The case for the defence

Born 1404
Executed 1440
Exonerated 1992

It is now widely accepted that the trial of Gilles de Rais was a miscarriage of justice. He was a great war hero on the French side; his judges were pro-English and had an interest in blackening his name and, possibly, by association, that of Jehanne d'Arc. His confession was obtained under threat of torture and also excommunication, which he dreaded. A close examination of the testimony of his associates, in particular that of Poitou and Henriet, reveals that they are almost identical and were clearly extracted by means of torture. Even the statements of outsiders, alleging the disappearance of children, mostly boil down to hearsay; the very few cases where named children have vanished can be traced back to the testimony of just eight witnesses. There was no physical evidence to back up this testimony, not a body or even a fragment of bone. His judges also stood to gain from his death: in fact, Jean V Duke of Brittany, who enabled his prosecution, disposed of his share of the loot before de Rais was even arrested.

In France, the subject of his probable innocence is far more freely discussed than it is in the English-speaking world. In 1992 a Vendéen author named Gilbert Prouteau was hired by the Breton tourist board to write a new biography. Prouteau was not quite the tame biographer that was wanted and his book, Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup, argued that Gilles de Rais was not guilty. Moreover, he summoned a special court to re-try the case, which sensationally resulted in an acquittal. As of 1992, Gilles de Rais is an innocent man.

In the mid-1920s he was even put forward for beatification, by persons unknown. He was certainly not the basis for Bluebeard, this is a very old story which appears all over the world in different forms.

Le 3 janvier 1443... le roi de France dénonçait le verdict du tribunal piloté par l'Inquisition.
Charles VII adressait au duc de Bretagne les lettres patentes dénonçant la machination du procès du maréchal: "Indûment condamné", tranche le souverain. Cette démarche a été finalement étouffée par l'Inquisition et les intrigues des grands féodaux. (Gilbert Prouteau)

Two years after the execution the King granted letters of rehabilitation for that 'the said Gilles, unduly and without cause, was condemned and put to death'. (Margaret Murray)



Thursday 25 November 2021

Making a Mediaeval Murderer

Three years ago, the website Dirty, Sexy History published this article by Jessica Cale - Making a Medieval Murderer: The Exoneration of Gilles de Rais. It remains one of the best accounts of the alternative narrative and features a substantial interview with your trusty blogger Margot K Juby.

Old image of  the blogger as a young woman


Tuesday 9 November 2021

A Lilliputian Quarrel

In the world of Raisian studies (impossibly pseudish expression stolen from Michel Meurger) everything moves with glacial slowness. Think how long it took for word of the 1992 retrial to seep out into the English speaking world. Lately, however, a near controversy has blown up. Consider this -


We all know Gilles de Rais' dates, don't we? All the fours, as in the Britannica entry. Wikipedia, however, has recently taken an independent tack and is insisting on "unknown, not earlier than 1405". Now, this is not just a minor quibble - Wiki is saying that everybody else for nearly 600 years has got it wrong. The only citation given is Romanian historian Matei Cazacu's relatively recent biography. 

A small furore took place on the Talk page of the relevant Wikipedia entry. Personally, I have never attempted to edit Wikipedia because I am not King Canute and have no illusions that I could make a permanent difference. But I have friends who do, and one of them tried to change the date back to 1404. After a couple of attempts, he was banned from editing.

So the editor who is so determined that Gilles de Rais was born in 1405 (or even later!) is playing hardball. There will be no discussion: Cazacu is right and everybody else is wrong. It seems a strange hill to die on, but goodness knows we all have our little idées fixes and I am nobody to judge. Far be it from me to insist that Heers or Benedetti or (heaven forfend!) Bossard were right about any given point.  Something about this stinks, however.

Cazacu's dating depends entirely upon the interpretation of documents and it does clash with other information that we have. Gilles de Rais came into his inheritance - and reached his majority - in 1424, when he was twenty. His brother René inherited in January 1434, which is one reason I consider it certain that he was born in 1414 rather than the often-given 1407. We do not know exactly what Gilles' role was in the rescue of Jean V in 1420, but we do know that both he and his grandfather were lavishly rewarded, which would seem unlikely if he had been only a page or a squire. He was made Marshal of France in 1429, at a phenomenally young age even if we consider that he was in his twenty-fifth year. If he had been twenty-three or even twenty-two, that would have been quite remarkable.

This may seem an esoteric point, and in a way it is. If the Wiki entry had been amended in a less arrogant way - "traditionally 1404, although some historians argue for 1405 or later" - there would be no problem. Nobody really knows either the month or the year of Gilles de Rais' birth and probably nobody ever will. This, however, is an aggressive attempt to make the claim that Matei Cazacu is the only reliable biographer, and this cannot be allowed to stand. 

One good thing has come out of this grubby little squabble. If you see Gilles de Rais' date of birth given using the rubric "unknown, not earlier than 1405", you will know that the article has been directly or indirectly sourced from Wikipedia and should be consigned to the dustbin. 




Wednesday 13 October 2021

Saints & Sinners: or, why I do what I do

Nobody will be surprised to hear that I have a little Gilles de Rais shrine; it would be more surprising if I didn't.


A few days ago I decided that I would add to it by ordering a candle and a canvas from a company that produces icons of saints with the faces of politicians and also does custom orders. I won't give them undeserved publicity, but will make sure that anyone putting their company name into the search engine will find this post. 

Within 24 hours I had a PayPal refund. Quickly followed by this -

I’m afraid we’ve got a bit of a problem with your custom request. Our candles are fun, irreverent and warmly meant - the subjects usually trigger warm and/or happy feelings – if they make us laugh we’re very gung-ho about making them and putting them out, but the immediate association here is one of pure evil.

We sometimes receive requests that we decline and while we hate not to please our customers, we also have to trust our gut. We don’t always get it right, but I’m afraid on this occasion, our call is not to do it. As a result of this decision, I have refunded your order.

Now, I'm not easily offended by ignorance - I'd have died of outrage several Bluebeardery & Copypasta seasons ago if I were. But this sticks in my craw because of a toxic combination of the judgemental and the hypocritical.

Because you can have a Margaret Thatcher icon - crowned, no less. Boris Johnson, also crowned, waving the butcher's apron. You can even have Priti "sink the immigrant boats!" Patel on a cushion. They're proud of that one.



All controversial politicians. You wouldn't look far to find someone insisting that each one has blood on their hands. All acceptable, apparently.

You can't, however, have Gilles de Rais, because somebody did an image search and clicked on the first site they found, probably Wikipedia. They chose to ignore all the recent developments since 1992 (and, in fact, before). They are blissfully and ironically unaware of the 1925 attempt to have Gilles beatified. Well, you may say, they make candles: why should they be following this somewhat arcane controversy? Indeed. I would argue, though, that they should at least make sure they know what they're talking about before they rudely turn down a £70 order.

I get that they thought I was attempting dark humour. But policing your customers' sense of humour isn't really on, either, is it? In fact, when a bespoke service tries to exercise its freedom of speech to censor its customers, for any reason, it never goes well.

I don't take offence on my own behalf. I'll get over feeling hugely disrespected. I don't think it's a great way to run a business, but it's their business, after all. If they want to turn away trade in a fit of misplaced virtue signalling, that's up to them.

(Although how you can jump on a moral high horse when you're making sizeable profits off the backs of all the photographers whose copyright you are merrily violating is beyond me. Every one of their non-custom items is based on an uncredited photograph).

But I am Gilles de Rais' representative on earth, so I have to make some kind of stand. I have spent a decade or more putting out the truth, with some effect, and what is the first impression someone gets when they search his name? "The immediate association here is one of pure evil". This is why I do what I do. This is why I carry on.


Update: It seems I was right; a business that turns away trade for dubious moral reasons isn't going to last long. This company, which I can now name as My Sainted Aunt, went into voluntary liquidation on February 21st 2022, some four months after my run-in with them. If I believed in karma, I'd be impressed with the rapidity. 

When I looked into the matter, it turned out that there is another company that offers a suspiciously similar product and that has been in business since 2016. So My Sainted Aunt - founded in June 2020 - presumably "borrowed" the idea from them. Delightful people. 

Monday 30 August 2021

Gilles de Rais: A Case for the Defence (Part 2)

My previous essay on the case for the defence deliberately did not address the grounds to suppose that there was some kind of plot against him. That is a whole other topic which needs to be examined in some detail. The motives of his enemies were not wholly financial, as simplified accounts of the life of Gilles de Rais often imply; politics also featured heavily.

However, the initial impetus behind the machination was property, as Bourdeaut grasped when he titled his book Chantocé, Gilles de Rais et les ducs de Bretagne. Gilles came into the world as a result of politicking over the border castles of Champtocé and Ingrandes and died for the same reason. Jeanne La Sage needed an heir urgently because she was a lone woman and therefore prey to any predatory noble.  And Jean IV, the father of Gilles' nemesis, had long coveted the Rais estates, and those two castles in particular. They were of huge strategic importance, controlling ingress to Brittany by river, but they were also highly lucrative. Their lord could tax the river traffic; Jean de Craon's battles with the Loire boatmen lived on long after him in the form of various lawsuits. Gilles hung on to Champtocé almost until the end, not (as is sometimes suggested) out of sentimentality about his birthplace, but because the revenue it accrued was a welcome source of cold cash.

Brittany was, at this point, effectively bankrupt. At one point the Duke misappropriated the money his late wife had left to have masses said for her soul, because he was lacking in both money and morals. The Rais estates must have looked tempting. In fact, they were so alluring that they were confiscated a good fortnight before Gilles was even arrested: as Reinach remarks, when you give away the bearskin before the hunt starts, it means you have firmly resolved to kill the bear, by fair means or foul. (Quand on cède ainsi la peau de l'ours, c'est qu'on est bien décidé, per fas et nefas, a tuer l'ours.) 

Most biographers argue that, since Jean V had obtained the two castles he particularly craved in early 1438, he had no reason to plot against Gilles to seize the rest of his estates. There is a muddled belief that Gilles was virtually bankrupt and no longer had anything worth stealing. Nothing could be further from the case. In order to acquire the estates he wanted, the Duke had had to exchange them for the entirety of the barony of Rais, which Gilles had sold previously. That was how valuable those particular estates were to Brittany. Once acquired, however, it was by no means certain that Jean V could hold on to them. According to Breton law, the Duke was not allowed to enter into property transactions with his vassals. For this reason he used proxies such as "Jean Pain" and, notoriously, Geoffroy Le Ferron. Champtocé was ostensibly bought for one of his sons. In fact, the lawsuits about the misappropriation of Gilles' properties continued for a century after his death and all of them were eventually restored to the Rais family. 

Jean V had another reason to be doubtful that he could hang on to his ill-gotten gains. The contract for the sale of Champtocé was fiendishly complex and went through several drafts. The final agreement included the clause that Gilles could buy the castle back at any point within the next six years, at the price he had sold it for. Most commentators dismiss this as a motive: the money simply was not there. However, we know that the Duke had at least two spies in Gilles' household - Guillaume Grimaud and Guillaume Sauzaie - who were bribed to persuade their master to sell Champtocé (and, meanly, would not be paid unless they succeeded). It is certain that they would have told him that Prelati was claiming to be close to finding the Philosopher's Stone. If he could turn base metals into gold, money would cease to be a problem for Gilles. 

This, then, is the financial aspect of the plot. As we see, it was not as simple as "follow the money", though it should be stressed that not one sou of the proceeds went to the Church; it was divided between the Duke's sons.




The politics, similarly, appears simple but is deeply complex, hinging as it does on the absurdity of a French war hero on trial in the quasi-independent duchy of Brittany. Charles VII owed his throne to two commanders, Gilles and Jehanne. He had singled them out from the rest by awarding them the highly unusual honour of a border of fleurs de lys around their coats of arms. If both had been executed for heresy, then it might be argued that he had won the crown with the help of the Devil. To smear Gilles was to smear Jehanne and, by extension, the French King. 

Jean V's links with England were strong. Few writers explain exactly how strong they were. After his father died, his mother, Jeanne de Navarre, married the English king, Henry IV; her son, the future Jean V, became a ward of the Duke of Burgundy, one of the staunchest allies of the English. As Duke of Brittany, he operated a politique de bascule which was highly successful: between 1420 and 1427 he switched sides no fewer than five times. During Gilles' trial, he actually signed an important treaty with the English, so it is clear which way the pendulum was swinging at that time, and it was not in a direction favourable to the pre-eminent  French commander standing before a Breton court

Besides, Jean V loathed the Lavals. A 17th century historian, François-Eudes de Mézeray, remarked that the Duke was “very glad to avenge his own offence in avenging that of God”. Michelet adds that he was all the more delighted to strike at the Lavals because the King had elevated the barony of Rais to a county and therefore Gilles from a baron to a count. The Duke had a paranoid fear that the Lavals were plotting against him; in December 1437, while he was negotiating with Gilles for the sale of Champtocé, he dismissed his cooks for fear of poison.  Jean V would never have trusted Gilles completely; he was descended from the Lavals on his father's side and would have carried that name if it had not been for the complex deal that had eventually resulted in a passionately pro-French Laval owning a huge swathe of Brittany. All this must have rankled.

Gilles' judge Jean de Malestroit, usually described as the Bishop of Nantes, was also the Chancellor of Brittany. He was a lifelong supporter of the English, had led several embassies to London, and was strongly suspected of sabotaging the French cause - not least by Richemont, the Constable of France, who in 1426  kidnapped him and flung him into prison. Malestroit's chief aim in life was to maintain the independence of Brittany and prevent it from being subsumed into France, and he rightly supposed that an alliance with England was the best way to ensure this. Unlike the Duke, his allegiance never wavered. 

The important fact to remember is that the French King had nothing to do with the trial of Gilles de Rais. It is impossible to make sense of what happened without understanding the separation between Brittany and France. 

In the end it all came down to property and dirty politics. 

Thursday 12 August 2021

The Martyr


Links to the film are now dead because the Rhode Island International Film Festival, which was showing it, is over. This blog post will be updated with new links when the film is shown elsewhere. 


Nearly a year ago I mentioned the short film I had been making with director Edmund Stenson and his crew - details and pictures here. It finally airs on Friday 13th August and will be available to watch for a week at this site. It lasts 15 minutes and is free to view. 

"A quirky, docu-fairytale brought to life through hand-illustrated animation, The Martyr paints a sinister-yet compassionate-portrait of two outcasts, and the obsession that binds them."



To my great astonishment, animator Robbie Ward introduced an image of me into the action (albeit with tidier hair): here I am witnessing the execution of Gilles de Rais. This gave me an eerie frisson, as it echoes a dream I had twenty-odd years ago. Nobody in the film crew knew about this, least of all Robbie Ward, who I never met. 

Once again, the link to the film, which is free to watch and will take up just fifteen minutes of your time. Click here


Tuesday 3 August 2021

Gilles de Rais: A Case for the Defence

Almost everything we think we know about Gilles de Rais has come from corrupted sources and is false. Briefly, up until the late 19th century there was no authoritative biography. Everything written about him was fictionalised and sensationalised. Eugène Bossard, an abbot from the area round Tiffauges, seized on him as a suitably obscure subject for a thesis. His speciality was French literature: he was not a historian. And he was completely ignorant of folklore, which is why his identification of Gilles with Bluebeard is so utterly spurious. Every biographer since has leaned heavily on Bossard, assuming him to be reliable. He is not.

Bossard accepted as genuine a known forgery, the account of the trial penned by Paul Lacroix, "The Bibliophile Jacob". Lacroix was a writer of titillating fictionalized pieces, with a fascination for anything bloodthirsty or lubricious. Many of his inventions have entered later biographies as fact. To complicate matters further, J-K Huysmans plundered Bossard to write his scandalous novel, Là-Bas, and added some myths of his own. Because Huysmans has been widely translated, but Bossard has not, much of the English-speaking world takes its information about Gilles de Rais from the former.

It is often said that "most historians" believe that Gilles de Rais was guilty. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Nobody has taken a poll. Probably most historians have never given the matter a thought. Certainly, the only historians whose opinion would be more relevant than Joe Public's would be those who specialise in that particular time and place, and preferably those who are acquainted with the relevant documents, a tiny minority. One contemporary historian who fits the bill exactly is Professor Thomas Fudge, who wrote a chapter about Gilles de Rais and researched the subject deeply. He came to the conclusion that it's a troubling case and there are strong grounds to suppose that it may have been a stitch-up.

In general, though, historians have had precious little to do with creating the legend of Gilles de Rais, and are unlikely to have much to do with his rehabilitation. Briefly, there are few primary sources, most of them are compromised and unreliable, and biographers (for the most part non-historians) simply do not look at them. The historical method has been much ignored in assembling the traditional narrative of the life of Gilles de Rais.

The story as it is presented to us has been cobbled together by a process of Chinese whispers, where each biographer copies the others and nobody bothers to check back to the primary sources. Evidence is relentlessly cherry-picked, contradictions and impossibilities ignored. That boy who supposedly disappeared while scrumping apples? Accounts vary, but this was said to have happened either on June 1st or at Easter. Apples? Really? What are referred to as "witnesses" are more properly complainants. The eye witness accounts come from inside his household and were produced by torture. The seventy-odd people who appear in court are, for the most part, not parents of the allegedly missing children. They are giving hearsay evidence. It's often as lame as "I saw a man in Machecoul looking for his son" or "I used to see these two brothers working the fairs, but I haven't seen them for a long time." Even Bataille (not a historian) naively points out a whole slew of children who apparently went missing from Machecoul when Gilles was living at Tiffauges. Those sinister old procuresses who fill the gap by ferrying boys across country? Not mentioned by any of the insiders when they were listing the other accomplices, and not produced in court even though (apparently) arrested.

In no particular order, some of the easily-dispelled myths about Gilles de Rais -

The most notorious fib, copied by Bossard and passed on to almost all of his successors, is that there was an illustrated Suetonius that had a corrupting effect on Gilles. There is evidence that such a book did not even exist at that time, but even if it did it would be irrelevent. The Suetonius story does not come from a primary source, it is a mid-19th century confection.

Another legend, which has been quoted as fact by many writers (including, shamefully, the historian-biographer Emile Gabory) is that the evidence at the trial was so shocking that the Bishop of Nantes veiled the crucifix. This derives from that notorious novel by J-K Huysmans; he got the idea from Lacroix and changed it for dramatic effect. Lacroix had Pierre de l'Hôpital covering the cross so that Henriet would not feel inhibited by it as he gave his testimony.

Almost all biographies of Gilles de Rais include the Suetonius or the veiling of the crucifix or both, indicating how very little research their authors did. They simply make no attempt at using contemporary sources. These are mistakes that could not be made by anybody who had done proper research.

At the moment, there is a craze for clickbait sites mentioning the "forty naked bodies" that were supposedly discovered - that is simply not true. At the trial there were allegations that a conduit (or barrel) of dead children was found at Champtocé; there are no eye witness accounts, the evidence was hearsay. No forensic evidence for this or any other accusation was produced in court, which means that a huge number of bodies must have been disposed of without trace. Nobody reported any foul smell or suspicious smoke.

Another falsehood concerns Gilles de Rais' military career. He never executed enemy soldiers. The ones he had hanged were French collaborators - traitors. Every commander did this. Treason was a capital offence.

Also, he never abandoned Jehanne. The army was disbanded after the failed attack on Paris. Joan never saw any of her commanders again. She was fighting her own unofficial war at Compiègne when she was captured; Gilles would probably have known nothing about it. Documents place him at Louviers, just across the river from Rouen where Joan was on trial, in the winter of 1430/1431. La Hire was with him. Both men were at the head of armies. They were in the heart of English-occupied Normandy. Clearly a rescue operation was planned - the English obviously thought so, as they threatened to throw Joan into the river and drown her if any attempt was made to save her.

Another common misconception is that Gilles de Rais confessed freely, without torture. This is untrue. He was not, as everyone insists, given exemption in return for a confession. He was told that if he confessed, the torture would be deferred till the next day, and sure enough there was a convenient gap the next morning, when the court met in the evening instead. There were only two evening sessions; the other one handily occurred after his servants were tortured.

As many people know, there was a rehabilitation trial in 1992, fronted by the Breton novelist Gilbert Prouteau, which acquitted Gilles completely. It was unofficial, and contentious. It did, however, bring the matter to the public eye and has very gradually seeped across the internet to the point where someone will bring it up on a relevant thread. I have been researching Gilles de Rais for many years and feelings about his guilt have definitely changed dramatically in the last twenty years.

See also Gilles de Rais: A Case for the Defence (Part 2)


As stated, the biographies are a poor lot. These two stand above the rest, because they at least acknowledge the possible political and financial motives for a stitch-up.

E A Vizetelly – Bluebeard: an account of Comorre the Cursed and Gilles de Rais (1902)

Jean Benedetti – Gilles de Rais, the authentic Bluebeard (1971)


The revisionist biographies are almost exclusively in French -

Fernand Fleuret/ Dr Ludovico Hernandez – Le Procès Inquisitorial de Gilles de Rais (1921)

Jean-Pierre Bayard – Plaidoyer pour Gilles de Rais (1985, reprinted 1992)

Gilbert Prouteau – Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup (1992)


My book, The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais, was published in 2017

Friday 2 April 2021

New Page

All the Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard posts have been gathered together on a single page - 

 The Bluebeard Dossier: why Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard

Illustration by Harry Clarke



Thursday 28 January 2021

"I am a direct descendant of Gilles de Rais!"


I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but you certainly are not. Gilles de Rais had one daughter, who married twice but died without issue. The estates that she had, with the help of the King, reclaimed from the Duchy of Brittany reverted to her uncle, René de la Suze. He had one daughter, who produced a male heir. However, the Rais family died out in 1502; Jeanne La Sage’s apparently successful attempt to provide herself with heirs to the estate of Rais had failed after less than a century. 

"God, the Creator, became so displeased with this house, which had been very great, that no children were born to it, and it died out through dissipation, whence sprang thousands of lawsuits, which were still lasting in our life-time."  Bertrand d'Argentré, 16th century

It is not uncommon for anonymous internet commentators to try and enhance their street cred by claiming to be descended from The Wickedest Man In The World. What surprised me was that one of Gilles’ lesser-known biographers attempted a similar trick. Valerie Ogden, author of Bluebeard: Brave Warrior, Brutal Psychopath, explained her interest in de Rais by claiming that she married into a family that is descended from him. Her in-laws “run away” whenever she brings the subject up, however. It is impossible to know whether this is a genuine family tradition, or some kind of in joke, or whether Ogden simply made up the whole story as a publicity stunt. In any case, her decision to go public with it was poorly judged, as it underlines her utter ignorance of her subject. She even alludes to the discredited Bluebeard link by insisting that her husband’s family have “cobalt-blue hair”, presumably inherited from a literally blue-bearded "ancestor"  whose line did not long outlast the 15th century. 

Few things are clear in the complicated story of Gilles de Rais. But this much is certain: if you encounter someone who claims to be his descendant, that person is either lying or deluded. 


Gilles' line ends at the bottom of the chart. 1520 is a typo for 1502. 


Monday 4 January 2021

Mr Fox - the English Bluebeard

Lady Mary was young, and Lady Mary was fair. She had two brothers, and more lovers than she could count. But of them all, the bravest and most gallant, was a Mr. Fox, whom she met when she was down at her father’s country-house. No one knew who Mr. Fox was; but he was certainly brave, and surely rich, and of all her lovers, Lady Mary cared for him alone. At last it was agreed upon between them that they should be married. Lady Mary asked Mr. Fox where they should live, and he described to her his castle, and where it was; but, strange to say, did not ask her, or her brothers to come and see it.

So one day, near the wedding-day, when her brothers were out, and Mr. Fox was away for a day or two on business, as he said, Lady Mary set out for Mr. Fox’s castle. And after many searchings, she came at last to it, and a fine strong house it was, with high walls and a deep moat. And when she came up to the gateway she saw written on it:

Be Bold, Be Bold.

But as the gate was open, she went through it, and found no one there. So she went up to the doorway, and over it she found written:

Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold.

Still she went on, till she came into the hall, and went up the broad stairs till she came to a door in the gallery, over which was written:

Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold, Lest That Your Heart’s Blood Should Run Cold.

But Lady Mary was a brave one, she was, and she opened the door, and what do you think she saw? Why, bodies and skeletons of beautiful young ladies all stained with blood. So Lady Mary thought it was high time to get out of that horrid place, and she closed the door, went through the gallery, and was just going down the stairs, and out of the hall, when who should she see through the window, but Mr. Fox dragging a beautiful young lady along from the gateway to the door. Lady Mary rushed downstairs, and hid herself behind a cask, just in time, as Mr. Fox came in with the poor young lady who seemed to have fainted. Just as he got near Lady Mary, Mr. Fox saw a diamond ring glittering on the finger of the young lady he was dragging, and he tried to pull it off. But it was tightly fixed, and would not come off, so Mr. Fox cursed and swore, and drew his sword, raised it, and brought it down upon the hand of the poor lady. The sword cut off the hand, which jumped up into the air, and fell of all places in the world into Lady Mary’s lap. Mr. Fox looked about a bit, but did not think of looking behind the cask, so at last he went on dragging the young lady up the stairs into the Bloody Chamber.

As soon as she heard him pass through the gallery, Lady Mary crept out of the door, down through the gateway, and ran home as fast as she could.

Now it happened that the very next day the marriage contract of Lady Mary and Mr. Fox was to be signed, and there was a splendid breakfast before that. And when Mr. Fox was seated at table opposite Lady Mary, he looked at her. “How pale you are this morning, my dear.” “Yes," said she, “I had a bad night’s rest last night. I had horrible dreams.” “Dreams go by contraries,” said Mr. Fox; “but tell us your dream, and your sweet voice will make the time pass till the happy hour comes.”

“I dreamed,” said Lady Mary, “that I went yestermorn to your castle, and I found it in the woods, with high walls, and a deep moat, and over the gateway was written:

Be Bold, Be Bold.

“But it is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr. Fox.

“And when I came to the doorway over it was written:

Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold.

“It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr. Fox.

“And then I went upstairs, and came to a gallery, at the end of which was a door, on which was written:

Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not Too Bold, Lest That Your Heart’s Blood Should Run Cold.

“It is not so, nor it was not so,” said Mr. Fox.

“And then–and then I opened the door, and the room was filled with bodies and skeletons of poor dead women, all stained with their blood.”

“It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so," said Mr. Fox.

“I then dreamed that I rushed down the gallery, and just as I was going down the stairs, I saw you, Mr. Fox, coming up to the hall door, dragging after you a poor young lady, rich and beautiful.”

“It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so," said Mr. Fox.

“I rushed downstairs, just in time to hide myself behind a cask, when you, Mr. Fox, came in dragging the young lady by the arm. And, as you passed me, Mr. Fox, I thought I saw you try and get off her diamond ring, and when you could not, Mr. Fox, it seemed to me in my dream, that you out with your sword and hacked off the poor lady’s hand to get the ring.”

“It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so," said Mr. Fox, and was going to say something else as he rose from his seat, when Lady Mary cried out:

“But it is so, and it was so. Here’s hand and ring I have to show," and pulled out the lady’s hand from her dress, and pointed it straight at Mr. Fox.

At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.



As part of my campaign to break the spurious link between Gilles de Rais and Bluebeard, here is the story of Mr Fox, the English Bluebeard. There are many, many other tales with similar elements - the forbidden room, the murderous husband or fiancé - but this happens to be a personal favourite of mine. From the delicious sing-song opening - "Lady Mary was young and Lady Mary was fair"- to the final call and response dialogue leading to the abrupt ending, it maintains a perfect tension. 

The significant point about this old folktale is that it is alluded to by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing - Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor 'twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so'. The play was written around 1598 or 1599, and even then Mr Fox was an "old tale". 

Perrault's Bluebeard was written in 1697, almost a century later. It can hardly be said that the uxoricidal spouse trope was invented by him, or indeed that the unknown English author of Mr Fox was inspired by Gilles de Rais. 

The truth is that the Abbé Bossard,  who was writing a thesis in the discipline of French Literature, knew even less about folklore than he did about history. Gilles de Rais had never been compared to Bluebeard until the mid-nineteenth century, when the idea first emerged and was seized on by Paul Lacroix, the Bibliophile Jacob. Bossard accepted Lacroix's clearly forged account of the trial and with it his assertion that Gilles had a literal blue beard and was nicknamed for it. Thus he had an entirely original (because false) topic for his thesis, which was his sole aim. The absolutely bogus link between the folktale ogre and the alleged child-murderer came into being solely because subsequent biographers simply could not be bothered to do their own research, but were content to lean on Bossard's dubious assertions. 

Gilles de Rais was not the original of Bluebeard. 

It is not so, nor 'twas not so, but, indeed, 

God forbid it should be so...


Here is a useful list of folk tales similar to Bluebeard, compiled by the excellent Sur La Lune site. They are categorised as  types ATU 312, ATU 310, and ATU 955 in the  Aarne-Thompson-Uther index.

https://www.surlalunefairytales.com/a-g/bluebeard/bluebeard-related.html

The Execution of Gilles de Rais, by Jean Chartier



Concerning a heretic lawfully executed in Brittany

In this same year (1440), the Duke of Brittany caused to be seized and lawfully arrested and imprisoned Monseigneur Gilles de Raiz, Marshal of France, because it was said that he had killed and had others kill several small children, and that he did many astonishing things against the Faith thinking to attain his intentions and desires, by the temptations and lures of the Enemy [ie the Devil], and also on the advice (so they say) of a man named Gilles de Sillé and others among his servants. And the aforesaid lord of Raiz was put on trial in Nantes by the principal judge of Brittany, Master Pierre de l'Hospital, and was condemned to death. And a gallows was made, a tall ladder beneath it, and under this gallows a great fire. And after he was tied to the gallows the said ladder was pulled from beneath his feet and the fire drew near his body, so that he was hanged and burned at the same time. And they say that he was fully penitent. 
And as soon as he was dead, the rope was cut and he was placed in a coffin by four or five ladies and maidens of high estate, and entombed with great ceremony in the Church of the Carmelites in Nantes. And the said Sillé had fled and left the country, and several others among his servants were similarly seized and executed. 

Jean Chartier was the official court chronicler to Charles VII and had a particular interest in Gilles de Rais. There is even speculation that he may have lived in his household for a while, since a man of that name was recorded as part of the entourage at Orléans, although the name must have been a common one. His account of the execution is likely to be reasonably accurate, although it is implied (disait-on qu'il eut bien bonne repentance) that he was not an eye witness. The phrasing might, however, merely express scepticism: for a short passage, there is a lot of on dit. 

* This is a very loose translation and suggestions are welcome. In particular, the word amonnestement (which is almost certainly a misspelling) was strongly resistant to being rendered into English; I have used the word "lures", which seemed to come closest to the sense. I have not translated the footnotes, which add little to the text and were written by a much later editor.