On this day 1715…death of Louis XIV

How Louis XIV’s doctors tried to use wine to cure the ailing monarch before his death, 300 years ago on this day in 1715.

Louis XIV – known also as the “Sun King”, “le Roi-Soleil”, for his brilliant and eventful reign – remains to this day Europe’s longest reigning monarch, having ascended to the throne at the age of just four in 1643. Upon his death, 300 years ago today, he had ruled for 72 years and 110 days.

A true colossus of history, his ambition and the resulting wars shaped European history and expanded France’s borders to almost their modern limits and his method of absolute kingship produced both the Palace of Versailles and, arguably, sowed the seeds of the French Revolution.

A lover of all the finery of his age it was also supposedly he that gave Tokaji the sobriquet: “C’est le Vins des Rois, Rois des Vins” – his successor, Louis XV, used the Latin, “Vinum Regnum, Rex Vinorum” when quoting his famous ancestor.

It is no surprise therefore that when news of his death reached foreign courts even other crowned heads of Europe such as Frederick-William I of Prussia, were moved to tell their courtiers: “gentlemen, the king is dead.”

Unfortunately for le Roi-Soleil his death was anything but glamorous. In his youth his energy for war and great building projects were easily matched and probably exceeded by his carnal appetite and although in later life he became increasingly religious and restricted himself to just one woman, Madame Maintenon (actually his wife although they were married in secret because of her lowly status), as he neared his end Louis was thoroughly riddled with syphilis and gout among other ailments.

In what would have been perceived as a sign of divine discontent with his former sinful ways, the 76-year old Louis eventually succumbed to a gangrenous infection which was initially misdiagnosed and quickly spread from his foot to his leg.

Black, putrid and foul smelling, his doctors ordered the limb to be bathed in ass’s milk and boiling wine mixed with herbs.

In fact a special silver vessel was made for the sole purpose of allowing the royal “guibolle” to be fully immersed in the aromatised wine.

What wine exactly was used is open to speculation, Nancy Mitford in her 1966 book, “The Sun King” specifically mentions it was Burgundy, which was a favourite at the royal court at the time, but as to which village it may have come from time constraints have, for this piece at least, stymied further investigation.

Louis lingered on, in agony, through August but insisted that the daily routine of the palace continue around him, even when he became completely bed-ridden. In perhaps the strangest display of kingly power, dutiful courtiers would daily continue to troop into the king’s bedchamber to watch him eat his meals.

He once remarked that: “If I continue to eat with such an appetite I fear I shall ruin a good number of Englishmen who have staked their fortunes on my being dead by September.”

Enviable sang-froid in the face of what he knew was his approaching end but also somewhat lessened by the fact that at this point the great king was reduced to eating little more than rather watery bouillon.

Unsurprisingly however, washing gangrene in Burgundy – no matter how good or expensive – proved futile, Louis named his great-grandson, the five-year old Louis last surviving son of Louis, Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s already deceased grandson, as his successor and XV king of France of that name under the regency of his nephew, the Duke of Orléans (mercifully called Philippe, not Louis).

On 1 September, four days before his 77^th birthday, Louis XIV died and he was followed to his grave, less than two weeks later, by another famous inhabitant of Louis’s world and kingdom and who was even born in the same year as the great monarch – Dom Pérignon.

But that’s another story.