Agnès Sorel (c. 1422-1450) was the favorite of Charles VII and the first official mistress of a King of France. Originally from the Tours region and of minor nobility, she took her first steps in high society by becoming a lady-in-waiting to Isabella of Lorraine, Queen of Sicily. Her encounter with Charles VII in 1444 would change the course of her life. As the king’s favorite, Agnès Sorel became a source of inspiration for artists of the time. For example, Jean Fouquet’s famous painting, the Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, was inspired by the figure of the royal mistress.
Agnès Sorel Meets Charles VII
Since his coronation in Reims in 1429, Charles VII’s life had been marked by victories over the English, and France was gradually reconquered at the end of the war that lasted a hundred years (1348-1453). The king, who until then had been confined to Bourges with his court, plagued by doubt and questions about the legitimacy of his birth, had regained confidence in his destiny. To celebrate these victories, a grand feast was organized at the Narbonnais castle in Toulouse in 1444. Charles VII, accompanied by his wife Marie of Anjou and his courtiers, received the homage of his guests. He did not suspect that this would be the place of an encounter that would change his life. Agnès Sorel, a native of Fromenteau in the Touraine region and future Lady of Beauty, was about to enter the scene.
In the great hall of the castle, Isabella of Anjou, the king’s sister-in-law, presented her ladies-in-waiting to Charles, each more beautiful than the last. The king’s gaze was drawn to one of them, blonde as a sheaf of wheat, standing out from her companions with her radiance.
“Sire,” said Isabella, “allow me to introduce you to the youngest of my ladies, Agnès Sorel.” She raised a clear face to the king, with large almond-shaped eyes, a well-defined mouth, and a wasp waist, bowing in a deep curtsy. Charles VII was dazzled: “More than beautiful,” he murmured, “the most beautiful of all!” He turned to his wife, an unattractive person with little wit. Kind and indulgent, she noticed his expression and rejoiced, without knowing the cause.
The feast then took on a special meaning for Charles. Agnès Sorel soon realized the emotion she had aroused, which troubled her all the more as she herself discovered an attraction for this man twenty years her senior. The king, despite his ungainly physique and lack of presence, was not without charm when his lively eyes lit up, revealing his qualities of subtlety, sensitivity, and intelligence.
Isabella of Anjou, to whom this had not escaped notice, did everything to favor this encounter, going so far as to install Agnes in a private room furnished with precious furniture (ladies-in-waiting usually lodged in dormitories), offering her sumptuous dresses. One evening, Messire Etienne Chevalier, the king’s private secretary, came to give her a precious jewel in the shape of a fleur-de-lis on behalf of his master. Could there have been a clearer message?
Agnès Sorel at the King’s Court
During a meeting arranged by his close associates, Charles courteously declared his feelings to the beautiful young woman, whose scruples melted like snow in the sun, for she realized, to her great emotion, that she was in love. Later, the two lovers would meet, marveling at each other, in Agnes’s room. No one yet knows of this idyll, except, of course, the accomplices of a king mad with love.
Discovering the king’s entourage, Agnes quickly noticed the animosity that reigned between the monarch and the dauphin, the future Louis XI, the latter constantly intriguing and plotting against a father he had hated since childhood, and finding in this liaison another opportunity to harm him. Charles was fortunately assisted by a few trusted men, such as Etienne Chevalier, the seneschal Pierre de Brézé, and especially the king’s grand treasurer, Jacques Cœur.
Industrialist, shipowner, banker, ambassador, and art lover, Jacques Cœur was a very influential man at court. A beautiful friendship would develop between him and Agnès Sorel, who would order many goods of all kinds from him. The grand treasurer of France planned to make the beautiful young woman a muse, a symbol of renewal for France, which had suffered greatly during this interminable period of war.
While Agnes was expecting her first child, Charles fell seriously ill in Tours, struck down by an inexplicable illness. Agnes trembled, France trembled… There was talk of poisoning, perhaps a criminal act by the Dauphin Louis who coveted the throne. Everything was done for the king’s salvation, who would miraculously recover thanks to potions, prayers, enemas, and other remedies of the time. At the birth of her first daughter in 1444, named Marie of France, Agnes officially became the royal favorite, a title that did not exist before, as the kings’ mistresses had to remain in the shadows.
First Official Favorite in the History of France
A luxurious life then began for Agnès Sorel. She was a woman radiant with life, happy to feel beautiful and to show it. She inaugurated the fashion of décolletés that completely revealed the breasts, which she had very beautiful. The king would give her the manor of Beauté-sur-Marne. He covered her with jewels, dresses, silverware, furs, and rare perfumes, and had her enter the queen’s household to have her near him. He would interest her in the affairs of the kingdom, integrating her into his council and taking her advice into account. With her, Charles VII was transformed, rediscovering a joy of living that he had so lacked.
His wife Marie of Anjou suffered from this betrayal spread out for all to see under her own roof, an outrage that shocked her modesty and hurt her tenderness towards her husband. She had to endure among her ladies-in-waiting this woman who was too beautiful, too conspicuous, more surrounded than herself! The luxury, the expenses, the lifestyle, Agnes’s provocations, made her the most criticized and envied woman in France, but some would admire her zest for life, her inner beauty as much as her outer beauty, her fine and brilliant mind, her communicative gaiety.
Louis, for his part, never ceased to outrage her, even insult her, despising her in the eyes of all, consumed by this hatred towards his father and his mistress, these two latter being obstacles to his ambitions to reign. One day he finally gave free rein to his rancor and pursued the beauty through the corridors of a royal castle, threatening her with his sword. Agnes had to take refuge in the king’s chamber, and the latter, exasperated, exiled him to the Dauphiné.
While Agnes was expecting her second child, Charles carried out the pursuit of reforms in his kingdom, reshaping the army and appointing agents responsible for tax collection. Installed at the hotel in the suburb of Loches, bordered by forests, fields, and water features, she was happy in this rural place. The king established himself near his beauty, at the castle of Razilly, far from the gossip and slander of the court, giving free rein to his favorite occupations: hunting, walks in the forest, crossbow shooting, tennis and chess, dancing, and amorous jousts with his beloved.
On a snowy day in January 1446, Charlotte of Valois, Agnes’s second daughter, was born. The king, overjoyed, showered her with gifts and titles in Rouergue and Berry. She would wear around her neck the first cut diamond in the West, an invaluable gift from Charles. Besides the fashion for vertiginous décolletés, she would launch those of endless trains and headgear as high as beehives. In this era not much given to hygiene, she popularized among the court very refined body care, massages, baths, and perfumes, according to the Oriental fashion.
Plots and Intrigues
Her happiness was only marred by the incessant plots of the dauphin aimed at separating her from the king, and the fact that she had not given him a son: “If only I could give the king of my heart this son he would have loved so much,” she sighed. For his part, the dauphin sought by all means to bring down the two characters she esteemed and protected, the seneschal Pierre de Brézé and the grand treasurer Jacques Cœur. A wind of conspiracies and dark betrayals blew over the king’s entourage.
The seneschal, who was suspected, among other things, of having an affair with Agnès Sorel, had to file a lawsuit to defend his honor. The “Lady of Beauty” would clumsily attempt to intercede on behalf of her friend, going to Paris in great pomp, in an entourage worthy of a queen. The result was contrary to what was expected: booed, insulted, and treated as the “king’s whore” by the people, she was deeply hurt and bitterly regretted her initiative. The king, furious and distressed by the welcome given to his precious beloved, would organize festivals in her honor to make her forget this affront.
After five years of peace, Charles VII, urged by Agnes and his entourage, would go to war again to retake the few cities of the kingdom still in English hands. This campaign would be crowned with success, and soon only Calais would remain to the latter. While Agnes was expecting a fourth child, she was informed of yet another plot by the dauphin aimed at delivering the king to the English. Mad with anxiety, she wanted to warn the monarch of the danger that awaited him, despite her difficult pregnancy.
Tragic Death of Agnès Sorel
After an exhausting journey in the middle of winter, she joined the king at Jumièges. The latter was more alarmed by the state of his beloved than by the news she brought him: “Rest at the manor of Mesnil, my love, the Benedictine monks will welcome you there,” he told her. The king, followed by Jacques Cœur and Etienne Chevalier, would come to visit her. Over the days, they would notice a great weakness and lack of vitality that was unlike Agnes.
The delivery began a month early, while the young woman, exhausted, could not bear the ordeal. A frail little girl was born who would not survive, leaving her mother devastated, prey to fevers and abdominal pains resulting from long and difficult childbirths. Then began for Agnes, afflicted with “childbed fever,” a rapid agony, punctuated by suffering and sanies. Charles VII was devastated, forgetting his almost finished war to stay at the bedside of the one who was the essence of his life and who was in danger of death.
Agnes did not want to offer the spectacle of her physical decay. She would lock her door, her body soiled, emptied, horrifying her. Feeling her end near, she summoned her confessor and her friend and testamentary executor Jacques Cœur. They would witness the last words of the “Lady of Beauty”: “It is a small thing, and vile and fetid, that our frailty.” Agnès Sorel died in February 1450, at the age of 28, perhaps a victim of poisoning (*). Grief-stricken, the king ordered two magnificent marble tombs, one containing her heart at Jumièges Abbey, the other her body in the collegiate church of Saint Ours in Loches.
Thus ends a great love story, between a king with a chaotic journey and the “most beautiful of beauties” of his time. Her glory would last only seven years during which this exceptional woman in more than one respect left no one indifferent, imposing her lifestyle, associating her name with that of Charles VII in the history of France.
(*) In 2005, forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier suggested that Agnès Sorel had suffered from acute mercury poisoning.
