Why was the Countess de la Fère branded? The true story of "Milady Winter". Heraldic lily symbol

Why exactly lily? Or maybe Milady is not so guilty - if you think about it, what if she is not the main villain, but in fact the musketeers, four men who destroyed one woman in an unequal confrontation? We recently rewatched our Soviet film, and for the first time I thought about this question. And after my husband said that before a woman simply had to know her place, my eyes were opened. And even the lines from the heroine’s monologue confirm this: “The world of proud women is surrounded by a shameless game. For throwing off the yoke, a brand is imprinted on my shoulder.”

FLEURAL LILY SYMBOL

I'll start right away with the point. Why is there a lily on the stamp? The lily is a symbol of the royal family of France. The most common symbol in heraldry after the cross, eagle and lion. It is quite logical that criminals were branded with this sign - as a sign of royal justice. On the other hand, the lily is also a symbol of purity, innocence, the Virgin Mary and Christianity in general. Isn't there a lot of honor for tramps, thieves and prostitutes?

It’s interesting, but true - the flower is called a lily, but in fact, instead of it, the iris is depicted everywhere. What exactly does wild yellow marsh iris have to do with it? If you look closely, the iris resembles female genitalia. When Athos draws a flower on the wall in the film, it is clear that it is much more elongated than the real thing. There is an interesting version that this is an allusion to the fallopian tubes, which medieval prostitutes had to tie up as a means of contraception. The anger of Athos - then still Count de la Fer - could not have been caused by the fact that the girl turned out to be a thief, as Dumas delicately presented, but by worse suspicions. But all the same, his action is little understood - he loved so much, and almost killed him without even understanding it. But more on that below.

LADY WINTER

Little is known about the origins and life of Milady before the beginning of the novel. In a conversation with Rochefort, she reports that she was born in Armentieres, a small town near the Bethune monastery. At the same time, Dumas says that she knew perfectly well the customs and peculiarities of the faith of the English Puritans - this was taught to her in childhood by an old servant. How does a French woman get an Englishman in her service? Although this is not the most controversial point - in the novel by Anne and Serge Golon, Angelique's servant was the former German soldier Guillaume Lutzen. Milady's impeccable English pronunciation is also noted. Not to mention her nickname. Her middle name, Lady Winter, is also English, after her second English husband. Most likely, Milady's father is English, her mother is French. According to the context of the book, Milady is an English spy in the service of Richelieu, recruited shortly before the start of the novel. The real name of the heroine, as well as her origin, is not really clear. Only towards the end does Athos list her names. But again there is no accuracy - some researchers write that her real name is Anna de Bayle, others - Charlotte Buckson. That is, again the origin is unclear: if the first name is correct, then Milady is from France, if the second, then she is English. In the film, Milady asks the cardinal for a hereditary title as a reward for her service. Here again there are several options. Either she doesn’t have a title, or she has lost the right to it, or she is English, and she needs a title in France. The latter is most likely - since through her second husband she received the title of Lady Winter, assigned to her son.

ATOS AND MILADY

What kind of love is this when you are absolutely merciless towards your loved one? Athos was not embarrassed by either Milady’s origin or the fact that she was not a virgin; he even “went against the will of his entire family.” But I couldn’t survive the stigma. And in general, how is it possible to hang your own wife like that in the middle of a hunt, like in some wild times?! Dumas's entire novel is about this contradiction. In it, Cardinal Richelieu is the main villain, the antagonist, and the musketeers are the positive heroes. In fact, it was the other way around. Athos is a representative of the old aristocracy, apparently from a very ancient and noble family. He somehow mentions in a conversation with d'Artagnan that his mother was a lady of state to Queen Marie de' Medici - that is, the first lady of the court at court. This is a very high position. Athos says to himself “noble as Dandolo and Montmorency.” Montmorency was an ancient noble family, princes of the blood, related to the royal family. Under the “old order,” noble nobles had the powers of full rulers in their lands. They had the right to mint their own coins, have a personal army, and the king did not always have full power over them. And he had no control over their subjects. Remember the saying “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal.” That is, Athos had every right to create arbitrariness on his lands. His real name is Comte de la Fère. In French, the word "fer" is iron. Iron Count. Hard-hearted, passionless, striving to control his passions. He gave up once and has been trying to make up for it ever since. He is merciless and hard, like an iron blade, towards everything and everyone. His three friends, of much lower birth than himself, are the only exception to Athos's cold soul. By the way, not everything is an exception. In the novel “Twenty Years Later,” Athos, who has regained his title, cannot introduce d’Artagnan to his guests under his simple title - he calls him “Chevalier d’Artagnan,” that is, he raises him to a level acceptable to his entourage.

HEROES OF THE NOVEL “THREE MUSKETERS”

It seems that the heroes of the famous novel are not quite who we are used to perceiving them. D'Artagnan is not the main character, but only a cover for deeper content. The point is in 2 points:

1) Confrontation of the archetypal masculine principle (Athos) with the more ancient archetypal feminine principle (Milady). Patriarchy and chauvinism, which subjugated women through brute force, periodically found themselves powerless in the face of female sexuality. Unable to restrain themselves and unable to achieve reciprocity, men could do nothing but destroy the object of desire. This is what Athos does with his wife.

2) Confrontation between the noble aristocracy and Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu is a villain for this very reason - the goal of his entire policy was to fight the feudal freemen (which Athos, as a count, used with might and main) and strengthen the vertical of power. He banned duels, which immediately reduced the number of deaths among young nobles. He ordered the demolition of feudal castles and the construction of open palaces in their place - so that the nobles would not try to hide behind impenetrable walls from the royal will. He appointed royal intendants to the aristocracy's possessions in order to have control. Athos and Richelieu are mortal ideological enemies.

Milady is a double enemy for Athos. Both as a woman who desecrated his family, and as a henchwoman of the cardinal.

At the same time, the rest of the musketeers are at odds with Richelieu rather “for company.” D'Artagnan's father, on the contrary, instructed him to show respect and serve 3 people - the king, the cardinal and Monsieur de Treville. Because he is a small landed nobleman, Richelieu’s policies did not cause such damage to him. In the film, after a game of chess in the Cardinal's palace, D'Artagnan tells Richelieu that just yesterday he might have considered the opportunity to serve with him, but today his friends are among the king's musketeers. It is clear that their enmity was not initial. It's more difficult with Aramis - his personality is the most mysterious of all. In the book, his servant Bazin says that "Aramis" is the opposite of "Simara", the name of one of the demons. The word “simara” has another completely innocent meaning - it is a priest’s cassock. Considering that Aramis is a defrocked abbot who always dreams of regaining his rank, it is not surprising that he chose such a nickname. All three musketeers have names that hide their dark pasts. It’s clear with Athos - a fugitive, defamed count. Aramis is a man forced to leave his rank in order to learn to fence and take revenge on his offender. Richelieu is an enemy for Aramis rather due to circumstances - he banned duels, and Aramis just had to set up a “date” with the nobleman who insulted him. It’s not very clear with Porthos yet. Only in the book “Twenty Years Later” does he try to achieve at least a baronial title. This means that Richelieu was hardly a real enemy for him - his reforms had little bearing on Porthos.

The musketeer friends are portrayed as positive heroes, although their behavior is far from impeccable. Athos is a drunkard and a murderer. Porthos openly courtes a married woman for money, while showing up at her house, introducing himself to her husband as his wife’s cousin and spending his money. Aramis didn’t do much wrong in the first book, but then he made up for it in full. In the novel “Twenty Years Later,” he is the lover of Madame de Longueville, an active participant in the Fronde, a noble conspiracy against the king. In the book "Ten Years Later" he becomes a Jesuit who betrayed his friends. D'Artagnan changes women like gloves. At first he loves Constance, after her abduction he has an affair with Milady and at the same time with her maid Katie - he uses her, knowing that the girl is in love with him, to penetrate her mistress's chambers. To Milady herself, in order to spend the night with her, he introduces himself as Count de Wardes, with whom she was in love. To avoid being exposed, he hides his face in the dark. And in the end, this magnificent four, taking with them four servants, the executioner and Lord Winter, gather to kill one woman in an unequal battle.

STAMP ON MILADY'S SHOULDER

As a representative of a small noble family, Milady had only 2 options ahead of her - either marriage to a humble man or a monastery. She ended up in the second. She spent 2 years there and ran away with a young monk, whom she seduced. Before escaping, he stole church property. The fugitives were found, the monk was sentenced to imprisonment and branding. The executioner turned out to be his brother, who, in a fit of despair, branded the girl too.

The first fact is that there was no justice, there was arbitrariness on the part of the executioner.

The second fact is that if Milady was 16 years old at the time of her marriage, it means that when she ran away from the monastery, she was 14-15 years old. There is some doubt about who else seduced whom.

The third fact - what, exactly, atrocities did Milady commit, besides the murder of Constance? Seduction of a monk - there are many questions with him. Buckingham's murder? So this is part of her work for the cardinal, and it was not she who killed him, but the fanatic Felton. She seduced and ruined this unfortunate Felton - he was such a Puritan, who could hardly stand Buckingham anyway. The murder of the second husband, Lord Winter - there are nuances here.

Milady's first marriage ended in a nightmare. A logical question is: how did the husband not see the mark on his wife’s shoulder? But here everything is quite clear - previously it was considered immodest to undress completely. It is clear that no one climbed into the bedroom to peep, but Athos could well understand his wife’s embarrassment and did not insist. Having married for the second time, Milady apparently decided not to wait for her husband’s reaction any longer and poisoned him immediately after she became pregnant. She needed her son to become the heir, and she, as his mother, owned the title by full right.

MILADY'S EXECUTION

Athos describes Milady as “a girl of sixteen, lovely as love itself. Through the naivety characteristic of her age, an ebullient mind shone through, an unfeminine mind, the mind of a poet. She didn’t just like her, she intoxicated her.” In the film he says, “There are no such refined manners in all of Provence.” From other descriptions of Milady, we learn that she: is fluent in several languages, knows many nuances of completely different aspects of life, knows how to quickly find a way out in any situation, knows how to handle weapons, has great physical strength and a “wonderful voice.” Like a real archetypal woman, she has a lot of masculine traits. Women's weakness is alien to her - although she knows how to play it and use it perfectly. Not a single man was able to cope with her, so all they could do was destroy her physically. Think about it - five men (including the executioner) against one woman! And in book ten - there were also the servants of the musketeers and Milady's brother-in-law Lord Winter. And barely they were all able to cope with it. Dumas writes how Athos ordered the servants guarding Milady to be replaced only on the basis that she told them something.

The Three Musketeers is a novel about men, the main characters are men. Only after 100 years will authors begin to make women heroines. In the book there are only 3 women - Constance, the Queen and Milady - for a huge number of men. In the novel about Angelique, the Marquis of Plessis-Bellières, recalling the reign of Louis XIII, says that it was a time of rude warriors who lived by war and duels. There was no place for women then, even very strong ones.

In Dumas, Milady was branded at the age of 16 as a criminal who seduced a priest and forced him to steal church vessels. The lily was a symbol of the royal Bourbon dynasty; it was used to brand criminals by court verdict. But the woman who became the prototype of Lady Winter committed a more serious theft, totaling 1.6 million livres.

Jeanne de Luz de Saint-Rémy de Valois, according to legend, came from the family of the illegitimate son of King Henry II. Despite the connection with the ancient Valois family, the family was poor; Jeanne begged on the street as a child. There the Marquise Boulevillier saw her, took pity on her and decided to help. She placed her in a boarding school for noble maidens at the monastery.

At the age of 22, the girl ran away from the monastery with her fiancé, a guards officer, whom she soon married and became Countess de la Motte. Jeanne struck up an acquaintance with the Bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Louis de Rohan. He introduced her to high society. Her cunning, acting skills and intelligence opened the doors of the best houses in France for her.

Jeanne de la Motte went down in history because of a grandiose scam involving a diamond necklace. It is this fact that is dedicated not only to the episode with the diamond pendants of Anne of Austria in The Three Musketeers, but also to Dumas’s novel The Queen’s Necklace. One day, King Louis XV decided to give a gift to his favorite Madame DuBarry and ordered a necklace of 629 diamonds from jewelers.

The order was completed, but the king died before he could redeem it. Louis XVI refused to purchase the necklace for Marie Antoinette because it was too expensive.

Jeanne managed to convince the cardinal that she was close friends with the queen and could help him restore good relations with the royal couple. Marie Antoinette subsequently denied her acquaintance with the swindler, but it is possible that she knew about her existence. Be that as it may, Jeanne managed to deceive the cardinal: she convinced him that she had organized correspondence with the queen, although in fact the letters were written by her accomplice, who forged the handwriting.

In 1785, de la Motte forced the cardinal to sign an agreement with the jeweler to buy back the necklace, supposedly at the request of the queen. Jeanne de la Motte took the necklace to give it to Marie Antoinette, and the jewelry, of course, was never seen again. Because of this crime, a loud scandal broke out. The jewelers never received the money and turned to the queen. The swindlers were arrested, Zhanna was branded and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Despite the fact that Marie Antoinette was not involved in this story, her name was tarnished. The scandal with the necklace contributed to the decline in the prestige of royal power, led to its crisis and the uprising of the people during the French Revolution.

The Countess managed to escape from prison. According to legend, she spent the rest of her life in Russia under the name of Countess Gachet and was buried in Crimea. The fate of the stolen diamonds is unknown.

The image of Milady, created by Margarita Terekhova, remains one of the most striking in Soviet cinema, and the actors of the cult film are still popular.

in the novel "The Three Musketeers, on Milady's shoulder there is a symbol in the form of a lily. What did it mean? and received the best answer

Answer from Andrey Puchkov[guru]
There are several versions of the origin of the Lily brand. .
1. In France, this is how thieves were branded, and the lily meant the coat of arms of the head of state.
2. In the Middle Ages in France, prostitutes were branded with a schematic image of a lily.
3. There is a very beautiful legend: Clodwick, the first French king to convert to Christianity (this happened at the turn of the Vl-Vll centuries), was given a lily by an angel. Since then, this flower has been called a symbol of purity in France. That is why the mark in the form of a lily has become in France a symbol of indelible shame - a silent reproach and lifelong punishment for those who lead an unrighteous lifestyle.
4. During the republic of 1793, the republican government tried in every possible way to humiliate this emblem of royal power and even ordered convicts to be branded with the image of a lily.
5. The brand on the shoulder was burned by a representative of the Bourbon dynasty. These lilies are depicted on the mantle of all kings, and they were also used to brand enemies and criminals. This is the same as a stamp on a passport indicating a criminal record.
Any version is suitable to answer the question. . But how exactly did the mark on Milady’s shoulder appear? On the shoulder of Countess De La Fère? Anne de Belle, etc., what did Athos call her?
It turns out that this is the story. . In her youth, Milady attracted a young priest, who, in order to shower his beloved with money, sold church jewelry. . for which he was branded with a sign of shame... And his brother - the Lille executioner - in order to take revenge, personally branded Anna de Belle. . -That’s why Milady, before execution, making excuses for the brand, says that it wasn’t her, she didn’t deserve it, etc. Although she earned the brand later, after the branding.
And there is one more nuance: According to the laws of that time, anyone could execute a branded woman, which is what Count de La Fère did when he saw the terrible mark on his young wife. Later, he tried to commit suicide, drank away his entire fortune and, under the name of Athos, entered the service of de Treville, the captain of the royal musketeers, who was the only one who knew the secret of his subordinate. That’s why he sings: “We go around into the pool, and that’s the end.” That is, he forgot about both: about his branded wife, and about his former life, and about his title and disgraced name. And when he sees the mark again. . he recognizes his wife and is very surprised that she is alive, and decides to finish the work of old years, and finally execute her - and with the hands of that same Lille executioner. How..

Reply from Destroying dreams. With guarantee[guru]
that she was a prostitute, Protestants and Huguenots were branded with the same stigma, but these were already for their faith.

Reply from groundhog tomatoes[guru]
fallen women, thieves were branded with this mark

Reply from Makrab char[guru]
flower seller

Reply from Kga47[guru]
Woman walking

Reply from Kirill[guru]
the fact that my lady in her youth had a fixed hourly wage for love.)))

Reply from Vasilievich[guru]
This is how girls of easy virtue were stamped.

Reply from Yatyana[guru]
Dumas has already answered this question:
....- Well! “Once, during a hunt, on which the countess was with her husband,” Athos continued in a quiet voice, but very quickly, “she fell from her horse and fainted. The count rushed to her aid, and since the dress was constricting her, he cut it with a dagger and accidentally exposed his shoulder. Guess, d'Artagnan, what was on her shoulder! - said Athos, bursting into loud laughter.
- How can I know this? - D'Artagnan objected.
“Lily flower,” said Athos. - She was branded!
And Athos swallowed the glass of wine he was holding in his hand.
- What a horror! - cried d'Artagnan. - This cannot be!
- It's true, my dear. The angel turned out to be a demon. The poor girl was a thief...

Illustration for the novel by A. Dumas "The Three Musketeers"

Many people know that Dumas borrowed the heroes of “The Three Musketeers” from “Memoirs of Mr. D’Artagnan,” which he found in the National Library. Less known is that these memoirs are also fictional - the brave warrior and irresistible heartthrob Charles de Batz, known as named D'Artagnan, he hardly wrote anything other than promissory notes. The true author of the book was the writer Gacien de Courtille, who cut his teeth on scandalous revelations about the life of the royal court and spent half his life in the Bastille for this. “Memoirs” were written by him between two imprisonments and were published in Amsterdam in 1704 - 31 years after the death of their hero, who died from a Spanish bullet during the storming of Maastricht at the age of 58.

In Courtille's work, which is very different from Dumas's novel, Milady is not mentioned at all. In The Three Musketeers, she first met D'Artagnan in the town of Mente, where her accomplice, Count Rochefort, laughed at the young man and ordered his servants to severely beat him. Courtille also describes this scene, but Rochefort (he is called de Ronet there) communicates with a local merchant, and not with a young woman, whose beauty immediately struck the young hero: “The lady was young and beautiful and this beauty struck him all the more because she was completely unusual for Southern France, where D'Artagnan still lived. . She was a pale, blond woman with long curls that hung down to her shoulders, with languid blue eyes, pink lips and hands as white as alabaster.” Further in the novel, other details of Milady’s appearance are mentioned: black eyebrows, tall height and the absence of one tooth on the left side. The most colorful detail was revealed, however, only to those who saw the lady undressed - a lily flower burned on the right shoulder, “small, reddish in color and as if half erased with the help of various rubbings.”

In the 17th century, the lily, the royal coat of arms, was used to brand criminals, both women and men. Why was Milady awarded this dubious honor? This is stated in the novel “Twenty Years Later”: at the age of fifteen she, the daughter of a poor nobleman from Lille, raised in a Benedictine monastery, seduced a young priest. The lovers fled, taking gold from the church, but they were caught and branded - and this was done by the priest’s brother, the Lille executioner. But even here Milady managed to escape with the help of another victim of her spell (this time it was the jailer’s son).

Episode from the novel "The Three Musketeers"

The rest is well known to readers and viewers: the adventuress lived either in France or in England, changing many names - Countess de la Fer, Charlotte Buckson, Lady Winter, Lady Clarik, Baroness Sheffield... She got married at least twice. Her first husband, the future Athos, almost killed her after accidentally seeing the shameful stigma. The second, the British Lord Winter, left her the title and a son, later known as Mordaunt.

Dumas hints that Milady poisoned the lord, which was followed by other crimes - espionage, theft, murder, and most importantly, fierce hatred of D'Artagnan and his friends. However, the young Gascon himself gave reason for enmity - he seduced Milady, pretending to be her in the dark lover, Count de Wardes, and the next morning he laughed at her. The vengeful Lady Winter did not forgive anyone for this.

Let us remember that she staged the theft of diamond pendants from the Duke of Buckingham, and then his murder, also out of revenge - once the all-powerful favorite made her his mistress, and then abandoned her like a boring toy.

Milady's atrocities were put an end to her musketeer friends, whose quick court-martial ended in a death sentence. “From the other bank they saw how the executioner slowly raised both hands: the blade of his wide sword flashed in the moonlight, and his hands dropped; the whistle of a sword and the cry of the victim were heard, then the headless body fell under the blow.” Milady's corpse was thrown from a boat into the Lys River; according to the chronology of the novel, this happened at the end of 1625, when she was not even 23 years old. D'Artagnan and Athos, despite all her crimes, could not get rid of their love for her and remembered her for many years after the murder. Smart, fearless, passionate, like an “indomitable tigress,” she loved to flaunt in men’s clothing - in at that time this was considered a sure sign of a witch. As a true witch, Milady sought to destroy any man who became her lover and learned the secret of the ill-fated lily. The combination of devilish malice with an angelic appearance had a particularly strong effect on both the heroes of the novel and its readers.

Who could be the prototype of this unusual woman? Dumas read the story of the Queen’s pendants in the memoirs of the famous philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucauld and other contemporaries. Everywhere it is said that a certain spy of Cardinal Richelieu secretly cut two commemorative pendants from Buckingham’s shoulder, but her names are different: Countess of Carlisle, Lady Clarik, Lady Winter. In principle, any of these noble ladies could be called “milady,” but Haciende Courtille is the name given to the lady-in-waiting of the English queen Henrietta Maria, who briefly became D’Artagnan’s mistress - however, this happened much later, when neither the cardinal nor Buckingham was alive The Duke was killed by naval officer John Felton, but not out of love, but out of puritanical fanaticism. As for the woman with a lily on her shoulder, Dumas found her in another of Courtille’s works - the fake “Memoirs of M. de Rochefort.” tried to charm Father Rochefort; during the hunt, as described in The Three Musketeers, the brand was accidentally discovered, and the adventurer was driven away in disgrace.

One of the heroines of the story with pendants may well turn out to be the prototype of Milady. This lady named Lucy Percy was born in 1599 and was the daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, one of the most influential English nobles. In her youth, she was married to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, who was soon appointed English ambassador to France, which allowed Lucy to travel between London and Paris, having fun in both capitals. At 22, she was seduced and soon abandoned by the Duke of Buckingham. Perhaps out of jealousy, she actually helped expose his affair with the Queen of France by cutting off the ill-fated pendants from his shoulder. But, perhaps, it was not female vindictiveness that forced her to provide a service to Cardinal Richelieu, but banal poverty - her husband, who lived in grand style, squandered both his considerable fortune and his wife’s dowry, leaving huge debts. To earn money for dresses (Lucy was known as London's first fashionista), she could well have become a French spy.

The countess spent the money she received from the stingy cardinal on patronizing art: the best poets sang of her beauty, painters painted her portraits. One of them, by the great Van Dyck, depicts a lady of pleasant plumpness with a sly smile and curly curls - this could really ignite the imagination of Dumas the father, who knew a lot about female charms.

Lucy Carlyle's contemporaries also appreciated her beauty - after Buckingham, his successor as First Minister, Earl Strafford, became her lover, and then his irreconcilable opponent, opposition leader John Pym. After the death of her husband, the countess went to great lengths, accepting men in her bedroom without distinction of ranks and titles - they would be younger and more beautiful. For this, rumor awarded her the nickname “British Messalina.”

The countess's second passion after love was politics. During the years of the English Revolution, she played a prominent role, speaking first on the side of Parliament and then on the side of the king. To arm the royal army, she generously sold her jewelry, including a magnificent diamond necklace worth 1,500 pounds - with the money raised for it, two cannons were bought. Later, Lucy seduced the commander of the parliamentary army, the Earl of Essex (by the way, her cousin), on the bed of love, eliciting military plans from him and communicating them to the royalists. In 1649, when the intriguer was already over fifty, Cromwell, immune to female charms, put her in the Tower and, according to rumors, even tortured her in order to reveal the network of agents with which she was connected. Quite soon the Countess was released, but the prison discouraged her from any interest in politics - Lucy Carlyle spent the last years of her life in solitude and prayer. She died in 1660, having managed to wait for the restoration of the monarchy.

Portrait of Lucy Percy by Van Dyck. The artist, like the British poet Thomas Carew, admired the countess's beauty.

French memoirists were interested in only one episode of the countess's stormy biography - the matter with the pendants, and they could easily read her last name as both "Carlyle" and "Claric". Where the name Lady Winter came from (in English “winter”) is more difficult to say - there was no such noble family in England. Perhaps this is the nickname given to Countess Lucy by her ill-wishers? The Puritans persistently considered her a witch, accusing her of incestuous relations with her cousin and of the evil death of her gentlemen - Buckingham was stabbed to death, and Strafford was executed on charges of treason.

Dumas, who never wasted anything, gave his Milady both names - Winter and Clarik. It is more difficult to understand why she was called Baroness Sheffield - perhaps this was the title of her husband, the youngest son of Lord Winter?

Another mystery - what was Milady's real name? In the castle of Athos she appeared under the name of Anne de Bayle, but in the play “Youth of the Musketeers” Dumas made clarifications - from birth she bore the name Charlotte Buckson, and her father was an English sailor; that is why she knew the English language and customs so well. Anna de Bayle, according to the same play, was the name of the adventurer's mother. Dumas borrowed this surname from one of the mistresses of King Henry IV, Jacqueline de Bayle - it is curious that her husband was the Comte de Wardes, Milady's lover in the novel. This person was not famous for anything special, so she can hardly be considered the prototype of Milady.

But another woman successfully claims this role - however, she lived many years after Dumas' musketeers, on the eve of the Great French Revolution. Jeanne de Saint-Rémy was descended from the illegitimate son of King Henry II. In 1780, when she was 24 years old, she married guardsman Charles Lamotte, who called himself a count without any reason. Four years later, the couple started the most notorious scam in the history of France, which became known as the “case of the necklace.” By that time, the beautiful Jeanne, with the full sympathy of her husband, had become the mistress of Cardinal de Rohan and, with his help, penetrated into high society. She allegedly became friends with Queen Marie Antoinette herself, although she later denied this. Be that as it may, the adventuress managed to convince the cardinal to buy in installments and give the queen who was supposedly in love with him a most valuable diamond necklace worth one and a half million livres - almost 250 million modern dollars! On a date in the Park of Versailles, Jeanne played the role of a queen and calmly took the necklace. The unlucky cardinal did not recognize his mistress - she put on a different wig and spoke with an accent, and it was already dark in the park...

The Countess instantly sent it to London to her husband, where the necklace was quickly sold piece by piece.

Portrait of Jeanne Valois-Saint-Rémy, Countess de la Motte by Marie Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun

When the cardinal carefully tried to find out from the queen the fate of the donated jewelry, a huge scandal broke out. Versailles was shocked. The necklace seemed to fall through the ground. The cardinal ended up in the Bastille, but during the investigation it turned out that he was drawn into this story through no fault of his own, and as punishment he was only deprived of the priesthood. , The Lamott couple did not have time to escape and ended up in the Bastille. Jeanne was subjected to public punishment: on June 21, 1786, the thirty-year-old beauty was flogged on the Place de Greve in Paris and a brand was placed on her beautiful shoulder - however, now it was not a lily, but the letter V (from the word voleuse - “thief”).. During the branding She jerked her shoulder and the drawing blurred. The second seal was placed on her when she was already unconscious.

Soon she - again, like Milady - managed to escape by seducing the warden, and she ended up in London. England granted her political asylum. Here Jeanne released her memoirs, justifying herself and blaming the queen for everything. This opus, like the entire “case of the necklace,” seriously damaged the authority of the monarchy and brought closer the revolution that soon broke out. Of course, Jeanne’s colorful story could not help but attract the attention of Dumas, who dedicated two entire novels to her - “The Queen’s Necklace” and “Joseph Balsamo.” The hero of the latter, better known as Count Cagliostro, also participated in the scam of the Lamotte spouses, for which he was expelled from France. Dumas could not help but notice the similarities between the “case of the necklace” and the “case of the pendants” - in both, the queen’s honor hung in the balance, in both, the main role was played by beautiful and treacherous seductresses. Lucy Carlyle and Jeanne de Lamotte could well have merged in his imagination, ultimately giving birth to the vivid image of Milady.

The mortal remains of Countess Carlisle rest peacefully in the family crypt, but Jeanne's fate is shrouded in mystery. Soon after fleeing to London, her husband left her, taking all the money with him. She was only 35 years old, she was still beautiful, but for some reason she lived alone, practically in poverty.

In 1791, in what is commonly believed to be a fit of madness, she jumped out of the window of her squalid Oxford Street flat and was buried in an unmarked grave. There were rumors that she was killed either by royalists avenging the discredit of the monarchy, or by agents of the French government trying to trace the missing millions. But there is another version - a completely different French woman committed suicide, and Milady Jeanne, covering her tracks, simply died. According to others, she faked her own death, allegedly falling out of the window of her house. The fact is that the enraged French king demanded that Great Britain hand over the fugitive to him. London did not want to quarrel with Paris over some adventuress, even if she was fabulously rich. That’s when she staged a staging of her own death, and then walked incognito in the funeral procession behind her own empty coffin.

Lifetime portrait of Jeanne Lamott by an unknown artist. The life and death of this woman, who historians believe served as the prototype for Milady, are full of mysteries.

For thirty years there was no word or breath about her. And suddenly the French Ambassador to Russia identifies her in St. Petersburg under the name of Countess de Gachet. He immediately demanded that Emperor Alexander I hand over the state criminal. But after her audience with the emperor, the French were refused, and the already middle-aged countess was allowed to settle in Crimea.

Back in the 70s, in the famous Artek camp, the pioneers were shown “Milady’s house” - a small white house where a noble Frenchwoman, who became the prototype of Dumas’s heroine, allegedly once lived. Later, her story was described in detail by several authors, the most famous of whom is journalist Nikolai Samvelyan. It is difficult to say what is true and what is fiction in this story. It is known that in 1824, Alexander I sent two noble ladies to Crimea - Baroness Krudener and Countess Golitsyna. Both were known for their closeness to the Freemasons, whose lodges the tsar banned, not without reason believing that revolutionary ideas were ripening in them. Their French companion, Countess de Gachet, also went with the two titled persons.

"Milady's House" in Artek

They settled on Golitsyna’s estate in Koreiz, but soon Gachet rented a house on the outskirts, on the current territory of Artek, where she lived alone with an Armenian maid. When the Countess died in 1826, her faithful maid buried her in the Armenian cemetery in the village of Stary Krym. Now the grave is lost, but a photograph of it has been preserved - it shows an intricate monogram of poorly distinguishable Latin letters and an empty oval where the surname and first name of the deceased are usually written.

It seems that Countess de Gachet (her name was either Jeanne or Diana) had reasons to hide her real name. This gave rise to the version that she was Jeanne de Lamotte, who settled in Russia after long wanderings. Margarita Terekhova also heard the legend about this, and while working on the role of Milady, she visited Artek (remember that G. Yungvald-Khilkevich’s film about the musketeers was filmed in Crimea). By the way, the role of the fatal villain brought serious problems to the actress: “It was as if the forces of evil began to swirl around me. Otherwise I cannot explain what happened. Let’s say, I needed to draw a brand in the scene when D’Artagnan accidentally learned Milady’s secret. Yura (Yungvald-Khilkevich) is also an artist. He says: “I’ll draw it for you now.” And suddenly he begins to call everyone together. “Look, there’s a red spot - you just need to outline it.” Can you imagine? He called everyone and just outlined the lily that appeared on my shoulder.”

In Crimea, the personality of the mysterious Countess de Gachet has acquired new legends. One of them says that she was an occultist, a student of Cagliostro, and shortly before her exile she told Alexander I something so incredible that he soon left the throne and became a hermit. Another is that in “Artek” the countess led a gang of smugglers and accumulated enormous wealth, which she buried near her house before her death. When they began to change the deceased’s clothes before the funeral, they allegedly saw a scorched royal lily on her shoulder...

It is clear that this is fiction - instead of a lily, as we know, Jeanne de Lamotte was branded with the letter V. The rest of the facts from the biography of the “Crimean Milady”, which most likely has nothing in common with the heroine of the “necklace case,” are also fictional. All this speaks only of one thing - the super-spy of the 17th century came out from the pen of Dumas the Father so alive that readers still cannot come to terms with the absence of this “demon in female guise” on the pages of real history.

Vadim Erlikhman,
Gala Biography, No. 12, 2011

What does the mark in the form of a lily on Milady's shoulder mean (the film "The Three Musketeers")?

Indeed, Milady, Athos’s former lover, had a lily stamped on her left shoulder. This is the sign of the Bourbons, which was taught, branded, singling out criminals from the general population. Milady was such a criminal of the law. It was believed that the mark of a lily on the left shoulder meant that the woman had committed adultery.

The lily has always had the meaning of purity, and therefore the tradition of branding representatives of the most ancient profession, seductresses, with this flower looks like a special mockery. In Dumas’s novel, Milady received a lily on her shoulder for seducing a monk, if my memory serves me correctly, and it was this man’s brother, the executioner of the city of Lille, who branded her. Criminals in France were branded differently; various letters were burned on their shoulders, which showed what kind of crime they committed. For example, the Latin letter V meant a thief, and the double letter meant a repeat offender. This was done not so much to recognize the criminal in the crowd. after all, the marks were still successfully hidden, just for possible identification upon capture, since there were no modern identification methods in the Middle Ages.

In those days, in many countries, a special mark for criminals was common - they were branded, i.e. They made a certain figure out of metal, heated it on fire and applied it to the skin. It could be a shoulder, as in Three Musketeers, it could be a forehead or a cheek. This mark meant that the person had committed a crime.

Why did they do this - then there were many escapes from prisons and in order for the criminal not to get lost among the crowd, something had to make him stand out - this was the key. Well, also, when committing a crime, they looked at the body of the criminal and, by the number or shape of the mark, determined what kind of person he was and imposed an appropriate punishment on him.

In those days, criminals who were not sentenced to death were branded: for theft, robbery, robbery, adultery and other similar crimes. Since Milady, according to the Lille executioner, committed crimes and was convicted for them, he branded her.

The lily was considered a sign of the French crown (it is also called the fleur-de-lis), and apparently, as a sign that she was a state criminal, she was given such a mark.

The lily is a sign, or rather the seal of the royal family...

Law and order is what the royal family is responsible for...

Crime fighters are those who serve the royal family...

If a criminal was caught, he was given the royal mark so that everyone knew that he was a criminal and that the royal family cared about law and order...

In Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers, Lady Winter (Milady) is described as a very beautiful, slender blonde. On her left shoulder she had a mark in the form of a lily. It was with this symbol that a thief was branded, although the lily is such a delicate and beautiful flower...

The brand in the form of a lily was considered a mark of shame. Seeing him, the loving husband (Comte de la Fère) could not come to terms with the fact that his young wife bears such a stigma and decides to kill her.

The lily is the sign of the royal house of France. Probably this sign was used to brand criminals - it belongs to the king.

Perhaps this is a distinctive sign (like the stars on the fuselage): priest-Athos-Lord Winter...)))))

A brand in the form of a lily on the left shoulder was used to mark criminals and women who had committed adultery. Although at all times the lily was considered a symbol of purity and innocence. And perhaps that is why they were branded with such a stigma.



I read that the mark in the form of a lily at that time was considered a symbol of promiscuity and was placed on women who stole and engaged in prostitution. In the film, as I remember, she received a stigma that was not true; it was not her fault that life put her in such a situation.

The lily was the heraldic symbol of the Bourbons, beginning with Henry of Navarre (who became King Henry IV) as a symbol of the French royal house. The lily was used to brand criminals; in this case, my lady earned her lily for adultery, which was then severely punished. The Ballad of Athos is proof of this.

The fictional blond heroine of Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers, Milady (Anne de Bayle), had a mark on her left shoulder in the form of a small lily flower with a red tint.

This sign meant nothing more than that Milady was a villain and a spy.

This is how in those ancient times they marked criminals and thieves.