In the 17th century, Louis XIV’s French army was not so heteronormative

In ancient Greece, the city of Thebes had its Sacred Battalion, an elite unit apparently composed of 150 pederastic couples. At the turn of the 21st^e century, the United States military prohibited its LGBT+ personnel from revealing their sexual orientation, under the law “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (literally “Don’t ask, don’t talk about it” in French), in force between 1993 and 2011. While the army is often perceived as an environment shaping canonical and heterosexual masculinity, homosexuality in the military ranks is a long-documented phenomenon, sometimes valued, sometimes discriminated against and very often tolerated.

This is how it was in 17th century France.^e century. Among the 450,000 soldiers sometimes fielded by the armies of Louis XIV (king of France between 1643 and 1715), the presence of soldiers preferring men is not a taboo. If contempt is felt in certain contemporary sources, effective repression of the “inhabitants of Sodom”, as they were then called, is rare.

The army of Louis XIV, the new “Sodom”?

Libelles, pamphlets or even private correspondence: there are numerous documents written in the 17th century^e century which mention the supposed homosexuality of certain soldiers. The tone is often mocking, but the concordance between these different sources offers little room for doubt and the soldiers concerned rarely deny them, living their homosexuality openly in the ranks or at the court of Versailles.

Nicolas Chalon du Blé (1652-1730), Marquis of Huxelles and Marshal of France, is the subject of a song with biting irony: “D’Huxelles will love the skirt / When I stop loving wine.” If he is renowned for his unexpected victory at Denain in July 1712, Marshal Claude Louis Hector, Duke of Villars (1653-1734), has for “greatest passion” her “vice of loving young boys”if we are to believe the correspondence of Princess Palatine (Elisabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, the sister-in-law of Louis XIV), an attentive observer of court life.

Would this taste therefore be specific to officers? At the time, at least 17% of those accused of “sodomy” were vagabonds, sailors and not least rank and file soldiers, the essayist Didier Godard estimated in 2002 in his book Le Goût de Monsieur – Male homosexuality in the 17th century^e century. This statistic goes against the received idea which sees behind homosexual practices the taste of a decadent aristocracy. Equally questionable is the image of a sexuality which would be due to the absence of women: canteen maids, maids, laundresses and prostitutes were numerous in the armies before the time of conscription.

However, from that time on, such practices were described as imported from abroad. Thus the Duke of Saint-Simon, close courtier of Louis XIV, who speaks in his memoirs of homoeroticism as a “Italian taste”. Those who indulge in it are called “buggers”, or “berdaches” for those who are said to be passive in their relationships with other men, in other words those to whom a position of inferiority is attributed.

“Effeminate” warriors?

In May 1642, libels thus qualified “berdache” Duke Antoine de Gramont, Prince of Bidache (the rhyme was obvious) and Marshal of France, the day after his military defeat against Spain at the Battle of Honnecourt (in the current Nord department). The use of this term refers the marshal, whose sexual orientation many know, to a form of weakness, as if the two went hand in hand.

This association between supposed preferences for the dominated position in the sexual act and a reputation as a bad soldier is common and, one suspects, often contradicted by the facts. Thus “Monsieur” Philippe d’Orléans (1674-1723), brother of the Sun King and husband of Princess Palatine, known for his taste for the masculine gender. In particular, moments are documented where he is brutally humiliated by other men in the middle of a ball.

Blessed bread for Cardinal Mazarin, who portrayed him as an “effeminate” man to keep him away from power during the youth of Louis XIV. But “Monsieur” proves this derogatory image wrong with his successes on the battlefield. In April 1677, he led the French army to victory at Cassel (North), against the troops of the United Provinces (the future kingdom of the Netherlands). The Knight of Lorraine, one of her supposed lovers, also fought there under her orders.

A relative tolerance

While Louis XIV would have, according to the Duke of Saint-Simon, a “singular horror for all the inhabitants of Sodom”we do not know of any concrete act of repression against those who would lend themselves to it in his armies. Moreover, the time is no longer for the tribunals of the Inquisition which burned sodomites. So much so that, according to Princess Palatine, certain nobles have fun “to say that since Sodom and Gomorrah the Lord has not punished anyone for these misdeeds”.

The king rather seems to put up with it out of pragmatism, given his military ambitions. Indeed, in the army of the 17th^e century, desertion and changes of camp were such that officers struggled to maintain the full ranks of their regularly inspected troops. More than once, a certain tolerance regarding morals and breaches of discipline is therefore necessary. Prostitution, officially punishable by corporal punishment, is only lightly repressed during times of war. Likewise, can we prevent good soldiers and officers from having fun among themselves when it is necessary to prevent them from fleeing before the battle or the inspection?

Between men who are not always consenting

An emblematic case is that of Louis II de Bourbon-Condé (1621-1686), known as the Grand Condé, cousin of Louis XIV. This general spent a time in the service of the Kingdom of Spain, before taking up arms again for Louis XIV. Previously the unexpected winner of the Battle of Rocroi in May 1643 (at the young age of 21), the man his brothers in arms, like the Count of Coligny-Savigny, called “bugger” constituted a precious asset for the French armies and he should not return to the service of the enemy…

So he can give free rein to his desires, says the Palatine: “When the Grand Condé was in love with M^she from Epernon, he went to the army and got used to young horsemen; when he returned, he could no longer tolerate the ladies; he gave the excuse that he had fallen ill and that so much blood had been drawn from him that all strength and love had been taken away from him.”

And Princess Palatine added that the Minister of War at the time, François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), was also pragmatic. He would have convinced the king to be “indulgent” towards the military preferring men by arguing that “it was better for the service of His Majesty than if they loved women; because when it was necessary to go to war and enter the campaign, they could not be detached from their mistresses; that they returned before the end of the campaign and that, when it came to the battle, there were no officers; (…) while having other inclinations, they were very happy to leave the ladies, and to go into the countryside with their lovers, and in this case they were not in such a hurry to return home.”

If, according to Louvois, it is preferable for soldiers to engage in relationships with men within the army rather than with women far from the lines, we cannot guarantee that these soldiers, some of whom are of lower rank and therefore in a subordinate position like the “young officers” that Marshal d’Huxelles “domesticated” according to Saint-Simon, are indeed willing.

Certainly, just as in heterosexual relationships, sexual violence can occur between men in the armed forces. Such acts of aggression are then repressed, as they are in heterosexual relationships… Except that the guilty party and the victim are then considered as accomplices and equally punishable. In the 17th century^e century, tolerance has limits.