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Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (2 July 1630 – 16 July 1676) was a French aristocrat who was accused and convicted of murdering her father and two of her brothers in order to inherit their estates. Further rumors speculated about her poisoning upwards of 30 sick people in hospitals to test out her poisons, but these rumors were never confirmed. The majority of her trial rested on letters saved by her dead lover and co-conspirer, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix which implicated her in their deaths. She was tortured, forced to confess, and finally executed. Her trial and death spawned the onset of the Affair of the Poisons, a major scandal during the reign of Louis XIV accusing aristocrats of practicing witchcraft and poisoning people.

Early Life

The Marquise was born to the relatively wealthy and influential household of d'Aubray. Her father, Antoine Dreux d'Aubray, was the Seigneur of Offemont and Villiers and Councillor of State, became the Master of Requests in 1638, the Civil Lieutenant of the city of Paris in 1643 and finally the Lieutenant General of the Mines of France. Her mother, Marie Olier (1602-1630) was the sister of Jean-Jacques Olier, who founded the Sulpicians and helped establish the settlement of Ville-Marie in New France which would later be called Montreal. In her confession, the Marquise admitted to being sexually assaulted at the age of seven, though she did not name her assaulter. Further admitted in her confession is that she also had sexual relations with her younger brother Antoine, who she would later poison.

Though the eldest of 5 children and loved by her father, she would not inherit his estate and was thus expected to marry into another. Coming from money, whoever she would marry would inherit quite a large dowry from her, 200,000 livres, in fact. At the age of 21, she was married to Antoine Gobelin, Baron de Nourar, Chevalier in the order of Saint Jean of Jerusalem and later Marquis de Brinvilliers, whose estate was worth 800,000 livres. His wealth came from his ancestors' tapestry workshops who, once they had made money, left the industry to pursue higher-bred occupations. His father was the President of the Chamber of Accounts. Upon marriage, the Marquise's father bestowed upon the couple a house at 12 rue Neuve St. Paul in Marais, an aristocratic district of Paris. With the Marquis de Brinvilliers, she soon had three children, two girls and a boy. She had a total of seven children, but the other four are suspected of being illegitimate children of the Marquise's various paramours. The Marquis befriended a fellow officer, Godin de Sainte-Croix, and introduced him to the Marquise of which she would have a long-lasting affair with.

The Marquise's father was displeased to hear of his daughter's sexual affair with Sainte-Croix (which if became public, could damage his reputation due to his high position in French society) and was further displeased that the Marquise was in the process of separating her wealth from her husband's (who was gambling it away), which was akin to almost divorcing him, a major faux-pas in French aristocratic society. Due to her father's position as a prévôt, granting him a large amount of power and influence, in 1663 he instigated a lettre de cachet, against her lover, Sainte-Croix, which called for the arrest and imprisonment of him at the Bastille. While riding in a carriage with the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Saint-Croix was arrested in front of her and thrown in the Bastille for a little under two months. The Marquise later commented that perhaps if her father had not had her lover arrested, she might have never poisoned her father.

Many historians say that it was in his time in the Bastille where Saint-Croix learned much about the art of poisoning. There, he came into contact with Exili (also known as Eggidi), an Italian in the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, who was an expert on poisons. Exili was imprisoned in the Bastille not because he had committed a crime, but rather because Louis XIV was suspicious of his presence in France because the courts of Sweden and France were not on the best of terms at the time. Other historians say that is is highly possible that Saint-Croix was already an acquaintance of Christopher Glaser, a famed Swiss pharmaceutical chemist. Glaser Saint-Croix but certainly came into contact with him again thanks to Exili. Yet, other historians doubt that Saint-Croix came into contact with either and might have just been using their well-established names to sell his poisons for a higher price.

Upon his release from prison, Saint-Croix married but still remained in close-contact with the Marquise. Saint-Croix started an alchemy business to allow him to work with poisons, of which he now knew a lot about from his time in prison, by obtaining the necessary license to use certain equipment in order to distill his poisons. It was under his tutelage that the Marquise de Brinvilliers started to experiment with poisons and concoct ideas of revenge.

Crimes

It's been suggested by many researching the Marquise that before poisoning her father she tested out her poisons on unsuspecting sick hospital patients. This theory comes from a report made by the lieutenant general of the Paris police, Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie, who, in speaking of the Marquise, indicated that she, a pretty and delicate high-born woman from a respectable family, amused herself in observing how different dosages of her poisons took effect in the sick.

Scholars who support and acknowledge this theory do so because the era in which the Marquise lived enabled the Marquise to get away with murder quite easily. Typical for the era, female members of French nobility would often visit hospitals to help care for the sick. Because many of these patients were already ill, it provided the means for the Marquise to test out her poisons without much suspicion. She tested out her poisons at the hospital, Hôtel Dieu, close to Notre Dame. Furthermore, because Hôtel Dieu was not a very well managed hospital, as it was overflowing with patients, and was more concerned with saving souls than saving lives, deaths, even those under suspicious circumstances, went unnoticed. She also started to experiment on her servants, giving them food tainted with her experimental poisons. The Marquise was not tried for these crimes, however, because they were only discovered after her execution.

In 1666, the Marquise started to slowly poison her father, who would eventually die on the 10th of September. She placed a man by the name of Gascon in her father's household to slowly administer poison to him. In the week before his death, her father invited the Marquise and her children to stay with him. She gave him multiple doses of "Glaser's recipe," a tried-and-true mixture of chemicals that would render him dead seemingly of natural causes. Antoine Dreux d'Aubrey died with the Marquise at his side. An autopsy was then performed on his body which concluded that the Dreux d'Aubrey died of natural causes, exacerbated by gout. After the death of her father, the Marquise inherited some of his wealth. She quickly burned through the money, and thus needing more, decided to poison her two brothers, hoping to get their share of her father's fortune as she was, to her knowledge, their next heir.

Her two brothers lived in the same household but the Marquise was not on the best of terms with either of them, making them harder to slowly poison than her father. She thus employed a man by the name of Jean Hamelin, more commonly known as La Chaussée, to work as a footman in her brothers' household. La Chaussée went to work straight-away. Antoine d'Aubray actually suspected that he was perhaps a target of attempted poison when he noticed that his drink had a metallic taste to it. La Chaussée's attempt at poisoning him there failed, but not long after, during an Easter feast, Antoine d'Aubray fell ill after eating a pie and never recovered, dying on the 17th of June 1670. The second brother was poisoned soon after, dying in September of the same year; their subsequent autopsies would hint of poison due to the fact that their intestines were suspiciously colored but nevertheless concluded that they both died of "malignant humor". Numerous individuals around the inquest of the brothers' deaths were suspicious that they were poisoned, especially because their deaths were so close to one another and in similar circumstances, but La Chaussée was never suspected; in fact, he was so well loved by the younger Dreux brother that upon his death, he bequeathed one hundred écus to La Chaussée.

Discovery of her crimes and her escape and capture

(I think I need help on this sealing casket part im a bit confused) The Marquise's poisonings were not discovered initially, and in fact continued to be unknown until 1672, upon the death of her lover and conspirator, Saint-Croix. At the time of his death, Saint-Croix owed a great deal of money. Those who were owed money thus went through his estate looking for things recuperate . Unfortunately for the Marquise a box containing letters between the two lovers, various poisons, and a note promising a sum of money to Saint-Croix dated around the time her father first starting feeling ill was found, re-opening the case of foul play for her father and brothers. These contents were instructed to be given to the Marquise upon his death, and thus were resealed and given to the Commissary Picard, until formal procedures could happen. La Chaussée, hearing that Picard was in charge of Saint-Croix remaining affairs, went to him explaining that his former boss owned money to him, and in explaining this, provided a suspiciously accurate account of Saint-Croix's laboratory. Picard mentioned to La Chaussée that among Saint-Croix's possessions was the box with the incriminating letters. La Chaussée, on hearing this, ran away and fled, leading to Picard to demand an inquest for La Chaussée for this suspicious behavior. He was soon found, and, on interrogation, implicated not only himself, but the Marquise for crimes against her family.

Similarly, upon news that this box had been found, the Marquise fled France to hide in England. She evaded authorities for a number of years, who continued to hunt after her. Eventually, in 1676, however, she rented a room in a convent in Liège where authorities there alerted the French government who subsequently arrested her. Among her possessions in the convent was a letter titled "My Confessions", which, as the title implies, detailed the various crimes she had committed over the year along with other personal information. In this letter, she admits to having had poisoned her father and two brothers, and had attempted to poison both her daughter and husband, although the latter two were unsuccessful. She also confessed to having had many affairs, and that three of her children were not her husband's. Some scholars doubt the Marquise's authenticity in her letters, but certainly the content of her confession was heavily used against her in French courts. Madame de Sévigné, a contemporary French aristocrat of the Marquise's, talked about the Marquise's in one of her many famous letters, highlighting the gossip that spread around French nobility about her. While being extradited back into France, the Marquise made various unsuccessful suicide attempts. Madame de Sévigné wrote of one such attempt telling that Marquise attempted to end her life by shoving a piece of glass in an unspeakable area. On her return to France, she was first interrogated at Mézières before being imprisoned in Conciergerie, a prison located in Paris.

Trial

Madame de Sévigné in a letter to her daughter wrote that the Marquise's trial captured the attention of all of Paris. When questioned the Marquise heavily feigned ignorance, neither denying or admitting the questions raised against her but rather pretended that she was not aware of any happenings around her concerning the deaths of her family and her illicit relationship with Saint-Croix. Much of the early interrogation centered around the money trail between her, Saint-Croix, and Pennautier, the Marquise's financier. Though rumors quicky spread of her guilt, there initially was not much evidence, outside of this monetary trial and the Marquise's own paper confessions that she had actually committed the crimes levied against her. La Chaussée revealed little under interrogation and since his rank was far below the Marquise's, his testimony was not weighted heavily. (cite) This lack of substantial evidence soon changed, however, from the testimony of another of the Marquise's former, Jean-Baptiste Briancourt. Briancourt alleged that not only had the Marquise admitted to him that she poisoned her brothers and fathers, but that she and Saint-Croix had tried to murder him as well. The Marquise dismissed all of Briancourt's accusations against her citing that he was a drunkard. She was not believed, however, and after a final interrogation it was decided that she was guilty of her crimes and she was to be tortured before finally being executed by being beheaded and then having her body burned in a public spectacle.

Execution

As France was a Catholic state at the time of her execution, it was necessary to find a confessor for the Marquise in her final hours. The man chosen was the abbe Edem Pirot, a theologian from the Sorbonne. Despite having never had ministered a criminal in their final hours, her was nonetheless chosen for the role. He complied a grand account of her final hours of which the original copy is housed within the Jesuit Library in Paris. Within this recounting, Pirot talks about her life and events leading up to her crimes.

Before her death, as part of her sentence, the Marquise was subjected to a form of torture known as the water cure where the subject was made to drink (often through a funnel) copious amounts of water in a short period of time. In his account, Pirot noted that when faced with the prospect of torture, the Marquise said she would confess to all, however, she noted that she knew that this would not alleviate her sentence of torture. She added no new information that she had not already confessed under torture except for adding that she once sold poison to a man who intended to kill his wife. After four hours of torture she entered a final confession session with Pirot in the prison chapel. As she left the chapel, a crowd of aristocrats gathered to see the spectacle of her death march as she and the abbé traveled to the Place de Grève for her execution. The Marquise was covered in a white slip as was customary outfit for the condemned at their execution. On the way to her execution, they stopped at Notre Dame so that the Marquise could perform the Amende Honorable inside of the packed Cathedral. When they finally reached the Place de Grève the Marquise was unloaded from the cart she was in and brought up to a platform. The executioner shaved her hair before pulling out a sword and chopping off her head. The surrounding area was packed with spectators who hoped to grasp a glimpse of her execution. The Madame de Sévingé was among them, and in fact, her most well-known letter mentions the Marquise's execution. After the beheading, the Marquise's body was burned of which the madame de Sévigné quotes that Brinvilliers (or, rather, her ashes) were "up in the air".

Ramifications

After the Marquise's execution, authorities, notably La Reynie and Louis XIV, were convinced that the Marquise could not have acted alone, and there were more individuals involved than Saint-Croix, La Chaussée and Pennautier. Because the former two persons were already dead, an investigation was launched into Pennautier. Nothing came of this investigation however, and Pennautier was cleared of all formal suspicions. The inquest into the Marquise's accomplices did not stop there, however. Because someone so highborn was involved in such a deadly scandal, it was not a far leap of thought that other members of nobility could be involved in poisonings and other suspicious manners of death. Many people in high positions of power were arrested and tried for murder and other criminal dealings. This gradually expanded until 1679 when the investigations came to their height in the resulting affair known as the Affair of the Poisons where more than a few hundred notable individuals were arrested. Notable individuals include: Catherine Monvoisin, a fortune-teller better known as La Voisin, Madame de Montespan, a mistress of the king, and Olympia Mancini, the Countess of Soissons.

Popular Culture

Fictional accounts of her life include The Leather Funnel by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Marquise de Brinvilliers by Alexandre Dumas, père, The Devil's Marchioness by William Fifield, and Intrigues of a Poisoner by Émile Gaboriau. In her 1836 poem  A Supper of Madame de Brinvilliers., Letitia Elizabeth Landon envisages the poisoning of a discarded lover. Robert Browning's 1846 poem "The Laboratory" imagines an incident in her life. Her capture and burning is mentioned in The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley, also the poisoning of the poor is echoed by the main character, Genevieve's, mother. The plot of the novel The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr concerns a murder that appears to be the work of the ghost of Marie d'Aubray Brinvilliers.

There have been two musical treatments of her life. An opera titled La marquise de Brinvilliers with music by nine composers—Daniel Auber, Désiré-Alexandre Batton, Henri Montan Berton, Giuseppe Marco Maria Felice Blangini, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Michele Carafa, Luigi Cherubini, Ferdinand Hérold, and Ferdinando Paer—premiered at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1831. A musical comedy called Mimi – A Poisoner's Comedy written by Allen Cole, Melody A. Johnson, and Rick Roberts premiered in Toronto, Canada in September 2009.

The Sailor Moon musical Kessen / Transylvania no Mori (Kaiteiban), included a character known as De Brinvilliers-sensei. She was a vampire who posed as a chemistry teacher who tested her students about various poisons.

Margarita Blankenheim, a character in the Evillious Chronicles based on the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, was based after the woman. A song by mothy sung by Hatsune Miku known as "Gift from the Princess who Brought Sleep" describes Margarita's actions.

The 2009 French television film The Marquise of Darkness (French: La Marquise des Ombres) starred Anne Parillaud as de Brinvilliers.

See Also

• The Affair of the Poisons
• La Voisin
• List of French serial killers