She managed, it is true, by her charm and beauty to keep her husband deeply in love with her in his maudlin fashion, but, weak as he was, she failed to influence him politically.[[315]] She had already offended Medina Celi and played the game of the Queen-Mother against him—for he had been a friend of Don Juan—by interfering with his appointments for the benefit of her nurse, the widow Quantin; and now, at the very period when Mariana had determined that the prime minister, who had failed to pay her full pension, and who alone stood between her and supreme power, should be dismissed, Marie Louise again foolishly threw her influence with her husband against the oft-threatened minister. Medina Celi, overwhelmed by his unpopularity and the insuperable difficulties of his task, was brusquely dismissed by the King in June 1685; and thenceforward Mariana was supreme. The new minister, the Count of Oropesa, was clever and active, and at first made sweeping financial reforms: but he was really the tool of the Austrian faction, which, before many months had passed, negotiated the League of Augsburg, which bound together Spain, the empire, Sweden, Bavaria and other powers, against the encroachments of Louis XIV.; and again poor, ruined Spain was pledged to enter, if called upon, into the central European war.
For the moment Louis was not prepared to meet all Europe in arms, and his views with regard to Spain had become somewhat changed. It was by this time evident that Marie Louise would bear no child to her degenerate husband, and Mariana and Mansfeldt were already preparing to put forward the claims to the succession of the children of the Empress (the Infanta Margaret, daughter of Mariana), whilst Louis XIV., making light, as he always did, of the renunciation signed by Maria Theresa on her marriage (already referred to), was determined to show that his own son, the Dauphin, had the best right to be King of Spain if Charles II. died without issue. When, therefore, the new French ambassador, Feuquière, went to Spain early in 1685, he was instructed to talk seriously, and in secret, to Marie Louise on the subject.[[316]] He was to tell her that she would be wise to desist from all political intrigue directed to the change of personnel of the government, and so to gain the goodwill of the ministers and obtain a firmer hold over the King. This advice came too late, for she had foolishly connived at Medina Celi’s fall before Feuquières could deliver his message. This, however, was only the first step; and in the following year Father Verjus was sent to Madrid with money and instructions to aid Feuquière in gaining friends and forming a party under the ægis of Marie Louise to push the claims of the Dauphin to the Spanish succession.
In the meantime the Austrian party, under Mariana, were having their own way unchecked. Marie Louise was their sole stumbling-block, for the King would never willingly lose sight of her, notwithstanding her follies, of which her enemies made the most; and at the instance of Mariana and her Austrian backers a dastardly series of plots was formed for ruining the young Queen in the eyes of her husband. We get the first hint of them from a letter dated 12th April 1685 in the curious informal correspondence addressed by the Duke of Montalto in Madrid to the Spanish ambassador in London, Pedro Ronquillo, both of them partisans of Mariana: ‘A case of no little scandalousness has happened in the palace,’ he wrote. ‘You know, of course, that Mme. Quantin is the favourite of our Queen, and that M. Viremont, a Frenchman who takes care of the Queen’s saddle horses, is also well liked by her Majesty. By these means this man introduced himself so much into the palace with the Quantin woman, that, although she wears the dress of a duenna, and is neither young nor at all handsome, there was a talk of their getting married. Everybody laughed at such a courtship; but the matter went so far and the connection was so close, for both of them are cunning enough to get out when they liked, and perhaps he may have found means to enter her chamber in the palace, that the woman was recently taken out of the palace to the house of Donna Ana de Aguirre, who is in high favour with the Queen, and it is said that this Quantin woman gave birth to a boy there the other day.[[317]] This scandal has caused no end of murmuring and satires, so shameless some of them as to be incredible. What is quite as incredible is the irresolution of the King. Up to the present time nothing has been done, either to the man or the woman, and Viremont continues in his employment as if nothing had happened. They are married now; but if I had my way they should be burned. Yesterday the Quantin woman went to pay her respects to the Queen with as much effrontery as if she had not behaved thus. You can see by this the state the palace is in.’[[318]]
We can supplement this narrative from other sources. The French widow was the only person of her own tongue and country near Marie Louise, and, though she had been a dangerous companion, the poor Queen clung desperately to her. As soon as the rumour of her marriage spread the outcry for her punishment and expulsion was raised by the enemies of Marie Louise, and the Queen herself was attacked in dozens of spiteful couplets as having connived at immorality in her own apartments. The outraged Queen threw herself at her husband’s feet in an agony of tears, and implored him not to expel the only French woman-servant upon whom she could depend. Charles, moved by his wife’s tears, allowed Quantin to remain in Madrid, though not to sleep in the palace, and refused to believe the stories told him that Marie Louise had knowingly been a party to the irregularity of her servant.
This was to some extent a defeat for the Queen-Mother and her friends; but the scandal laid a foundation of distrust, upon which further attack might be based. This is how the Duke of Montalto speaks of the King’s concession to his wife. ‘I don’t know whether the Quantin affair is true or not; but it is publicly stated, and is the most dreadful scandal that ever happened in the palace. Medina, Oropesa and the Confessor, all urged the King to take some step, but to no purpose, for he preferred to give way to the tears and prayers of the Queen, rather than uphold the decency of his own household. So she has triumphed to such an extent that this woman, having married the rogue Viremont, has positively been brought by the Queen into the palace again to serve her, and goes home to her husband every night! Cases of this sort are surely enough to drive one crazy, and to banish all hope of better times. Since I have told you the story I must now tell you the sequel. As soon as they were married the woman went ostentatiously to the palace to salute the King, which he placidly allowed. The fine pair have now gone to Aranjuez with the Court, like people of quality, in one of the royal coaches. Medina Celi has thrown up everything and gone away in disgust. It is all the King’s fault, and such goings on as these will expose to the world our master’s tyranny and incapacity.’[[319]]
The further blow at the Queen was silently planned whilst the Court was at the spring palace of Aranjuez, where it usually stayed until Corpus Christi day. On the 12th May Charles fell suddenly ill, and much was made of the matter. Although, after bleeding, he was quite well on the third day, it was decided that he must immediately return to the capital. ‘What must be well borne in mind in all this’ (wrote an enemy of Marie Louise) ‘is that the Queen wanted to prefer her own pleasure to the health of her husband; for it was almost impossible to persuade her to come to Madrid. She said that the illness was nothing, and wished to keep the King there till Corpus Christi, notwithstanding the heat and danger. When she was not allowed to have her own way, she was cross and ill-humoured; as was clear when the King was confined to his bed, for she did not even go to see him. This is the more strange, as when the Quantin woman was to be bled she must needs go and visit her without ceremony. Neither I nor any one else can understand the strange things that are going on in that house.’[[320]]
This was written at the end of May; and some three weeks afterwards the plot ripened. A Frenchman named Vilaine, who is called by some authorities a discharged groom of Marie Louise, and by the Duke of Montalto the wax-chandler of the Queen-Mother, denounced Quantin and her husband for having plotted, with the knowledge of the Queen, to poison King Charles. The accused persons were at once arrested, and a carefully prepared hue and cry was raised against all Frenchmen. Many foreigners were attacked and some killed in the streets; the French embassy had to be surrounded by troops, and the whole Court was in a panic. Charles was a coward and miserably weak, but he stood by his wife as well as he knew how at this period of trial. Marie Louise, indignant and outraged at what she knew was a vile plot against her, demanded that the accusers should also be arrested; but before this could be done, Quantin and her husband, the French maids and others, were put to the torture; and the poor woman, with both arms broken and her lower limbs crippled for life, still maintained her innocence and would confess nothing.
The Queen’s few Spanish friends were put into close confinement. No evidence whatever could be wrung from any of the accused to support the charge against them: but the Council of Castile, packed now with the Queen-Mother’s partisans, still continued to regard the matter as a serious menace to the King’s life, and frightened poor Charles nearly out of what small wits nature had given him. In a French news letter of the time (19th August 1685) the political aim of the proceedings is exposed. ‘The Council of Spain desires to involve the Queen in the accusations, because they fear her influence over the King, and he has not sufficient strength to resist the ministers who propose to appoint commissaries for the Queen. She has written to her father, saying that she has no French person now near her, nor any one else whom she could trust. She is, she says, in daily fear of being poisoned, and she refuses to eat what they provide for her, which has cast her into great weakness. She will only eat with the King and from his dishes. Vilaine, they say, is to be rewarded and sent to an employment in the Canaries. The French ambassador is not allowed to speak with the Queen; and the Venetian ambassador was nearly murdered, because they thought he was French. When the King is with the Queen the ministers are all in the wrong, but when they are with him he changes his mind.’[[321]]
Quantin and all the French people about the palace were expelled the country, when no atom of proof could be found against them, and Charles, apparently alarmed at the threats of Louis XIV., that if any harm came to Marie Louise he would avenge her by war in Spain itself, was emphatic in his repudiation of any suspicion on his part against his wife. He assured Feuquières that he regarded his wife’s interests as his own, and never believed for a moment in her guilt: and he assured the Duke of Orleans that, not only did he not know that the accused French people had been tortured, but that when he asked for a copy of the whole of the proceedings in the case, his Council had assured him that the records had all been burnt. In vain, however, did the French government insist upon the punishment of the accusers. The King might promise and strive, but there were others stronger than he; and Vilaine was spirited away and rewarded.
Another news letter in the same French collection as that justed quoted does not hesitate, a few months afterwards, when the whole matter was known, to say: ‘Although the Quantin affair is now a thing of the past, it is nevertheless worth recording that the Count of Mansfeldt, the imperial ambassador and his wife, to please the Queen-Mother, originated the accusation against the woman. She was made to suffer the cruel tortures she did in order to injure the young Queen, who was so outraged at it, and the King as well, that the imperial ambassador is forbidden the palace, except on the business of his embassy.’