de Sade’s life

 

 

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1817) (Comte de Sade after his father’s death) was a colorful French character. He was the son to Jean Bapiste Comte de Sade and to Marie-Elonore de Maille de Carman, Comtesse de Sade. His mother served as a lady-in-waiting to the Princess de Conde, related to the Bourbons, and as a governess to her child.

When Donatien was four years old he had a fight with the 8 year old prince, beating him ferociously.  For that reason, he was sent to live with his paternal grandmother in Avignon.

There he was surrounded by female relatives that indulged his every whim, while showing him a world where sex was freely used for pleasure.

His father, that was abroad, decided that it was better for the child to have a masculine presence as a guide, and sent him to his brother, Abbe Jacques-Francois de Sade. The situation was not much better, as the Abbot was a religious man, but, as it was common at those times, had a wordly side, and housed at different times many female companions, from a mother and daughter duo to several prostitutes. So, the Marquis was reared in promiscuous environments.

When his father realized this, he sent him, at 10, to a Jesuit’s college. The Jesuits education was first-class, but it included sodomy and physical punishment. He also learned confession, with the need to reflect on the darker side of his mind, which deeply impressed the young Donatien.

He was then sent to a military academy and, at 15, saw action, becoming a war hero. His bravery, good looks and social charm made him a good officer, who was promoted to Captain at 18. As a soldier, he began to indulge in his sexual tastes and to gamble, losing his father’s money, at his despair.

He decided to get rid of his son and its financial burden by marrying him. It was not an easy endeavour, because his licentious conduct was well known, but he finally convinced a wealthy and well-connected family of the bourgeoisie. The candidate was Renee-Pelagie de Montreuil, Pelagie for her friends. But even more difficult to convince was Donatien himself, who was happy with his dissolute life, who had a lover and who had gonorrhea. But finally and at the last moment, he accepted, and they married.

At the beginning, he was a loving and devoted husband, who charmed his way into her and her family, especially his mother-in-law. It was then when he had a problem with a woman that  he flogged until leaving her bleeding and insulted with blasphemies. She went to the authorities, and he went to jail (for the first of many times) but her mother-in-law helped him out, and also on hiding Pelagie his misdeeds. In his first stay in jail, he wrote “Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man”, his first book

From then on and for several years, de Sade, who could be also a charming and caring lover, had many affairs, including living publicly with another woman, who the locals believed his wife, in his castle of La Coste (now Lacoste), near Avignon, and his mother-in-law helped him hiding every debauchery from his wife.

Another woman whom he flogged to blood went to the authorities. This time, he confessed to Pelagie his crime, and surprisingly, she began immediately helping him. Thanks to hers and her mother’s help, he had to stay in jail just four months. But his repeated misdeeds and Pelagie’s approval began to alienate him from his mother in law.

 

The next time he got in trouble was in an orgy in La Coste, organized with the help of Latour, his valet. The orgy lasted several weeks, included everything from whips to sodomy (which was forbidden in France) and the use of one of his times’ drugs, “Spanish fly” ⁽¹⁾. One of the women got ill on the drug, ended in a hospital, and accussed him for asking to sodomize her, and for poisoning her.

When the police arrived to the castle he had fled, travelling around Europe for some time, with his virginal sister-in-law, Anne-Prospre. The two ran off to Marseilles together. Pursued by her mother-in-law, now his mortal enemy, he was finally imprisoned in Sardinia, but he managed to escape. He roamed again, even going back to La Coste, and had there with the collaboration of Pelagie, a six-week orgy that included several teenagers, used as forced servants. Enslaving children was too much even for him. He had to flee again (with his wife’s help) but he finally decided to try reconciliation with his mother in law, and went to Paris, only for being imprisoned, and now for good, for 13 years. He was in several prisons, and ended up in the Bastille. In his time in prison, he wrote many of his books. During the upheavals of the French Revolution, he used pipes as megaphones to ask the multitude to take the fortress and release them. As he was considered dangerous, he was sent to the Charenton Asylum, from where he walked away after the fall of the Monarchy.

Even when he had made the most of his condition of an aristocrat to enjoy his sexual preferences, he now played the "Citizen Louis Sade" in the Revolutionary government of France. He was made Judge on his district (saving his in-laws from the guillotine), and when Robespierre fell, and the Revolution was replaced by the Empire, he was finally sent by Napoleon, who was disgusted by his sex writings, to the Charenton asylum, where he continued writing, from 1799 until his death in 1817.

⁽¹⁾ A drug made with the dried, crushed body of the green blister beetle known as Cantharis Vesicatoria, or the Spanish fly. It was (and it is, even today) thought to be an aphrodisiac but it is actually irritant and poisonous. (back)
 

 

Published: 10/12/05