A closer look
Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart, better known as Madame de Montespan, was the incredibly powerful chief mistress of King Louis the Fourteenth who reportedly turned to dark mysticism to maintain her royal influence. Desperate to keep the king's wandering affections, she secretly hired a notorious Parisian sorceress named La Voisin to perform elaborate black masses that allegedly involved sacrificing infants over her bare stomach. She supposedly slipped obscure love potions made from dried mole blood and bat bones into the king's royal meals, hoping that ceremonial magic would permanently secure her political position at the extravagant court of Versailles. It reveals the absolute insanity of seventeenth-century French high society, where the most powerful woman in the country casually relied on literal satanic witchcraft and dead bats just to prevent her boyfriend from talking to younger women
