Mystery and Murder in Paris – The Infamous Madame de Brinvilliers

Mystery and Murder in Paris – The Infamous Madame de Brinvilliers

On 17th July 1676, Marie Madeleine Marguerite D’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, was tortured and forced to drink 16 pints of water.

She then confessed to a series of crimes, the main being the poisoning of her father and two brothers, for financial gain.

Shockingly, it seems almost certain that Madame de Brinvilliers, also poisoned around 50 poor people either in hospitals, or under the auspices of her ‘charity’ work amongst the underprivileged.

This seems to have been some sort of macabre practice run, to the main event.

Marie was born in Paris in 1630, the daughter of Dreux d’Aubray, a civil lieutenant of Paris.
The family was wealthy, noble and well known, and Marie was described as pretty with an endearing air of childlike innocence.

This ‘childlike innocence’ contradicts other reports that she had been sexually abused at the age of seven, and had an incestuous relationship with one of her brothers when she was ten years old.

When she was 21, Marie married Antoine-Gobelin, Marquis de Brinvilliers.
Although quite comfortable financially, The Marquis was a terrible gambler, and he was soon in debt.

Their marriage was a very ‘open’ one, with both having numerous affairs.

Marie entered into a romantic liason with Jean Baptiste Godin de Sainte-Croix
She blatantly and scandalously flouted their affair, lavishing her own money on Sainte-Croix to finance their extravagant lifestyles.

Her husband by then had fled France to escape his creditors.

Marie’s father, dismayed by the scandal his errant daughter was causing, effected a ‘lettre de cachet’ signed by the King.
Sainte-Croix was arrested, and spent a year in the Bastille.

And it is here that the story really begins…..

Sainte-Croix’s cell mate was a certain Exili, an Italian poisoner, who shared his knowledge of poisons with Sainte-Croix.

On his release, Sainte-Croix plotted with Marie not only the poisoning of her father, Dreux d’Aubray, but also her siblings.

The poison she used was arsenic based, and was reputed to have been invented by Giuila Tofana, an infamous Italian poisoner, which was consequently known as Acqua Tofana.

Marie and Sainte-Croix’s original plan was just to poison Marie’s father, Dreux d’Aubray.
Marie set up her own small laboratory, experimenting with strengths and dosages of arsenic and mercury, testing them on her maid and the sick in the nearby Hotel de Dieu.

For eight months Marie remained with her father on his estate.
She cooked for him and took care of him, acting as the doting daughter.

In reality, she was administering small doses of the poison to his food, hoping the results would be undetectable.

When Dreux d’Aubray died in September 1666, the cause of death was recorded as natural, and no autopsy was performed.

However sharing her inheritance with her two brothers and sister, did not make Marie as rich as she had hoped.
Her next step was by now predictable, but was to cause her eventual downfall.

She hired a young man, nicknamed La Chausée, and placing him in the household of her younger brother. Marie paid him handsomely, to continue her work.

Both brothers had their food laced with poison by La Chausée, the first dying on July 17th 1670, and the second three weeks later.
Although traces of arsenic were found in the autopsies, Marie was not formally a suspect.

Marie was in Paris at the time of their deaths, providing her with the perfect alibi.

Marie’s former lover Sainte-Croix, had not yet benefited from Marie’s inheritance.
Now financially ruined, he had kept a detailed diary of Marie’s exploits.

This contained her love letters to him, two promissory notes from her and the final, ironical nail in her coffin… vials of the poison they had used to murder both her father, and her brothers.

These were left in a box with the damning note.
“To be opened in the event of death, prior to that of Madame de Brinvilliers.”

The sudden unexplained death of Sainte-Croix had been unexpected….
Marie could not have foreseen the consequences both of Sainte-Croix leaving no will, and the incriminating box being opened on his demise.

Marie’s accomplice La Chausée, was soon arrested and confessed to everything under torture, before being sentenced to death.

Marie had already fled to England and then to the Netherlands, trying to avoid extradition, but was finally arrested and returned to Paris to stand trial on 29th April 1676.

On 17th July 1676, Madame de Brinvilliers was exEcuted in the Place de Grève.
She was b-headed and then thrown onto a pyre, before her remains were thrown into the Seine.

It was recorded that Marie, dressed only in a shirt and hood, and watched by a huge, excited crowd of onlookers, had climbed the scaffold with great dignity and courage.

However, Madame de Brinvillier’s death was not in the least the end of French scandals involving poison. It was only the beginning…..

What was to follow in 1677-1682 was not only to completely eclipse Marie’s crimes, but also to cause a scandal involving prominent members of the aristocracy, that reverberated into the very heart of the court of King Louis XIV.

Madame de Brinvilliers being tortured with the water cure.
Jean-Baptiste Cariven, 1878.