Tower of Nesle

Israel the younger Sylvestre, Tour de Nesle

A poem in Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit is about the Tower of Nesle, a popular subject at the time he was writing, in part thanks to a scandalous play written in 1832 by Dumas and Gailladet.

According to the play, the "Tour de Nesle" would have been the scene of the orgies of a queen of France, obese ogress who attracted students for her pleasure. After having enjoyed them,  she had them thrown into the river during the night. The philosopher Buridan would have failed in his youth, a victim of the ogress. The queens? Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philip the Handsome and Margaret of Burgundy, wife of Louis X. 

 

The play chose to ignore the other woman Blanche, wife of Charles, the youngest son of Philip IV. The scandal, started in 1313 during the visit of Philip's only daughter Isabelle with her husband, Edward II of England. It permanently altered the attitudes and manners French royal society after the 14th century. The accusations apparently started by Isabella after seeing her small woven purses, gifts to her two sisters-in-law, in the hands of men who were not their husbands. The Tour de Nesle was the name of the tower in Paris where much of the adultery was said to have occurred. The story, as stories do, developed once Philip placed the couples under investigation. Eventually, the two men were arrested and the story made public. The scandal led to the torture (including castration) of the two accused male lovers, their subsequent executions (either drawn and quartered, flayed, or broken on a wheel and then hung), and lifetime imprisonment of the two young women. Jeanne of Burgundy, the third sister-in-law who was accused of potentially being present and perhaps having participated in the festive orgies of her two sisters, was saved from such a punishment by her husband Philip V. Their marriage seems to have been the only happy one; he wrote her love letters, if uninteresting ones, throughout their life together. His will shows her interest in the school, but nothing except the legend suggests that there was more to it.

More info on this can be gathered in the book by the excellent writer Alison Weir.

Weir, Alison. (2006) Isabella: She-Wolf of France, Queen of England. London: Pimlico.