
Alexandre Bontemps (; 1626–1701) was the valet of
King Louis XIV and a powerful figure at the
court of Versailles, respected and feared for his exceptional access to the King. He was the second of a sequence of five Bontemps to hold the position of ''Premier valet de la
Chambre du Roi'' ("First valet of the king's bedchamber") in uninterrupted succession between 1643 and 1766, when an early death, leaving no successor, broke the line. There were four head or Premier
valets de chambre, of whom Bontemps became the most senior in 1665, and thirty-two valets.
Life
His father, Jean Baptiste Bontemps (1590–1659), had been surgeon to
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown.
...
before becoming a Premier Valet in 1643. Alexandre succeeded him on his death in 1659, dying in office in 1701, by which time he was a count and marquis, holding several key offices controlling both the palaces and towns of
Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of ÃŽle-de-France, ÃŽle-de-France region in Franc ...
and
Marly, the
Swiss Guard
The Pontifical Swiss Guard,; ; ; ; , %5BCorps of the Pontifical Swiss Guard%5D. ''vatican.va'' (in Italian). Retrieved 19 July 2022. also known as the Papal Swiss Guard or simply Swiss Guard,Swiss Guards , History, Vatican, Uniform, Require ...
who guarded the King and his palaces, and the household of the
Dauphin. He was thus a key figure in maintaining the security of the King, and managing his household. The Governorships of Versailles and Marly had been given to him in 1665 after the death of Jérôme Blouin (1610-1665), then the senior head-valet, and passed to Blouin's son in turn when Bontemps died. He was also a member of the ''
Conseil du Roi
The (; 'King's Council'), also known as the Royal Council, is a general term for the administrative and governmental apparatus around the King of France during the Ancien Régime designed to prepare his decisions and to advise him. It should no ...
'' (the Royal Council) and held a senior rank in the chivalric
Order of Saint Lazarus.
He seems to have been an amiable figure, entirely devoted to Louis, who in turn trusted him as he did few others. He was twelve years older than the King. He was one of a small handful of witnesses to the secret second marriage of Louis to
Madame de Maintenon.
Saint-Simon speaks of "royal coaches (the kind without armorial bearings on the harness, such as Bontemps used for the King's private missions)" and says that "all the secret orders, the private audiences, the sealed letters to and from the King, in fact all the mysteries passed through his hands". Saint-Simon anecdotes have him arranging the marriage to an obscure country nobleman of an illegitimate daughter of Louis who, unlike many, he did not choose to acknowledge officially, and, in Louis's earlier years, leading a minor mistress enveloped in a cloak up the back stairs to the King's study for her assignation; the king having put the key on the outside of the door.
He emerges better than most from the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, whose father had been a friend of Bontemps. Saint-Simon asked him for advice on important issues, using him sparingly. The memoirist
Choisy wrote that part of his success with Louis came from never asking him for favours, although Saint-Simon says that he "loved procuring favours solely for the pleasure of it ... great numbers of people, some of them highly placed, owed their fortunes to him, and he was modest almost to the point of breaking with them if they so much as mentioned it".
The two statements are not incompatible, as Bontemps was in a position to ask favours from ministers and other powerbrokers. He says Bontemps was "rough and brusque in manner, yet respectful and always in his place.... His only skill lay in serving his master, and he was wholly intent on that...
e had beeninfluential for the past fifty years, and with the Court at his feet."
[SS Memoirs:I:146] He once greatly amused Louis, when asked how his wife was, by "replying mechanically with a shrug".
He used the Swiss Guards stationed around the Palaces and gardens to report on the behaviour of
courtier
A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the officia ...
s, including their
church attendance, as well as political and sexual intrigues. As
Intendant
An intendant (; ; ) was, and sometimes still is, a public official, especially in France, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The intendancy system was a centralizing administrative system developed in France. In the War of the Spanish Success ...
or Governor of Versailles, his control extended to the whole town outside the palaces, where many courtiers had houses.
Premier valet

The office of head valet dated back to a historically unwise complaint some generations back by the
Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, always great nobles, against the more menial aspects of the role. Once established, the valets expanded in number and importance, somewhat at the Gentlemen's expense. One of their number was always a few steps from the King wherever he went, and the four Premiers, rotating quarterly, were alone able to, and presumably did, sleep at the foot of the royal bed.
[Da Vinha:1-3]
In addition one of the ordinary valets was ''en poste'' by the King's bed all day, inside the
balustrade that separated it, like an
altar
An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...
communion-rail, from the rest of the room. In the morning
Levée and evening ''Coucher'' ceremonies, the
Grand Chamberlain of France and Premier valet did the work, whilst the First Gentleman of the bedchamber (rotating annually among the four holders) had "the command of the room" (''le commandement de la chambre''). However, Saint-Simon explains carefully that if the First Gentleman of the year was absent, the Premier valet of the quarter was ''en commande'' of the ceremony, attended daily by about a hundred of the greatest courtiers – a significant point of prestige.
Private life
Apart from a large apartment in the palace, and a separate house in Versailles, Bontemps had a "hôtel particulier" (townhouse) on the
ÃŽle Saint-Louis
Île Saint-Louis (), in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the rest of Paris by fo ...
in the centre of Paris, with thirty rooms and a staff of twelve. According to Saint-Simon, he copied his master with a secret second marriage to the mother of La Roche, head-valet to Louis's grandson,
Philip V of Spain
Philip V (; 19 December 1683 – 9 July 1746) was List of Spanish monarchs, King of Spain from 1 November 1700 to 14 January 1724 and again from 6 September 1724 to his death in 1746. His total reign (45 years and 16 days) is the longest in the ...
.
The children of his first marriage married very well, and two generations later a Bontemps married an illegitimate son of the last
Prince of Conti, a cadet branch of the Royal Family. Others married into the largest banking families in France. There is
a portrait of the Comtesse de La Châtre, daughter of
Louis XV's Bontemps head valet, by
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
in New York, dated 1789, the last year of the
Ancien Regime.
In modern memory
*
The City of Versailles has a "Rue Alexandre Bontemps".
*Bontemps, played by
Stuart Bowman, has a large part (if sparing with words) in
''Versailles'', the 2015 British-Franco-Canadian
television series
A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming plat ...
drama set around the construction of the palace.
*Bontemps is a leading character in the computer game ''
Versailles 1685'', where the player takes the part of a junior valet helping him to thwart a plot at Versailles.
References
Sources
* Da Vinha, Matheu, ''Les Valets de chambre de Louis XIV'', Perrin, 2004;
Online text in French* "SS Memoirs" =
Duc de Saint-Simon, ed & trans Lucy Norton; ''Historical Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon'', Vols 1–3, 1967–72, Hamish Hamilton, London.
''This article is partly sourced from the French Wikipedia article "Bontemps".''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bontemps, Alexandre
17th-century French nobility
Ancien Régime office-holders
Servants
1626 births
1701 deaths
French courtiers
17th-century French people
Court of Louis XIV