The Erl-King

O who rides by night thro' the woodland so wild?

It is the fond father embracing his child;

And close the boy nestles within his loved arm.

To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm.

"O father, see yonder! see yonder!" he says;

"My boy, upon what dost thou fearfully gaze?"

"O, 'tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud."

"No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud."

(The Erl-King speaks)

"O come and go with me, thou loveliest child;

By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled;

My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy,

And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy."

"O father, my father, and did you not hear

The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?"

"Be still, my heart's darling--my child, be at ease;

It was but the wild blast as it sung thro' the trees."

Erl-King

"O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy?

My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy;

She shall bear thee so lightly thro' wet and thro' wild,

And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child."

"O father, my father, and saw you not plain

The Erl-King's pale daughter glide past thro' the rain?"

"O yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon;

It was the gray willow that danced to the moon."

Erl-King

"O come and go with me, no longer delay,

Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away."

"O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,

The Erl-King has seized me-- his grasp is so cold!

Sore trembled the father; he spurr'd thro' the wild,

Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;

He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,

But, clasp'd to his bosom, the infant was dead.

Sir Walter Scott's translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's original German

Illustration by Albert Edward Sterner, 1910

The original can be found here, with literal translation. As we see, Scott has daintified the ending of the poem somewhat, to remove the element of rape. Other translators render these lines more accurately -

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."

(Edgar A. Bowring, 1853)

Obviously, this is only a Hallowe'en blog post, mildly entertaining (to those who like Romantic German poetry in translation) and with only a  tangential connection to Gilles de Rais. 

Or is it? 

We know, because I have been banging this drum since I was sixteen, that Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard. Those who argue that Charles Perrault based his uxoricidal spouse on an alleged child-murderer - rather than, say, the alleged wife-killer Comorre the Cursed - lamely argue that Gilles' story was so horrifying that it had to be bowdlerised for fairy tales. Well, fairy tales were written for adults and they were strong meat, as the Grimms demonstrated. 

And here we see once more folklore out-Heroding Herod. The King of the Alders, like some latter-day Zeus, becomes enamoured of a mortal boy and seizes him to be his cup-bearer or catamite. Scott may shrink from the sexual implications, but Goethe did not. The parallels with the traditional image of Gilles de Rais are hard to avoid.  

I am not the first to point this out. Before he wrote his novella Gilles et Jeanne, Michel Tournier dabbled with the subject in a war story called Le Roi des Aulnes, (The Erl-King) where the antihero is  Abel Tiffauges and he rides a  horse named Barbe Bleue. To my mind, it is a far better book than Gilles et Jeanne and probably Tournier's masterpiece. And although he throws Bluebeard into the mix, probably to elucidate matters for the dim ones at the back of the class, he is quite clear: Gilles is the Erl-King. 

 For those who just can't get enough of the Erl-King, here is a blog on the subject, which includes the Bowring translation. 

POSTSCRIPT There is a strong link between the Erl-King and the Wild Hunt, as this story illustrates -

"A tale was told in Devon, England of a farmer who returned late one night from Widecombe Fair, somewhat the worse for the ale he had drunk, but able to guide his mare along the muddy lanes that led to his village. Wind raged in the trees around him, and flashes of lightning bleached the rattling branches. When rain began to fall, he pulled his hat down to protect his face and neck.

At length, he found his horse knee-deep in yelping hounds. The dogs danced impatiently at his stirrups. He looked up: A black-clad huntsman stood motionless before him, astride a gleaming black horse. The huntsman’s own broad-brimmed hat hid his face in the shadow. There were bodies – of what animals the farmer could not tell – slung across the huntsman’s saddle.

The farmer noted the great lord’s booty and, in his distinctly bibulous state, cackled with laughter. “Huntsman, share your spoils,” said he.

The huntsman looked down at him and shrugged and laughed in his turn. He tossed a parcel at the farmer, wheeled his horse and disappeared into the night, taking his hounds with him.

With rain-slicked hands, the farmer fumbled at the parcel. The wrappings fell away, and the man started violently. The parcel held the body of his small son, blue and stiff. Yet when the farmer blinked and looked again, all he saw were his own wet hands. He kicked his mare and sped home as fast as the beast could travel. His wife awaited him, wailing. The infant boy she held in her arms was dead."

The version I know relates to the Gabriel Ratchets, the belief that the strange barking sound of skeins of geese flying overhead in autumn is in fact the hounds of the Wild Hunt. A peasant was sitting by his fire and heard them fly over, and like a fool he shouted "Huntsman, share your spoils!" There was a loud crashing noise as something fell down the chimney - it was half a human torso. For some reason I prefer that version, although the other is arguably darker.

I have never found my version anywhere, and nor can I find the book I quoted the Devon story from. So if you do go down that rabbit hole, let me know if you find either. 

Gilles de Rais Day 2024

 Standing at the stake, Gilles de Rais asks forgiveness for his crimes from the crowd of onlookers.

Illustration by Alfred Paris, taken from Les Brigands by Frantz Funck-Brentano, 1913

Of course, all the words put into Gilles de Rais' mouth, at his trial and execution, were inventions. Since he died convicted of sodomy,  the record of his trial should have been burned on his pyre with him. Instead, it was edited & multiple copies made to serve as a cautionary parable of sin and repentance. 

Gilda Rice, the Dark Knight of Paris, and other AI Horrors

YouTube has looked favourably on Artificial Intelligence for some years, but it is only quite recently that it has impinged on my little corner of history. Over the past few months a suspicious number of shorts about Gilles de Rais have been appearing. They all have brand new illustrations, although they mostly do not look particularly fifteenth century.. 

The main giveaway is that the integral subtitles, and sometimes even the titles themselves, are laughably misspelt. So we find -

Giold de Rais

Gilda Rice

Jilas Derais

Gillister Rice

Gil Dorae

Giladerese

Gila Deriz

Giel da Reyes

He is routinely called Jill. At one point his surname is rendered as Darius.

Prelati is once memorably rendered as "Pilate". 

Please note, these are not the auto-generated subtitles YouTube provides, which are routinely hilarious. These are part of the videos and cannot be turned off and on. 

So far so funny, but the content is similarly distorted. Bizarrely, Gilles is executed by guillotine in one video. AI really cannot cope with his mode of death, so he may be hanged, burned, hanged and burned (not necessarily in that order), or sentenced to be burned but the sentence commuted to hanging.

One of his alleged crimes is "prostitution", apparently. There is a reference to Brittany, France, which is as wrong as it gets. The title I borrowed for this post is real; there are now people in YouTubeland who think that Gilles (or Gilda) stalked the streets of Paris like a French Jack the Ripper. For the record, Paris was occupied by the Burgundian allies of the English; Jehanne was unable to liberate it and Gilles never set foot inside its walls. 

Certain phrases, mostly connected with satanic rituals and a descent into infamy, are recycled endlessly. AI clearly feeds on clickbait, and when it starts feeding on itself we shall really see some fun. 

And if this is happening to Gilles de Rais, imagine the other disinformation being created out there, and the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who will swallow it unquestioningly. 

Now more than ever, just because you read it on the internet does not make it true. Caveat lector.

Gilles de Rais rides a bike in Hartlepool, AI image courtesy of David J Allenby 

 

GOD is dead

This is an old picture of David Allenby, my partner of forty-something years, who died today. He was a man of many names - William Braquemard, GOD (Good Old Dave), Dr Allingham. He collaborated with me on the book and I don't think it would have made it into print without him. I did mention him in the acknowledgements, likewise he has a name-check on the film, but I can never thank him enough. I shall miss him forever. 

This is the first poem I wrote about him -

Breakfast with Doctor Allingham

(for DJA)

He prefers it Continental-style.

The obscene dripping sausages of the Britons,

the bacon with its visible fat and cunt-taste,

the almost too-symbolical eggs -

these disgust his sensitive palate.

He sits like an emperor in his bay-window

which overlooks the fertile cemetery.

It is almost October. Fruits are in season.

Ripely they fall to his open hand.

Breakfast with him involves all of the senses.

"A woman for children," he pronounces,

"A boy for pleasure. A melon for ecstasy.

Old Turkish proverb, that." He sinks his teeth

up to the gums in moony flesh

and relishes the juices as they flow:

his fine moustaches are clipped back daily

lest they should trap one liquid drop.

His breakfast-companions, whether male or female,

listen, and watch his gourmandise,

and find that they are almost flattered

to see themselves so deliciously betrayed.

He breaks the tight skins of small, sweet apples;

probes with his tongue a fresh-split fig;

succulent oranges bleed for him

as he strips a pear to its naked core

or kisses the velvety cleft of a peach.

Clusters of grapes like Diana of Ephesus

he crushes and sucks with lascivious appetite;

strawberries that bruise at the touch of a finger

lie virgin, lapped in smoothest cream.

Melons, whether musk or honeydew,

nectarine, apricot, muscat, medlar

yield to this promiscuous epicure.

All flesh is fruit, and should be plucked

while glowing, fragrant, plump and lush,

ripe to the brink of rottenness -

not hang and shrivel untasted on the tree.

Or so says Doctor Allingham, replete,

and gazing from his breakfast-room window

at the opulent autumn cemetery.

And here is his photo blog Hull and Hereabouts. I hesitated to post this because he ended it in 2020 with several rants. But which of us reacted well to lockdown? And, with a PhD in biochemistry, he knew rather more about "the Science" than you or I. But you can skip those bits.  

He had some wonderful photos and witty commentaries. The blog is a joy, do scroll through it. You'll get more of a sense of the man than I can convey. 

Au revoir, Davey-Jo

Blowing my own trumpet

When I began this blog, I really had no idea what to post, so often I just put up links to interesting sites. That was over a decade ago; we've come a long way since then. However, here, with little comment, are a couple of pieces on Edmund Stenson's short film about my work. The title says it all. 

Blog post by Andrea Silgardi  

Review by Joseph Perry

You can find 'The Martyr' here

Mythbusting #2

 

That there was a book so lurid that reading it tempted Gilles de Rais into crime

While sorting out the Gilles de Rais myths that need busting, I decided to give low priority to the Corrupting Book that supposedly triggered his crimes. That particular myth had died out, I thought.  Jacques Heers was peddling it in 1994, but that was thirty years ago and Heers is not as well thought of now as he was then. 

And now, voilà! Up it springs again, undead, complete with a "quote" to support it. 

The story, invented by the Bibliophile Jacob, is that  Gilles possessed an illustrated copy of Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, which was the inspiration for his depravities.  Lacroix has Henriet, as his librarian, translating it to him and Gilles, aroused, committing his first crimes the same night. Bossard  enthusiastically adopted this narrative 

Anybody who has looked into Suetonius will know that there are some highly lubricious anecdotes about the Emperors, Tiberius especially. Those who claim that the Inquisition could not possibly have imagined the acts attributed to de Rais should note that  there were precedents. And also that Suetonius' claims, too, have been disputed. The human imagination is far more versatile than folks think. 

One can see why someone trying to craft a compelling story out of the trials of Gilles de Rais might want to make up a back story to account for what would otherwise be quite inexplicable atrocities. For there is a gaping hole at the heart of the allegations against Gilles - the little matter of motivation. We are offered three motives, which conflict with each other. So did he kill for pleasure? Or was he sacrificing children to the Devil? Or, as the ever-practical Henriet asserted in a seldom-quoted aside, simply to ensure that his victims could never tell tales? 

Some writers have attempted to square the circle by asserting that Gilles started with child sacrifices and grew to enjoy the bloodshed. Unfortunately, this clashes violently  with the timeline. The murders are alleged to have started in 1432 at the latest; it was Prelati who suggested offering body parts to the Devil, and he only arrived in mid-1439. This offering up of the hand, heart, eyes and blood of an already-dead child is the only example of anything resembling human sacrifices. The whole Satanic Rites of Bluebeard narrative is based on a few headers in the civil trial, and these were almost certainly added at a later date.

This is the confected quote that is suddenly appearing in a number of online articles -

Là-dessus, je décidai d'imiter lesdits Césars, et le même soir, je commençai à le faire en suivant les images reproduites dans le livre... »

[Whereupon I decided to imitate the aforesaid Caesars, and that same evening, I began to do so by following the images reproduced in the book...]

These words do not appear in the trial record or in any other contemporary source. They were written in the mid-1980s by historian Maurice Lever, closely following the myth created by Paul Lacroix, the Bibliophile Jacob. Please note that although Lever was an historian, his period was the 17th and18th centuries, not the 15th. M. Lever had never laid eyes on the trial documents, far less studied them. Why would he? He was merely referencing Gilles in a book, Les Bûchers de Sodome, dealing with the criminalisation of homosexuality. 

 The quote is bogus, as is the whole narrative. It illustrates how little respect even genuine historians have shown for the truth about Gilles de Rais.

Further reading -

The Bibliophile Jacob

The AI image at the top of the page is taken from Reddit, with thanks. 

Mythbusting: check out that cliché!

 The most recent blog post is the first in what may well be a near-endless "Mythbusting" series, which will eventually have its own separate page. Inevitably, there will be some repetition. Some posts will probably be what my nemesis, Wikipedia, calls "stubs", concisely stating the facts and linking through to other posts where the matter has been discussed in detail.

This is necessary because, with the traditionalist rawhead-and-bloody-bones propagandists on the back foot, most of the disinformation comes from amateur commenters on social media who base their theories on moonshine and fairy dust. These ignorant assertions must not be allowed to stand, because if unchallenged they will spread like the plague, and having counter-arguments readily available will help me and others to quash them.

There is more absolute tosh written about Gilles de Rais than almost any other subject. For more than five hundred years, what little was written about him was fictionalized. When, in the late nineteenth century, he finally received what is often (erroneously) called an "authoritative" biography by Eugène Bossard, many errors were simply baked into the narrative. Bossard was not a historian: he was writing a thesis in the discipline of French literature. He has Gilles born in the wrong place (Machecoul rather than Champtocé), claims his mother remarried when she actually died, gets the birth year of his brother René out by seven years, and repeats as fact several legends about the corrupting book, the dead fiancées, and the veiling of the crucifix. Later biographers merely copied his errors rather than doing their own studies. 

The word cliché was originally a technical term from the early days of printing When pages had to be set up laboriously with metal type, a word that was often used was kept ready made so that it could simply be dropped into the text to save time. This is exactly how the internet works. A particularly juicy piece of misinformation will be C & P-ed everywhere. This was how a monumentally sloppy piece of Wikipedia editing became a sex act so shocking that even the Inquisition couldn't invent it - "he cut their heads off and ****ed the hole!" This little gem still crops up here and there occasionally. 

The people who repeat this drivel have never read the trial record. Some of them may never have picked up a book since they left school. They steal whatever appeals to their perverse little minds, without question or comprehension. The pieces of clickbait they steal may well have been already stolen and edited, and will be stolen and edited in their turn in a nightmare process of Chinese whispers. 

So whenever you see a literal cliché, a phrase that pops up unchanged on various sites, you are seeing undigested data that is almost certainly wrong. That there were no mediaevalists involved in the 1992 retrial, that Gilles was born "no earlier than 1405", that "most historians" believe that he was guilty... No thought at all has gone into cutting and pasting these stock phrases. Proceed with caution.  

IMPORTANT NOTE: I hope it is abundantly clear that this blog is a resource. Use it however you want. Feel free to link to it, quote it, refer to it, paraphrase it. This information needs to be out there. Spread the word, with my blessing and my thanks. 

Mythbusting #1

That human remains were found in any of the castles of Gilles de Rais either during his lifetime or more recently

One of the most common tropes in online discussions is "but bodies were found!" This is largely because of the Chinese Whispers effect, and also because Joe Public is unable to distinguish between evidence and allegations.

The prosecution claimed that "suspicious" ashes and a bloodstained, stinking child's chemise were found at Machecoul. Not, please note, in the château as you might expect, but in a small hovel of ill repute on the outskirts of the village, where Blanchet and Prelati lived for a short time. Nobody has ever claimed that any murders or magical operations took place there or that Gilles ever visited it. It was a tiny building with, obviously, a correspondingly small fireplace and chimney, so burning bodies to ashes there would have been completely out of the question. 

The other allegation that is regularly treated as indisputable fact is the supposed discovery of a barrel" or "conduit" (the word used is ambiguous) full of children's bones at Champtocé. This has entered into contemporary myth to the point where a 1900 fantasy picture of Gilles' arrest has become current on the internet. The image shows him pinioned, brutish and hangdog,  watching while a barrel of bones is tipped over in front of him. It goes without saying that nothing of the kind happened

The myth of the cache of children's bones comes in the testimony of Guillaume Hilairet, an interesting serial witness who is also named as a "person of interest". He did not, himself, see the thing he reported, he was merely repeating what he was told by one Jean Jeudon. It is, in fact, classic ouϊ-dire (hearsay) evidence. M. Jeudon, like all the alleged eyewitnesses, does not appear in court. 

Many of the people who claim that "bones were found" imagine that they have been found recently. Occasionally somebody asks if the castles have been excavated and whether skeletal remains were dug up. Indeed, there have been excavations, unsurprisingly. Nothing incriminating has ever been unearthed. 

Here is a recent post about excavations of the sousterrains of Tiffauges. Inevitably, one ghoul could not contain herself & was politely but firmly told: No. No bones at all. Other commenters challenged her about the Champtocé claim. She was unable to defend her assertion. 

Further reading -

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones...

The Template of Normality

Just a little funny to let you all know I'm still here and still working towards the complete rehabilitation of Gilles de Rais. Expect more blog posts soon.

These stills were taken from Edmund Stenson's beautiful little short film, The Martyr, which you should watch if you haven't seen it already. Yes, that is me, & yes I do talk just like that, this was unscripted. 

Gilles de Rais Day 2023

Gilles de Rais 
Etienne Corillaut
Henri Griart
I will be their advocate till I die.  

Illustration by Quentin Faucompré

 

New Page

My two short essays on the case for the defence are now available together on a new Page.

http://www.gillesderaiswasinnocent.co.uk/p/gilles-de-rais-case-for-defence-parts-1.html

Truth knows no season: in memory of Kathleen Lehman

On June 27th 2022, Team Gilles (as I call it) lost an illustrious member with the death of Kathleen Lehman. 

I exchanged emails with her for a while in the late nineties and will always regret that we lost touch. She was an original thinker and I wish that the book she planned to write had reached fruition. For a long time, she was the only person I knew of who shared my crazy notions about Gilles de Rais. 

Her dense and thoughtful essay, which graced the internet for two or three years at the turn of the century, will probably have been seen by few. I feel privileged to have read it, and still lament its loss, although if it had remained online I would possibly not have felt the need for this blog, which led directly to my book. Lehman struck a chord in me; she had discovered Gilles at fifteen, as I had, and developed a similar conviction of his innocence. On the other side of the Atlantic, she had uncovered the same flaws in the traditional narrative that I had, and drawn the same conclusions. I felt less alone. Her closing words had a particular resonance - 

It may be argued that the details of the life of Gilles de Rais are of no importance to the modern day, but they will always ultimately be important to Gilles de Rais, and truth knows no season. To bring him in death the justice which he did not receive in life is my pre-eminent goal.

Rest In Power, Kathy. 

 Official obituary of Kathleen Lehman here

The Martyr - an update

 In 2020 I announced that The Martyr, a short film by Edmund Stenson, would be "coming soon". On reflection, "soon" was a bit optimistic. Before it could have a permanent home on the internet, it had to do the rounds of the film festivals, most of which it was a tad too weird for. However, it did win Best Short Documentary at both Atlanta Shortsfest and FilmQuest.

It will take up 15 minutes of your time and is well worth it. You get to see me, and my dolls, and my Collyer brothers style home. And there are delightful illustrations by Robbie Ward, like the one below. 

It is available free-to-view in two places - 

YouTube  https://youtu.be/LBYgr7L-NSk

and Vimeo  https://vimeo.com/717518870 

from February 4th 2023.

Do watch, enjoy, and share. Reviews and comments welcome. 

A Childermass conundrum

At Orléans in 1434 Gilles de Rais  is supposed to have signed an infamous procuration, or deed of attorney, that put the management of his finances into the hands of Roger de Bricqueville. There are several reasons to be suspicious of this document. Firstly, there is no proof whatsoever that Bricqueville was in Orléans; he & Sillé are both omitted from the list of Gilles' entourage. Secondly, the document was dated 28th December, Holy Innocents Day, which, given that Bricqueville was accorded the right to marry off the infant Marie de Rais to whoever he chose, strikes an ominous chord to many writers. However, Gilles is consistently presented to us as a superstitious man, and Holy Innocents Day, or Childermass,  was regarded as the unluckiest day of the year, so ill-starred that the day it fell on was deemed unlucky for the whole year. Any enterprise begun on it would be doomed to failure. It seems highly improbable that Gilles, as a man of his time and one who particularly venerated the child martyrs, would have risked entering into such a vital contract on that day of all days. Also, it should be noted that Bricqueville never did arrange a marriage for young Marie, even though she was a good match; her late great grandfather Jean de Craon would certainly have found her a husband with no qualms at all. 

The Coventry Carol - "Herod the king in his raging..." 

Le Massacre des Innocents by Nicolas Poussin, 1628

Gilles de Rais Day 2022

 Ne craignez point la mort de ce monde, ce petit trépas...  

Illustration by Robbie Ward from the short film The Martyr

Beyond Copypasta

Time for another Bluebeardery and Copypasta post, I think, as we've been serious for a long time.

Some people come up with the most bizarre ideas and I'd love to know where they get them from -

But, sadly, they never tell me. They drift off, never to return. A proper cliff-hanger, you might say. 

Some commenters have noticed that the Shrek villain Lord Farquaad looks like Gilles de Rais, though they usually get it back to front and wonder why Gilles de Rais looks like Farquaaad. Clearly because Eloi Féron way back in the 19th century took his influence from Disney, dude. Others go even further astray -

Obviously, a topic like this offers great opportunities to be as edgy as hell, but that only works if nobody pops up to tell you how you got it all wrong -

It's important to point out to me how very weird I am for caring about the most egregious historic miscarriage of justice of all time -

And that old chestnut, "Gilles de Rais is my ancestor!" Which doesn't give them quite the épater les bourgeois distinctiveness they imagine -

I often think I should organise a get-together of all his descendants. Might be fun. 

Selection of idiocies -

Finally, the kind of foot-stamping that always draws me in -

Why do I respond to these idiots? Because, unless they dirty delete as they occasionally do, these posts are there for good. What I try to do is refute the lies in an entertaining way for future browsers. My motto has always been: seize the narrative. Looking at recent comments on more serious forums, it seems to be working. 

[The comments in this post were taken from Twitter and YouTube]

 

Printing the legend

While writing my book, and indeed in this blog, I always avoided following the various Jehanne alternative narratives down their various rabbit holes. This was a deliberate decision. I was heavily invested in the theory of Gilles de Rais' innocence, which was quite controversial when I began my work, and that was enough to make me look eccentric. I didn't need any more conspiracy theories to make me seem like a crazy woman. So - was Jehanne, in fact, a by-blow of nobility? Other than pointing out that she was not a lowly peasant but a gently-raised girl who certainly never tended the flocks, as she herself  indignantly asserted, I didn't go there. On the vexed issue of the False Pucelle, Jeanne des Armoises, I had no choice, since Gilles espoused her cause, but I took a conservative view -

The question must be asked: could Claude des Armoises have been the real Jehanne, somehow saved from burning? Rumours of her survival had proliferated from the moment of her death, and one chronicler wrote finalement la firent ardre publiquement, ou aultre femme en semblable d'elle [finally she was burned publicly, or another woman who looked like her], allowing for the possibility of some substitution. Francis Leary admitted that the only way this could have been done was before the handover to the English, since they had only seen her from a distance, in armour and helmet, and had little idea what she looked like. According to this unlikely theory, a false Jehanne stood trial and went to the stake in her place. Even Leary finds this scenario improbable, and a substitution at the last minute would have been next to impossible. Sadly, it is almost certain that the real Jehanne was handed over to her enemies, subjected to an unfair trial and executed. As we have seen, Gilles' own behaviour encourages this melancholy conclusion: he behaved consistently like a man bereaved and plunged into the deepest depression. He may have been temporarily fooled by a False Jehanne, or he may have used her knowingly for his political ends. But in the end, she was a forgery, like the tinsel that Prelati tried to pass off as gold.

[From my book, The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais]

These contentious issues were addressed directly in a 1961 book called Operation Shepherdess, by André Guérin and Jack Palmer White, described as "ineffably surreal" by The St Joan Centre. For many years I had a copy of this book on my shelves but, inexplicably,  I never read it. Then, a decade or more ago, it disappeared during a house move. I searched diligently, but it never reappeared, and I didn't need it for the book so I put it to the back of my mind. Recently I thought I might buy another copy - it's long out of print but not hard to obtain - and finally get round to reading it. 

Well. A quick flick through the index soon explained why I didn't bother with it all those years ago. From a promising start, the text went off the rails in the third sentence - "Moscow"? What?

... Gilles de Rais, whom Charles VII named Marshal of France after the Coronation in 1429, when de Rais was but twenty-five.

A very wealthy Breton, the newly honoured Marshal assembled about him workers of precious metals, silversmiths, jewellers, weavers, lace-makers and engravers of arms, also clowns, monks, troubadours, astrologers, and alchemists. [So far, so good.] The renown of his library reached Moscow. The councillors of Henry VI of England modelled the royal stables on his. Eventually, however, he fell into the hands of unscrupulous magicians, necromancers, sorcerers, and sundry mountebanks. Increasingly excited by them, he drove the artists away and, in the countryside around his château, inaugurated a reign of terror which ended only when he was hanged and burned by the Duke of Brittany at the age of thirty-six for having offered up to the Devil numberless women, especially his wives, and over 1,000 small children. Because he not only refused to be clean-shaven like the rest of the courtiers but had recourse to dye, he was popularly known as Bluebeard.

Numberless women! Wives! A thousand children! Bluebeard! This, of course, is the heavily mythologised version of Gilles that prevailed in the early sixties - Klossowski's modern French translation of the trial record was not published until 1965. It is painfully clear that, however deeply the authors researched Jehanne, they spent not even five minutes on her second in command. The notorious beard betrays its Shavian origins - Gilles is seen  "sporting the extravagance of a little curled beard dyed blue at a clean-shaven court", and, like Shaw, the authors thereafter routinely call him Bluebeard.

Perhaps, like me, Guérin and White merely wanted to concentrate on their protagonist without being distracted by the peripheral characters. However, they could not have provided a more salutary example of the dangers of printing the legend: when the reader comes across a serially polygamous, uxoricidal, beard-dying Gilles de Rais on page twenty of Operation Shepherdess, how likely is that reader to believe anything else in that text? 

Tryphina, Comorre, and the four dead wives

[This is an extract from The Martyrdom of Gilles de Rais. The tale is written in my own words, as it seemed wrong to steal an existing version.]

Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard. No matter how desperately the Abbé Bossard tried to make the connection, arguably to the point of falsifying evidence to support his case, he never came close to justifying his thesis. In fact, Bossard was completely ignorant about folklore: popular tales seldom have one single source, and the Bluebeard motifs appear in myths from all over the world. If Perrault had been minded to take his inspiration from close to home, however, there was a tale of a Breton nobleman who was a serial uxoricide: Comorre, or Comor (the name is variously spelt). Many have argued that he was a far more likely Bluebeard than Gilles. Bossard was aware of this theory, but rejected Comorre completely; he insisted that the story bore no resemblance at all to the Bluebeard legend. Here is the story: judge for yourself.

Tryphina was the only daughter of the Count of Vannes, although she had four brothers. In some versions, her mother died when she was a child. In all versions, she was the prototypical fairy tale heroine, as good as she was beautiful, a combination that always seems to call down misfortune. Her father doted on her. 

When she grew into a young woman, a powerful lord named Comorre became enamoured of her and sent ambassadors to ask for her hand in marriage. He was twice her age and already a widower four times over, a giant of a man, terrifying in his aspect. Neither Tryphina nor her father was disposed to accept his proposal, in spite of the bribes that his representatives offered. However, the velvet glove hid an iron fist: when the Count politely declined, on the grounds of his daughter's youth, the ambassadors threatened war. 

Tryphina, distressed by the prospect of being the cause of a bloody conflict, consulted with Saint Gildas, a local holy man. He had little comfort for her. His advice was to save her people by sacrificing herself to her frightful suitor. He did promise, however, that one day he would bring her back safely to her father. 

So Tryphina dutifully married Comorre, and went with him to his own dark and menacing country. As one account expresses it, “Comorre carried off his young bride as a hawk carries off a little white dove.” She was well treated, because her new husband was genuinely fond of her, but she was deeply unhappy and spent much of  her time in the chapel, praying at the tombs of her four predecessors. 

After a few weeks, Comorre was compelled to leave his bride and travel to Rennes to attend a gathering of the princes of Brittany. He was absent for six months and, upon his return, was anxious to be reunited with his lovely wife, whom he had doubtless missed far more than she missed him. He entered her chamber, only to find her embroidering baby clothes. To her surprise, he paled and left her without uttering a word. Tryphina realised that she was in peril, for reasons she could not understand. 

She hastened to the chapel and cowered by the four tombs. On the last stroke of midnight, the dead wives of Comorre appeared to her and warned her to flee back to her father, because her husband planned to kill her as he had killed them. They explained that there was a prophecy that Comorre would be destroyed by his own son: to escape his destiny, he murdered his wives as soon as they conceived. 

Tryphina asked how she could escape the castle, given that Comorre's fierce hound guarded the courtyard.

 The first wife handed her a cup and told her: “This poison killed me, it will do the same to the dog.” 

And how, Tryphina asked, should she climb the high wall? 

“Use this rope that strangled me,” said the second ghost. 

But how could she find her way through the dark forest? 

“With the fire that burned me,” said the third, handing her a blazing torch. 

And how could she ever walk so far? 

“Lean on this staff that cleft my brow,” said the final phantom bride. 

Tryphina took the fatal gifts and fled into the night. Comorre was following close behind, however, and finally she was betrayed by an old magpie that overheard her laments and repeated them. Her husband caught her and struck her head off with his sword. 

This should have been the end of her story, but she was found lying dead in the woods by her grief-stricken father and Saint Gildas. The holy man told her father not to mourn: he bade Tryphina to rise up, and when she did he set her head firmly back on her shoulders. Thus he kept his word and brought her safely home, where in time she gave birth to a son. 

The child duly fulfilled the prophecy that his father had dreaded. When still a young boy, he idly threw a handful of stones against the wall of Comorre's castle. Magically, the walls crumbled into ruin and the tyrant died in their fall.

Magpie by Natalia Mikhalchuk

A Likely Story #7

One of the most spectacular set pieces in the allegations against Gilles de Rais is the ferrying of forty decaying cadavers downriver, from Champtocé to Machecoul, for cremation. Bossard paints a delightful picture of this episode, with the barge waiting under the willows; Prouteau sardonically calls it a barque dantesque. In the prosaic words of the trial record, we merely have Henriet remarking that the remains were transported "by water". 

The reasons for this Gothic journey need not detain us long. Gilles was about to hand the castle of Champtocé over to the Duke of Brittany; for complex political reasons, this could only be done by pretending to take it by force from his brother, who was currently occupying it. The token army of about twenty men was accompanied by the Chancellor of Brittany, Jean de Malestroit, presumably to oversee the handover. So everything that took place happened with Gilles' future judge on the premises, an embarrassing fact that is often glossed over. 

None of this is disputed, although the date is unclear. Most commentators have it as June 1438. So in all probability, the Dantean barge processed down the Loire with its cargo of dead children at the height of summer, when nights are short and days long. Note too that Machecoul was supposedly taken by René de la Suze in November 1437; there is no record of how or when Gilles reclaimed it. 

Now, René de la Suze had been living at Champtocé since October of the preceding year, so obviously the bodies were hidden in a reasonably safe place. For some reason, however, Gilles feared that they would be uncovered by Jean V, so it became necessary to exhume and dispose of them. They could hardly be burned on the spot - remember, the Bishop of Nantes was there and might have noticed. Hence the lengthy process of exhumation and the long journey to Machecoul, which could not be reached by river, so the final part had to be overland. Given the time of year, not all of this process could have been accomplished under cover of darkness.

The bodies were packed in one or two chests (accounts vary) and were burned at Machecoul. Apparently nobody in the castle or the village noticed the stinking smoke that must have resulted. Note that much is made, during the trial, of how the bodies were burned immediately. How a backlog of forty was allowed to build up under a tower at Champtocé, dating back to around 1432 presumably, and nobody ever noticed are questions which are not addressed. 

Gilles de Rais himself was supposed to have accompanied the remains on their final journey, since he was not a man to miss out on inhaling the stench of burning bodies. We are not told how his guest, Jean de Malestroit, felt about being left to entertain himself while his host was mysteriously absent for a period of many hours. Hospitality was important and Gilles' behaviour would have been seen as unspeakably rude. 

The events at Champtocé have an exact parallel at Machecoul in October of the preceding year. When he heard that René had taken Champtocé, Gilles panicked and had (again) around forty bodies exhumed and cremated. None of this is plausible, as Gilles never before or after displayed any fear of the brother who was by far his military inferior, but at least on this occasion there was no need for an excursion by river. The two episodes are so similar that many biographers confuse or deliberately conflate them. 

Gilbert Prouteau boggled at the sheer unlikelihood of the mass transportation of so many decomposed corpses by river and land over a distance of 111.4 kilometres (nearly 70 miles). Nous passons encore une fois les frontières de la vraisemblance [Once more we go beyond the bounds of credibility], he remarked, and it is hard to argue with him. 

A Likely Story #6

One of the set pieces of the trial is the case of Jean Hubert, aged fourteen, son of Jean and Nicole Hubert, who went missing in 1438. Georges Bataille asserts that, of all Gilles' victims, we know his fate the most precisely; in fact, the converse seems to be the case. At first, the lad's parents gave their testimony together. Their son was employed briefly by Princé, Pierre Jacquet, who was Gilles' herald at arms, but the arrangement did not work out, apparently because Jean was afraid of Princé's horse. He was then passed on to Henriet, who introduced him to a mysterious gentleman known as Spadin, or Spadine. It has been plausibly conjectured that this is a misspelling of the Scottish name Spalding. Henriet spoke of training the boy up as a valet to replace Poitou, improbably said to be leaving Gilles' service. We hear no more of this surprising career move on the part of Gilles' most devoted servant. 

The three internal witnesses – Gilles himself, Henriet and Poitou – are unanimous that Jean lodged at the Hôtel de la Suze in Nantes for eight days before being killed. However, Gilles was absent for four or five of those days. On his return, he was kind to the boy, had him clean his room, and gave him wine to drink and a loaf of bread to take to his parents. Jean did this, and then returned to La Suze. Shortly after, Spadine/Spalding called for M Hubert to ask where the child had gone, and there was an unseemly dispute over who had lost him. The parents made several complaints to Gilles' men and were told that “a Scotsman” had taken their son away. Now, young Jean had already told his parents that he did not want to go back to school because Spadine was going to take him “north” or “upriver”. He stayed with his parents for only one night between employers and seems to have been an adolescent who yearned to escape from his dull home life.

There was a run-in with one Mme Briand, wife of a kitchen employee called Jean Briand; she accused Mme Hubert of saying that Gilles killed her son, which the latter woman prudently denied. Mme Briand made an earlier appearance in the evidence, in relation to the disappearance of a boy named Delit. It is interesting that the conversation with Mme Hubert follows almost exactly the same course as the one with Mme Delit, concluding with Mme Briand's threat or warning that “she and the others would regret it”.

To complicate matters further, Nicole Hubert reappeared alone later in the trial, and contradicted the evidence she gave with her husband. This time, she did not mention her son meeting Gilles at all. The loaf of bread was a present from Spadine; in the earlier testimony, there were two loaves, one from Gilles and one from a servant called Simonnet, though the second loaf was intended for an unnamed woman in town. Princé has been edited out of the story altogether – in Mme Hubert's solo account, her son worked for a man called Mainguy, who died.

This case is unique in that it was affirmed by Gilles, his servants, and the parents of the missing child, among others. The only comparable case is that of Bernard le Camus, although he was reported missing by the man he lodged with rather than a relative.

Reading the accounts given at the trial, it is not easy to work out exactly what happened. Gilles' biographers get round this little difficulty in their usual fashion, by deciding on the narrative and editing out the contradictions.