In 1749, Louis XV ordered a new fleece from his jeweler: it was a Toison d'Or.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells the fascinating story of the most beautiful decoration worn by the King of France.
It is surely the most sumptuous jewel of Louis XV. Ordered in 1749 by the King of France, the Toison d'Or is a badge that refers to the legend of Jason and the Argonauts… In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars looks back on the origins of the "colored set" worn by the king.
In 1749, Louis XV ordered a new Toison d'Or from his jeweler Jacquemin.
The king wants her particularly beautiful and dazzling.
He wants two of the most beautiful blue diamonds from his great-grandfather Louis XIV's collection to be inserted into this jewel: the famous dark blue heart-shaped diamond, a masterpiece from the Sun King's collection, and another cut in the shape of a cushion, like the previous one by Pittan, Louis XIV's jeweler.
This second diamond is clearer, with a "slightly celestial" tone, it is called the Bazu.
It weighs 32 carats 66. It is the second blue diamond of the Sun King.
This new set will be called "color set".
Louis XV already had several insignia of the Toison d'Or.
Until now, the most beautiful was the "white set" composed of four large white diamonds including the very beautiful "Second Mazarin" of more than 25 carats and many other smaller ones, 175 diamonds and eighty rubies.
The colored adornment must have been even more dazzling than the white adornment.
But why is Louis XV so attached to this Order of the Golden Fleece?
And why is this Order considered the most prestigious in Western Europe?
Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, founded in 1429 the Sovereign Order of the Golden Fleece
Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, was the son of Jean sans Peur, the man of the quarrel between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.
Jean sans Peur had his rival and cousin Louis of Orleans assassinated in 1407.
He himself ended up assassinated in 1419 by an Armagnac supporter of Charles VII.
The House of Burgundy is ulcerated and out of a spirit of revenge, his son Philippe le Bon allies with the English.
It is he who, in 1430, will deliver them for 10,000 gold crowns Joan of Arc, fallen into his power under the walls of Compiègne.
In 1435, four years after the torture of Joan of Arc, Philippe le Bon obtained from Charles VII to be independent and he further extended his domain.
His city of Dijon was then the capital of a powerful state which included part of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Flanders, Artois, Picardy and the territory between the Loire and the Jura.
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On January 14, 1429, he married Isabelle of Portugal.
She was his third wife.
On this occasion, he created the Order of the Golden Fleece.
It was founded in honor of God, of the Virgin and of Saint Andrew, but with the concern to retain the high nobility around it.
The Order originally had 31 members, 31 knights who symbolize the close union, around it, of the nobility of the rich and vast Burgundy territories.
Its members are dressed in sumptuous costumes: a scarlet dress filled with petit gris and covered with a long coat of the same ruddy cloth, also filled with petit gris.
The Order is obviously inspired by the legend of the Golden Fleece conquered by Jason and his Argonauts.
The legend of Jason and the Argonauts
The Golden Fleece, in Greek mythology, is that of the winged and divine ram which carried into the air Phrixos and Hellé who were fleeing their mother-in-law Ilo.
Helle fell into the sea. Arrived in Colchis, beyond the Black Sea, Phrixos sacrificed the ram to Zeus and made a gift of the magical Golden Fleece, which brings fortune, to the king of Colchis, Aietes.
He hung it on an apple tree and had it guarded by a dragon named Ladon.
Later, Jason, son of the king of Thessaly Eson, is instructed by his father to fetch the famous Fleece in Colchis and bring it back to him.
The goddess Athena directs the construction of the boat, called Argo, which will carry Jason and his companions, the Argonauts.
Arrived in Colchis, Jason is refused the Fleece by King Aietes, but Medea, his daughter, gives him the means to conquer it.
It is this golden ram hanging on a branch of an apple tree and guarded by a dragon that will symbolize the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Indeed, the collar of the Golden Fleece consists of a golden ram suspended from a gold chain decorated with blue fire stones emitting flames.
The meaning is: "I am a brave knight ready to fight with the flint and fire if I am to defend my values, the Golden Fleece".
It is, of course, a totally Burgundian Order.
For twenty years, after the peace of Arras, the France of Charles VII and the Burgundy of Philippe le Bon will live in good harmony.
The Duke of Burgundy then maintains one of the most brilliant courts in Europe, ruled by five great officers, the Marshal of Burgundy, the Admiral of Flanders, the Chamberlain, the Grand Squire and the Chancellor.
Philippe le Bon then turned away from French affairs and devoted himself entirely to his Burgundian state.
He represses the tax revolts of the cities of Liège and Ghent (this will happen often), works to unify the estates while respecting local customs.
Under his leadership, a powerful intellectual current developed with the University of Louvain, founded in 1425, and a brilliant artistic development with painters such as the Flemish Primitives Van Eyck and Memling.
He receives the nickname, much envied, of "Grand Duke of the West".
But his duchy suffers from a serious flaw, it is not in one piece.
Champagne and Lorraine separate the two parts, Burgundy and Franche-Comté on the one hand, the Netherlands on the other ...
Philippe le Bon and his wife Isabelle will have a son, Charles, on November 11, 1433. At only nineteen days old, he was elected Chevalier de la Toison d'Or.
Extraordinary honor but the event is commensurate with the relief of Philip the Good: he had not had children from his first two wives, and had lost the first two given to him by his third wife, Isabelle.
Little Charles will have a traveling life between Burgundy and Flanders.
The family moves from city to city, Brussels, Ghent, Tournai, Bruges.
In 1438, he was 5 years old.
His father gave him a House, he was titled Count of Charolais.
The Peace of Arras, signed with the King of France Charles VII in 1435, put an end to sixteen years of Franco-Burgundian wars.
As a token of peace, Charles is engaged to Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VII.
Their marriage is celebrated in Cambrai on June 11, 1439. The bride is 11 years old, the groom 6!
For seven years, until the untimely death of Catherine, the very young couple lived in Brussels.
Charles "the Bold", a proud duke
After the death of his wife, Charles, a 13-year-old widower, returns to live with his parents.
He has the ardent nature of a sportsman and a great hunter.
He is courageous, loyal but also violent, proud and stubborn which will put him in a state of inferiority vis-à-vis his devious opponent, Louis XI, who deemed him "crazy or close"!
His grand design was to unite his possessions in Flanders with those of Burgundy and Franche-Comté to create between France and the Empire a new kingdom which could extend to the Mediterranean.
If we want to summarize, he must conquer Champagne and Lorraine to the detriment of Louis XI.
Charles became Duke of Burgundy in 1467, known as “the Bold”, severely punished the people of Liège who had revolted against their bishop with the help of Louis XI.
All his reign will be filled by his wars against Louis XI of which he was the most powerful vassal but against whom he tries to draw up the Emperor and the King of England.
In 1475, he undertook the conquest of Lorraine while Louis XI, who had reoccupied the towns of the Somme in 1471, found allies against the expansion of Burgundy.
In particular the Swiss who dealt decisive blows to Bold at the battle of Grandson in March 1476, then to Murten in June 1476.
Charles the Bold ended up being killed under the walls of Nancy in January 1477. The Burgundian State collapsed with him.
Louis XI then annexed Burgundy.
From his second marriage to Isabelle of Bourbon, the Bold had only one daughter, Marie, born in 1457. She brings the rest of her inheritance, notably the immense territories of the Netherlands, to the House of Austria in marrying, in the summer of 1477, Archduke Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III of Habsburg.
However, Philippe le Bon, first grand master of the Order of the Golden Fleece, had made it clear that this function could only be exercised by a man.
It is therefore Maximilian of Habsburg who becomes the new grand master of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Maximilian will become Emperor Maximilian I and will have several children with Mary.
The eldest, Philippe 1er, known as the Beautiful, will inherit the Netherlands from his mother.
He will marry Jeanne la Folle, heiress of Spain and the Kingdom of Naples.
It is their eldest son, Charles, who will become Emperor Charles V.
He will inherit a huge Empire representing more than half of Europe with Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and the Kingdom of Naples.
The historian Pierre Chaunu will even speak of an "Emperor overwhelmed with inheritances"!
He is now the Grand Master of the Golden Fleece and when he settles his succession, it is to his son, King Philip II of Spain, that he will pass the Grand Master on.
The kings of Spain, holders of the Grand Mastery of the Golden Fleece
From the death of Charles V, it is the kings of Spain, Philippe II and his successors, who are the holders of the Grand Mastery of the Golden Fleece, the only ones authorized to choose their knights.
In 1701, the Spanish sovereign Charles II died without posterity.
A war will break out for his succession: it mainly opposes Louis XIV and the Emperor Leopold 1st of the Holy Empire, a Habsburg.
Both had good reasons to claim the throne of Spain: both had married sisters of Charles II and both were grandsons of Philip III of Spain.
Louis XIV chose to support the rights of his grandson, Philippe d'Anjou and Léopold I, those of his son, the Archduke Charles.
Charles II, sickly and knowing that he could not have an heir, had nevertheless seemed to support the French successor.
Indeed, Louis XIV and his wife had solemnly renounced their rights to the Spanish throne but French diplomacy had ended up obtaining, at the last moment, from Charles II the designation as his successor of the grandson of the Sun King, Philippe d ' Anjou.
Things are going to move quickly.
Philippe d 'Anjou arrived in Madrid at the beginning of 1701. He was immediately crowned under the name of Philippe V. All the European powers recognized him, with the exception of the Habsburg emperor.
But the decision to open the Spanish colonial empire to French trade raised opposition from England and the United Provinces.
A great alliance is then formed against France and Spain.
It brings together England, the Holy Empire, Holland, and later Portugal and Savoy.
It is a coalition against Louis XIV and Philippe V who have Bavaria as their only ally.
The War of the Spanish Succession broke out in September 1701. After some Franco-Spanish successes between 1701 and 1704, disasters would follow.
The English settled in Gibraltar, Archduke Charles was proclaimed King of Spain in September 1706 and Philippe V was expelled from Madrid.
The winter of 1708-1709 was disastrous for invaded France, where famine was raging.
Louis XIV tries negotiations but the conditions are so humiliating that he refuses them.
The French then try a last ditch effort.
Marshal de Villars arrested the allies at Malplaquet in 1709 and in 1710, victorious at Villaviciosa, he drove them out of Catalonia.
Two huge victories.
A turning point for the war, reinforced by the unexpected death of Emperor Joseph I.
His successor, Archduke Charles, ascends the imperial throne under the name of Charles VI.
The allied powers are then terrified at the idea of a reconstitution of the Empire of Charles V for the benefit of Charles VI.
England immediately withdrew from the coalition and Villars won a decisive victory at Denain, near Valenciennes, in 1712. A series of treaties, including that of Utrecht in 1713, put an end to these terrible conflicts.
Philippe V is recognized king of Spain and a new European order is installed.
Austria, at the head of the Empire, invests Italy.
France regains its borders and England becomes master of the rock of Gibraltar, the lock of the Mediterranean to which it still has the key ... Philippe V reigns over Spain while most of the Spanish possessions in Europe, such as Naples and Sicily , the Milanese and the Netherlands are ceded to the Emperor.
As for England, it keeps Gibraltar and Menorca, at the same time as it annex Newfoundland and Acadia, to Canada.
It is therefore now, after the long ordeal of the war, a Frenchman who reigns in Madrid and who is the Grand Master of the Golden Fleece.
The Habsburgs, however, do not want to give up their rights to this prestigious order.
From that moment, the Toison d'Or had two great masters.
Both were eligible, the King of Spain in Madrid, on the one hand, and the Habsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna, on the other.
This is the reason why King Louis XV was made Knight of the Golden Fleece by the King of Spain.
He is the first king of France to enter this order.
We understand that he is attached to it and that he wants his colored badge to be the most beautiful ever made!
Bibliographic resources:
Henri Dubois, Charles the Bold (Fayard, 2004)
François Farges (direction), Precious Stones, catalog of the exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History (Van Cleef & Arpels / Flammarion 2020)
Pierre Gaxotte, of the French Academy, Louis XV (Flammarion, 1980)
Xavier Salmon (direction), Madame de Pompadour and the Arts (Meeting of National Museums, 2002)
Jean des Cars, The saga of favorites (Perrin, 2013)
"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier and Salomé Journo
Graphics: Karelle Villais
This episode was produced in partnership with the Natural History Museum on the occasion of the "Precious Stones" exhibition that you will be able to discover in Paris as soon as the museums reopen their doors.