marriage of Louis XIV
One night, at the chateau de Versailles, a group of selected people gathered, sworn to complete secrecy, to witness the second marriage of Louis XIV. To this very day, no document has been discovered that proves the whole thing, yet it is accepted to have happened by historians all over word. The great Sun King had lost his wife Marie-Thérèse…
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Mistress versus Queen, or how Louise de La Vallière got into a carriage race with the Queen of France…
1667. The year the War of Devolution began and Louis XIV showed his great military power for the first time. Besieged city after city falls into the hands of the French King. The Spanish have hardly time to fortify themselves, before the French knock at their gates. It is one grand victory for the young and handsome Louis XIV and…
