At Versailles How to Get Ahead

By the 17th century, life at the Royal Courts of Europe

had evolved into a rarefied world of ritual and affectation.

Nowhere more so than in France.

Everyone at court had to grapple

with the endless nuances of etiquette and flattery.

But for the ambitious, it was the place to be seen.

If you wanted to get ahead in 17th century France,

there was only one thing for it -

get yourself in the presence of the king by any means necessary.

Pull any strings you had, wear your finest clothes,

sharpen your elbows to force your way into sight of the one person

who could truly make a difference to your prospects.

His Majesty the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Louis very deliberately chose the sun to symbolise his omnipotence.

Everywhere he went he was orbited by a multitude of people,

sometimes thousands at a time.

Who all hoped to bask in the king's good favour.

This was a system of absolute power, and it was set in stone, literally,

in this, the most magnificent palace anywhere on earth - Versailles.

Versailles was the ultimate expression of royal authority.

5,000 people living firmly under the royal thumb.

Just five years old when he was crowned King of France,

Louis XIV spent his marathon 72-year reign combining

the showmanship of Liberace with Stalin's grip on power.

He surrounded himself with yes-men, from talented artists

and designers to kowtowing courtiers and dancing dilettantes.

His court was a hotbed of sex, poison and scandal.

Sure, Louis was a despot, but his reign produced an explosion

of baroque art that celebrated as Le Grand Siecle -

the Splendid Century.

TRUMPET FANFARE

In 1661, Louis XIV brought his favourite mistress to Versailles

for a bit of royal hanky-panky.

He was 23, she just 17.

And Versailles was a modest retreat

built by Louis's father for hunting trips.

Young Louis had things other than hunting on his mind -

love, of course, but also a thrillingly ambitious plan

to transform little Versailles into the ultimate powerbase.

A great royal city under a single roof.

Louis recruited a string of brilliant people

to realise his dream.

None of them more brilliant than the designer Charles Le Brun.

Before he'd even met the king,

Le Brun had dazzled French high society with his paintings

and his fabulous interiors.

Louis called him the greatest French artist of all time and decided

what Versailles really needed was Le Brun's masterful touch.

It was at a party that Louis decided to hire Charles Le Brun.

But it wasn't a party of the king's.

He was a guest at a lavish bash thrown by his then-Finance Minister.

And it was something out of Great Gatsby -

guests left not with goody bags but with diamond tiaras, even horses!

Louis detected something suspicious

and solved the problem to his own satisfaction by throwing

his Finance Minister into jail and poaching his designer, Le Brun.

What was the secret of Le Brun's success?

Exquisite taste, naturally, but also a love of all things French.

Under Louis's watchful eye,

Le Brun stuffed Versailles with the best France had to offer.

French tapestries.

French furniture.

French sculpture.

This is Le Brun's masterpiece, the legendary Hall of Mirrors.

There's a lot of glass!

Nearly 50 chandeliers and candelabra, and 357 mirrors.

Le Brun imported the finest Venetian craftsmen to make them,

only to swipe all their closely guarded secrets

and open up a dedicated French glass factory.

He crowned the lot with his own spectacular paintings.

A none-too-subtle homage to the monarch whose idea it was.

This ceiling is one of the finest examples of baroque art

you can see anywhere.

There is Louis in his battle gear on his throne.

Putti and cherubs disport and play at his feet, playing cards

and other games, and above him the gods look on favourably.

Only Father Time, with his hourglass and his scythe,

represents a threat to Louis, a mortal threat.

And it's interesting that apart from his poor, old wife

shunted off to the corner there,

he's the only human being in that scene.

He keeps company with the supernatural, with the deities.

And the message spelt out, "the king governs by himself."

No other mortals need to be involved.

This is the message Charles Le Brun hammered home at Versailles.

Here is Louis XIV as an omnipotent, thunderbolt-hurling god.

Louis as the sun.

As all-conquering hero.

No doubts here about who was the fairest of them all.

And Le Brun did very well out of it, thank you very much.

Directorship of the French Royal Academy of Painting,

plus a handsome pension.

At Versailles, it paid to big-up the boss.

If you were a foreigner hoping to please Louis,

you have to play by French rules.

God forbid you forgot

that French Baroque was a regal, elegant style all its own.

That was the undoing of the great Italian architect Bernini,

famed for the magnificent piazza outside St Peter's in Rome,

who came to France to do some building work for the Sun King.

For all Bernini's acknowledged mastery,

Louis just didn't like his designs.

They were too flowery, too baroque, just too Italian.

Between the two of them there could be no loss of face,

it was all smiles. But as soon as Bernini was out the door, it was...

Instead, the Italian was offered the consolation prize

of making a bust of the king.

And this is it.

Despite Louis' reservations about the great Italian,

he's made rather a handsome job of this, hasn't he?

Billowing locks,

the wind-caught drapery suggest the king as a man of action.

His thousand-metre gaze representing leadership, authority.

His eyes are slightly larger than natural to emphasise that.

It's said that Bernini left a tiny, accurate wart at the tip

of that proud Bourbon nose, but I must say I can't detect it.

Perhaps some slavish courtier went round after the Italian left

with sandpaper and removed it.

Bernini returned to Rome irritated by his treatment at the hands

of the haughty Versailles courtiers.

Nevertheless,

he set to work on a swaggering equestrian portrait of Louis.

When it finally arrived at Versailles,

the king hated it so much,

he relegated it to the furthest corner of the gardens,

where he wouldn't have to look at it.

Poor Bernini never really won the seal of Louis's approval.

Manicured evergreens.

Classical statues.

Magical groves.

Elegant fountains.

The palace was spectacular, but the gardens of Versailles had

the crowned heads of Europe turning green with envy.

Visitors couldn't wait to see them.

The green-fingered wizard responsible for all of this

was a man called Andre Le Notre, one of a long line of sons of the soil.

Despite his humble origins, he was a big favourite of the king's.

And whenever Louis had been away from Versailles for a while,

he could always count on a big hug from his gardener.

The Sun King once offered Le Notre his own coat of arms -

the sort of honour other people at court could only dream about.

But the gardener modestly replied, "That's all right,

"Your Majesty, I already have one.

"Three slugs crowned by a lettuce leaf."

Despite his humility,

what he achieved in the gardens here was remarkable.

Spectacular vistas stretched as far as the eye could see.

Le Notre employed up to 30,000 labourers at a time, to tame

a once-malarial swampland and create an earthly vision of paradise.

Geometrically precise gardens boasted species both practical

and exotic.

One plant above all beguiled the king - the orange tree.

He was intoxicated by its scent, enchanted by its flowers.

Le Notre established this orangery in the shelter of Versailles,

and he somehow contrived to have orange trees in flower

every month of the year.

The finest of them were taken into the chateau,

where their perfume filled the royal apartments.

Le Notre's gardens were the absolute expression of an absolute monarchy.

Immaculately shaped, perfectly clipped,

here was nature utterly subjected to the will of the king.

DUCK QUACKS

To improve the view from the Palace,

Louis called into being a vast, grand canal,

complete with its own fleet of scale-model French warships.

But supplying water for the canal, as well as 2,500 fountains,

plus the domestic needs of Versailles residents,

was a monumental challenge.

For years the king's engineers

laboured on one ambitious scheme after another.

Diverting streams, draining lakes, building dams.

It just wasn't enough.

One engineer made an outrageous suggestion.

Why not divert the mighty River Seine itself,

five miles to the north?

This place is the closest the River Seine comes to Versailles,

but in order to divert it to the palace itself, royal engineers

first had to lift it to the top of that hill over there.

That's an elevation of 162 metres.

But they weren't going to let a little thing like that put them off.

On the banks of the Seine, the engineers built a vast

pumping station, once dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World.

14 giant waterwheels powered 221 hydraulic pumps,

which forced water uphill through a series of pipes, till it

reached a monolithic stone structure looming over the landscape.

It still looms today, an abandoned reminder of the Sun King's hubris.

The way it worked was this.

The waters of the Seine were pumped up here through this gully,

into this well here,

and up through this structure to the aqueduct above.

And from there they would have gurgled and splashed all the way

to Versailles, and lapped against the very shoes of the king himself.

This was just one part of an astonishing engineering achievement.

A vast network of aqueducts and pipes - 120 miles of them in total -

all funnelling the wet stuff to Versailles.

At full pelt, the fountains alone used more water than

the entire city of Paris, over five million gallons a day.

But the truth is, all that engineering genius was never

quite enough to meet the demand.

In the end, the gardeners just turned the fountains off

when the king wasn't looking.

Louis's reign wasn't always secure.

As a boy king,

he nearly lost his crown to a bunch of rebellious nobles.

Which probably explains why the adult Louis kept

a vice-like grip on the tiller of government.

He is modestly supposed to have said, "L'Etat, c'est moi."

"I am the state."

He wasn't far wrong!

By 1689, the king had relocated the entire business of government

from Paris to Versailles.

If you were a minister or noble

who didn't want to be left out in the cold,

there was only one thing for it -

get a room as close to the heart of power

as you possibly could.

Somewhere off the maze of corridors.

The long gallery here was one of the great thoroughfares of Versailles.

Every door seemed to open onto a private world.

At all hours of the day or night,

this was a teeming ant hill of servants, courtiers, aristocrats.

Those who could afford to, preferred not to walk,

and were carried instead.

And so at times,

the scene here resembled a demolition derby of sedan chairs.

Even if you were on the waiting list,

it could take you years to get in.

You had to wait till someone was thrown out or died.

That allowed everyone lower down the pecking order to shuffle up.

But beware. Even if you got a room,

you might languish in obscurity for years.

A place at Versailles was to die for, literally.

Impoverished aristos faded away to nothing,

up here in their overcrowded rookeries, underneath the eaves.

One poor, discarded Duchess, abandoned by her husband,

was mouldering away up here

when somebody in the immediate royal circle

decided what they needed was a maid of honour.

She was sent for, tracked down.

Her life was transformed.

Was the old girl bitter about the way she'd been treated?

Not at all. A girl's got to eat.

At last, the king had all the great and good of France

exactly where he wanted them.

Anyone who didn't live in the gilded cage

didn't count.

Louis liked to think he ran an open palace. He said,

"If there's anything singular about the French monarchy

"it's the free and easy access which subjects have to their prince."

In reality, the guards had clear instructions

to keep the riffraff out.

And there was a rigorous system of entrees.

The better your entree,

the closer you could get to the king's private chambers.

We've done it, nearly.

This is the Mount Everest of our social climbing -

the king's bedchamber itself.

But wait a minute, you could still undo all your hard work

with a careless rasp of the knuckles on the woodwork.

No, believe it or not, the way to gain admission

was to scratch ever so lightly

with the nail of the smallest finger on your left hand

and wait to be admitted.

And it's said that here at Versailles,

the fashionable grew that nail extra long

to show that they were amongst the privileged few.

Louis was never alone in the royal bedroom,

and I'm not just talking about after lights out.

He turned this most intimate of royal places

into a highly theatrical and hierarchical

grand stage of court ritual.

So near and yet so far.

We're in the royal chamber,

practically within touching distance of His Majesty.

But some of us must remain forever beyond this cordon sanitaire.

It's like a velvet rope in a nightclub.

Even if your access-all-areas backstage laminated pass

was good enough to get you here, right beside the king's bed,

one last hurdle, one nightmare of social etiquette awaited you.

Which chair to choose?

Would you take the attractive armchair

or perhaps the stool?

Should you take a chair at all?

You were expected not to sit down before your social betters.

And if you picked the wrong type of furniture,

you might just as well have sat on the electric chair

because it meant social death.

The best job at Versailles was the one that got you in here,

one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber.

They dressed His Majesty in the morning and undressed him at night.

Ridiculously, only the most senior person present

could hand the king his shirt.

So, if successively important people entered the room,

His Majesty just had to wait as his outfit was passed

from one pair of hands to the next.

Among the lucky few who got to dress the king in his bedroom every day

was a man whose influence would shape courtly fashions

throughout Europe - the royal hairdresser, Georges Binet.

Georges Binet was a specialist in wigs,

a man so dedicated to furnishing a luxurious barnet for Louis

that he once vowed,

"I would strip every head in the kingdom bald

"in order to adorn that of His Majesty."

He was, if you like, the barber of civility.

Until the mid-1600s, men wore wigs out of necessity,

often because syphilis caused their hair to fall out.

Louis XIV's problem was hereditary baldness

which he hid with a modest weave.

But with encouragement from his wigmaker, Binet,

the king's hair would reach phenomenal lengths,

or rather heights.

Thanks to Louis, big hair on blokes

became the must-have accessory in upper-class France.

Professional cutters scoured the land, buying up human hair.

It took 50 heads of hair to furnish a royal wig.

Today, most toupees are machine-made in a matter of hours.

'But Marie-Charlotte Quehin...'

Bonjour.

'..an expert in creating Louis XIV's wigs for the theatre,

'still uses the same painstaking method they employed 400 years ago.'

-So, that's real hair.

-Oui.

Can you explain what you're doing there?

SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

So, how long will this take you, do you think?

What is this over here? It looks like you've trapped

an animal or something in there, Marie-Charlotte. What is that?

'Inevitably, I've agreed to be fitted with a Louis XIV wig.'

Merci.

'If I'm lucky, it won't come with any 17th-century problems,

'such as dust, fleas,

'splitting headaches, throbbing boils.'

That's interesting.

I feel a strange surge of power,

an authority coursing through me.

I like it.

I'll take it.

Everyone at court understood the importance of clothes

to the Sun King.

He adored the finest fabrics, the grandest of designs,

not just on himself, but on everyone around him too.

His Majesty would often demand that the entire court

was re-kitted in the latest expensive couture

and he insisted you pay for it yourself

to the ruin of several nobles.

'Historian Fabrice Conan is an expert

'in the fashions of Louis's court...'

-Stockings.

-Stockings.

'..and how vital it was that you dress to show off

'your social status...'

Here we are, Fabrice.

What do you think?

'..beginning, of course, with the underwear.'

That's perfect.

'In an age of dangerous waterborne diseases,

'regular bathing was deeply unpopular.

'Instead, spotless underwear showed you cared.'

It was very important to change your shirt two or three times a day

because people thought that when you change your shirt, you are clean

because all the dirt is on the shirt.

That's why, in the suit, you can see the laces,

you see some white parts

and it's a way to show that you are someone very important

and that you take care.

So, a very white shirt, as you have, this one, it's really perfect.

'Next comes the 17th-century forerunner

'of today's three-piece suit. Part one, the pantaloons.

'Part two, a waistcoat.'

So, this is typical of the 17th-century

because it's very long and it became shorter in the 18th-century.

And who would have worn this?

Somebody of high rank or middle rank?

Each man had to wear this and it will change...

It depends on your rank, you're right.

You will have more ornaments,

more gold, more silver or diamonds.

OK. Shall we?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I can see it would give you a certain swagger.

-Is this all fastened up?

-Yes.

-You have to fasten this part.

-I was afraid you'd say that.

-Very long.

-It IS quite long. Would a gentleman have dressed by himself?

No, never. Never.

OK. What's the idea with the lace? Why wear lace?

The more lace you have, the richer you are.

So, at the beginning of the time of Louis XIV,

there were very, very large laces like this,

and they became a bit shorter later.

-Let me go...

-OK.

-..like for Louis XIV.

-We'll put it here.

-Not too tight, Fabrice.

You have to suffer to be a royal.

OK.

That's nice.

-And now...

-The piece de resistance...

-The piece de resistance!

-..as we say in English.

-Yes, yes.

It's in velvet and embroidered.

The richer it is, the nicest to have at the court.

Very...up, like this.

Good fit. Perfect.

-What do you think?

-Yes, it was done for you.

Well, I might not be ready for the court, but I'm ready for panto.

'All these dainty feet need now are shoes, but not just any shoes...'

So, you see we have the red heels?

We don't know why they appeared at the court.

Some people said that Louis XIV was back from a party in Paris

and he walked in the street and he was in front of a butcher's shop

and there was some blood

and he walked on the blood and he arrived like this at court.

-And everyone thought it was the new fashion.

-And everyone, two days later, thought it was fashion.

In fact, we don't know.

-But all the people at Versailles had these red heels.

-Naturally.

-OK.

-If you please.

-Yep.

-Didn't have stockings on, admittedly.

-Ah, yes, that's it.

'Here comes that wig again.'

Fix the head.

'And a sword to prove I'm a member of the nobility.

'Finally, the icing on the gateau.'

-OK.

-On your head.

If there's still room up there.

Thank you very much, Fabrice.

If you were going to be spending any time at all

in the royal presence, you'd be well advised

to lay off the liquids beforehand.

The king had no tolerance of anybody else's physical weaknesses,

and Versailles wasn't particularly well endowed

with comfort facilities. Indeed, it wasn't unknown for a noble

to nip behind a pillar when emergency pressed.

The king had the same control over his bladder as he did over

everything else in France, and woe betide the courtier

who asked permission to relieve himself.

Round here, the royal "we" was seldom heard.

The worst thing was to be caught in a coach with the king.

Yes, it was a first-rate opportunity to bend the royal ear...

..but on the other hand, if you didn't have superhuman control

over your bodily functions, you were in big trouble.

One duchess described a journey she made with the king

as the most horrific of her life.

She realised quite early on that she needed a...comfort stop.

That was out of the question.

So, the poor woman knitted her legs together

for six - count them - hours.

There was the exquisite torture

of the refreshment that was proffered to her,

which she had to sip.

Several times, she came close to blacking out completely.

When at last they reached their destination,

she only narrowly avoided an embarrassment

by making a mercy dash for the nearest chamber pot.

The king had the same intolerance of any symptom of illness.

Even pregnancy irked him.

Perhaps this is the origin of the phrase "a right royal pain".

The Duc de Saint-Simon was the courtier who got it all wrong.

Try as he might to grovel to the king,

he was forever putting his foot in it.

Embarrassing faux pas, hot-headed outbursts,

generally irritating His Majesty and so getting short shrift.

Luckily for us, in his final years,

Saint-Simon took bittersweet revenge by writing his memoirs,

the most revealing account we have of life at Louis's court.

He first met His Majesty when he was just 16.

His own father propelled him through the mob

into the presence of the king.

It was a taste of what was to come because it wasn't a terrific moment,

as he later recorded, in French, of course.

"The king thought me puny and delicate looking

"and said that I was still exceedingly young."

Saint-Simon clung on at Versailles by his fingertips,

constantly scuppering his own chances of promotion.

Take the time he slipped away on an unauthorised pleasure trip,

was spotted by the king's spies

and got a royal dressing-down for his pains.

His career was a souffle that stubbornly failed to rise.

By the end of his account, it's clear that Saint-Simon

has become jaded and cynical, fed up with the routine at court.

On the other hand, he's very clear-eyed about what it was

that Louis most sought in his courtiers.

Praise, or better - adulation - pleased him so much

that the most fulsome was welcome

and the most servile even more delectable.

That's what gave his ministers so much power

for they had endless opportunities of flattering his vanity,

especially by suggesting that he was the source of all their ideas

and had taught them all that they knew.

Falseness, servility,

admiring glances,

combined with a dependant and cringing attitude,

above all, an appearance of being nothing without him,

were the only means of pleasing him.

In one respect, the king's unbridled vanity was justified.

He was a beautiful mover.

He famously performed the role of the Sun God Apollo in a ballet

designed to remind everyone from whence their sun shone.

Louis made dance a vital talent for anyone wanting to get on.

If you were a member of court,

you were expected to attend dances.

They were important social occasions

at which your accomplishments could tell others a lot

about your breeding and refinement.

'With the help of my trusty baroque shoes,

'I'm following in the footsteps

'of all those Versailles courtiers

'who sought tuition in the essential art of movement.'

Small steps...

'Dance expert Edith Lagrange begins by teaching me

'how to walk with grace and confidence.'

-So...

-So if I was a brave officer

or if I was a writer or something like that,

but my deportment was poor, that would be a problem for me?

-Oh, yes, sure.

-Really?

Because you have to look like you're steady.

In fact, they taught dancing in the army

to make them very strong in the legs

and to know how to control their body and to be fast in their turn.

'Now I must learn the dance steps of the minuet,

'a popular little number at court.'

The rhythm of the minuet step is

one step forward,

you have plie

and eleve.

Plie...

Eleve on your toes.

First step and three little steps

on your toes - so up...

up, up, down.

-Heels to heels.

-Heel to heel,

-of course.

-And up, down.

-Up, down...

Then, three steps

-on your toes and then plie.

-Plie.

Heels together like I showed you.

Heels together, yes, you did show me that.

You can hold my hand.

Oh, lovely. Thank you.

And one step

and three little steps

-and...

-One...

three little...

-I don't, yeah.

-Yes...

OK, well, something like that. Maybe we need some music.

-Yes.

-What do you think?

-I think so.

'And now for a performance that would impress the Sun King himself.'

MUSIC PLAYS

Very good.

-When do we go?

-I will tell you.

-I thought I was leading.

-Now! And...

-It's a bit fast.

-Is it too fast?

That's a little fast.

Because minuet was a happy dance.

-Well, I'm happy, I'm just not very quick.

-Yes?

No, OK, so this, we were very slow,

we were in a walk...

-..beat, a walking beat.

-You held us back, I felt.

One...

one, two.

Up.

Up.

Up.

Up.

Small wave, big wave.

-Very good. But you've done this before, I sense...

-No.

-No.

Ready?

-One.

-No, too fast.

Now.

-Up.

-I'm up.

-Up.

-I'm up!

Come on! You're better when you go back.

-Let's go back, you're better.

-OK.

I'm better going back.

-Well, I enjoyed that.

-Yes!

-Thank you for the dance.

Oh, it was my pleasure.

Louis XIV adored music.

So much so, he had a gaggle of musicians

following him around almost everywhere he went.

He filled Versailles with the sound of music.

Today, faithfully recreated by the Compagnie Baroque.

And the man who created the Versailles sound

was Louis's court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully.

MUSIC PLAYS

Jean-Baptiste Lully was actually Italian, born Giovanni Battista.

But the king didn't seem to mind, perhaps because Lully

was so keen on all things France.

He begged the king to give him full citizenship, and in return,

Lully helped to define what it meant to be French.

The impressive Lully penned new works for His Majesty

every single day.

He saw to it that Europe's most-fashionable baroque music

was no longer Italian, but French.

Stately and elegant, like the Sun King himself.

APPLAUSE

Louis's reign was a golden age for French music,

producing star composers like the viol player Marin Marais,

organist and harpsichordist Francois Couperin,

and the prolific Marc-Antoine Charpentier, whose Te Deum

is cherished today is the theme of the Eurovision Song Contest.

If the king embodied the entire nation,

then what nourished his body was important, too.

At Versailles, there was an army of cooks

whose job was to provide regular banquets fit for a king.

The public could stand and watch - and inhale -

as Louis sated his legendary appetite with dozens of dishes.

This was the birth of haute cuisine as we know it,

the classic French melange of rich creams, sauces and meats.

Fish, too, brought fresh to the Royal table,

was given the fancy treatment.

Merci, monsieur.

The king's most talented chef, Francois Vatel,

discovered the horror of getting it wrong during a weekend

of feasting in the countryside.

Poor old Vatel.

The Prince of Cooks, as he was known, met a fishy end.

He laid a sumptuous banquet for the king and his party

in the woods at Chantilly. The smell of roasting meat

commingled with the bouquet of narcissi.

Everybody had a terrific evening, apart from the poor cook himself.

They ran out of meat.

Not, thank God, at the king's table. No, at the 25th table.

All the same, he saw this as a grave blot on his reputation.

He'd ordered fish for the next day, but where were they?

The poissons hadn't arrived.

Convinced that his honour would be ruined,

Vatel retired to his quarters.

He took his sword and braced it against the back of the door.

And thrust it three times into his chest,

fatally wounding himself.

The next morning, the fish turned up

and everybody agreed it was a most delightful luncheon.

# Je t'aime...

# Je t'aime...

# Oui, je t'aime... #

The king enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh,

and every one of his mistresses worked her charms.

He took his satisfaction wherever he could.

So as long as you were female, and had a pulse,

you had a fair chance of bedding the boss.

Little Louise de la Valliere was youthful and pretty

and distracted from her flat chest with plenty of frills and laces.

By contrast, the witty Athenais de Montespan

had long, blonde hair, a pouting mouth, and an impressive cleavage.

Court stunner Marie Fontanges was said to be as beautiful

as an angel, and as stupid as a basket.

And the formidable, matronly Francoise de Maintenon

tried to tame the rapacious monarch.

This is the marble court at the very heart of Versailles.

And the king's complicated love life is written

into the very architecture of the place.

The Queen was ensconced in her quarters here.

The king's apartments, including the all-important bedchamber, behind me.

And over here was where the mistress du jour was put up.

Now, Louis and his mistress liked to oversee

the comings and goings in the court, to comment and titter about them.

And other, even more ribald noises escaped the upper windows.

Small wonder courtiers came to dread passing beneath them

and referred to it as "facing the firing squad".

Charming your way into the position of official mistress

won you untold privileges and favours.

But make no mistake, when the king was feeling frisky,

you'd better not complain of a "mal de tete",

or he'd grab the nearest chambermaid instead.

Yet one of Louis's favourite paintings has a strange

double meaning, for a man so driven by carnal pleasures.

The obvious subject matter was King David playing the harp.

Well, Louis was a lover of, a patron of the arts, particularly music.

So that flattered him.

But the work also spoke to the inner man in Louis.

After all, King David is raising his eyes in supplication to the Almighty

for forgiveness over his affair with Bathsheba, an adulterous liaison.

Not for the first time, I think, the king was having it both ways.

When he got up in the morning, he could look at this picture

and either be engorged with vanity at the idea of his musical prowess,

or else shriven with remorse,

depending on what he'd been up to the night before.

The year was 1666.

The royal mistress of the day was Athenais de Montespan,

a ravishing beauty with a razor-sharp wit.

# I put a spell on you...

# Because you're mine! #

For a time, the charms of Athenais worked perfectly.

The king was spellbound and made her his new official mistress.

All too soon, though,

she began to fear the kingly eye was roving again.

So she took unorthodox action.

She consulted a maker of spells, a sorceress,

and her name was Madame Voisin.

# You're mine! #

Madame Voisin was a witch who counted many important people

amongst her clients, but none closer to the king than Athenais.

We can imagine the usually vivacious mistress secretly slipping away

in a carriage to visit Madame Voisin at her home

in a quiet Parisian backstreet.

This row of houses stands on the site of the sorceress

La Voisin's home. It was an elegant villa set in substantial grounds.

And it was here she practised her Satanic arts,

including abortions and black magic rituals.

Many residents of Versailles came to buy

Voisin's famously poisonous concoction of arsenic and lead,

to help rid them of some rival at court.

But the king's mistress, Athenais, was here for something else -

a love potion that would help reinforce her hold

on the king's affections.

In a Parisian herbalists, historian Yves Broha is about to reveal

exactly what Madame Voisin was brewing up for Athenais.

Could you show me a love potion today? Is it legal?

And was it hidden in his food? Was that the idea?

A what "sexuel"? What was it?

Un excitant.

Oh, an exciter, a sexual exciter. Well, I guess that's the whole idea.

This is big voodoo, isn't it? Have you used this on anybody?

Really?

The love potion seemed to do the trick,

because the king's mistress noticed a distinct improvement

in the royal bedroom department.

Unfortunately, things were about to unravel

for her sorceress friend, Madame Voisin.

In 1679, Paris police were investigating

a string of suspicious deaths.

They uncovered widespread use of poison in French high society.

La Voisin was named as one of the chief suppliers.

Along with several other dealers in poison, she was tortured,

tried and hanged.

This wonderful, lurid engraving of the period

shows how the story of La Voisin

was seized upon by a scandal-hungry public.

It describes her as "source of so much evil,

"cursed creature who, by a thousand poisons, has destroyed nature".

She's seen here with demonic forces gathering about her.

On the right here, Death himself, with his sharpened scythe.

And over on the left, the three Fates,

about to sever the cord of her wretched life.

To begin with, the king was fully behind the inquiry.

He wanted to get to the bottom of this whole terrible affair.

But then word began to circulate

that one of the people caught up in it

was none other than his own beloved mistress. What to do?

Well, the king, of course, did what he always did,

and acted to suit himself.

He simply shut the inquiry down,

suppressed the evidence relating to his favourite courtesan.

And sure enough, she was safe.

Small matter that by then,

36 people had already paid with their lives for this sorry business.

For years, the king had inflicted exquisite torture on the court.

Most of them were banned from sitting in his presence.

Now, though, he was facing karmic comeuppance.

His normally strong constitution failed him for once,

and he developed a ticklish complaint

that made sitting down into an ordeal.

Louis developed an embarrassing and very painful anal fistula,

a pus-filled abscess that just wouldn't go away.

The king's physicians tried a range of tricks -

enemas, soothing poultices and various herbal concoctions -

without success.

The king got so fed up with his physicians

that he ordered his barber to cut the abscess out instead.

In those days, barbers performed surgery.

But it was a drastic throw of the dice.

The operation would be performed without anaesthetic,

and there was a high chance that the patient wouldn't survive.

As for the poor barber, Charles-Francois Felix,

he was terrified, but he didn't say no to His Majesty.

Monsieur Felix set about redesigning the tools of the trade

to create something that might improve his chances of success.

The Paris Museum of Medicine still houses the original instruments

designed by Louis's barber.

And this is what the fiendish imagination of Monsieur Felix

came up with to solve the agonising problem of the royal fundament.

He designed a retractor and a scalpel.

Now, the retractor would be inserted

into a delicate and throbbing part of the royal anatomy,

and then gently, like the petals of a flower,

opened up so that the surgeon could see what he was doing.

The historical record is a bit patchy

as to where Monsieur Felix came up with the idea for the scalpel -

this eye-wateringly long blade -

but I like to imagine that he was settling down

to a plate of his favourite escargots of an evening,

still turning this problem over in his mind,

when, grappling with a particularly truculent snail,

inspiration struck him.

Before he turned to the royal bottom,

75 other lesser posteriors were brought before him on the slab

so that he could experiment with these devices.

His Majesty went under the blade without a whimper or a murmur.

Against all the odds, the op was a great success.

The king was well and happy again.

He showered his lucky barber with benisons, with honours

and titles and riches.

And the operation itself

became the must-have procedure in fashionable Paris.

It was the Botox of its day.

It was known as the Royale.

And fashionable people would say to each other, "Have you had a Royale?

"I hear she's had a Royale."

Throughout Louis's reign, it was his portrait painters

who projected the powerful Sun King image to the wider world.

Hyacinthe Rigaud, who made his name painting all the nobs at Versailles,

was the artistic spin doctor par excellence.

In 1701, Rigaud was confronted with a challenge -

to paint the ageing Louis without diminishing his glory.

His Majesty was, by now, clearly no spring chicken.

But Rigaud manages to combine a jowly accuracy

with a noble, almost godlike demeanour.

And look at the legs on that. Not bad for 63.

No wonder Louis declared this his official state portrait,

his image for the ages.

This was the original painting

where the eyes followed you round the room,

because you dare not take your eyes off it.

It was forbidden to turn your back on this likeness of the king,

just as it was against the rules

to show your back to His Majesty himself.

Whenever he was away from court,

this full-length portrait hung in the throne room in his place.

Facsimiles of it were carried in processions in the provinces

like effigies of martyrs or saints.

It was less a work of art, more a feat of transubstantiation.

It was as if the ineffable presence of His Majesty himself

somehow permeated the oil and the canvas.

Louis lived to be one of the longest-reigning monarchs

in history. 72 years and 110 days on the throne.

His was a time of unparalleled glitter and spectacle.

He wanted his court to reflect his glory.

There were endless entertainments, lavish displays of fountains,

fireworks and feasting.

In the terrible winter of 1709,

when most of France starved from famine,

Louis decreed the party should go on.

At Versailles, Louis created a court like no other.

It was made to serve him and France -

though, of course, in his mind,

they were one and the same.

A project of such dazzling, all-consuming narcissism

couldn't possibly last.

The kings of France would live on at Versailles for 100 years,

until history blew up in their faces,

taking them right along with it.