The Trial of Gilles De Rais Page 14
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September 5
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Fearing the intrigues and, evidently, the preparation for attack on the part of these two lords, Jean V shows up in person at Machecoul. There he receives an oath of fidelity from the captains occupying garrisons belonging to Gilles in Brittany, which had not yet been sold: Michel de Sillé, Gilles de Sillé’s brother, and his lieutenant, Jean de Dresneuc, of Machecoul; Conan de Vieilchatel of Saint-Etienne-de-Mermorte; Yvon de Kersaliou of Pornic; Valentin de Mortemer of Le Louroux-Bottereau. Captains like these might have been more faithful to his family than to Gilles himself.
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September 13
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Yolande d’Aragon’s youngest son, Charles, governs Anjou in the name of his brother René, the King of Sicily, “the good King René,” then prisoner of Philippe de Bourgogne; at the same time Charles is in fact, since 1433, Charles VII’s prime minister. Charles d’Anjou, Count of Maine, holds an interview on September 13th with Jean V of Brittany and Constable de Richemont on the banks of the Loire at Ancenis. Gilles de Rais is still able to sell his lands within the limits of the duchy of Brittany where, as we have seen, an important portion of his fortune remains. But above all he still possesses, in Anjou, the beautiful fortresses of Ingrandes and Champtocé that Jean V would like to acquire at any cost; Champtocé, on the Loire, is in a sense the key to Brittany. Champtocé is disputed at Ancenis in the presence of Gilles’ brother, René, now a lieutenant of Constable de Richemont, and André de Lohéac, his cousin, who helps him defend the family’s interests. Dunois and Jean de Bueil also are present at this conference. The question of Champtocé, posed by Gilles’ financial distress, is of first-order importance. Apparently Jean V only wants to buy time. We do not know what he does to appease them, but he agrees to exchange letters of alliance with Yolande d’Aragon’s son. He does not intend to observe them! Alliance, fidelity are sworn to on both sides, but nobody intends to keep his word!
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(1436)
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1437
Near the beginning of the year Gilles de Rais’ valets Poitou and Henriet
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Étienne Corrillaut, called Poitou, originally from Pouzauges, becomes Gilles de Rais’ valet. He is not yet twenty years old. According to Poitou’s deposition at the ecclesiastical trial (p. 228), Gilles has intercourse with him from the moment he enters his service; after which Gilles wants to kill him and had picked up a dagger to do so, but Gilles de Sillé prevented him, explaining how beautiful a lad he was and that he must keep him. But in his confession at the civil trial (p. 279), it is said that ten years after having entered Gilles’ service (he entered his service then sometime around 1427), he saw two dead children in his master’s room; Gilles wanted to kill him, but Briqueville and Sillé prevented him. Giles then had sexual intercourse with him and made him take an oath never to reveal what he had seen or would see (pp. 228 and 279). He will observe Gilles’ secret, that he often cut the throats of his victims, and he will become his procurer; he will be hanged at the same time as his master (p. 138).
The other valet, the Parisian Henriet Griart, is at this time in Lord de Rais’ service as of three years, but he has not been introduced to his master’s secrets. A little later Poitou will be trusted with doing so.
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Murder of Catherine Thierry’s brother
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Shortly into 1437, Catherine, the wife of a painter named Thierry, living in Nantes, entrusts her brother to Henriet with the intention that he be admitted to the master’s chapel at Machecoul. He is the first child whom Henriet, according to his confession, had led to Machecoul into the room where he is killed. Henriet does not seem to have understood at first what is going on. In the first place, his master asks him to take an oath: he must not repeat what he is about to learn. Thereupon he is surprised, according to his confession, at the disappearance of Catherine Thierry’s brother. It is then that Henriet suspects: Gilles himself killed the child.
Poitou and Henriet’s testimonies agree but, according to Henriet, this murder happened three years before the trial. Poitou speaks of four. These differing versions alone permit us to deduce the approximate dates on which Poitou, then Henriet, became their master’s accomplices (pp. 227, 235, 276).
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February or March
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René d’Anjou, a prisoner of Philippe de Bourgogne, is freed January 28th. He returns at once to Anjou. On his return, René de La Suze and André de Lohéac ask him to affirm his opposition to the possible sale of Ingrandes or Champtocé, citing Gilles de Rais’ acts of violence and banditry: was his mother not robbed by his men? René d’Anjou declares Champtocé confiscated to his profit; then he obtains a signed and sealed promise from Jean V not to buy the land. Jean V will even swear “over our Lord’s dead body during the singing at Mass.” 37
Jean V does not stop, for all that, to discuss the terms of sale with Lord de Rais!
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May 26
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By Breton custom, Jean V had no right to buy his vassals’ lands. It is in the name of his son Pierre, therefore, that he buys the manor of La Bénate for ten thousand crowns. He gives sixty pounds to Prince, Gilles’ herald of arms, who has served his interests in this affair. But he runs into the opposition of Anne de Sillé; during his lifetime, Jean de Craon, whose widow she now is, had in fact assigned this land which belonged to him as a dowry to his wife.
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October Gilles’ family takes control of Chomptocé
Gilles has the children’s bones burned at Machecoul
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Having learned of Jean V and Gilles de Rais’ deals but resolved to decide the issue, René de La Suze and André de Laval-Loeheac take Champtocé. Gilles takes fright and, fearing an attack on Machecoul, requests Gilles de Sillé and Robin Romulart to remove “from a tower near the lower hall” of the fortress the “bones of forty children or thereabouts” and burn them. Later, according to Poitou, Gilles de Sillé said to him and Henriet: “Wasn’t Milord Roger de Briqueville a traitor to have asked Robin Romulart and me to watch Lady Jarville and Thomin d’Araguin through a slit when we removed the said bones?” (p. 238). Evidently Briqueville’s noble friends were attracted by an unhealthy curiosity. The story need not be invented; it responds to the sensation that Lord de Rais’ crimes provoked in the seigneurial world: rather vague indignation, outright scandal, occasionally an unspeakable disturbance. The number of accomplices that Gilles easily finds at his service alone illustrates to him that his crimes were then not so monstrous; all in all, it had to do with a great lord and miserable children. Justice reacted on the occasion of another affair; under certain political circumstances, justice might have closed its eyes.
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(1437)
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November Gilles’ family takes Machecoul and discovers the skeletons of two children
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The bones are burned fifteen days or three weeks before Lords de La Suze and de Lohéac arrive at the castle of Machecoul (p. 229). Gilles’ brother and cousin take Machecoul in November. In spite of Gilles de Sillé’s and Robin Romulart’s cleaning efforts, one could still find the skeletons of two children in that lower part of the tower from which forty victims’ bones were removed. The captain of one of the companies who took the garrison asks Poitou and Henriet if they knew about this. In their deposition, the valets say that they responded no: Gilles “had not revealed his secrets” to them yet. Obviously they are lying. If they had not been privy to his secrets until after the taking of Machecoul, that is, logically, since the transfer from Champtocé (p. 275), they would have been initiated together. But as we have seen, Poitou initiated Henriet (p. 100).
Evidently the discovery of skeletons played a role in the rumors that started growing from that moment. This time, those in the know apparently are lords;
and not just Gilles’ relatives, but his enemies.
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November 2
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Jean V, alarmed, feared seeing Anjou enter into war with Brittany. Jean de Bueil could invade his territory from Sable. That is why the Duke calls for a reunion in Vannes of all the vassals in the duchy, among them Lords de Rohan, de Châteaubriant, de Malestroit, and de Rais. Jean V exchanges letters of brotherhood in arms with Gilles. He removes the lieutenant generalship of Brittany from André de Laval-Lohéac, his brother-in-law, giving it to the man whom he has just made a brother in arms under the pretext of services rendered. There is, he thinks, a plot by Laval against him …
Even though Arthur de Richemont is occupied with war against the English, his brother asks for his help against Laval-Lohéac. He definitely intends to get his hands on Champtocé.
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December 25
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Gilles stays at Vannes, where Jean V holds court. He is now reduced to the very self-serving, sole protection of this grasping feudal lord. Henceforth he is burned on all sides, and Jean V’s pretended friendship will not prevent the latter in the near future from handing Gilles over to the judges at Nantes. But at this moment Gilles is at Vannes with his chapel; they sing the Divine Office before the Duke on Christmas.
Gilles signs a pact with Jean V; he hands over Champtocé in exchange for one hundred thousand gold crowns. His fortune is on the brink and this is the last chance he has to turn it around. But, to begin with, Gilles must recapture the castle that his brother now occupies. To that end he enters into tortuous transactions with the latter. In coordination with René d’Anjou, the royal power tries to substitute René de La Suze. But the brothers slyly succeed in coming to terms; René will cede the fortress, pretending to defend it, while Gilles will give him seven thousand gold crowns and the possession of La Mothe-Achard in exchange.
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1438
February-March Murder of Guillaume Delit
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Guibelet Delit’s son, Guillaume, frequented the Hotel de La Suze, where he helped Gilles’ chef, named Cherpy, roast meat. According to his mother, named Jeanne, a certain Master Jean Briand, who was staying at the hotel in Gilles’ service, told Cherpy that it was not a good idea to let the child help in this manner. Afterwards she never saw the child again, nor had any news of him.
That happened in February or March of 1438, as related at the trial of 1440 (“a year ago last Easter”). Three or four months later (around May), she complains to Jean Briand’s wife. “They say,” she affirms, “that Lord de Rais has small children caught to be killed.” No sooner said, Gilles’ men appear, the names of whom she does not know. Jean Briand’s wife speaks to them: according to Jeanne Delit, Lord de Rais had the children killed; she adds that Jeanne is wrong to speak like this, something bad could happen to her.
With that, the miserable Jeanne apologizes before Gilles’ men (p. 269).
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Around June Gilles de Rais’ recovery of the Champtocé garrison and transportation to Machecoul of three coffers filled with children’s skeletons
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At a date difficult to specify, René de La Suze abandons, as agreed, the Champtocé garrison to his wife, whom he had instructed accordingly. Twenty of Gilles’ armed men under Yves de Kersaliou, the captain of Pornic, put on an act of defending the garrison. Jean de Malestroit, the Bishop of Nantes and Chancellor of Brittany, who later indicts Gilles, will take possession of it in Jean V’s name. But before this can happen, Gilles has requested five of his manservants — Gilles de Sillé, Hicquet de Brémont, Robin Romulart, and the two valets Henriet and Poitou — to proceed to the tower of the fortress and remove the skeletons of some forty children. They place them in three coffers which they take “as secretly as possible” to Machecoul, partly by water. At Machecoul two singers in Gilles’ chapel, Jean Rossignol and André Buchet, whom we have mentioned above (p. 89), replace Hicquet de Brémont and Robin Romulart. It is at Machecoul where the bones are burned; they cannot be burned at Champtocé, the fortress about to be handed over without delay to the Duke. Henriet and Poitou’s testimonies inform us that “the bones were already desiccated … because of the length of time” they had spent in the tower. We do not know exactly when the children had been killed. We should only think they were made to leave as of autumn of 1432, after the death of Jean de Craon (pp. 82-83).
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(1438)
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Evidently Gilles was then supposed to return to Vannes under the pretext of receiving from the Duke what was his due, which, we can be sure, came to nothing; as a matter of fact he held on to his Breton domains, which he had previously pawned for money. Apparently the advances he received on these domains were equivalent to the value of Champtocé. But it is perhaps on this occasion that André Buchet, who, as we have seen, belonged to Lord de Rais’ chapel, sent a child, nearly nine, dressed as a page from Vannes to Machecoul through a certain Raoulet. In principle, the settlement of accounts should have followed upon the recovery of Champtocé (pp. 228, 236, 277). We know from Henriet’s testimony that André Buchet sent the child when Gilles received money from the Duke for Champtocé; but Gilles could have pretended to receive it.
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Around June 16 Murder of Jean Jenvret’s son
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Jean Jenvret and his wife complain of the disappearance of their son, a schoolboy of nine, who occasionally frequented the house of La Suze. Lord de Rais was at Nantes, in that house, at the moment of this disappearance “two years ago, eight days before Saint John the Baptist’s Day,” (around June 16, 1438). Jean Jenvret was staying with Monsieur d’Étampes, that is to say that he was a domestic for Richard, Count d’Étampes, the brother of the Duke of Brittany.
Before dying in the prison at Nantes, Perrine Martin, the most famous of Gilles’ procuresses, confesses to having led the child to the castle at Machecoul. Poitou himself affirms that he could have killed him in the house of La Suze. Perrine Martin perhaps only took the cadaver to Machecoul. Four witnesses of the Sainte-Croix parish of Nantes knew this child; they heard his parents lamenting his disappearance and, since then, they have never seen him again (pp. 267, 268, and 281).
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On or about June 24 Murder of Jean, Jeanne Degrepie’s son
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A twelve-year-old schoolboy, Jean, the son of Jeanne Degrepie, Regnaud Donete’s widow, of the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Nantes, disappeared on or about Saint John’s Day (June 24, 1438); Gilles de Rais was then staying at Hotel de La Suze, where the child sometimes came. Perrine Martin is supposed to have led him to Gilles’ room; Gilles is supposed to have ordered her to lead him to the doorman at Machecoul, which she is supposed to have done. The mother and six people from the same parish testified to that disappearance (pp. 155, 161, 266, 269-270, and 273-274).
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Around June 26 Murder of Jean Hubert
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According to the testimonies, Jean and Nicole Hubert’s son, named Jean like his father, was killed by Gilles de Rais at Hotel de La Suze. Of all the presumed victims of Gilles de Rais, this Jean Hubert, age fourteen, is without a doubt the one which the depositions allow us to know the fate of the most precisely. In the spring of 1438 he still lives with his parents, Jean and Nicole, in the Saint-Leonard parish of Nantes. Later they move to the Saint-Vincent parish. The child continues going to school, at least until his parents entrust him to a certain Mainguy, with whom he lodges. But this Mainguy dies and Jean returns to his parents. We are approaching Saint John’s Day (June 24, 1438).
A man named Pierre Jacquet (or Jucquet), better known as Prince, is staying in Nantes at this time; he is the herald of arms in Gilles’ retinue.
He could have acquired the nickname Princé on account of his family’s origin: Prince, or Prinçay, was a village not far from Chéméré, where Lord de Rais had a castle and stayed occasionally.
Someti
me around June 17th, this Prince “employs” the young and “very beautiful” Jean Hubert. He makes him fine promises; he will be his page, and not only the child but his parents will benefit greatly by this.
The child recounts to his parents how Prince, his master, is frightened of his own horse; he does not dare to mount it for fear of being killed …
The “employment” lasts eight days, until Saint John’s Day. But already the parents have reason to be disappointed. The child should have been better lodged, and the promises are not kept. Prince stops speaking of retaining him; the parents would like him to return to school. In fact, Prince hands the child over to Gilles’ valet Henriet Griart, who leads him to the Hotel de La Suze where he meets a gentleman, evidently a Scotsman, in Gilles’ military retinue. Little Jean speaks of him as a “proper gentleman,” and the parents’ testimony calls him Spadine (which probably corresponds to Spalding).