The Trial of Gilles De Rais Page 13
* * *
February 26 Second stay at Orléans
* * *
At Ortéans Gilles sells, or pawns, a silver head of Saint-Honoré.29 This transaction appears connected to the pretext given to La Trémoille, but in fact it inaugurates a series of transactions having no other explanation than a life of unbridled dissipation, which from here on out alone interests the Marshal.
* * *
March 26 Endowment of the Holy Innocents Chapel at Machecoul
* * *
Paradoxically, it is a pious endowment for the chapel at Machecoul that we ought to cite first in this dissipated life. Gilles has two Orléans notaries, Jean Caseau and Jean de Réconin, draw up a deed confirming the endowment of this chapel that, by the splendor of its ceremonies and the wealth of its clergy, rivaled a collegiate church and even a cathedral. The minute of this deed existed prior to 1940 in Orléans. Abbot Bossard reproduced a portion of it that we think we ought to cite here.
The text sheds light on one of the most curious aspects — the most disconcerting — in the life of the child killer: “Whereas noble lord, Monsignor Gilles, Lord de Rais, Count of Brienne, Lord of Champtocé and Pouzauges, Marshal of France, had recently, for the benefit and salvation of his soul, and in order that, before Our Lord Jesus Christ, it serve as a memorial to him and his deceased father, mother, relatives, friends, and benefactors, made an endowment to the memory of the Holy Innocents at Machecoul-en-Rais, in the duchy of Brittany; and whereas he had established and ordained a vicar, a dean, an archdeacon, a treasurer, several canons, a chapter, and a college in this endowment; and also whereas he had ordained and granted a lease for annuities, revenues, and possessions for their life and needs, in order that the divine service might be augmented and, from then on, performed and celebrated in the said place of Machecoul; and for this that the said Lord had and still has the good intention and firm purpose of maintaining the said endowment, which he has certainly demonstrated and demonstrates each day effectively, desiring with all his heart that the said vicar, dean, and chapter be after his death peacefully maintained and guarded in good possession and seizure, thus provided for and assigned to them by him as has been said, and the former preserved and defended against every oppression, this Lord has given to the King of Sicily and the Duke of Anjou, from whom he holds them in fief in respect of the duchy of Anjou, the castle and castlery of Champtocé, exclusive of the payment or toll house of the place where the said endowment is located, and he has given to the Duke of Brittany half of all the manor, barony, and land of Rais lest Madame Catherine de Thouars, the wife of the said Monsignor de Rais, or Mademoiselle Marie de Rais, his daughter, or other relatives, friends, heirs, and trustees, who in the name of the said young lady Marie or otherwise, with some claim or in some manner or for some reason whatsoever it might be, gainsay or obstruct the said endowment; in order that the said Lords King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou and Duke of Brittany might bear, support and defend them …“30
* * *
(1435)
* * *
Certainly such clauses have very little meaning. In particular, the gift of Champtocé to La Trémoille (if Gilles should happen to die without an heir) is irreconcilable with that conditional bequest to King René. In both cases they are empty assertions. These words, however, show Gilles’ attachment to the endowment that ruins him.
We have seen how the inhabitants of Machecoul, the parents of the innocent victims of its founder, were frightened by the thought that their complaints might reach the ears of the “men in Lord de Rais’ chapel”! A chapel of the Holy Innocents, the haunt of a killer of children! This Jean Rossignol, this André Buchet, who participate in Gilles’ butcheries, divinely singing in memory of the Holy Innocents!
A contemporary document, not included in the text of March 26, 1435, gives us precise information on so bloody a sanctuary. A record by which the heirs of Lord de Rais intend, after his death, to prove their kinsman’s extravagance goes as follows: “Gilles kept a chapel of singers in his retinue wherever he went, in which he had twenty-five to thirty people, children, chaplains, young clerks, and others; he brought them with him on his travels so that his retinue comprised, on account of this chapel, including their servants, more than fifty people at his expense, and as many horses. Similarly, in this chapel he had a quantity of gold and silk cloth vestments, candlesticks, censers, crosses, plates, etc., of great sumptuousness, which cost three times their value, with several pairs of organs, one of which required six men to carry. And likewise the chapel included a dean, cantors, archdeacons, vicars, a schoolmaster, etc., as in the cathedrals, and one of them was called a bishop; to some he paid four crowns, to others three hundred, and he covered their expenses; he dressed them in trailing, scarlet robes with fine fur, etc., they wore fine, gray hats, lined with thin vair, etc., and there was nothing but vanity in their devotionless, orderless service. And when he was seized with a desire to prefer one of them, he gave him legacies, in addition to his wages, to that person’s relatives even, as he had done to one Rossignol of La Rochelle, and a choirboy from Poitiers, to whom he gave the land of La Rivière, close to Machecoul, worth two hundred pounds in annuity; moreover, he gave his father and mother more than two hundred crowns.”31
These mad expenditures have Gilles entering upon a path where he will founder. He cannot control these expenditures. Thus in Orléans he pawns personal property and real estate for hard cash. We have already seen him sell (or pawn) a silver reliquary on February 26th.
On April 16, 1435, he pawns “a cope, a vermilion baldachin, figured in green, inweaved with little gold birds, garnished with a hood and orphreyed in Paris with a chasuble and a dalmatic for a deacon.”
* * *
April 30
* * *
He pawns “two hoods for church copes, the one embroidered with the Trinity, the other with Our Lady’s coronation, a crimson, violet, velvet cope, with gold cloth, worked in images two by two, a figured black satin dalmatic with a silk cloth; a baldachin measuring thirteen ells, with little gold birds, from Cyprus.”
* * *
May 8 Gilles de Rais The festival of Joan of Arc and the scandalous expenditures
* * *
We are unable to extract from the documents a specific fact touching on Gilles’ participation in the 1435 festival in honor of Joan of Arc, but we have good reason to believe it was of paradoxical importance. Doubtless it accounts for that unheard quantity of gold crowns that vanished in a matter of months.
In the first place, we know from the Mémoire des héritiers already cited (p. 94) that the theater played a very large role in his expenditures. He produced several sorts of pieces: “mysteries,” “plays,” “farces,” “moresques,” “impersonations,” “moralities.” The Marshal demanded sumptuous spectacles. “Each time he had them play, he had them dress in new outfits, depending on the piece.” One could speak of the theater at this time as beautiful compositions in the style of tapestries. Here, as elsewhere, Gilles’ desire for magnificence goes out of bounds. His need to dazzle was so great that under the scaffolds carrying the scene and decorations, which were necessary to build for each performance, he had wine and hippocras distributed, not to mention delicacies destined for the spectator.
We also know that at each anniversary following 1429 the liberation of Orléans was celebrated with a great festival; in any case, by a procession. For the year of 1435, we read in the city’s accounts:
“To Guillaume Le Charron, to Michelet Filleul, as a donation made to them in order to help cover the cost of their scaffolds and other expenses incurred the eighteenth day of May 1435, when they put on certain mysteries on the boulevard of the bridge during the procession.”
It evidently had to do with the Mystère du Siège d‘Orléans.32 This enormous theatrical machine, comprising more than twenty thousand lines of verse and requiring close to five hundred actors, has fallen into oblivion. But it has been pieced together after a 15th-century French m
anuscript preserved in the Vatican library, where it evidently ran aground after the pillage in 1562 of the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, neighboring on Orléans. This mystery was composed not long after the events, by an Orléanais, and it was written to be performed, because scene directions are given with constant precision. But it could only be performed at Orléans, for the people of Orléans. Now another passage from the records shows us that, in fact, the episodes of the siege were performed in the city at just about the same time. This passage figures in the 1439 accounts:
* * *
(1435)
* * *
“To Jehan Hilaire, for the purchase of a standard and a banner that belonged to Monsignor de Rais, to show in what manner the Tourelles were assaulted and taken from the English, the eighteenth day of May, VII Tournois pounds …”
It is difficult to imagine that the mystery that was played on the boulevard of the bridge in 1435 had nothing to do with the Mystère du Siège d’Orléans, if we are assured that during the same period the assault on the Tourelles was represented in Orléans. The fort of the Tourelles was the bridgehead. Therefore it is in the neighborhood of the bridge in both cases; yet the assault on the Tourelles is only the decisive episode of the siege and, by consequence, of the Mystère du Siège d’Orléans. That is not to say that the mystery was performed in its entirety, but at least one episode was played during the procession on May 8th.
Gilles de Rais’ character plays an important part in the Mystère du Siège d’Orléans. His standard and banner are, in effect, necessary if one represents the assault of the Tourelles, where he distinguished himself. The city buys them in 1439. We cannot be sure who sold them to Jehan Hilaire; we know only “that they belonged to Monsignor de Rais,” and that they belonged to him originally.
It is somehow certain that Gilles de Rais took part personally in the spectacles performed at the festivals honoring Joan of Arc in 1435 at Orléans. Under what conditions and the extent to which he took part are unknown to us. But the Mémoire des heritiers33 informs us that during his stay at Orléans (which in two or more visits extends from September 1434 to August 1435) Gilles spends 80,000 to 100,000 gold crowns (hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, of our own money).
Moreover, our overall feeling is that his fortune was affected after the stay in Orléans. We know of his passion for magnificent spectacles and how it ruins him. Therefore it is logical to suppose that he participated in the costs of spectacles given in May 1435. These last are exceptional; they never seem to have been repeated.
* * *
July 2 Letters of interdict from Charles VII and the sales of domains
* * *
His expenditures, and the massive sales of domains that alone permitted him to meet them that year, are enough to rouse his family. In the tone that the Marshal has set, his brother and his cousin, André de Laval-Lohéac, obtain letters of interdict from Charles VII, dated from Amboise July 2, 1435. Gilles forfeits the right to sell his property and nobody is allowed to contract with him thereafter. This interdict is loudly proclaimed in every region where Rais is accustomed to staying: Orléans, Tours, Angers, Champtocé, Pouzauges, Tiffauges …
Already before this, at least during the Orléans period, the sales of important domains succeeded one another so rapidly that when the interdict did come — not that it was possible to “establish a balance sheet of the unfortunate baron’s sales” — one can safely say that he had nothing left in Poitou except his wife’s property, which custom withheld from his touch; nothing in Maine; nothing in Anjou, except Ingrandes and Champtocé. Only his property in Brittany remained for the most part intact.34
* * *
July 7
* * *
As he liquidates his domains, Gilles is reduced to every expedient. Thus he pawns gold candlesticks at Orléans on July 7th. They probably belonged to the Machecoul chapel.
* * *
August 25
* * *
He pawns to Charles de Halot, the innkeeper at the “Cheval Blanc,” a certain number of extremely valuable objects for the sum of two hundred and sixty gold royals: a manuscript by Valerius Maximus; the City of God, in Latin, by Saint Augustine; a second copy of the City of God, this time in French; and two ecclesiastical copes, one of them damask, and a black satin chasuble.
Around the same time he pawns, this time to Jean Boileau, a fourth manuscript, Ovid’s Metamorphoses; we understand that it was of parchment “bound in red leather, decorated with copper keys and a gilded silver clasp.” This last manuscript, it is true, was recovered two years later.
Once more during his stay at Orléans he pawns his horses, even his own prized horse, Cassenoix; he pawns his wagons and harnesses.
* * *
(1435)
August-September
* * *
Gilles leaves Orléans and retires to his lands, apparently in the region of Rais. Because of his excessive expenditures and the interdiction, he is creditless. He is, if not disgraced, at least profoundly impaired. Only those of his companions who live like parasites, greedy for his blind extravagance, remain about him.
* * *
Gilles de Rais’ military councils Guillaume de La Jumelière conclusively abandons him
* * *
A knight such as Guillaume de La Jumelière, who had followed him from the start, who had been with him at Orléans, where we know that he was at his service (Gilles installs him at the “Image de Sainte Marie-Madeleine” ; he is cited in the documents under the name of Monsignor de Martigné), conclusively abandons him. This abandonment signifies the feeling of inconsistency and deviation that he now exudes.35
It could also be that Guillaume de La Jumelière, over and above the sales and scandalous squanderings, caught wind of the Marshal’s criminal atrocities. The scandal evidently did not come to light in one day. The public rumor spreads only slowly. The poor folk do not speak without trembling; the lords keep quiet for another reason. Occasionally they act like the clergy, induced to throw a veil over the faults of one of their own: they condemn their faults, but they keep them quiet.
* * *
Year’s end
* * *
The following testimony can, if necessary, be connected to his return from Orléans. But first it must be said that it cannot be taken too seriously. The notary public at the trial retained it, but its little sense can only serve to weaken the case for the accusation. If we mention it, like others of equal value, our purpose is to be thorough, and to take the opportunity to emphasize that the accusation rests in toto on those testimonies that are precise, whose number is in every way considerable.
At the trial in 1440, an inhabitant of Machecoul, Guillaume Hilairet, a witness of the first alleged disappearance (p. 258), claims to have “previously heard one of Rais’ women, whose name he did not know, complaining at Machecoul of the loss of a child of hers.” These words follow the statement of an event that the witness says dates back “about five years,” that is theoretically to 1435. But this encounter with a stranger proves nothing and could have taken place on another occasion anyway (p. 259). Whatever the case, that vague recollection of a mother’s lamentation gives a good indication of the atmosphere that must have developed in the region of Rais since the return of the man who dominated it under the protection of high walls.
* * *
1436
May Assault on Michel de Fontenay
* * *
Gilles has entered into a violent quarrel with Michel de Fontenay, one of the two teachers to whom his father, drafting his will on his deathbed September 28, 1415, had been anxious to entrust him. Michel de Fontenay, an Angevin priest, out of friendship had seen to the publication in Champtocé, near the University of that city, of the royal letters interdicting Gilles. While passing through Angers, Lord de Rais abducts him. It was an act of violence whereby he publicly claimed authority he did not have. This abuse of authority was all the more crazed as Michel de Fontenay was an ecclesiastic
and a notable. Gilles has him imprisoned at Champtocé, then at Machecoul; he probably would have come to the same end in these prisons as the unfortunate Gilles Meshcin did in 1423 (p. 73). But because of protests from the Bishop, officers, and the University, Lord de Rais frees the man who had been in charge of his education since his childhood.36
* * *
August 24 and 25
* * *
The family — primarily Gilles’ brother, René de La Suze, and a cousin, André de Laval-Lohéac — is obviously resolved to oppose any deal that Jean V, the Duke of Brittany who openly refuses to abide by the letters of interdict, pursues with Gilles. Intending to respond in advance to the intentions of the two lords, who are bound to him by ties of vassalage, Jean V exacts an oath of fidelity from them.