Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (; 22 July 1630 – 16 July 1676) was a French aristocrat who was convicted of murdering her father and two of her brothers in order to inherit their estates. After her death, there was speculation that she tested her poisons on upwards of 30 sick people in hospitals and street dogs, but these rumours were never confirmed. Her crimes were discovered after the death of her lover and co-conspirator, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, who saved letters detailing dealings of poisonings between the two. After being arrested, 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 practising witchcraft and poisoning people. Components of her life have been adapted into various media including short stories, poems, and songs to name a few.
Early life
thumb|Staircase in the Brinvilliers home
The Marquise was born in 1630 to the relatively wealthy and influential household of d'Aubray. Her father, Antoine Dreux d'Aubray (1600–1666), held multiple important governmental and high-ranking positions such as the Seigneur of Offémont and Villiers, councillor of State, Master of Requests, the Civil Lieutenant and prévôt of the city of Paris, and Lieutenant General of the Mines of France. Her mother, Marie Olier (1602–1637) 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. His wealth came from his ancestors' famed tapestry workshops. While riding in a carriage with the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Sainte-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. Yet, other historians doubt that Sainte-Croix came into contact with either and might have just been using their well-established names to sell his poisons for a higher price. Many claim that Sainte-Croix died because an accident exposed him to his own poisons. While being extradited to France, the Marquise made various suicide attempts.
Before her death, as part of her sentence, the Marquise was subjected to a form of torture known as the water cure in which 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 everything; however, she noted that she knew that this would not alleviate her sentence of torture. After the beheading, the Marquise's body was burned, of which Madame de Sévigné says that Brinvilliers was (or, rather, her ashes were) "up in the air." and The Marchioness of Brinvilliers: The Poisoner of the Seventeenth Century, by Albert Richard Smith. 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 are 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 Johnson and Rick Roberts, premiered in Toronto, Canada in September 2009.
The radio docu-drama Crime Classics featured her story in 1954. 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
- List of French serial killers
- La Voisin