are not eating?’ asked the marquise, astonished, pecking at a piece of bacon from her husband’s plate. ‘Will it be dangerous? What is the problem with that city? Is it not the one that defends Metz, Lunéville and Nancy?’
‘Last year, Charles IV, Duc de Lorraine, agreed by treaty to give the city of Marsal to the King of France. But he has reneged on his promise, on the deceitful pretext that the treaty was signed only by his nephew. The King has announced his intention to send an expeditionary corps to persuade the duc to honour his commitment. And I have volunteered, enthusiastically.’
‘But what if you should die there!’ exclaimed Athénaïs, her eyes suddenly misting over.
‘Then the name of Marsal,’ smiled Louis-Henri, ‘would for ever make you think of me. But nothing shall befall me. This campaign will bring us a host of advantages … And since to please God it is not necessary to cry or to starve, let us laugh, my dear, and eat our fill! May I have this oyster?’
Beneath the stars as they returned to Paris, the Montespans’ carriage clattered along the road, and the coachman knew only too well that the shaking was not solely the result of the ruts along the King’s highway. Inside the vehicle, Françoise-Athénaïs straddled her husband frenetically (oysters, asparagus, ‘Aphroditic’ beans?). They faced one another, their mouths clamped together. The marquise squeezed her thighs to prevent the virile member from escaping as they jolted along. Louis-Henri clung to her with all his strength: ‘Hold tight to me, lest I come undone.’
A company of pikemen marched at sixty paces a minute to the rhythm of drums, oboes, fifes and trumpets playing military music. Their mounted captain was none other than the Marquis de Montespan.
He observed his infantry soldiers as they advanced across a wide plain surrounded by a circular plateau, wooded in places. Marsal, the fortified city they were to take by storm, sat in the hollow of a natural basin.
These men under Louis-Henri’s command, marching doggedly, were clumsy farm boys that a recruiting sergeant had found in the region of Chartres.
‘Several of them are bound to be killed,’ Athénaïs had sighed.
‘Whether they die stirring the earth in front of an enemy town or stirring it in a field in Beauce, it is still in the service of the King,’ her husband had said dismissively.
The pikemen carried a pike two toises in length to confront the enemy cavalry. When the gates in the walled city were opened and the charge was given, they would have to ram their weapons deep into the horses’ guts; there would be fountains of blood splattering cloth, clothes would be torn, and all of it would cost him … the marquis added up his expenses.
War was a ruinous undertaking. The aristocrat who bought a military commission also had to finance his company: provide for horses, carts, mules, household and camp utensils, tents, beds, dishes. A gentleman’s soldiers were not allowed to have their ‘king’s bread’ and their uniforms had to be bought for them. Louis-Henri watched as his Beaucerons advanced.
Every item of the entire iron-grey outfit – jacket, breeches, boots, cravat, helmet – must have cost upwards of … but he could not shout out to them, ‘Mind your clothing!’ And then, they ate vast quantities, these soldiers who were about to face a horse: two pounds of bread, a pound of meat and a pint of wine, in addition to the five sols of pay each day. So much to disburse! Particularly as the marquis had also bought himself three rows of fusiliers – one row to shoot, one preparing to shoot, and one reloading their muskets, the lot of them moving forward, in turn, behind the pikemen. Louis-Henri, on a white horse, commanded them to remain calm and quiet so that they could hear the orders, and reminded them that they were to fight in silence and that each man had always to have a bullet in his mouth, to reload all the more quickly.
Montespan, in the vanguard, was not afraid, this 2 September 1663. And although this was his first battle, the Gascon was suddenly fired up, gripping his taffeta standard and dreaming of nothing but ripping open the enemy. He knew that this was his opportunity to prove his bravery and – if he was not slain – to hope for some financial largesse – at last – on the part of a grateful sovereign.
He was not afraid when he came across sappers digging blast holes for explosives at the foot of the walls, nor to know that when they collapsed the moment would have come for hand-to-hand fighting, and he would have to go at it, steel against flesh! He knew why he was there, above all for whom he was there. The thought of his wife and the comfort he would bestow upon her carried him forward. The pikemen encouraged one another, shouting, ‘Kill! Kill!’ The fusiliers cried, ‘Forward fearlessly!’ Louis-Henri closed his eyes, bit his lower lip and thought, for Athénaïs! Clumps of earth flew up beneath his horse’s hooves, and the pikemen running at his side stirred up the dust. The clatter of firearms continued behind him.
Now he would have to show his mettle. Already, in the hedges they passed, the crushed blackberries bled like wounds. The hills all around were covered in flowers. The air was still. They prepared themselves for the end of the world. Louis-Henri’s banner, with his coat of arms, fluttered in the landscape. A bird flew overhead with fruit from the hedge in its beak; its reflection in the stream lingered after its passage. Montespan’s mind roved and wandered aimlessly, in quest of shadows and a charming labour. He was filled with bloodlust. For his wife – his soul mate, his precious care – he had made this leap into the silent abyss, and he brandished yellow and black taffeta against the sky. Marsal’s fortifications seemed to loom higher and higher when suddenly there came music from inside the city.
‘What is that?’ wondered the marquis, pulling on his horse’s reins.
‘The chamade,’ replied a pikeman standing near.
‘The what?’
‘The call of trumpets from the besieged, signalling that they surrender.’
‘What? Oh, no, it cannot be! Why are they surrendering? They have no right! I’ve borrowed twelve thousand livres tournois – twelve thousand! – to pay for this war! So they must defend themselves, and pour boiling oil upon us, and shoot at us, and launch the cavalry … and give me my chance to act the hero!’
But white flags were waving above the towers of Marsal. The Marquis de Montespan, utterly disconcerted, turned about. And what did he discover, far behind him – blazons flapping in the wind, an immense army filling the entire horizon on the cliff above the plateau. So many cannons, and kettledrums, and flags, and standards! Montespan stuttered at the sight, ‘But-but-but who are all those people?’
‘His Majesty with his personal army.’
‘The monarch has come? But I did not know. I did think, three companies of squires like myself do not amount to much to attack a city …’
An envoy from the King galloped to the city gates, took a message and sped back the other way to confirm the news: ‘The Duc de Lorraine agrees to honour his promise!’
Montespan’s fusiliers fired into the sky to show their joy. Only Louis-Henri was sulking. He could have wept. All it took was for the King to show his strength on the horizon and the rebels surrendered their arms without firing a single musket. And now Montespan would have to go home without a shred of fame, more in debt than ever. What an unfortunate end to what had been a very strange war. Sometimes fate dealt one an unexpected hand.
As
