Antoine II Coëffier (or Coiffier) de Ruzé (or Coiffier-Ruzé), Marquis d'Effiat, was a French aristocrat who born in 1638 or 1639 and died in Paris in June 1719. A grand seigneur with possessions in the Auvergne, Loire Valley, and Paris regions, he was a member of the court at Versailles and a keen hunter on his lands and those of the House of Orléans.
A member of the household of the two successive Dukes of Orléans, he has a sulfurous reputation due to his relationships with them. As one of Philippe I's favorite lovers, he was involved in many intrigues, notably against Philippe's two successive wives. Members of the court suspected him of having poisoned Philippe's first wife, Henrietta of England, and he was an enemy of the second, Princess Palatine Elisabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria. She refused to allow him to be governor to her son, the future Regent. Nevertheless, he played a role in concluding the latter's marriage to Mademoiselle de Blois and became one of her "roués", debauched companions at the famous "petits soupers". Saint-Simon detested the Marquis d'Effiat.
During the Polysynod, he was vice-president of the Finance Council, and then a member of the Regency Council. He founded the royal military college in Effiat and hospices in Chilly and Montrichard. He died childless, and this branch of the Coëffier de Ruzé family died out with him.
Biography
Family Antoine II Coëffier de Ruzé, Marquis d'Effiat, born 1638 or 1639, was the son of Martin Coëffier de Ruzé, Marquis d'Effiat (1612–1644) and Isabeau d'Escoubleau de Sourdis (died 1644), married in 1637. He was the nephew of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a favorite of Louis XIII, who was executed in 1642 for conspiring against Richelieu, and the grandson of his namesake Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé, Superintendent of Finances and Marshal of France.
The Marquis d'Effiat was orphaned at an early age, five or six, and was survived only by his grandmother Marie de Fourcy, wife of Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé, through whom he was linked to the powerful ministerial family of the Phélypeaux and to the minister Claude Le Peletier, who in 1696 bought the Hôtel d'Effiat, the family's former Parisian townhouse.
On May 2, 1660, he married Marie-Anne Olivier de Leuville, born in 1637 or 1638, daughter of Louis Olivier, Marquis de Leuville, lieutenant general of the king's armies, and his wife Anne Morand. Marie-Anne Olivier de Leuville died on February 21, 1684, childless. Thereafter, the Marquis d'Effiat did not remarry.
Grand seigneur and courtier Antoine II Coëffier de Ruzé was marquis of Effiat, lord of Vichy, Longjumeau, Gannat, Montrichard and Chilly. He was lord of Crocq from 1668 to 1701 when he sold this barony to François du Ligondès.
It was his grandfather and namesake, Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé d'Effiat, who in 1624 obtained the erection of Chilly and Longjumeau into a marquisate and then launched the construction of Château de Chilly, which was continued by his widow, Marie de Fourcy. Louis XIV spent several nights there during the Marquis d'Effiat's youth. Antoine II Coëffier de Ruzé d'Effiat inherited the seigneury of Montrichard from his mother. He organized hunts there, to which he gave particular splendor.
In the mid-1660s, the Marquis d'Effiat entered the household of Monsieur (Philippe d'Orléans), brother of Louis XIV, where he obtained the enviable positions of premier écuyer and grand veneur. His wife, Marie-Anne Olivier de Leuville, became governess to Monsieur's children in December 1679, but did not hold this position for long, dying in February 1684.
Monsieur appointed the Marquis d'Effiat governor of his châtellenies of Dourdan and Montargis. Effiat became governor of the latter town around 1691 and remained so until he died in 1719. He liked to stay there and, as in Montrichard, to hunt in the forest of Montargis, as Saint-Simon, who disliked him and despised his family origins, too recent nobility according to him, points out:Effiat lived as a boy, very rich, very inaccessible, very fond of hunting, and had the pack of Monsieur, and after him [that] of M. le Duc d'Orléans, who had no use for them; six or seven months of the year in Montargis, or in his lands almost alone, and seeing only obscure people, very particular, and also obscure in Paris, with creatures of the same kind; sometimes debuting in good company, as he was only good with his grisettes and his complaisants. He was a rather small man, dry, well-built, upright, clean, with a blond wig, a shaggy face, very glorious, polite with the world, and who had a great deal of the language and bearing of it.Fontenelle seems to have had a very different opinion of the Marquis d'Effiat. Indeed, in 1692, the Recueil des plus belles pièces des poètes français tant anciens que modernes (Collection of the finest works by French poets, both ancient and modern), of which Fontenelle was most certainly the author, was dedicated to the Marquis d'Effiat. The dedication states that Effiat is "the man in the world most capable of [...] knowing all the beauties [of this book]". Further on, the author states:I am thinking here only of the accuracy of your discernment and the finesse of your taste [...]. Some of the most agreeable Authors who have entered this Collection have had the honour of being in a private company with you & I owe you even the greater part of their Works, which they have done for you or which they have entrusted to you.The Marquis d'Effiat was a courtier, housed in the Princes' Wing at the Palace of Versailles, in a five-room apartment with three rooms above. These apartments were later allocated to Louis XIV's valet de chambre, Alexandre Bontemps. On December 31, 1688, Effiat was appointed Knight of the King's Orders in a large promotion. The award ceremony took place on January 1, 1689. This promotion indicated that he was appreciated by Louis XIV.
Monsieur's favorite and accused of poisoning
Along with Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine, Effiat was one of the main favorites of Monsieur, whose homosexuality (an anachronistic term) was notorious. Although the Chevalier de Lorraine was the main lover of the Duc d'Orléans, the relationship was not exclusive, and the duo sometimes became a trio with the Marquis d'Effiat. The presence of other favorites led to disputes and reconciliations, comically described by Madame de Sévigné in her letters to her daughter dated August 9, 1675, August 12, 1675, and August 28, 1675. The angry Chevalier de Lorraine takes refuge with the Marquis d'Effiat in Chilly, before returning to court at Effiat's insistence. Saint-Simon specialist Damien Crelier considers this group of favorites, including the Marquis d'Effiat, to be composed of homosexuals for opportunism.
Monsieur's favorites intrigued against the Duc d'Orléans' first wife, Henrietta of England. When she died suddenly at the age of 26 in 1670, the idea that she had been poisoned, as Henrietta herself claimed before her death, seemed to take hold at court. Louis XIV ordered an autopsy on the princess, and the doctors' report concluded that she had died of natural causes. Poisoning was not proven and, despite several hypotheses, the precise cause of death remains unknown.
However, rumors persisted that the Marquis d'Effiat was the murderer. In his Mémoires, Saint-Simon took up the rumor, claiming to have heard it from the Attorney General Joly de Fleury. Saint-Simon recalls that the Chevalier de Lorraine had been exiled by the King and that Monsieur's favorites were worried about Henrietta's favor with the King. The Marquis d'Effiat was said to have mixed poison with the chicory water drunk by the princess. To find out the truth, Louis XIV allegedly questioned Purnon, Madame's first butler, who accused the Chevalier de Lorraine of being responsible for the poisoning. As early as the 18th century, Marmontel, the king's historiographer, was suspicious of Saint-Simon's assertion. For him, "nothing in this account is believable".
The persistence of this rumor arises in the context of the poisons affair, and the crimes by poisoning committed a few years after the death of Henriette of England by the Marquise de Brinvillers; poison has been considered a feminine weapon par excellence since Antiquity.
In addition to the accusation, Saint-Simon portrays the Marquis d'Effiat as an unscrupulous schemer, while discreetly alluding to his homosexuality:the Marquis d'Effiat was a man of great wit and manoeuvrability, who had neither soul nor principles, who lived in a disorder of morals and public irreligion, equally rich and miserly, with an ambition which always sought a way to achieve it, and to whom everything was good for that, insolent to the last point with M. le Duc d'Orléans himself, who, from the time when, with the Chevalier d'Lorraine, whose damned soul he was, he governed Monsieur, his court and often his affairs, with a rod, had become accustomed to fearing him and admiring his spirit.
Enemy of the Princess Palatine
In 1716, almost fifty years after the death of Henrietta of England, Princess Palatine, Monsieur's second wife and a close enemy of the Marquis d'Effiat, returned to the same accusations. Monsieur's favorites were said to have poisoned his first wife without telling her, for fear of her gossip. Monsieur was reputed to lack discretion and to love gossip. He was considered to be effeminate and was thus attributed to faults considered feminine. More precisely, according to the Princess Palatine, the Marquis d'Effiat was clever enough to poison the Princess's cup, which no one else touched, rather than the chicory water it contained, which could then be consumed by others.
In 1671, the Duc d'Orléans remarried to the Princess Palatine. The Marquis d'Effiat continued to exert considerable influence over the Duc d'Orléans, and his relationship with the latter's second wife was as difficult as with the first. He practices a kind of moral harassment towards Monsieur's new wife, with the Chevalier de Lorraine and a woman – who tries to pass herself off as Monsieur's mistress – called Mademoiselle and then Madame de Grancey. The latter is Elisabeth Rouxel de Médavy (1653–1711), daughter of Marshal de Grancey. In 1682, they tried to discredit the Princess Palatine in her husband's eyes by spreading the rumor that she was having an affair which she had to defend.
In 1689, Monsieur considered entrusting the governorship of his son, the Duc de Chartres, future Duc d'Orléans and Regent, to the Marquis d'Effiat. For the Princess Palatine, it was unbearable that someone she considered depraved should be responsible for her son's education. She refused and, faced with her husband's stubbornness, intervened with Louis XIV. With candor and humor, she points out the consequences of the poisoning rumor: "Whether true or false, this accusation constitutes a fine title of honor for entrusting my son to him", she writes. She also fears that the marquis will initiate her son: This marquis is the most debauched fellow in the world, and particularly adept at debaucheries of the worst kind. If he becomes my son's governor, I can be sure he will teach him what is most horrible in the world.Indeed, this plan has sometimes been misinterpreted as a hidden desire to steer the young Duc de Chartres towards homosexuality. In the end, the King reassured the Princess Palatine that there was no question of appointing Effiat governor to her nephew the Duc de Chartres.