executed, Filastre later recanted : "All I said is false. I did that for me to be free of pain and torment. I say all this because I do not want to kill the guilty conscience of a lie." Although rumours of poisoning abounded, dubious evidence from various unreliable witnesses who either recanted or contradicted each other meant no charges were ever laid. Aftermath Historian Antonia Fraser suggests that Marie Angélique died from pleuro-pneumonia induced by tuberculosis. In view of the fact that she was known to have suffered from a persistent loss of blood after her miscarriage, another doctor suggested that when she lost her baby, a fragment of the placenta lodged in her uterus. An alternative suggestion is that she was killed by a rare form of cancer, which occasionally develops after a cyst on the placenta is expelled during pregnancy. The probability is that she died from complications arising from her earlier miscarriage. At court, several courtiers wrote about the duchess's death. According to Ernest Lavisse and Bernard Noël, "Two miscarriages caused her to lose favor with the king." The Duchess of Orleans claimed that it was certain the duchess was poisoned by Madame de Montespan, and suspected that the poison was administered in her milk. Despite the medical findings, rumours persisted that the Duchess of Fontanges died from poisoning. In film L'Affaire des poisons (1955) played by Christine Carère Royal Affairs in Versailles (1954) played by Nicole Maurey See also French royal mistresses 1650–1700 in fashion References External links The Fontange Fontanges, Angelique de Fontanges, Angelique de Fontanges, Angelique de French ladies-in-waiting French duchesses French suo jure nobility Deaths in childbirth French maids of honour 17th-century French people 17th-century French women