Gilles de Laval, Sire de Rais, companion of Joan of Arc, Marshal of France. By Éloi Firmin Féron (1802–1876) • WIKIMEDIACOMMONS “Beast of extermination”, “terrifying vampire” who “killed with pleasure” and “enjoyed death even more than pain”, according to Jules Michelet. "The most artistic and the most exquisite, the most cruel and the most villainous of men", both "tawny" and "a decadent esthete", according to the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, who attributed to him "the pride of in crimes what a saint is worth in virtues”… Absolute horror and morbid fascination surround the figure of Gilles de Rais, a great Vendean lord executed in Nantes on October 26, 1440 for having been guilty not only “of perfidious heretical apostasy as well that of the horrible evocation of demons”, according to the sentence of the Church court, but also of the assassination of at least 140 children, with whom he was convinced of having committed “crimes against nature”. At the time of his ordeal, the Baron de Retz was probably no more than 35 or 36 years old. Orphaned around the age of 10, he had been raised by his maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, a wealthy lord and fierce warlord. Jean organized with him the kidnapping of Catherine de Thouars, an heiress. By marrying her when he was about 15, Gilles further increased the considerable fortune that the chance of four noble successions, those of the houses of Laval, Rais, Craon and Machecoul, had enabled him to accumulate. His many possessions extended to Vendée and to the borders of Brittany, Anjou and Poitou. A meteoric rise We were then in one of the darkest phases of the Hundred Years War. Thanks to a bloody civil war between two princely parties, that of the Armagnacs and that of the Burgundians, the English, after their victory at Agincourt in 1415, had seized a good part of the kingdom of France. Gilles fought them in the region of Le Mans, before making a place for himself in the close entourage of the "little king of Bourges", the dolphin Charles. The latter, disinherited by his father Charles VI in favor of the King of England in 1420, had to withdraw to the south of the Loire. In 1428, Constable Arthur de Richemont lost his influence at the Dauphin's court to another favourite, Grand Chamberlain Georges de La Trémoille. The same year, Gilles entered the service of the latter, who was his cousin. Under the orders of La Trémoille, he took part, in the foreground, in a series of memorable military successes, won by the Dauphin's armies following the providential intervention of Joan of Arc. From the spring to the end of the summer of 1429, from the deliverance of Orléans besieged by the English to the vain attempt to retake Paris, including the trip to Reims to have the Dauphin crowned king there, Gilles de Rais was the one of the Maid's close companions. On July 17, the day of the coronation, it was Gilles who had the signal honor of carrying the Holy Ampulla from the Abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims, where it was kept, to the cathedral. At the same time, to reward him and honor the party of La Trémoille, Charles granted Gilles the prestigious title of Marshal. A brilliant warrior, Gilles de Rais was a key player in Charles VII's conquest of the throne of France, and also one of Joan of Arc's closest comrades in arms. The disgrace of La Trémoille in 1433 put an end to the glorious period of the Baron de Retz. In 1435, after a few military operations without great significance, which did not allow him to assert himself in the eyes of Charles VII as he would have liked, Gilles returned to live on his lands, in his castles in Vendée and on the edge of Poitou. , with the armed band which formed his retinue. If we are to believe certain testimonies of his servants during his trial, it was then already a few years ago that the Sire de Rais had begun to perpetrate his crimes. But the investigation carried out by the bishop of Nantes, Jean de Malestroit, during the summer of 1440 could only reveal the kidnappings and murders apparently committed systematically since his return to the country. The rumor also accused him of crimes against nature and of using “the blood, heart, liver and other parts” of his victims “to make sacrifices to the devil and other evil spells”. Summoning Demons The attention of the higher authorities had not, however, been drawn in the first place by these unheard-of misdeeds. It was the abuses committed by Gilles and his men of war to the detriment of other local lords and, above all, to the detriment of ducal and episcopal interests, which were the cause of his downfall. The Sire de Rais was perpetually on the lookout for new resources to support a lavish lifestyle whose excesses, which bordered on mad squandering, had moreover provoked as early as 1435 a request to the king from his brother for his property be placed under guardianship. On May 15, 1440, the day of Pentecost, Gilles had made the mistake of attacking both the ecclesiastical immunity and the majesty of Duke John V:he had broken into a church during mass to manhandle a servant ducal from whom he wanted to take back a seigniory which had nevertheless been sold. When men of Jean V came to arrest him in his castle of Machecoul on September 15, the investigations carried out against him for four months had added to the rebellion against the duke and the desecration of a building consecrated by any other leaders. accusation, following complaints from many parents of missing children. The confessions of four servants, obtained in mid-October, were decisive. One of them, Eustache Blanchet, recounted the passion of his master for alchemy and the extravagant expenses granted by Gilles to bring “magi” from Italy. The latter practiced for him very costly and vain experiments, supposed to lead to the transformation of metals into gold. Francesco Prelati, a Tuscan alchemist who passed from the service of the Medici of Florence to that of the Sire de Rais, confirmed these statements. He also confessed to having frequently carried out with Gilles, in the hope of obtaining gold, rituals of invocation of the demons Barron, Satan, Belial and Beelzebub, acts constituting witchcraft in the eyes of the Church. Unsustainable crimes The other two servants, named Poitou and Henriet Griard, told how they abducted young boys, delivered them to Gilles and made their bodies disappear after the latter had subjected them to abominable abuse. The descriptions given in the confessions of these henchmen, like those of Gilles himself when he confessed to avoid torture, are often untenable. The Sire de Rais took pleasure in causing his victims to die slowly, in great pain. He often sexually abused them while cutting their throats or dismembering them, in streams of blood, and sometimes continued after their death, "as long as there was any heat left in their bodies". The trial of Gilles de Rais is certainly the most disturbing of the Middle Ages, with that of the Templars. The latter, however, were clearly the innocent victims of state manipulation. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that the accusations against Gilles de Rais were fabricated, nor the appalling details of his crimes invented by the accused and his minions under the duress of the judges. The man whom Belle Époque medicine saw as an archetype of the "superior degenerate" may today appear as the first serial killer known pedophile in Western history. As for popular opinion, it merged, in Brittany and Vendée, the story of the Sire de Rais with an old folklore tale, that of Barbe-Bleue. Find out more Gilles de Rais, M. Cazacu, Tallandier, 2012.Gilles de Rais, J. Heers, Tempus, 2005.The Trial of Gilles de Rais, G. Battle, 10/18, 1997. Timeline Around 1404 Gilles de Rais was born in the Château de Champtocé to Guy de Laval and Marie de Craon, from powerful lineages.1415 Orphaned, Gilles came under the guardianship of his grandfather, the warlord Jean de Craon.1429 In the service of the Dauphin Charles, Gilles rubs shoulders with Joan of Arc in her military campaigns against the English.1435 In disgrace with the king, he returned to his Vendée lands. Disappearances of children are reported.1440 Arrest and trial of Gilles. After confessing to his crimes, he was executed in Nantes on October 26. A Resounding Trial In his trial, October 21, 1440, when he confesses his crimes, he explains that "he did them and perpetrated them according to his imagination and his thought, without the advice of anyone, and according to his own sense, only for his pleasure and his carnal delight”. We know of these horrible misdeeds thanks to two trials preserved in Nantes in the ducal archives, one ecclesiastical and the other secular, which took place between July and October 1440, and in the private archives of the Thouars family. In July 1440, during a pastoral visit, the Bishop of Nantes learned that children or adolescents from his diocese had disappeared. Gilles de Rais was quickly accused by public rumor of these abductions and also of rape and murder, invocations and demonic pacts and violence against a ducal officer. On September 13, 1440, he was summoned to appear before the ecclesiastical tribunal of Nantes, on charges of "murders of children, sodomy, invocations of demons, offense to the divine Majesty and heresy". He is arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Nantes. Following his trial, he was excommunicated for “heretical apostasy […] invocation of demons […] crime and vice against nature with children of either sex according to the sodomite practice”. He was condemned on October 26, 1440, with two of his companions, to be hanged and burned. But, at his request, his body will not be entirely consumed to be buried in the monastery of Notre-Dame des Carmes in Nantes. The trial of Gilles de Rais is that of a sadistic and sodomite paedocriminal, but also that of a culprit of divine lèse-majesté, because it was also considered that he had flouted God and nature, as well as the laws of the duchy. of Brittany. At the end of the Middle Ages, the intertwining of crimes that were both sexual and against nature and crimes of lèse-majesté represented a stereotypical accusation in many political trials, such as those of the Templars at the beginning of the 14th century. sup> century.Author of the box:Didier Lett, professor of medieval history, University of Paris
