Marquis de Sade

Born into a noble family dating back to the 13th century, Sade served as an officer in the Seven Years' War before a series of sex scandals led to his detention in various prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. During his first extended imprisonment from 1777 to 1790, he wrote a series of novels and other works, some of which his wife smuggled out of prison. On his release during the French Revolution, he pursued a literary career and became politically active, first as a constitutional monarchist then as a radical republican. During the Reign of Terror, he was imprisoned for moderatism and narrowly escaped the guillotine. He was re-arrested in 1801 for his pornographic novels and was eventually incarcerated in the Charenton insane asylum, where he died in 1814.

His major works include The 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, Juliette and Philosophy in the Bedroom, which combine graphic descriptions of sex acts, rape, torture, murder, and child abuse with discourses on religion, politics, sexuality, and philosophy. The word sadism derives from his fictional characters who take pleasure in inflicting pain on others.

There is debate over the extent to which Sade's behavior was criminal and sadistic. Peter Marshall states that Sade's "known behaviour (which includes only the beating of a housemaid and an orgy with several prostitutes) departs greatly from the clinical picture of active sadism". Andrea Dworkin, however, argues that the issue is whether one believes Sade or the women who accused him of sexual assault.

Interest in his work increased in the 20th century, with various authors considering him a precursor to Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, surrealism, totalitarianism, and anarchism. Many prominent intellectuals, including Angela Carter, Simone de Beauvoir, and Roland Barthes, published studies of his work, and numerous biographies have also been produced. Cultural depictions of his life and work include the play Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss and the film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Dworkin and Roger Shattuck have criticized the rehabilitation of Sade's reputation, arguing that it promotes violent pornography likely to cause harm to women, the young and "unformed minds".

Life

Early life, education and marriage (1740–1763)

Sade was born on 2 June 1740, in the Hôtel de Condé, Paris, the only surviving child of Jean-Baptiste François Joseph, Comte de Sade, and Marie-Éléonore de Maillé de Carman. The Sade family was of the provincial nobility dating to the 13th century. Sade's mother was from a junior branch of the house of Bourbon-Condé and therefore Sade was related to the King of France by blood.

Sade's father was a captain of dragoons who was entrusted with diplomatic missions to the Russian Empire, Britain and the Elector of Cologne. His mother was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Condé and, for his first four years, Sade lived in the Hôtel de Condé. The infant Sade was spoilt, haughty, and prone to violent rages. In 1744, he was sent to live with his grandmother in Avignon, probably because he had fought with his playmate, Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, who was four years his senior.

The following year, Sade was placed in the care of his paternal uncle, the Abbé de Sade, a priest and libertine who lived in the château de Saumane in the Vaucluse region. The Abbé d'Amblet was appointed as Sade's tutor and the young marquis grew to respect him greatly. Meanwhile, the Count de Sade had lost favor with the king and had been recalled from his post in Germany. His career was now in ruins and his wife eventually left him to live in a Carmelite convent in Paris.

In the autumn of 1750, ten-year-old Sade was sent to the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he was taught Latin, Greek and rhetoric, and also participated in the school's theatrical productions. Sade's father was now heavily in debt and could not afford to enroll his son as a residential student, so Sade probably lived in private accommodation with Amblet. Residential students were discouraged from mixing with external students, and this might have isolated Sade from his aristocratic peers. Biographers and historians are divided on whether or not Sade experienced caning (or other forms of corporal punishment), sexual abuse or sodomy while at school, and whether or not this influenced his sexual development.

Sade spent his summer holidays with Madame de Raimond, one of his father's former lovers, at the château de Longeville in the Champagne region. There, he met Madame de Saint-Germain, for whom he would hold a life-long affection. Both women became mother-figures for Sade.

In 1754, Sade was sent to the Chevaux-légers military academy. After twenty months of training, on 14 December 1755, aged 15, Sade was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the King's Foot Guard. He soon went to battle at the onset of the Seven Years' War. After thirteen months as a sub-lieutenant, he was commissioned to the rank of cornet in the Brigade de Saint-André of the Comte de Provence's Carbine Regiment on 14 January 1757, and again promoted to the rank of captain in the Burgundian Cavalry on 21 April 1759. Despite this, Sade generally refused to ingratiate himself with his superiors, and "disdained making friends with his peers". He frequently infuriated his father with his gambling and womanizing.

By 1761, Sade had gained a reputation as a good soldier, but a gambler, spendthrift and libertine, all of which damaged any prospects of further promotion. In February 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War, and Sade was discharged. Back in Paris, he lived a life of pleasure, while his ill and seriously indebted father contemplated retiring to a monastery to avoid "having to welcome my son, with whom I am unhappy".

Sade's father was also negotiating with the Montreuil family for his son to marry their eldest daughter, Renée-Pélagie. Although the Montreuils were of bourgeois origin, and had only been ennobled in the 17th century, they were wealthy and had influential contacts, both at court and in legal circles. The count considered his son a financial burden with a poor character: "As for me, what makes up my mind is that I will be rid of the boy, who has not one good quality and all the bad ones".

Meanwhile, Sade had fallen in love with a nobleman's daughter named Laure de Lauris, but was abruptly rejected after two months of courtship. He was enraged, and threatened to blackmail Lauris by blaming his venereal disease on her to the next young man she courted. Sade, who proclaimed that he would "only marry for love", resisted the arranged marriage with the "plain and charmless" Renée-Pélagie, and did not attend court when, on 1 May 1763, the king and members of the royal family endorsed the marriage contract. Sade finally relented, and the two families signed the contract on 15 May. The wedding took place two days later.

Sade and Renée-Pélagie moved into rooms provided by her parents in the Hôtel de Montreuil in Paris. Sade was initially pleased with his new, strictly Catholic bride, writing to his uncle, "I don't know how to praise her enough". Two years later, however, he told the Abbé that she was "too cold and too devout". She gave birth to two sons and a daughter, and later became an accomplice to his alleged crimes with adolescents.

Scandals and imprisonment (1763–1790)

Testard affair and aftermath

Four months after his wedding, Sade was accused of blasphemy and incitement to sacrilege, which were capital offenses. He had rented a property in Paris which he used for sexual encounters. On 18 October 1763, Sade hired a prostitute named Jeanne Testard. Testard stated to the police that Sade had locked her in a bedroom before asking whether she believed in God. When she said that she did, Sade said there was no God and shouted obscenities concerning Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Sade then masturbated with a chalice and crucifix while shouting obscenities and blasphemies. He asked her to beat him with a cane and an iron scourge which had been heated by fire, but she refused. Sade then threatened her with pistols and a sword, telling her he would kill her if she did not trample on a crucifix and exclaim obscene blasphemies. She reluctantly complied. She spent the night with Sade, who read her irreligious poetry. He asked her for sodomy (another capital offense) but she refused. The following morning, Testard reported Sade to the authorities. On 29 October, following a police investigation, Sade was arrested on the personal orders of the king and jailed in Vincennes prison. Sade wrote several contrite letters to the authorities in which he expressed remorse and asked to see a priest. After Sade's father begged Louis XV for clemency, the king ordered Sade's release on 13 November.

On his release, Sade was exiled to the Montreuil estate at Échauffour, Normandy. In September 1764, the king revoked Sade's exile and the marquis returned to Paris where he took up a series of mistresses. In the summer of 1765 he took his then mistress, Mademoiselle Beauvoison, to his favourite castle at La Coste, Provence, where he passed her off as his wife, greatly offending Madame de Montreuil. The following year, he undertook renovations of La Coste, including building a theater for public performances.

In January 1767, Sade's father died. That summer, Sade went to La Coste where the local dignitaries and vassals formally swore homage to their new lord; a revival of a feudal custom which his father had avoided. On 27 August, his first son, Louis-Marie, was born.

Arcueil affair and aftermath

On 3 April 1768, Easter Sunday, Sade approached a 36-year-old widow named Rose Keller who was begging at the Place des Victoires in Paris. Keller stated that Sade offered her employment as a housekeeper. He took her in his carriage to his country residence in Arcueil, where he locked her in a room and threatened to kill her if she did not undress. He then tied her down on a bed and whipped her with a cane or a cat-o'-nine-tails. She stated he also cut her with a penknife and poured hot wax on her wounds. He brandished a knife and threatened to kill her if she did not stop screaming. He later gave her food and locked her in an upstairs room. She managed to escape out a window and sought help. She went to the authorities that evening and lodged a complaint. The local magistrate began an investigation the following day and news of the affair reached Madame de Montreuil on 7 April. She immediately sent representatives to Arcueil who paid Keller to withdraw her complaint. On 8 April, the king issued a lettre de cachet (a royal warrant for arrest and detention without trial) and Sade was imprisoned at the Château de Saumur and later the Pierre-Encize prison. On 15 April, the criminal chamber of the parlement de Paris took up the case and soon issued an arrest warrant for Sade. On 3 June, the king issued a pardon for the marquis, probably on the petition of the Montreuil family. The parlement interrogated Sade on 10 June and he stated that Keller was a prostitute who willingly supplied her services. He denied tying her down, cutting her with a knife or burning her with hot wax and stated that Keller did not complain about the flagellation at the time. The parlement accepted the king's pardon and ordered Sade to pay 100 livres in alms for prisoners. Sade was returned to Pierre-Encize prison under the lettre de cachet. On 16 November, the king ordered his release on the condition that he stay at La Coste under supervision.

The Arcueil affair was widely publicized, causing the Sade and Montreuil families great concern for their reputation. In June 1769, Renée-Pélagie gave birth to a second son, Donatien-Claude-Armand, and the Montreuils hoped this would help domesticate Sade. In July 1770, Sade returned to his Burgundy regiment where he encountered some hostility. In March 1771, however, he was granted a commission as Master of Cavalry which amounted to an official rehabilitation. Soon after, a daughter, Madeleine-Laure, was born. Sade, heavily in debt, was forced to sell his commission but this did not save him from a short spell in debtors' prison.

In November 1771, Renée-Pélagie's 19-year-old sister, Anne-Prospère, visited the Sades at La Coste. Sade developed "a fatal passion" for his sister-in-law and it is possible that they began a sexual relationship. The following year, he devoted himself to theatrical productions at La Coste and his Mazan property. He incurred large costs hiring professional actors and building elaborate sets.

Marseilles affair and aftermath

In June 1772, Sade and his manservant, Latour, traveled to Marseilles on the pretext of obtaining a loan. On June 27, they engaged in an elaborately staged orgy with four prostitutes. The orgy included sexual intercourse, flagellation, and, according to some witnesses, both active and passive anal sex involving Sade, Latour and one of the prostitutes. Sade offered the prostitutes aniseed-flavored pastilles laced with Spanish fly. One of the prostitutes, Marianne Laverne, became ill after eating the pastilles. That evening, Sade had sex with another prostitute, Marguerite Coste, who became critically ill after eating the pastilles. Coste filed a complaint with the police and, after an investigation, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Sade on charges of sodomy and poisoning.

Sade went into hiding, and his wife paid Laverne and Coste to withdraw their complaints. The Marseilles court, however, continued the prosecution, sentencing Sade and Latour to death in absentia on 2 September. The sentence was confirmed by the Cours des Comptes de Provence in Aix on 11 September, and Sade and Latour were burnt in effigy the following day. Sade was now in Italy with Anne-Prospère, a liaison which turned Madame de Montreuil into his implacable enemy. He wrote to his mother-in-law from Italy, disclosing his location, and she used her influence to secure his arrest and imprisonment in the Fortress of Miolans, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He escaped from the fortress on 30 April 1773 and returned to France.

Sade narrowly avoided arrest in January 1774 when he was warned of an imminent police raid on his home in La Coste which had been arranged by Madame de Montreuil. Following the death of Louis XV in May, Madame de Montreuil successfully petitioned for a new lettre de cachet for Sade's arrest in the name of King Louis XVI. Meanwhile, Renée-Pélagie requested an appeal of her husband's death sentence.

La Coste affair and aftermath

In September 1774, Sade and his wife hired seven new servants for their La Coste property, including a male secretary and five females, all around 15 years old. That winter (1774–75), Sade, with the tacit consent of his wife, engaged in a series of orgies with his servants. Although the details are unknown, it is probable that the orgies included sexual intercourse and flagellation. In January 1775, the families of the girls filed charges of kidnapping and seduction, and a criminal investigation commenced in Lyon. Sade's wife arranged for three of the girls to be sent to convents and one to the Abbé Sade until their wounds healed. One of the girls remained at La Coste and died of an illness a few months later. In June, Nanon Sablonnière, one of the servants involved in the La Coste orgies, quarreled with the Sades and left, finding refuge in a convent. Fearing that Nanon might provide damaging testimony, Madame de Montreuil falsely accused her of theft and successfully petitioned for a lettre de cachet. Nanon was arrested and imprisoned at Arles where she remained for over two years. Sade, fearing arrest, left for Italy in July, and did not return for a year.

Treillet affair and imprisonment

In June 1776, Sade was back at La Coste writing a travel book, Voyage d'Italie. That summer, he hired three young women as servants, including Catherine Treillet, age 22. In December, he recruited four more servants. Three of them left after one night, claiming that Sade had offered them money for sex. They informed Treillet's father and, in January, he went to La Coste to retrieve his daughter. He fired a pistol at Sade from point-blank range, but it misfired. After a second attempt to shoot him, Treillet's father left and filed a complaint of kidnapping and seduction against Sade.

Madame de Montreuil then wrote to Sade telling him that his mother was critically ill in Paris. Sade and his wife arrived on 8 February 1777 only to find that his mother had been dead three weeks. On 13 February, he was arrested under the existing lettre de cachet and imprisoned in the Vincennes fortress.

With Sade now in custody, the parlement de Provence in Aix agreed to hear his appeal against his conviction for sodomy and poisoning. On 30 June 1778, the court overturned his conviction on poisoning and ordered a retrial on charges of debauchery and pederasty. Madame de Montreuil, wishing to avoid the disgrace of a criminal conviction in the family, sent a representative to Marseilles to bribe the prostitutes and other prospective witnesses. On 14 July 1778, after interrogating Sade and other witnesses, the appeals court overturned the sodomy conviction, finding him guilty of only "debauchery and immoderate libertinage". He was given a small fine and forbidden to enter Marseilles for three years. However, he was immediately re-arrested on a lettre de cachet and returned to police custody. Sade escaped custody while being transferred back to Paris and he returned to La Coste. On 26 August, he was re-arrested after a police raid on his château and was returned to Vincennes prison.

In prison, Sade engaged in extensive correspondence, mostly with his wife, and continued working on Voyage d'Italie and a number of plays. In the summer of 1782, he drafted Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man and began working on The 120 Days of Sodom. Vincennes prison was closed in February 1784 and Sade was transferred to the Bastille, where he produced a fair copy of The 120 Days of Sodom, which many critics consider his first major work. Sade began working on the novel Aline and Valcour and completed the novellas The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787) and Eugénie de Franval (1788). As revolutionary tension increased in Paris, Sade was outraged that his daily exercise was curtailed. On 2 July 1789, he improvised a megaphone and shouted to passers-by below that the warders were killing the prisoners. Sade was transferred to the Charenton insane asylum that evening. On 14 July, the Bastille was stormed by a revolutionary crowd and Sade's former cell was looted of his personal effects which remained there under seal. In March 1790, the National Constituent Assembly voted to abolish lettres de cachet and Sade was released from detention on 2 April.

Freedom and imprisonment (1790–1801)

On Sade's release, his wife sought a legal separation and the marriage was dissolved in September 1790. In August, he met Marie-Constance Quesnet, a 33-year-old actress, and they began a relationship which was to last until his death. Sade now called himself "Louis Sade, man of letters" and tried to launch a career as a writer. His novel Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue was published anonymously in June 1791. In October, his play Oxtiern opened at the Théâtre Molière in Paris, but closed after only two performances following audience uproar.

Sade was increasingly involved in politics, at first supporting a constitutional monarchy. However, as republican sentiment grew in 1792, Sade found himself in political difficulty due to his noble ancestry, public support of the monarchy and the emigration of his two sons. In March, his play Le Suborneur premiered at the Théâtre Italien but only lasted one night when Jacobin activists disrupted the performance. He began publicly espousing more radical republican views and became more prominent in his local revolutionary section, the Section des Piques. Following the fall of the monarchy in September 1792, he was appointed the section's commissioner on health and charitable institutions, and in October 1793 he was chosen to deliver the funeral oration for the revolutionary martyrs Marat and Le Peletier. In November, his section delegated him to deliver a petition against religion to the National Convention. His speech probably alienated Robespierre and other members of the convention and its powerful Committee of Public Safety who were attempting to suppress atheism and attacks on religion. In December 1793, Sade was arrested and charged with "moderatism", associating with counter-revolutionaries, anti-republicanism and "feigned patriotism". He was listed for execution on 27 July 1794 (9 Thermidor) but was saved either by bribery or bureaucratic error. Robespierre and his supporters fell from power that day, ending the Reign of Terror and paving the way for Sade's release from prison in October.

On his release, Sade concentrated on literature and his personal affairs. He published a series of anonymous novels: Philosophy in the Bedroom and Aline and Valcour (1795), and the first volumes of The New Justine and Juliette (1797–99). Sade had huge debts, little income from his properties, and the Vaucluse department had incorrectly placed him on its list of émigrés, leaving him vulnerable to arrest and confiscation of property. In October 1796, he was forced to sell La Coste, but his former wife obtained most of the proceeds. In 1798, Sade unsuccessfully petitioned Paul Barras, a leader of the Directory regime, to have his name removed from the list of émigrés. Sade's émigré status was finally revoked in December 1799, by which time he had fallen deeper into poverty and had registered as indigent.

In 1800, Sade published Crimes of Love, a collection of short stories published under his own name. The book received hostile reviews and a wave of articles appeared identifying Sade as the author of the scandalous Justine and Juliette.

Final imprisonment and death (1801–1814)

The Napoleonic Consulate was cracking down on public immorality and, in March 1801, Sade was arrested at his publisher's office and detained in the Sainte-Pélagie Prison. The stocks of The New Justine and Juliette were seized and the police minister Joseph Fouché ordered Sade's detention without trial as he believed the pornography laws did not provide for sufficient punishment and any trial would only increase Sade's notoriety. Following Sade's attempts to seduce young prisoners at Sainte-Pélagie, he was declared insane with "libertine dementia" and transferred to the Bicêtre Asylum.

After intervention by his family, he was transferred once more to the Charenton Asylum, where his ex-wife and children agreed to pay his room and board. Marie-Constance, pretending to be his illegitimate daughter, was allowed to live with him there. The director of Charenton, Abbé de Coulmier, attempted to run the institution on humane principles with an emphasis on "moral treatment" in accordance with the nature of the mental illness. He allowed Sade to write, produce and perform in plays, and also encouraged balls, concerts, dinners and other entertainments. In 1805, Coulmier had a theater built on the premises with seating for about 200. The performances, which included professional actors and inmates, became fashionable, attracting many among the elite of Napoleonic society.

Sade was also allowed to write. In April 1807, he completed Les journées de Florbelle, a ten-volume libertine novel. The novel was seized after a police search of Sade's and Quesnet's rooms. Sade later completed three conventional novels at Charenton.

Coulmier's novel approach to psychotherapy and the privileges granted to Sade attracted much opposition in official circles. In 1810, new police orders put Sade into solitary confinement and deprived him of pens and paper. Coulmier, however, gradually restored most of Sade's privileges.

In 1813, the government ordered Coulmier to suspend all theatrical performances, balls and concerts. By this time, Sade was in a sexual relationship with Madeleine Leclerc, the teenage daughter of an employee at Charenton. The relationship caused consternation for Quesnet and further allegations of immorality against Sade. In September 1814, the new director of Charenton asked the Bourbon restoration government to transfer Sade to another institution. Sade, however, was now seriously ill. He died on 2 December 1814 after an attack of "prostrating gangrenous fever".

Sade had left instructions in his will requesting that he be buried at Malmaison, his property in Émancé, without an autopsy or "pomp of any kind". However, Malmaison had been sold years earlier, and Sade was instead buried with religious rites at Charenton. His skull was later removed from the grave for phrenological examination. His surviving son, Claude-Armand, had all his remaining unpublished manuscripts burnt, including Les Journées de Florbelle.

Posthumous evaluation

Marshall writes that Sade's "known behaviour (which includes only the beating of a housemaid and an orgy with several prostitutes) departs greatly from the clinical picture of active sadism". Phillips states "there is no reason to believe that any of this behaviour involved compulsion". Dworkin, however, argues that the issue is whether one believes Sade or his female accusers and that admirers of Sade "attempt to justify, trivialize, or deny (even though records confirming the facts exist) every assault Sade ever committed against women and girls". Gray states that Sade engaged in "psychic terrorism" and that "Sade's brand of sadism was often more mental than corporeal". According to Bongie, Sade perpetrated "crimes of physical violence committed during sexual assaults on hapless prostitutes. Such assaults, aggravated by death threats and the element of recidivism, could easily get an offender into similar difficulties today".