Trial of Gilles De Rais

by George Bataille

  I have spoken of his childishness. It is, in fact, in a childish manner — consequently the most entirely, the most madly — that he incarnates this spirit of feudal society that with all its vivacity originated with the game that the Berserkir had played; he was riveted to war by an affinity that marked a taste for cruel pleasures. He had no place in the world, if not that which war gave him. A society steeped in feudal war alone could provide what it expected of this privileged man, who could do nothing other than drink to the dregs of privilege. Not only his vanity was affected, but his passion was hurt by the disfavor that caught up with him. This worn-out feudal world put him on the shelf. Under the appearance of wealth, what he had as yet to live was, in advance, blighted. However, one thing opposed him to these miserable lords, all ready to possess what remained: this privileged man could never, in the face of death, accept a life that would no longer fascinate him.

  In the tragedy of Gilles de Rais, there was at first a suffocation. There could be no question of admiring the wretch, or pitying him. But the tragedy took place upon the disappearance of the acquired conditions on which the life of the privileged class rested. What the feudal world had lived on disappeared. At the same moment, his castles began to smell of death. At Champtocé and Machecoul, bodies were drying up or putrefying at the bottom of certain towers (pp. 101 and 102). These castles were enormous masses of stone, inside of which the nooks could have been or very nearly were inaccessible, as deeply buried as burial vaults. These fortresses were the outward signs — or the sanctuaries — of ancient feudal wars, of which these lords were still gods. These wars insisted on drunkenness, they insisted on the vertigo and giddiness of those whom birth had consecrated to them. They insisted on rushing them into assaults, but occasionally suffocated them in dark obsessions. The game that these castles externalized was expected to be played to the hilt; possessing them, whoever resided in them could not have easily escaped. He could only do so if he rejected the spirit that these high, thick walls embodied. Whoever was effectively occupied with his interests — like Craon, managing his fortune with a bourgeois’ calculation and greed — was able to stop playing this game if he wanted. But he who is dominated by his interests is compromised: he works in some way, he is enslaved. In contrast, it was Gilles de Rais’ passion — far from giving in to the event — to be stubborn, to be obstinate to the point of ruin.

  The decline of Gilles de Rais has the look of funereal magnificence.

  His obsession with death is tangible: a man, little by little, locks himself up in the solitude of crime, of homosexuality and the tomb; in this profound silence, the faces that obsess him are those of dead children, whom he profanes with an abominable kiss.

  Before the backdrop of fortresses — and tombstones — Gilles de Rais’ decline takes on the appearance of a theatrical hallucination.

  We cannot judge the monster’s states of mind.

  But it is from the bloody room where the children’s heads stare at him that it evidently occurs to him early in the morning to wander through the village streets of Machecoul and Tiffauges.

  Could a long, intolerable hallucination possess a profounder truth?

  Gilles de Rais’ character is bound to this tragic apparition. This apparition is linked to the decisive disgrace that comes from La Trémoille’s fall.

  It is linked to that disgrace in a way that exposes Rais’ personal tragedy at the same time as it exposes the tragedy of a world to which a bloody figure is suited, who from the Berserkir to Proust’s M. de Charlus in every respect betrays a cruel foolishness. The feudal world, in fact, cannot be separated from excess, which is the principle of war. But at the instant that royal politics or intelligence alters it, it is no longer the feudal world. Intelligence or calculation are not noble. It is not noble to calculate or to reflect, and no philosopher could have been able to embody what is essentially the nobility. These truths said in regard to Gilles de Rais have precisely the advantage of seizing on the impure source of his life. Tragedy is necessarily impure; it is all the more real as it is impure.

  To what is this principle joined, which is no less sound for being misrecognized? That without the nobility, without the refusal to calculate and reflect (which is its essence), there would have been no tragedy; there would have been only reflection and calculation.

  I will go so far as to say that the tragedy of Gilles de Rais — considered as tragedy through ponderous reflection, through reflection taking into account a world that refused reflection (which even, by such a refusal, became the point of departure for it) — is the tragedy of feudal society, the tragedy of the nobility.

  But what does that affirmation mean?

  That without the profound foolishness in Gilles de Rais that ordered — commanded — the brutal refusal, there would have been no tragedy.

  We are not digressing from Gilles de Rais. These reflections would be meaningless if they could be separated from the character and all the blood clinging to him. But if it is true that only feudal society, which he embodies, renders him tragic, then feudal society, in this tragic game unquestionably and naïvely the force to bind the violence of life, does not differ from this sovereignty that is the principle not only of Greek tragedy but of Tragedy personified. Tragedy is the powerlessness of Reason.

  That does not mean that the laws of Tragedy are contrary to Reason. A law cannot truly belong to what is contrary to Reason. Could a law be opposed to Reason? But human violence, which has the strength to fall afoul of Reason, is tragic and, if possible, ought to be suppressed; at least it cannot be ignored nor disregarded. I should say this in speaking of Gilles de Rais, who differs from all those whose crime is personal. The crimes of Gilles de Rais are those of the world in which he committed them. The convulsive tremblings of this world are what these slit throats expose. This world had sanctioned the cruel differences that left these throats defenseless. It had left free — or very nearly so — these tragic games: the games of an energumen, at the limit of his sovereign power! It is true that already afoot in this world was a deeper movement that would reduce these differences, that would slowly reduce them … This slow movement, in its turn, would at one time have the tragic abruptness, therefore, of an opposed violence …

  The Theatrical Ruin of Orléans

  I have shown how this tragedy was that of the nobility, of this tragic, occasionally tragicomic if one likes, humanity that is the nobility. As for Gilles de Rais, the tragedy was prolonged during the years that followed his disgrace, from 1433 to 1440. Once having stopped making war, his life assumed the lamentable course laid out by his crimes and a series of feeble efforts.

  Independently of his will, the last appearance of the Marshal on a field of battle felt like a vain parade (p. 87). On this day, under the direction of Constable Richemont, the French king’s army measured itself against the English. But neither the French nor the English engaged in action. Having made their show of strength, the adversaries retired without fighting. It happened, nonetheless, that on the occasion of this day Gilles made himself noticed because of the splendor of his arms bearers! It is possible that it was decided by chance, but the men whom he had led into bloody combat must have only been of service to him henceforth in parades (with the exception of local affairs). From the beginning he loved to put his men-at-arms in formation, as others in our day love to put horses in formation. This resulted in excessive expenditures. This is why it occurred to him to sell some of his land in order to meet payments. At the time of Joan of Arc, these expenditures were justified. If they were large, they were still in proportion to an immense fortune. On the death of his grandfather, this fortune grew. But a short time afterwards, Gilles’ credit tumbled. With La Trémoille in disgrace, his title of marshal no longer had meaning. Then the opposite of what would have logically been expected occurred. Far from getting better, the situation of his fortune becomes precarious. His expenditures, formerly of necessity, are expenditures of ostentation! But apparently the Marshal’s decorou
s retinue is more burdensome than that of a captain engaged in war — as if he must compensate for lost prestige with a false front.

  There are numerous records of Rais’ mad expenditures. However, they are not precisely itemized; we are unable to explain what seems to have finally ruined him, or to what extent he was ruined. We see what happened, but we do not see the exact degree or cause of it.

  We can only affirm that the expenditures multiplied; ruin was one of the nagging aspects of the tragedy of which I speak. Gilles de Rais’ expenditures do not depend on any extravagance; they are the result of the excessive game that is the principle of primitive humanity. In comparison with war itself this game is in principle secondary, but it had a profound reality for a man whose every reaction is archaic. This violent man, to whom the game of war was lost, needed a compensation. He seems to have found it in the game of ostentatious expenditure. But would this game have a sufficient attraction if it did not threaten to drag the player into ruin?

  When he wasn’t anyone anymore, Gilles de Rais saw only one possibility of playing, of still playing. What could this feudal lord do in this world?

  A feudal lord’s privilege has only one meaning: freeing him from work, it consecrates him to the game. But war is the only game that gives full value to the privileged man. Could “ostentatious expenditure” justify an ardor comparable to the transports of war? The game of wild expenditures no longer mattered to Rais’ peers. It appeared comical to them. It belonged to a world on its way to extinction. In this game cities openly confronted one another constructing tall cathedrals. But the 15th century was already engulfed in a profound transformation wherein reality was to prevail over appearances.

  A Gilles de Rais could remain steeped in the reactions of the primitive world only through isolation, which 12th-century nobility understood thoroughly. On the occasion of a “court” held in Limousin, a knight in the 12th century had pieces of silver sown in a plowed field; another, in response to this challenge, had his meals cooked with church candles; another, “in boastfulness,” ordered that all his horses be burned alive. We know today what this boastfulness means, corresponding so clearly to Lord de Rais’ unintelligible expenditures.

  In societies different from our own — we ourselves accumulate wealth with a view to continual growth — the principle has prevailed instead to squander or lose wealth, to give it away or destroy it. Accumulated wealth has the same meaning as work; on the other hand, wealth wasted or destroyed in tribal potlaches has the meaning of a game. Accumulated wealth has only a subordinate value; in the eyes of whoever squanders or destroys it, wealth squandered or destroyed has a sovereign value, for it serves nothing else if not this squandering itself, or this fascinating destruction. Its present meaning is in its squandering, or the gift that one makes of it. Its utmost reason for being is on account of that which can suddenly no longer be put off until later, being of that instant. But it is consumed in that instant. It can be with magnificence; those who know how to appreciate consumption are dazzled, but nothing remains.

  Such is the meaning of the pieces sown and lost, the church candles for meals, and the horses roaring in the flames.

  Such also is the meaning of the mad expenditures which Rais intensified when he ought to have renounced war.

  In the spring of 1434, after the Sillé affair, he still has not definitively renounced war. He keeps in contact with La Trémoille. Having been duly charged to no longer appear at court, the ex-favorite attempts to marginally recover a dwindling activity; he profits by the fact that his friend, the Duke of Bourbon, is still at war with the Duke of Burgundy. He would like to come to the aid of Bourbon, whose city, Grancey, situated in Burgundy, is under siege by the Burgundians. Doubtless he figures that Charles VII will be pleased with this action. He therefore proposes to Rais to levy troops and come to the aid of Grancey. Rais seems at first to have accepted enthusiastically.

  We are unable to understand exactly what followed, but nothing was arranged. As for the affair in question, it is possible that others threw sticks into the gears …

  Indeed, Gilles obtained Charles VII’s official order to free Grancey, but the very day when this city surrendered to the Burgundians we know that he was at Poitiers … He asked his brother René in advance to take charge of the troops he had effectively levied in Brittany.

  However, the unemployed Marshal still has not abandoned the party.

  He goes to Orleans: he has the intention of living there sumptuously, according to his demeanor, but La Trémoille goads him on from there. Gilles then agrees to follow him into Bourbon. Presently this is a question of aiding the Duke of Bourbon, but quite in vain.

  The two men together are stubborn. They attempt, at the beginning of the following year, to attack Jean de Luxembourg. After the peace of Nevers, concluded between the Duke of Burgundy and the King (February 1435), Luxembourg remained at war with the French.

  But La Trémoille and Rais have little money. What is more, they come to terms badly on this subject, inasmuch as Rais clearly wants to lead a royal life, a life of dazzling splendor.

  He hesitates. He is not resigned to the chaos and disarray in which he founders, but Gilles senses that La Trémoille has overexcited him. He is offered insignificant affairs, without credits, without royal money. He clearly lets himself go. From then on he carries all the effeminate luxury of a Roman cardinal.

  Surrounded by young singers, he has himself named canon of Saint-Hilaire of Poitiers. (Until then, only the dukes of Aquitaine had borne this title.) On this occasion he must have appeared in a sumptuous costume: half-Church, half-helmeted warrior. He then travels with his ecclesiastical retinue, a “collegiate church,” whose seat as a rule was a chapel of the Saints-Innocents situated within the walls of Machecoul. This chapel had its canons and even a so-called bishop; it had singers, a music school analogous to those of cathedrals; every one of them was liturgically and sumptuously dressed: more than fifty people, and as many horses. Added to the ecclesiastical retinue was the military: two hundred horsemen, which a herald of arms and trumpeters preceded. We have said nothing of sorcerers, alchemists, armorers, an illuminator, and those who had the responsibility of carrying an organ on these travels … This man, walled up in a criminal solitude, could not dispense with a crowd that recalled a king’s entourage. We know what comprises this crowd from the notarial records of Orleans, where he stayed more than a year. The same crowd, a little later, must have accompanied him to Poitiers. At Poitiers, this delirium had a scandalous aspect which ought to be underlined. Two young singers who had charmed him also accompanied him; later he will make them into criminals. One is André Buchet of Vannes, who was to lead victims to him at least twice. The other, Jean Rossignol of La Rochelle, to whom he made a grant of land at Machecoul, took part in the transfer of children’s skeletons from Champtocé (see p. 103). On this day, in the church of Saint-Hilaire, he institutes two stipends in favor of these darlings. Apparently he was searching for veiled exhibitionism, which would assume the feeling of crime for him; he must have feverishly loved these voices of angels, these voices of corrupted ephebi, whom he joined in his orgies.

  The journey to Poitiers at the end of the year, and the long stay at Orléans the year after, thus allow us to imagine the hellish retinue that Marshal de Rais led as of the day when he was no longer Marshal except in name only (the title was then revocable, but it was not withdrawn from him). Orléans, it seems, cost 80,000 gold crowns; an important part not of his revenues, but of his fortune. (In 1437 he only received 100,000 crowns for Ingrandes and Champtocé, his two most important properties, which Jean V of Brittany had prized above all.) On his return, his finances were so bad that he had to lie low for a while in his domains in Brittany.

  He then establishes himself in the region of Rais, in the fortress of Machecoul.

  He had not sown pieces of silver, he had not locked his horses in a furnace, but the expenditures to which he had just devoted himself had given the same feeling
of an ostentatious game, “boastfulness” and unreasonableness, as the extravagances of the Limousin …

  It is then that Guillaume de La Jumellière abandons him, this Angevin lord to whom Jean de Craon had entrusted him.

  On all these campaigns La Jumellière had assisted him with his counsels. He was still accompanying Gilles when, at the end of 1434, he arrived at Orléans followed by his military assembly.

  The blazing, unrestrained expenditure at Orléans signified, at the same time as a definitive renunciation of war, what was in no way another escape, but the recourse to the impossible; far from being a modest throwback of the Limousin extravagances, those at Orléans recall tragedy. Orléans, which in 1429 had foreshadowed Rais’ glory, six years later consecrates his disgrace.

  In effect, the stay — after which Rais clearly recognized that the glorious past he had previously lived in this city was dead — signifies that he remains connected to this place.

  In the course of this ostentatious existence, he wants once again to be the young Marshal of France that he became beside Joan of Arc, throwing himself with an irresistible fury upon the English, delivering to his country an unexpected victory. This event had a different meaning to him than it did to everyone else. For Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc was evidently unintelligible. How would he be interested in the destiny of a people? What was said about this was troublesome: he was only interested in himself. In a pinch he managed, in his childishness, to partake in the great emotions that he was incapable of understanding … But like every year, on May 8, 1435, Orléans celebrated its liberation; for Gilles this involves garnering for himself a part of the delirious popularity that Joan of Arc possessed from the first day at Orléans. The unfortunate Joan was now four years dead; she had died in the flames, survived by Rais himself, who by her side had had one of the great roles of the day, the greatest after her own perhaps. It was his second chance to relive that day in the enthusiasm of the crowd; but this time he was alone, and the liberation of Orléans, the battle of the Tourelles, became his personal triumph.