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Lorraine, agreed by treaty to give the city of Marsal to the King of France. But he has reneged on his promise, on the deceitful pretext that the treaty was signed only by his nephew. The King has announced his intention to send an expeditionary corps to persuade the duc to honour his commitment. And I have volunteered, enthusiastically.’
    ‘But what if you should die there!’ exclaimed Athénaïs, her eyes suddenly misting over.
    ‘Then the name of Marsal,’ smiled Louis-Henri, ‘would for ever make you think of me. But nothing shall befall me. This campaign will bring us a host of advantages … And since to please God it is not necessary to cry or to starve, let us laugh, my dear, and eat our fill! May I have this oyster?’
    Beneath the stars as they returned to Paris, the Montespans’ carriage clattered along the road, and the coachman knew only too well that the shaking was not solely the result of the ruts along the King’s highway. Inside the vehicle, Françoise-Athénaïs straddled her husband frenetically (oysters, asparagus, ‘Aphroditic’ beans?). They faced one another, their mouths clamped together. The marquise squeezed her thighs to prevent the virile member from escaping as they jolted along. Louis-Henri clung to her with all his strength: ‘Hold tight to me, lest I come undone.’

4.
    A company of pikemen marched at sixty paces a minute to the rhythm of drums, oboes, fifes and trumpets playing military music. Their mounted captain was none other than the Marquis de Montespan.
    He observed his infantry soldiers as they advanced across a wide plain surrounded by a circular plateau, wooded in places. Marsal, the fortified city they were to take by storm, sat in the hollow of a natural basin.
    These men under Louis-Henri’s command, marching doggedly, were clumsy farm boys that a recruiting sergeant had found in the region of Chartres.
    ‘Several of them are bound to be killed,’ Athénaïs had sighed.
    ‘Whether they die stirring the earth in front of an enemy town or stirring it in a field in Beauce, it is still in the service of the King,’ her husband had said dismissively.
    The pikemen carried a pike two toises in length to confront the enemy cavalry. When the gates in the walled city were opened and the charge was given, they would have to ram their weapons deep into the horses’ guts; there would be fountains of blood splattering cloth, clothes would be torn, and all of it would cost him … the marquis added up his expenses.
    War was a ruinous undertaking. The aristocrat who bought a military commission also had to finance his company: provide for horses, carts, mules, household and camp utensils, tents, beds, dishes. A gentleman’s soldiers were not allowed to have their ‘king’s bread’ and their uniforms had to be bought for them. Louis-Henri watched as his Beaucerons advanced.
    Every item of the entire iron-grey outfit – jacket, breeches, boots, cravat, helmet – must have cost upwards of … but he could not shout out to them, ‘Mind your clothing!’ And then, they ate vast quantities, these soldiers who were about to face a horse: two pounds of bread, a pound of meat and a pint of wine, in addition to the five sols of pay each day. So much to disburse! Particularly as the marquis had also bought himself three rows of fusiliers – one row to shoot, one preparing to shoot, and one reloading their muskets, the lot of them moving forward, in turn, behind the pikemen. Louis-Henri, on a white horse, commanded them to remain calm and quiet so that they could hear the orders, and reminded them that they were to fight in silence and that each man had always to have a bullet in his mouth, to reload all the more quickly.
    Montespan, in the vanguard, was not afraid, this 2 September 1663. And although this was his first battle, the Gascon was suddenly fired up, gripping his taffeta standard and dreaming of nothing but ripping open the enemy. He knew that this was his opportunity to