Olivier le Daim

The Gallows of Montfaucon, (Viollet-le-Duc) detail Grandes Chroniques de France by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1460

Olivier le Daim [or le Dain] (died May 21, 1484), favourite of Louis XI of France, was born of humble parentage at Tielt in Flanders.

Seeking his fortune at Paris, he became court barber and valet to Louis XI, and so ingratiated himself with the king that in 1474 he was ennobled under the title Le Daim and in 1477 made comte de Meulant. In the latter year he was sent to Burgundy to influence Mary of Burgundy, the young heiress of Charles the Bold, but he was ridiculed and compelled to leave Ghent. He thereupon seized and held Tournai for the French.

Le Daim had considerable talent for intrigue, and, according to his enemies, could always be depended upon to execute the baser designs of the king. He amassed a large fortune, largely by oppression and violence, and was named gentleman-in-waiting, captain of Loches, and governor of Saint-Quentin. He remained in favour until the death of Louis XI, when the rebellious lords were able to avenge the slights and insults they had suffered in the hands of the royal barber. He was arrested on charges, the nature of which is uncertain, tried before the parlement of Paris, and on May 21, 1484 hanged at the Gallows of Montfaucon without the knowledge of Charles VIII, who might have heeded his father's request and spared the favourite. Le Daim's property was given to the duke of Orléans.

See the memoirs of the time, especially those of:

Philippe de Commines (ed. Mandrot, 1901–1903, Eng. trans. in Bohn Library)
Robert Gaguin, Compendium de origine et gestis Francorum (Paris, 1586) it was Gaguin who made the celebrated epigram concerning Le Daim: "Eras judex, lector, et exitium"
De Reiffenberg, Olivier le Dain (Brussels, 1829)
Delanone, Le Barbier de Louis XI. (Paris, 1832)
G. Picot, "Procés d'Olivier le Dain", in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques, viii. (1877), 485-537

The memoirs of the time are uniformly hostile to Le Daim.

Le Daim also makes an appearance in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, under the name of Olivier le Mauvais (the Evil).

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