Origin and first names
The Sades were an ancient, though no longer wealthy, noble family of Provence that originally held the title of count (comte in French). The grandfather Gaspard-François de Sade was the first member of the family to use the higher title of marquis, calling himself Marquis de Sade or Marquis de Mazan. Although Sade's father preferred the title comte, Donatien usually called himself Marquis de Sade.
De Sade was born in the Paris city palace of the Condés, a collateral line of the royal house of the Bourbons, to which his mother Marie-Eléonore de Maillé de Carman was related. His father Jean-Baptiste-François-Joseph de Sade, a field marshal and important ambassador, had ruined his reputation at the royal court by being too openly critical, but he was also known as a lover and wrote a number of novels and plays, which he never published. Among Donatien's aunts were two abbesses and two nuns.
The correct form of Sade's first name is not entirely certain, as he gave various other first names:
- His mother had intended the baptismal name Louis Alphonse Donatien. This was also his name during an interrogation in 1768.
- He was baptized Donatien Alphonse François.
- In his marriage contract, his name is Louis Aldonse Donatien.
- Fleeing from the police to Italy in 1772, accompanied by his sister-in-law and mistress Anne-Prospère Launay, Donatien Alphonse François traveled under the guise of Comte de Mazan.
- During the revolutionary period, he called himself simply Louis Sade, without a title of nobility.
- In 1794 he gave the name François Aldonse Donatien Louis.
Childhood and youth
Sade spent his early childhood at the Condés' city palace in Paris under the supervision of Charles de Bourbon-Condé, comte de Charolais, a noted libertine and Pair of France, whom he later mentioned often in his writings. He later grew up partly with his uncle Jacques-François-Paul-Aldonce de Sade at Saumane Castle and partly in Paris, where he attended the Collège Louis-le-Grand from the age of ten to fourteen and then went through an officer's school for young high nobles. At about twelve years of age, de Sade was reportedly such a handsome boy that ladies stopped to stare at the boy in the street. At 14 he became an officer candidate in the chevau-léger de la garde du roi and two years later took part in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) as an officer in the carabinier regiment. In 1759 he transferred to the cavalry regiment Royal Bourgogne. During the war he was promoted several times and won a decoration for bravery in the face of the enemy.
Wedding and first scandals
Meanwhile, Donatien de Sade's father had negotiated a good match for his son. The chosen bride was the twenty-two-year-old Renée-Pélagie Cordier de Montreuil, daughter of the President of the Tax Court of Paris and his resolute wife, Marie-Madeleine, called La Présidente. The Montreuils wanted to give their daughter Renée-Pélagie a handsome dowry and marry her offspring to a prestigious noble family. Since de Sade fulfilled this criterion, he seemed to the Montreuils to be the ideal son-in-law. To improve his family's finances, Father Sade signed his son's marriage contract on 15 May 1763.
His wealth, acquired through marriage, enabled Donatien de Sade to lead a dissolute life that was soon to exceed even the bounds of what one was willing to accept from aristocratic libertines at the time. As was quite common among members of his class at the time, Sade maintained relationships with actresses and courtesans, although at the time these two professions could hardly ever really be distinguished from one another. Courtesans and actresses were considered the "aristocracy of prostitution" and Sade seems to have always treated these women according to the etiquette of the time.
But he also used women from the common people, whom he did not treat at all as decently as the representatives of the aristocracy of prostitution. In the very year of his marriage to Renée Pélagie, the first of many further scandals occurred in Paris, when Sade apparently demanded blasphemous acts from a certain Jeanne Testard in addition to sex. Sade was briefly arrested for the first time by Inspector Louis Marais, bringing him face to face with a man who would become something of a nemesis to him for the next twenty-five years. Marais's police report of the incident is also the only reliable description of the young husband and aristocrat. Sade, Inspector Marais wrote, was "of average height," had "blue eyes and dark blond hair," his face was "oval and handsome," and his figure slender.
Sade repeated orgies in Paris and at his country estate in Lacoste (also known asLa Coste), to which he either invited and paid members of both sexes or simply forced them to participate because of his position.
In 1769, he began a love affair with his sister-in-law, Anne-Prospère Cordier de Launay de Montreuil, his wife's younger sister. This is evident from the seventeen-year-old canoness's passionate love letter of 15 December 1769, which she signed in her blood. The novelist Maurice Lever published this letter in 2005. The de Sade family had granted him access to the correspondence of their notorious ancestor:
Je jure à M. le marquis de Sade, mon amant, de n'être jamais qu'à lui, de ne jamais ni me marier, ni me donner à d'autres, de lui être fidèlement attachée, tant que le sang dont je me sers pour sceller ce serment coulera dans mes veines. Je lui fais le sacrifice de ma vie, de mon amour et de mes sentiments, avec la même ardeur que je lui ai fait celui de ma virginité. ... Je lui permets en outre de faire tout l'usage qu'il voudra contre moi dudit serment, si j'ose enfreindre la moindre clause par ma volonté ou mon inconscience.
[Signé avec du sang.] De Launay. 15 décembre 1769.
"I swear to the Marquis de Sade, my lover, to belong to him alone forever, never to marry another nor to give myself to others, and to remain faithful to him as long as the blood with which I conquer this oath flows through my veins. I sacrifice my life, my love, and my feelings to him with the same ardor with which I sacrificed my virginity to him. ... Should I violate even the slightest clause of this oath, willingly or unwittingly, I permit him to make any use he pleases of this oath against me.
[Signed in blood.] De Launay. 15 December 1769."
- Maurice Lever: " Je jure au marquis de Sade, mon amant, de n'être jamais qu'à lui... ", Fayard Paris 2005, p. 30-31.
Escape and imprisonment
Due to the accusations of a certain Rose Keller that she had been kidnapped by him under false pretences, arrested and severely maltreated by flogging, Sade was arrested again in 1768. However, after Sade had paid the woman compensation, she refrained from suing him.
In 1772, two prostitutes from Marseille complained that they had been poisoned by Sade with kantharidin sweets, an alleged aphrodisiac, and thus made compliant to group sex and anal intercourse. Sade was therefore accused and sentenced to death in absentia.
The Marquis evaded the trial and the execution of the sentence by fleeing to Italy. Because he had secretly taken his young sister-in-law Anne-Prospère and thus dishonored her, the families dropped him. His mother-in-law, the President, obtained a royal warrant (lettre de cachet) against him, so that on his return to Paris in 1777 he was arrested and confined without further trial until 1784 in the fortress of Vincennes, which served as a prison, Sade insisting on being escorted to Vincennes by none other than Louis Marais. The death sentence imposed in 1772, on the other hand, was overturned in 1778.
Writer behind bars
After an escape attempt in 1784, he was transferred to the Paris city fortress, the Bastille, where he remained incarcerated for another five and a half years.
Intellectually, the years in the Bastille were quite fruitful for Sade, since he could have books brought to him and read. During his imprisonment in the Bastille he finally became a homme de lettres. His central works from this period are Les cent-vingt jours de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom), 1785; Aline et Valcour ou Le Roman philosophique (Aline and Valcour or The Philosophical Novel), 1786, a travel novel in epistolary form; and Les Infortunes de la vertu (The Unhappy Fortunes of Virtue), 1787, a philosophical narrative that Sade expanded in 1791 into the novel Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu (Justine or of the Misfortunes of Virtue). Because of the religious and moral offensiveness of these works, he wrote the texts in secret and, in order not to be conspicuous by excessive use of paper, in tiny type.
Numerous plays were also written during these years. However, his conviction that he was a major playwright was not confirmed. During his lifetime, only one of his plays, Le Comte Oxtiern ou les Effets du libertinage (The Count Oxtiern or the Effects of Immorality), was performed (1791) and only one was printed.
Revolution and renewed arrest
Two weeks before the storming of the Bastille, the imprisoned Marquis de Sade is said to have shouted to a crowd demonstrating in front of the fortress that prisoners were about to be murdered in the Bastille. This is clear from a letter sent by the last governor of the Bastille, Launay, to the Minister of State, Villedeuil, on 2 July 1789. It states:
Le comte de Sade s'est mis hier midi à sa fenêtre, et a crié de toutes ses forces, et a été entendu de tout le voisinage et des passants, that'on égorgeait et assassinait les prisonniers de la Bastille, et qu'il fallait venir à leur secours... I must represent to you, Monseigneur, that it would be necessary to transfer this prisoner to Charenton, where he could not disturb the order.
"The Count de Sade went to the window yesterday at noon and shouted at the top of his voice that the prisoners of the Bastille were being slaughtered and murdered, and that it was necessary to rush to their assistance, which the whole neighbourhood and passers-by heard.... I believe, Excellency, that I must suggest to you that this prisoner be transferred to Charenton, where he cannot disturb public order."
- Jean-Jacques Pauvert: Sade vivant. Tome 2: ... " Tout ce qu'on peut concevoir dans ce genre-là. » 1777–1793. S. 511.
After the incident, Sade was transferred to the lunatic asylum at Charenton (near present-day Saint-Maurice), leaving behind the manuscript of the 120 Days of Sodom, which had been stored in a hiding place, and seemed lost for a long time. As he was now considered insane, his wife was able to file for divorce without fear of loss of honour.
In 1790, when the Lettres de cachet were abolished under the regime of the Directoires, the bourgeois Sade enjoyed freedom. He now became politically involved and - despite his aristocratic background - joined the radical Jacobins.
In 1791, on June 25, after the king's failed escape, he had a self-authored memorandum thrown into Louis XVI's carriage, Adresse d'un citoyen de Paris au Roi des Français (Address of a Citizen of Paris to the King of the French). In it, he accuses the monarch of having broken the sacred bond of trust between himself and his people by fleeing:
Que venez-vous de faire, sire ? Quelle action avez-vous commise ? À quel point vous êtes-vous permis d'induire un peuple entier dans la plus affreuse erreur. Jusqu'à présent, & depuis les commencemens de la Monarchie, l'opinion chérie de ce peuple étoit que si la bonne-foi, si la loyauté, si l'honneur s'exilaient de dessus la terre, c'étoit dans le cœur des Rois que leur Temple devoit se retrouver ; cette illusion n'est plus possible, vous la détruisez, Sire, et d'une manière bien cruelle sans doute.
"Sire, what have you done? What deed have you committed? How have you allowed yourself to lead an entire people into a terrible error. From the origins of the monarchy until today, the people loved the idea that sincerity, loyalty and honor, even if they were driven from the earth, would be in the heart of the kings, their temple. That hope is no longer possible, you are destroying it, Sire, and in the cruelest way possible."
- Wikisource, facsimile page 1
In 1791, at the Théâtre Molière, his play Oxtiern, ou les Malheurs du libertinage was premiered.
In 1792, the premiere of his comedy L'homme dangereux ou le Suborneur (The Dangerous Man or The Seducer) ended in an uproar.
In 1793 he was elected judge of a Paris revolutionary tribunal and president of the revolutionary Paris administrative district of the Section des Piques.
On November 15, 1793, he wrote the Pétition de la Section des Piques aux représentans (sic!) du peuple français. While in Sade's novels vice is rewarded and virtue punished, in this petition of the Piquen Section Sade praises republican virtues. In it, the "ci-devant Marquis" (former Marquis) calls for the transformation of all Christian churches into "temples of virtue and reason."
Qu'une fois par décade, la tribune de ces temples retentisse des éloges de la Vertu. ... Ainsi l'homme s'épurera.
"May the praises of virtue resound once a week in these temples. ... In this way man will be purified."
- Sade : Pétition de la Section des Piques aux représentans du peuple français. BNF Gallica, pp. 4-5.
As a revolutionary judge he saved his parents-in-law from the guillotine by having them put on a so-called purification list. In 1794 he fell into political disuse, was considered too moderate in his judicial office and was accused under the pretext of having once applied for service in the royal guard. He remained in prison for more than a year and was again sentenced to death. He was saved from the execution of the sentence by the fall of Robespierre on 28 July 1794.
Stay in Charenton and death
Napoléon Bonaparte, first consul of the French Republic since 1799, is credited with Sade's arrest in 1801. On March 6, 1801, the police searched his publisher's house and then his home. Several of Sade's manuscripts and books were found at the publisher's and confiscated. The publisher and Sade were arrested. The publisher was promised freedom if he revealed the hiding place of the printed copies of Juliette - he was released after 24 hours. The 1,000 or so books were confiscated and burned. Furthermore, bookstores offering the book were tracked down. Sade was administratively accused, without trial, of having written the books Justine and Juliette and was placed in the Sainte-Pélagie prison. At the beginning of 1803, he tried to commit an offence against fellow prisoners and was transferred to the Bicêtre prison. In April 1803, his family obtained his placement in the asylum of Charenton-Saint-Maurice (insane asylum), which he did not leave again until his death. Napoleon's police minister Joseph Fouché, who also had Sade secretly monitored at Charenton, had been instrumental in Sade's re-arrest. At least temporarily, Sade's old acquaintance Inspector Louis Marais was involved in the surveillance. At Charenton, Sade initially enjoyed humane treatment. He wrote the biographical novels La Marquise de Gange (printed in 1813) and - both published only posthumously - Adélaïde de Brunswick, princesse de Saxe (1812) and Histoire secrète d'Isabelle de Bavière (1813). In addition, he was allowed to perform several plays with inmates of the asylum as actors, among which, however, were none of his own. Towards the end of his life, on the personal orders of the police minister Fouché, he received solitary confinement with isolation and a ban on writing.
The version that the arrest was for accusation and personal revenge because a satire was written on Napoléon Bonaparte in 1800, Zoloé et ses deux acolytes ou Quelques Decades de la Vie de trois Jolies Femmes, which was attributed to Sade, had first been circulated in the biography Michaud (1811) and adopted by subsequent authors without verification. It could not stand up to re-examination, as the satire cannot be attributed to Sade.
On 15 August 1808, his younger son Donatien-Claude married Louise-Gabrielle-Laure de Sade, who belonged to a side branch of the House of Sade. On June 9, 1809, his older son Louis-Marie died. Sade was visited at Charenton by his son Donatien-Claude.
On 2 December 1814, he died at the age of 74 in the Charenton-Saint-Maurice lunatic asylum. In the death certificate, Sade's profession is given as homme de lettres, i.e. writer.
After Sade's death, Donatien-Claude, who rejected his father's atheism, burned his last major work, Les journées de Florbelle ou La nature dévoilée, which has therefore not survived. Sade's tombstone contained the inscription:
"He who passes by, kneel and pray beside the most unfortunate of men. He was born in the last century and died in this one. Despotism with its hideous head waged war against him at all times. Under the kings this abomination seized all his life. Under the Reign of Terror it survived and drove Sade to the brink of the abyss. Under the Consulate it returned, and again Sade is its victim."
The grave can no longer be located today, although Maurice Heine was still able to decipher the inscription in the 1920s.
Descendants
Among his descendants, Sade became a taboo subject within the House of Sade. It was not until the 20th century that Xavier de Sade acknowledged his ancestor again for the first time, opened the family archives to researchers and also publicly bore the title of marquis again.
Although there are some copper engravings purporting to show Sade, no authentic image of him can as yet be proved.
