It is difficult to believe, however, that the first leap, the most difficult, was superficial. I believe that the deep turmoil in which he struggled abandoned him again to tortuous thoughts. Though dimly, he must have been from the beginning no less open to the dizzying possibility that the confession of his repugnant crimes would fascinate those who heard them. Could he live without fascinating? Live without fascinating? Live without breathing! Whatever there was convulsing in him aspired to the moment when those who heard him would tremble. Fascinated, in their horror, they would tremble! The exhibitionism of criminals, compensating for the anxiety of dissimulation, generally has this aspect; it is on account of this that confession is the temptation of the guilty party who always, beginning from the disaster of crime, has the possibility of a blaze, disastrous in itself.
The decisive confessions, Gilles de Rais’ inadmissible confessions, did not take place until October 21st, the date on which torture had been decided upon. These confessions could therefore have been the result of the threat. It seems to me less risky to believe that the threat facilitated what was a response to passion, but was not the cause of it. Threatened, Gilles de Rais beseeched the judges to grant him a postponement. He would reflect but, in advance, he promised to speak spontaneously in a manner that would satisfy them. He secured a hearing not by the ecclesiastical judges, but by the president of the secular tribunal — to whom the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc would be united. Torture deferred, Gilles entered upon the path of these unprecedented confessions, after which it became unthinkable to insist. The session of October 22nd was decisive: before the ecclesiastical judges, assembled in numerous attendance, Gilles exposed his depravities at length. He recalled the most dreadful thing. The decapitated heads that his accomplices and he himself examined in order to pick the most beautiful, which he then kissed. Finally the bursts of laughter that they had together on seeing the grimaces of the dying.
This violent exhibitionism was itself only possible under the condition of an ambiguity. Would it have been imaginable without the great lord’s sobs? Or if the criminal who was crying had not been this great lord? In the moments of his confessions, there was a peak … They appeared in a sovereign, unusual light, from the fact of the criminal’s grandeur (doesn’t tragedy demand the criminal’s sovereignty); at the same time he is offered for the horror, the criminal is offered for the terrified sympathy, for the compassion of those who see him cry, who cry with him.
What grips us in Gilles de Rais’ death is the compassion. It seems that this criminal moved his audience to compassion; in part by reason of his atrocity, in part by virtue of his nobility and the fact that he was crying.
At the end of the secular trial, when the condemnation to death had been pronounced, and when the president of the tribunal and Gilles spoke together for several moments, the judge did not address himself like a judge to the accused; he bore him the deference that, under ordinary circumstances, a man has for another man. Doubtlessly, in his own eyes, the judge felt vindicated on account of the piety which Gilles de Rais gave proof of during these last moments. Doubtlessly the powerful family of the man he had just sentenced to death troubled him. I believe, above all, that the ignominy and the repugnant character of the butcheries — associated with this piety, these tears, and this grandeur — bewildered him; and that this judge had lost all possibility of discerning what opposed him to the criminal, what opposed him to his infamy.
At the same time I believe that the guilty party himself was obscurely conscious of the commotion that, under these conditions, would result from his death.
His naivete on this day was on a par with the naïveté of the judges whom he had moved. It is thus that he requested that the president of the secular tribunal intervene on behalf of the Bishop of Nantes, who had presided over the ecclesiastical tribunal; the “excessive” desire of the criminal was that a procession of all the people, which the Bishop himself and the men of his church would arrange, would accompany him to the place of execution in order to pray to God for him and his accomplices, who were going to die after him.
The judge promised immediately to request this favor, which was accorded him.
He had previously requested and obtained a previous favor: since he was expecting to be hanged and, as soon as he was hanged, delivered to the flames, “before the flames could open his body and entrails,” he would have liked to have been taken from the furnace, placed in a coffin, and led into the church of the Carmelite monastery at Nantes.
So well had they arranged things that his death was the occasion of a theatrical pageant.
Leaving the castle of La Tour Neuve, where the convict had been judged, the procession of an immense crowd chanting prayers and songs accompanied the miserable wretch, who had brought to the end his contempt for these little people who followed him and who were now supplicating God for him. The procession arrived at a meadow beyond the Loire that overlooked the city.
The church songs that he always loved to distraction lent to his death the resplendence that he could never get enough of in his lifetime. It seems that as soon as possible, “women of noble lineage” took care to pull out of the flames the dead man who, from the end of a rope, had appeared for one instant engulfed in the flame’s bewildering splendor.
Then they placed him in a coffin, and solemnly the body was carried to its last resting place in the church, where the peaceful solemnity of the funeral service awaited him.
Analysis of Historical Facts
ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL FACTS
The first part of the introduction — which has preceded — considers the problem of Gilles de Rais in its entirety.
In this second part, we have assembled the details of his life, their immediate consequences, and various related questions.
The Historical Facts in Chronological Order
* * *
1400
* * *
By a series of circumstances, before he is even born, a colossal fortune is piled on the head of the abominable Gilles de Rais.
On the verge of dying heirless, the last descendant of the house of Rais, Jeanne la Sage, decides to adopt Rais’ future father, Guy de Laval II of the house of Montmorency-Laval, and make him her heir.
This Guy de Laval is the nephew of Constable Du Guesclin.
If he accepts Jeanne la Sage’s proposition, he is expected to renounce the title and arms of Laval, at the same time assuming for himself and his descendants the title and arms of Rais.
* * *
1401
September 25
* * *
Guy de Laval II accepts the inheritance of the barony of Rais and the conditions that Jeanne la Sage had posed to him.
* * *
1402
May 14
* * *
For a moment, the combination of circumstances leading up to Gilles’ immense fortune and destiny is apparently compromised. For reasons unknown to us, Jeanne la Sage renounces the appointment of Guy de Laval as her lawful heir. She leaves everything to Catherine de Machecoul, Pierre de Craon’s widow. But, by a twist of fate, destiny nicely reestablishes what was decided upon earlier. It requires an alliance between the houses of Laval and Craon. The Craons were then the most powerful feudal house in Anjou (after the descendants of Louis I (1339- 1384), Jean le Bon’s youngest son, to whom his father had given the appanage of Anjou).
* * *
(1402)
* * *
* * *
1404
February 5
* * *
In fact, Guy de Laval II secures Jeanne de Rais’ inheritance in spite of everything; he marries Marie de Craon, the granddaughter of Catherine de Machecoul and Pierre de Craon, and the daughter of Jean de Craon.
After a trial period, harmony between the interested families foreshadows the fortune of the new couple’s heir. Marie de Craon abandons, by contract, all rights to the inheritance of the house of Rais to her husband, Guy de Laval. Therefore Guy de Laval and his
descendants will definitively possess, along with the fortune, the name and arms of Rais.
* * *
Near the end of the year Gilles de Rais is born
* * *
Gilles de Rais is born on the banks of the Loire, in the Black Tower of the castle at Champtocé, the vast fortress and home of Jean de Craon. “All the neighboring nobility” are invited to his baptism in the village church: everyone takes part in the ceremony, “holding a candle.”12
* * *
1407
* * *
Jeanne la Sage dies in the fortress of Machecoul, where she is buried. After her death, Gilles and his parents reside at Machecoul.
* * *
Around 1407
* * *
The birth of René, Gilles’ brother.
* * *
1415
Near the beginning of the year
* * *
The death of Marie de Craon, Gilles’ mother. She is buried in the chapel of Notre-Dame, in the Buzay abbey at Rais.
* * *
September 28 Death of his father Gilles’ education is entrusted to Jean de Craon
* * *
Dying, Guy de Laval of Blaison draws up his testament; in it he entrusts the education of his children to Jean Tournemine de La Hunaudaye, his cousin. He asks, at the same time, that the two tutors — two priests to whom he entrusted Gilles — Georges de La Bossac and Michel de Fontenay, continue his education. Guy de Laval is buried in the same tomb as Marie de Craon.
However, the testament has no effect on the tutelage. Jean de Craon, alone, in fact, assumes charge of raising Gilles and René and administering the older son’s property. At this time, he is not yet sixty years old. Violent and unscrupulous, he abandons Gilles, who is motherless, to passions that nothing can curb. He is responsible for an important part of the completely lax education to which Gilles himself attributes the origin of his monstrosity during his trial.
* * *
October 25
* * *
At the disastrous Battle of Agincourt, the death of Amaury, Jean de Craon’s son, succeeds in making Gilles, then only eleven years old, one of the richest heirs in the realm.
* * *
1417
January 14
* * *
Gilles is engaged by his grandfather to Jeanne Peynel (the daughter of Foulques, Lord de Hambye), a very rich heiress of Normandy. For Jean de Craon, it has to do with getting his hands on an orphan’s estate while paying the debts of her tutor. The greedy Jean de Craon is not interested simply in Gilles’ future, but in the management of his property during his youth. But the parliament of Paris, alerted, forbids his marriage to Jeanne Peynel before her majority.
* * *
1419
September 10
* * *
Companions of the Dauphin Charles stab Jean sans Peur, the Duke of Burgundy, on Montereau bridge during negotiations that some had thought might put an end to the civil war and draw partisans of the future Charles VII and the Burgundians together against the English. Double-dealing by Jean sans Peur is undoubtedly at the bottom of the assassination, which would widen the gap between the opposing parties for a long time to come.
* * *
November 28
* * *
Jean de Craon engages Gilles a second time; he gives his hand to Béatrice de Rohan, the niece of Jean V, the Duke of Brittany. We do not know why this transaction, which was contracted and dated in Vannes, fell through.
* * *
1420
January 17
* * *
King Charles VI, who has lost his sanity, disinherits the Dauphin Charles; Joan of Arc’s dream will later restore to him a realm that might well have seemed lost.
* * *
February 13
* * *
Jean V, the Duke of Brittany, of the house of Montfort, is ambushed by his enemies the Penthièvres. He is imprisoned at Champtoceaux. This episode begins a new phase in the war between the Montforts and the Penthièvres. Jean de Craon then sides with the Montforts. Because of this, his and Gilles’ fiefs are preyed upon by bands in the Penthièvres’ service. Mothe-Achard is occupied. But the Penthièvres are defeated. Jean V is freed. Jean de Craon “and his son de Rays” are indemnified for losses and recompensed.
But Gilles de Rais himself does not seem to have participated in these feudal combats. Abbot Bossard assumed that he did and Roland Villeneuve followed his opinion, but he was only sixteen years old then; the documents are silent; it is not likely, and we do not even know whether he was present at Jean V’s triumphal return to Nantes.
* * *
(1420)
* * *
* * *
May 20
* * *
By the Treaty of Troyes, Henry V, the King of England, becomes heir to Charles VI; the kingdoms of England and France are expected to be united under the same crown. The University of Paris and a semblance of the Estates General recognize the treaty. The Duke of Brittany recognizes it in turn but, after Charles VI’s death, he will change his mind several times; this whimsical character, who never keeps his word, answers to the English crown one day and to the Dauphin’s camp the next.
* * *
September 28
* * *
Jean V grants Jean de Craon and his grandson one hundred pounds in annuity, taken from one of the Penthièvres’ partisans. This one hundred pounds is, by all accounts, the equivalent of nearly one million of our own money (1959).
* * *
November Gilles’ marriage
* * *
With Jean de Craon’s approval, Gilles abducts Catherine de Thouars, his cousin, the daughter of Milet de Thouars and Beatrice de Montjean. Catherine’s property in Poitou adjoined the barony of Rais, which it complemented. It is difficult to understand the reason for the abduction, which is followed by a quiet wedding ceremony. Perhaps their relatively close relation necessitated putting the deed, rather than the proposition, before ecclesiastical authorities and families. In any event, Gilles de Rais and his grandfather benefited from the fact that Milet de Thouars had just “died at Meaux of a high fever.”13
* * *
Around 1420
* * *
Jean de Craon’s wife dies. After several weeks, he marries a second: Anne de Sillé, Catherine de Thouars’ grandmother, a relative of probably the most ferocious of Gilles de Rais’ future companions in debauchery.
* * *
1421
March 22
* * *
Near Saumur, at Baugé, the future Charles VII, who is given the title of regent on account of Charles VI’s insanity, wins a victory over the English troops.
* * *
Around 1421
* * *
Her period of mourning observed, Béatrice de Montjean marries a young knight, Jacques Meschin de la Roche-Aireault. This able young man had been chamberlain in the Dauphin’s court; he was able to give his wife the support without which she could never have opposed the brutality of Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais; they had already seized Catherine’s possessions, her mother’s dowry, and the fortresses at Tiffauges and Pouzauges in Poitou.
* * *
1422
April 24
* * *
Public marriage, with Rome’s authorization, of Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars. Jacques Meschin interferes — he will live to regret it — to obtain a settlement on behalf of Béatrice de Montjean.
* * *
August 31
* * *
Death of Henry V of England. His son and successor, Henry VI, is now ten months old.
* * *
October 21
* * *
Death of Charles VI. His succession will oppose the Dauphin, Charles VII — the King of Bourges — against the regent of France for the English, Bedford, Henry V’s brother, who represents the rights of young Henry VI.
Trial of Gilles De Rais Page 9