Madame de Pompadour—who had moved into the grand Versailles apartments used by Madame de Montespan eighty years earlier—studied the lives of Louis XIV’s mistresses, seeking to learn lessons from their triumphs and failures. “Madame de La Vallière allowed herself to be duped by Madame de Montespan,” she told her lady’s maid, “but it was her own fault, or rather, the product of her good nature. Initially, she had no inkling because she could not believe in her friend’s treachery. Madame de Montespan was dislodged by Madame de Fontanges and supplanted by Madame de Maintenon; but her haughtiness and capriciousness had alienated the King.”32
Despite Madame de Pompadour’s knowledge that Louise de La Vallière had been duped into losing Louis XIV by her best friend, her closest call to losing Louis XV was orchestrated by her own cousin. Madame d’Estrades was a witty but ungainly woman who owed her position at court to Madame de Pompadour’s friendship and generosity. Madame d’Estrades was appointed lady-in-waiting to the king’s daughter and wormed her way into Louis’s affection as an amusing friend. She tried to seduce him, but as Louis could only be seduced by beauty, her attempt fell flat. Her cousin’s success continued to eat away at her, and she devised a new plan to unseat Madame de Pompadour.
Madame d’Estrades brought her beautiful nineteen-year-old niece Charlotte-Rosalie de Choiseul-Romanet to court. Madame de Pompadour arranged the girl’s brilliant marriage and obtained a plum position for her as supernumerary lady-in-waiting to the king’s daughters. The girl’s aunt pumped up her aspirations of replacing the rather worn Madame de Pompadour and winning for herself riches, power, and glory.
Madame d’Estrades would invite her niece to play cards in Madame de Pompadour’s apartments during her intimate evenings with the king and a few friends. Madame de Pompadour’s friends pointed out uneasily that the young woman seemed hell-bent on seducing Louis, but in this case she naively refused to suspect that sweet, pretty Charlotte-Rosalie could be so under-handed. As the months passed, Madame de Pompadour continued inviting the girl to events where the king would be present.
Gradually Louis became more interested in the flirtatious bride and made several secret appointments with her, during which she steadfastly refused to have sex with him. Madame d’Estrades and her lover the comte d’Argenson had coached Charlotte-Rosalie to refuse the king’s advances until she was assured of becoming his maîtresse-en titre—and ousting Madame de Pompadour. One day as Madame d’Estrades and d’Argenson sat together, Charlotte-Rosalie rushed in quite disheveled, having evidently just been ravished by the king. She cried, “It has happened. He loves me, he is happy, and she is to be dismissed. He gave me his word.”33 She had even obtained a letter from the king promising to get rid of Madame de Pompadour.
The silly girl, proud of her great accomplishment, showed her letter triumphantly to her cousin the comte de Stainville. The count, though no friend of Madame de Pompadour’s, cleverly decided to win the eternal gratitude of so powerful a woman. He convinced Charlotte-Rosalie to allow him to keep the letter a few hours, then visited Madame de Pompadour immediately. He informed her that his cousin was too immature to fill so important a position, one for which Madame de Pompadour was so eminently suited. He gave her the letter and politely departed.
For once Madame de Pompadour vented her rage at her royal lover. When Louis visited her that evening, she showed him the letter and—for the only time in their relationship—threw a shocking temper tantrum. The king, horrified that the indiscreet Charlotte-Rosalie had let his passionate letter out of her possession, agreed to banish her from court that very night. Seven months later she died after giving birth. She was twenty-one.
By way of an apology, a few days later he raised Madame de Pompadour’s status from that of marquise to duchess. When she was officially presented to the king and queen as duchess, she made her venomous cousin Madame d’Estrades witness her triumph and later banished her from court. Comte de Stainville had bet on the winning horse; although the king could not bear to see his face—a reminder of the painful episode—Madame de Pompadour had him appointed ambassador to the Vatican and he later became foreign minister of France.
Sometimes the Parc aux Cerfs girls, hired to keep serious rivals from bothering Madame de Pompadour, made trouble themselves. One such girl, the nubile fourteen-year-old Louise O’Murphy, was being coached by Madame de Pompadour’s enemies. One evening Louise asked Louis how things were between him and his “old woman,” referring to Madame de Pompadour.34 The king was shocked, and his “old woman” quickly had Louise married off with a large dowry, shortly before she gave birth to a royal bastard.
After this episode the king visited Le Parc aux Cerfs incognito as a Polish nobleman. But one girl searched through her lover’s pockets as he lay sleeping and discovered that he was not a Polish nobleman but the king of France himself. Throwing herself at his feet she proclaimed her undying love for him. This poor girl was taken to an insane asylum—a surefire method of invalidating whatever stories she might relate about the king—and after a suitable period of incarceration married off in the country.
Another girl, a stunning prostitute displayed by Paris’s premier pimp, was seeking to ensnare the king with her sexual talents and hoped for far more than a stint at Le Parc aux Cerfs. The king’s valet and procurer, Lebel, a true friend of Madame de Pompadour’s, informed Louis that the girl was eaten up by venereal disease, putting an immediate end to her chances.
When Louis was clearly in love with the beautiful Mademoiselle de Romans, Madame de Pompadour again feared for her position. But she truly trembled when she learned that her rival was pregnant. Mademoiselle de Romans, quite sure that by means of her pregnancy she would oust Madame de Pompadour, took to bragging openly. The king, horrified at the noise she made, had her house searched and seized his love letters to her—proof that he had fathered her child.
Mademoiselle de Romans, certain her child would become a powerful duke, would often carry him in a basket to the Bois de Boulogne, sit down on the grass in her rich lace, and nurse him. Watching the king’s former mistress nurse a royal bastard soon became a Parisian pastime. One day Madame de Pompadour took her maid to see the young woman and her child. So that Mademoiselle de Romans would not recognize her, she pulled her bonnet down over her eyes and held a handkerchief to her jaw as if she had a toothache.
It was a sad scene: the aging mistress, who had suffered so many miscarriages in her efforts to give Louis a child, watching the young mother, her raven hair confined by a diamond comb, nursing the king’s baby. Madame de Pompadour and her maid exchanged some pleasantries and commented on the beauty of the infant before scurrying away. She seemed deeply distressed by the visit.
Toward the end of her life, Madame de Pompadour appeared to be giving up the struggle against rivals. The price of constant vigilance was poor health. In 1763, a year before her death at the age of forty-two, she retired twice from court for brief periods of rest, something she had never done in her eighteen years with the king.
Political Rivals
While most rivals hoping to supplant a royal mistress were ambitious individuals seeking financial rewards, some were candidates backed by powerful political coalitions bent on placing a malleable woman in the bed of power.
One mistress who ultimately lost to a political coalition was Madame Cosel, mistress of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. This lady of towering powdered white curls and unblinking black eyes held on to her position by paying a bevy of spies to inform her of his every move. In the end, however, she was no match for a coalition of the king’s ministers.