The Trial of Gilles De Rais Read online

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  Around the end of the year

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  It is without a doubt around this period that Gilles, caught in Prelati’s grasp, contemplates the worst. Why couldn’t the gift of dead children’s members have appeased this devil, whose silence and hostility overwhelm him? In his incoherence, the shady, fearful, and versatile Eustache Blanchet himself suggested to Henriet and Poitou that their master could not accomplish what he had begun without offering the feet, hands, or other members of the slaughtered children to the Devil (pp. 229 and 237).

  Each day Gilles is a little more impatient to see the Devil and Prelati, who will vouch for it later, tells him that if he wanted the Devil to appear and speak to him, he ought to offer a cock, hen, dove, or pigeon … , and if he really wanted what he was asking for, then it would be necessary to offer a child’s member (p. 212).

  Blanchet could be repeating Prelati’s words. Gilles’ testimony indicates that Prelati himself had affirmed that the Devil required the gift of a certain number of dead children.

  In fact, Prelati reports having seen in the large hall at Tiffauges, where the invocations occurred (and not in Lord de Rais’ room), a dead, outstretched child. He saw him in the presence of Gilles de Sillé, who Prelati thinks had just killed him (p. 212).

  This dead child would have been seen by him a year before his deposition, consequently around October 16, 1439. But he does not tell us that he was offered to the Devil. Gilles would not have yielded so quickly; it is possible that, corrupt as he was, he was not of such a temperament as to be able to sacrifice children to the Devil without trembling. We can surmise that by mentioning members, particularly the hand, heart, or eyes, Prelati wanted to scare him. He was not ignorant of Gilles’ anguish. It was possible for him to gain time by this trick.

  In the end — but in what a state of terror — this killer, trembling before the Devil, makes his promise!

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  Offering of a child’s hand and heart to the devil

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  One day in his room, in Poitou’s presence, he puts a child’s hand (Poitou does not know whether it was the right or the left) and heart in a glass that he covers with a piece of fine linen. Then he inserts the glass into his sleeve (sleeves were long and large then), forming a large enough pocket. He goes like this into Prelati’s room. Perhaps the glass also contains the child’s eyes and blood. It seems that there was only one offering: various versions differ, but no important contradiction in detail exists among them. François Prelati presents the horrible offering to the invoked demon, but the demon does not appear; a little while later he himself buries these human remains in sacred soil, close to the castle’s chapel (pp. 176, 198, 212, 239-240, and 280).

  * * *

  (1439)

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  December

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  The Viennese Dauphin, Charles VII’s son, the future Louis XI, is sent into Poitou “to put an end to the pillages, and expel the warring men who were in that region.” Accomplishing his mission, he is led to visit two of the fortresses where Gilles de Rais garrisons his troops, Pouzauges and Tiffauges. A brigand chief like Marshal de Rais was expressly targeted on this visit and, as we have already said (p. 118), one of the captains under the castellan of Tiffauges, Jean de Siquenville, is arrested; this Jean de Siquenville is thrown into the prisons of the castle at Montaigu, where the Dauphin had fixed his residence. Sensing the imminent hanging, Gilles’ captain escapes from that prison; this is why he must consequently procure letters of pardon, which we possess and in which the incident is related to us.43

  The Dauphin’s passage through Tiffauges has other consequences. First of all, Gilles hastens to have the alchemical ovens that he had installed in the fortress demolished (pp. 182-183). But, the Dauphin gone, Gilles is still afraid and decides to leave the royal domain and stay in Brittany, where the deceptive friendship of Duke Jean reassures him. He is at Machecoul at least toward the end of December. He cannot do without Prelati; if the conjuror’s presence is noted in the vicinity of the castle (p. 122), it is because the master is staying there.

  * * *

  Around December 10

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  About fifteen days before Christmas, Jeannette, Eustache Drouet’s wife, of Saint-Léger, sends two of her sons, aged seven and ten, to ask for alms at Machecoul, “because she had heard that Lord de Rais had them distributed there, and that, moreover, the men in that village willingly gave charity.” Several people told her of seeing her children in the following days, but when she went there she could not find them, nor learn what became of them, even after she herself and her husband made several inquiries. Maybe Gilles had actually returned to Machecoul. But it is not certain (p. 266).

  * * *

  Around December 20

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  Gilles — disquieted by the knowledge that Eustache Blanchet is out of his control, whose hostility, not to mention his wicked tongue, he is now familiar with — sends a certain number of his servants, including Gilles de Sillé, Poitou and Henriet, to Mortagne with the order to bring Blanchet back forcibly or voluntarily. They bring him to Roche-Serviére by the road leading from Mortagne to Machecoul. They are principally charged with imprisoning him in the castle of Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte, where, in his terror, he thinks Lord de Rais will leave him to die. Apparently it is only to frighten him; in any case, he makes so many vows that they lead him to Machecoul, where he lives freely until his arrest on September 13, 1440 (p. 218).

  At any rate, the solution of Machecoul explains itself by the fact that, for the moment, Lord de Rais is living there again.

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  Around December 25 Murder of two children

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  Ysabeau, Guillaume Hamelin’s wife, living in Fresnay, sends two of her children, aged fifteen and seven, to buy bread. They do not return;. since then, she is unable to find out what became of them. However, François Prelati and the Marquis de Ceva, both of whom she says she knows well and she knows stay with Gilles de Rais, visit her the following day. The Marquis poses strange questions and interrogates her on the subject of a son and daughter she has at home; he asks her whether they are hers, and finally whether she does not have others; she answers that she does have others, but dares not tell him that they have disappeared. When they leave, she hears the Marquis say to François that two children left that house.

  Eight witnesses from Fresney confirm the disappearance of two children.

  Eight days before that disappearance, Ysabeau heard talk of the disappearance of Micheau Bouer’s son (pp. 263-264), who left for Machecoul as well but eight months earlier, this time to ask for alms and coming from Saint-Cyr-en-Rais (p. 263).

  * * *

  End of December Prelati’s brutality

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  Clement Rondeau of Machecoul is dying and receives extreme unction. His wife Perrine, in tears and lamentations, is installed toward evening in the highest room of the castle, where both Prelati and the Marquis de Ceva sleep. Having returned for supper, these latter, furious to see her there, take her by the shoulders and feet to throw her down the stairs. Prelati finishes by kicking her in the lower back, but at the last moment Perrine’s nurse catches hold of her robe, saving her (p. 261).

  * * *

  1440

  January-February

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  In the period when Eustache Blanchet resides at Machecoul, the Marquis de Ceva procures for Prelati to serve him as page “a young, very beautiful child, saying that he was from the Dieppe region and that he was of a good family.” This page ought to have been fifteen or sixteen then. He remains two weeks with Prelati, then vanishes. The hostess of the place asks him what happened to the child. Prelati responds that the child cheated him; he left, he insists, with his two crowns.

  * * *

  (1440)

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  Henriet tells us that he had the child’s throat cut; according to his firs
t confession, he had him “struck down at Machecoul”; in his second, he does not know who cut his throat, he was not there, but he knows Gilles abused him just like the others (pp. 218-219, 227, 235-236, 259, 276-277 and 281-282).

  The page of a certain Daussy is about the same age as Prelati. Like the last one, he is put to death at Machecoul in the period when Blanchet, who reports it, lived there at the beginning of 1440, or maybe a little later (pp. 200 and 219). Gilles de Rais, who speaks of him as a “little” page, mentions him at the same time as Prelati’s page or the young Jean Hubert (pp. 105-107), but this latter was killed close to June 26, 1438.

  Jean de Lanté, the prior of Chéméré, a priory within the order of Saint-Benoît, entrusts his nephew to a fellow named Tabard, intending to have him learn to read and write. As with the pages of Prelati and Daussy, he is fourteen or fifteen years old, and like them he is put to death at Machecoul in the period when Blanchet lives there (pp. 218-219 and 275).

  * * *

  February

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  The convocation as witness of Jean de Lanté will be required at the ecclesiastical trial at the same time as that of the Marquis de Ceva, Bertrand Poulein, Jean Rousseau, and Master Gilles Heaume (p. 186). André Barbe, a cobbler living at Machecoul, says that “he heard a man complaining in the church of the Trinité at Machecoul, whom he did not know, who was asking whether anyone had seen his child, whom he claimed was seven years old; and this about eight months earlier”: basically, it is a question of February 1440 (p. 257). This testimony is, in principle, dubious.

  * * *

  March

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  A poor man from Touvois named Mathelin Thouars laments and anguishes, around March 1440, over the disappearance of his twelve-year-old child; he is clueless as to what may have happened to him. Four witnesses from Touvois profess to have heard his complaining. Testimony like this obviously adds nothing to that which merits our attention (p. 259).

  * * *

  February

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  The Dauphin, the Count d’Alençon, and Dunois meet at Niort; the Duke of Bourbon, the Count de Vendôme, and La Tremoillé meet at Blois; they each enter into rebellion against the King; the Duke of Brittany, Jean V, supports the rebels, but the Constable de Richemont subdues the movement; by July 17th the affair is completely terminated.

  Nobody asked for Gilles de Rais’ help. Nobody henceforth pays the slightest attention to him.

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  Before March 27 Murder of Guillaume Le Barbier

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  One morning before Easter (March 27th) at Machecoul, Blanchet is said to have seen Poitou arriving at the castle, accompanied by the son of the pastry-cook, Georget Le Barbier. This child, Guillaume, ought to have been approximately sixteen then. Georget Le Barbier lives in front of the entrance to the castle. Her son is placed with a certain Jean Péletier, the tailor of Lady de Rais, as well as several of the men in Lord de Rais’ household. The child and his master, the tailor, regularly come to eat at the castle. According to Blanchet, who basically knows what to expect, the lad’s entrance into the castle was answered with his death.

  According to the father’s testimony, the child supposedly did not disappear until Saint Barnabas’ Day (June 11). But we know that the father was managing badly. And two of our testimonies speak of sometime around Easter (pp. 220, 257, 258 and 281-282).

  * * *

  March 27 The confession and humble communion of Gilles de Rais

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  On Easter Sunday (March 27th), in the Sainte-Trinité church of Machecoul, Eustache Blanchet sees a priest, Monsignor Olivier des Ferrières, hearing Gilles de Rais’ confession. Soon after, the Marshal receives the Eucharist together with people of little means. The latter want to move aside for him, but Gilles orders them to remain where they are and partake in Communion as usual (p. 219).

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  March 27 to May 15 (between Easter and the Pentecost)

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  Between Easter and Ascension Day of 1440, the widow of Yvon Kerguen, a mason from Sainte-Croix, of Nantes, entrusts her nearly fifteen-year-old son, whom she will never see again (pp. 155 and 200), into the service of one of Lord de Rais’ men, named Poitou, who had asked her for him. Thomas Aisé and his wife, poor people who were still living in Port-Saint-Père around May 15, 1440, send one of their sons, who is about ten years old, to beg at the castle of Machecoul at a time when Lord de Rais is staying there. A little girl is supposed to have told her mother that alms were first given to the girls, and then she heard someone in the castle say to the young Aisé that if he has not received any meat, he will get some: the child is then made to enter. Since that day the mother no longer had any news of her son (pp. 260 and 265-266).

  * * *

  (1440)

  May 15 The Soint-Étienne-de-Mermorte scandal

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  A company of about sixty men-at-arms lies in wait in the woods outside the church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte. They are armed, and Gilles de Rais is at the head. The moment they have been waiting for comes, the High Mass is finished; he brandishes a double-sided axe (terminating in a kind of pike, which one calls a “gisarme”), and rushes into the church. Inside the church he insults Jean Le Ferron, the brother of Geoffroy Le Ferron; Geoffroy is the treasurer of Brittany and the man to whom Gilles has sold the estate of Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte. “Ha, ribald,” he shouts. “You beat my men, and extorted from them; come outside the church or I’ll kill you on the spot!” Poor Jean Le Ferron, a tonsured cleric trusted by his brother to watch over the fortress, is called upon to return it to Gilles; he is imprisoned in this same fortress which Gilles’ men have invaded (pp. 240-244). Gilles has violated ecclesiastical privilege and encroached on the rights of the Duke of Brittany, his own sovereign.

  In a short while, the reaction of the Duke and that of his chancellor, Jean de Malestroit (who possesses, insofar as he is the Bishop of Nantes, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese to which the Saint-Étienne church belongs), will lead Gilles to the gallows. The outrage against Jean Le Ferron corresponds to the puerile excessiveness wherein Gilles founders. From here on out Gilles is a tragic energumen; he has lost his senses and nobody is around to support him. Remorse wracks him. The Holy Land haunts him; he would like to change his evil life and implore forgiveness of his sins.

  He has already confided this intention the year before (p. 116). He repeats it at least once, evidently prior to the outrage of Saint-Étienne (more than four months prior to the deposition on October 16th).

  A hope of faraway travel and devotion uplifts his spirits (pp. 177, 202- 203, 216 and 222). But everything suggests that it is too late. Like a dog, he returns to his vomit. In any case, he struggles with himself in vain.

  * * *

  June

  * * *

  Gilles tries to escape from the Duke of Brittany, who has slapped him with a fine of 50,000 gold crowns (a considerable amount of money, representing half the value of his fortresses at Ingrandes and Champtocé). He transfers his prisoner Jean Le Ferron to Tiffauges, with Poitou, in the royal domain.

  * * *

  After June 24

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  Seven witnesses from Saint-Étienne-de-Montluc, including a clergyman, had known the orphaned son of a certain Guillaume Brice, a poor man in their parish, for about three years. This Guillaume died around February 1439. Since Saint John’s Day of 1440 (June 24th), the witnesses have not seen this boy again; he responded to the name of Jamet, was quite beautiful, and approximately eight or nine years old (pp. 255-256). No doubt it is difficult to see the reason for seriously accusing Gilles of the disappearance of a child in Saint-Étienne-de-Montluc, north of the Loire estuary. But he will resume the course of his wanderings, at least after July.

  * * *

  July

  * * *

  One apparent means of escape remains: why doesn’t Gilles go looking for Jean V? Insofar as his interests dictated, Jean V had show
ed him kindness. Provided that Gilles was not totally ruined, the Duke could thereby hope to profit.

  Gilles is in effect blind enough not to see that, in exchange for a favor which he needs more than anyone else, he has nothing left to offer Jean V

  He ought to know: he is ruined. There is nothing he could expect from the King. Escape? He refuses. His whole nature balks at the idea; anyway, what cover exists for such a visible person?