Louis XIV’s elephant was the only elephant in Europe until the first half of the 19th century

Kings and emperors are used to receiving and giving very singular gifts, particularly when their gift is the symbol of their power and commercial capabilities.

Among the strangest gifts that rulers have ever received is the elephant given as a gift to Louis XIV of France, who received an African elephant from the king of Portugal Peter II, known as the “Peaceful King”.

This animal was probably born around 1664 and lived most of its life inside the zoo that Louis Palace of Versaillesto house the strangest gifts that were delivered from other kingdoms and colonies.

From what we know through historical records, the elephant in question was a female and was captured at an early age in Congo, by a commercial expedition that sent it to Portugal, via ship.

Unfortunately he did not live long. In fact, he died in 1681 at only 16 years of age, so he never reached adulthood. The reasons for his death are very clear today. Not being used to living in a continental climate like the French one, and being the only specimen of her species in captivity in the whole of Europe, she probably suffered from depression and lung diseasewhich ultimately led her to not eat much and to starve.

Not that his French diet was suitable for his health. Louis XIV’s courtiers fed her daily with 36 kg of bread, 12 liters of wine, 10 liters of vegetable and rice soup, vegetable peelings and lots of hay. A diet that was probably more suitable for pigs or farm animals and which was instead unhealthy for a species that in theory should have mainly fed on shoots of African plants.

Precisely as a result of its poor diet and the fact that it did not move much, in the end, in the last year of its life, this specimen suffered so much from malnutrition that it even had to be tied to a crane to be kept upright and hydrated by force. A torture that would shock any visitor to a zoo today.

However, the very fact that the king did not give him a name – unlike his ancestor Charlemagnewho gave a name to the elephant he received as a gift from the caliph of Baghdad – makes us understand how this elephant was neglected, once it arrived in France, as much as it was the only representative of its species to live in Europe until 1862.

It is also likely that this specimen remembered its family and native environment in Africa, given that it was captured at the age of three and its species is known for its remarkable memory.

The only mitigating factor that can be attributed to the court of Louis XIV and to the king himself is that at the time there was not enough information to handle such an animal in Europe. So, although the king spent a lot of money to finance sumptuous banquets, it is not his fault or his veterinarians’ fault that the animal ultimately died of wasting. Indeed, it was his death that made science progress.

Shortly after the death, the king consented to the doctor Claude Perrault to dissect and study the corpse, whose skeleton is today exposed to the Paris Natural History Museum. The documents drawn up by Perrault, published in 1734, would later allow zoologists to better understand the anatomy of this species.

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