According to the splendidly wrong-headed D B Wyndham Lewis, the rehabilitation of Gilles de Rais is a purely 20th century chimera. "It seems hardly necessary to add that one or two fervent friends of Progress have...established to their own satisfaction Gilles' entire innocence, which occurred not even to his own proud, shamed family." In a footnote he adds "Nor to anyone else until 1902."
Leaving aside the rather glaring fact that Gilles' daughter Marie and her first husband made a determined effort to establish her father's innocence, as Wyndham Lewis himself records, the first writers to assert that he was the victim of a plot were, improbably, political commentators during the Revolution.
One might assume that, to the Revolutionaries, Gilles would have been the paradigm of the wicked baron, preying on his vassals in the worst possible way. After all, both his tomb and his monument were destroyed during the Revolution. However, Gilles was not singled out for special treatment - he was buried with the nobility and the heroes of Brittany and every tomb was desecrated and the church razed. Some Revolutionary writers certainly did see Gilles as a villain, but others saw him as a victim of a plot by the Church -
Le maréchal de Rais, à l'instant de son supplice, reprit tout sa dignité, il reprocha aux juges leurs bassesse et leur avidité, et marcha à son supplice, non pas en coupable, mais en héros.
[The Marshal de Rais, at the moment of his execution, recovered all his dignity, he reproached his judges for their baseness and their greed, and walked to his execution, not as a guilty man, but as a hero.]
These are the words of Joseph La Vallée, writing in 1792. He is quite explicit: Gilles was ruined by charlatans and forced to sell his estates cheaply to the Duke of Brittany. When he was bankrupt, the Duke and the priests accused him of "impossible crimes", when his true crime was having no more money to lavish on them. Two hundred years before Gilbert Prouteau, La Vallée put the case for Gilles' innocence in a nutshell
We should not assume that revisionist views about Gilles' guilt appeared out of nowhere in the twentieth century; they have run like a golden thread through history, from the moment of his death until the present day, appearing in the unlikeliest of places.
Leaving aside the rather glaring fact that Gilles' daughter Marie and her first husband made a determined effort to establish her father's innocence, as Wyndham Lewis himself records, the first writers to assert that he was the victim of a plot were, improbably, political commentators during the Revolution.
One might assume that, to the Revolutionaries, Gilles would have been the paradigm of the wicked baron, preying on his vassals in the worst possible way. After all, both his tomb and his monument were destroyed during the Revolution. However, Gilles was not singled out for special treatment - he was buried with the nobility and the heroes of Brittany and every tomb was desecrated and the church razed. Some Revolutionary writers certainly did see Gilles as a villain, but others saw him as a victim of a plot by the Church -
Le maréchal de Rais, à l'instant de son supplice, reprit tout sa dignité, il reprocha aux juges leurs bassesse et leur avidité, et marcha à son supplice, non pas en coupable, mais en héros.
[The Marshal de Rais, at the moment of his execution, recovered all his dignity, he reproached his judges for their baseness and their greed, and walked to his execution, not as a guilty man, but as a hero.]
These are the words of Joseph La Vallée, writing in 1792. He is quite explicit: Gilles was ruined by charlatans and forced to sell his estates cheaply to the Duke of Brittany. When he was bankrupt, the Duke and the priests accused him of "impossible crimes", when his true crime was having no more money to lavish on them. Two hundred years before Gilbert Prouteau, La Vallée put the case for Gilles' innocence in a nutshell
We should not assume that revisionist views about Gilles' guilt appeared out of nowhere in the twentieth century; they have run like a golden thread through history, from the moment of his death until the present day, appearing in the unlikeliest of places.
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