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Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.
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Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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To survive the court of King Louis xiv, you needed one money. The Sun King had a penchant for excess, and a typical day in court meant wild parties, grand feasts, high stakes gambling and the funds to keep all of that going to stay in the King's favor. Some nobles were forced to extremes, and starting in the late 1600s, the rush to keep up with the royals led to a scandal of supernatural proportions. The whole thing started with a break in. One night in Paris, somebody was seen going into the laboratory of Captain Goudin de Sainte Croix, which wouldn't have been unusual except that the captain had just died. The police were called, and while they didn't find any burglars, they did soon discover a curious red leather trunk. Inside were letters between the handsome captain and his lover, the beautiful married noblewoman Marie de Brinvilliers. This was itself not very strange. All of Versailles knew that Godin and Marie were having an affair. It was what was in the letters that was shocking. These weren't simple declarations of love. Many of the letters instead detailed Marie and Godin's shared passion trying to develop the perfect poison. And judging by the vials of tasteless, odorless liquid inside the case, it seemed the two had been successful. As news soon broke, Marie fled Versailles. She moved from town to town in disguise and under assumed names, always one step ahead of King Louis royal authorities. She was finally captured, though in Belgium. After four years. Between the Crown's investigation and Marie's own confessions, a horrifying picture is emerged. While Gudin was still alive, she and the captain laced cakes with arsenic and fed them to poor hospital patients to test them. When they'd finally crafted an undetectable poison, they moved on to family. Marie poisoned her father and two brothers so that she could inherit their wealth. With this money, she could shine in court and pay off Gudin's substantial debts. But Marie's execution did nothing to calm the excitement in court. King Louis was horrified that someone who could have killed him so easily and without suspicion had been so close to the Crown. Not only that, the court began to question whether any noble person's death in the past decade was truly due to natural causes or whether there had been other poisoners. On the loose. Poisoning, you see, was thought to be the work of witchcraft. So King Louis appointed the chief of Paris police to head a new task force, one that would root out any poisoners, witches or practitioners of black magic hiding in the court. The chief took his new assignment with enthusiasm. He quickly rounded up scores of fortune tellers, magicians and apothecaries. Many of these people gave up lists of clients to save their own skin. It was common for nobles to buy charms and love potions from low level alchemists and sorceresses like these. But now these purchases were cast under a new, suspicious light. Over the next decade, dozens of people were arrested for poisoning or witchcraft, which had basically become the same in the eyes of the law. In 1680, perhaps the most startling accusations rocked Versailles. A famous sorceress had named names of her clients, and one of her best customers was Madame de Montespan, the king's favorite royal mistress. According to the sorceress, Madame de Montespan had used the black arts for years to get to the top. Before she was Louis lover, she allegedly had a priest perform a black mass over her naked body. The sorceress claimed the madam had poisoned the previous royal favorites and had fed Louis love potions made with the body parts of murdered infants. Just as Louis had feared, there was a witch in his court and in his bed. Hearing these shocking revelations about his own lover, the king began to realize that he had taken things too far. Madame de Montespan had seven children with the king. She was his close friend and confidante and one of the most powerful women in court. And it would be foolish to admit that the King of France could be influenced by such a simple love potion. The affair of the poisons, as it became known, finally came to an end in 1682. By the time King Louis pulled the plug, over 400 people had been charged with witchcraft and 36 had been executed. More were jailed, exiled, or died from torture in prison. The French court was a fraught place where politics and gossip could make or break a career. Normally, you would expect the deadliest weapons in such a place to be words. But for a brief stretch under Louis xiv, if a rival wanted to poison the opinion against you, they might just take things a bit too literally. It's good to be king. Or at least that's what Mel Brooks says in his 1981 film History of the World Part 1. And while that may sound true to us peasants, history would actually suggest otherwise. Many kings throughout history met with grisly deaths, and that was especially True, during the Roman Empire, in fact, their kings or emperors were murdered more often than not, frequently by their own people. This led to a complicated political structure that was constantly changing. Emperors made alliances and broke them practically every year. How bad did it get? Well, by 286 A.D. there were actually two Roman emperors and more would be successors waiting in the wings. And this included a man named Corazias, who first gained renown not as an emperor, but as a pirate. Carausias was a member of a tribe that was an offshoot of the Celts who had settled in modern day northern France. His people were conquered centuries before by none other than Julius Caesar. And so while Carausius was born into the Roman Empire, he was also part of a separate distinct culture. And this perhaps led to mixed loyalties. But by the third century A.D. the Romans couldn't be too picky about who they picked as their soldiers were fighting rebellions throughout the empire. Carausius fought in the Roman navy, helping to secure Gaul for the empire. One of the two emperors at the time, Maximian promoted Carausias to commander of his entire northern fleet. But this was a bit of a miscalculation. You see, Carausias had been happy to fight against other tribes in Gaul. However, now that he had power, why would he not try to rule over the land that was first settled centuries before by his own ancestors? Carausias, you see, was supposed to use his fleet to stop pirates. But instead he captured the pirates and then hired them with their own confiscated plunder. And he used this practice to grow his fleet until finally Maximian ordered his execution. But Carausius moved fast on the sea and so he took his fleet north and quickly conquered modern day Britain. He once again showed his aptitude for making unusual alliances with when he joined forces with the so called barbarians of the north who lived beyond Hadrian's Wall, a massive fortification that divided modern day England straight across the middle. And because of this, Carausias was protected in the north and he had his pirates fortify the coast to the south. Maximian couldn't touch him. By about 290 AD Maximian and his co, Emperor Diocletian had no choice but to recognize Carausias as the third emperor of Rome, ruling over both Britain and northern France. But as I said, Roman emperors were not known for keeping their alliances. Once they had put down rebellions in other parts of the empire. Maximian and Diocletian developed a plan to get rid of Carausias. In 293 AD they appointed two new Caesars which were basically emperors in waiting. I did say that Roman politics were complicated, didn't I? Well, one of these Caesars was sent to kill Carausius, who was back in northern France and out from behind his barricades in Britain. Sadly, Carausias wouldn't get the chance to prove himself against this new upstart. He was assassinated by one of his own subordinates that very same year, and that subordinate then fled back to Britain, only to declare himself as yet another new emperor. The rest was a bit of a blur. The Romans chased down this new upstart, beat him in battle and reunited the empire. Maximian would later be hounded by another new emperor and ultimately took his own life. In the end, Diocletian became the only Roman emperor to ever retire peacefully, marking one of the few moments in Roman history when it truly was good to be king. Still, I wouldn't recommend it. Sure, the pay is good, but the turnover is atrocious.
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I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities Podcast. This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series and television show and you can learn all about it over@theworldoflore.com and until next time, stay curious.