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.

Was Gilles de Rais tortured?

We are told that Gilles de Rais confessed "voluntarily and without coercion", but this was merely an Inquisition formula; the same is said of his servants, and it is quite clear that their testimony was extracted forcibly. Most biographers state that Gilles' confession was produced merely by the threat of torture, and often there is an implication that he was a coward. It seems unlikely that he was allowed to escape physical interrogation, however, since at that period torture was used routinely, often merely to confirm a confession that had already been made.

On October 20th, after Gilles had made a rudimentary confession in court, in which the only crime he admitted to was alchemy, the prosecutor announced that he had established the case for the prosecution with this confession and the production of witnesses and their evidence. However, “in order that the truth might be further scrutinised and elucidated”, he asked the judges to have Gilles tortured. Malestroit and Blouyn then consulted with experts and concluded that Gilles should be put to the Question.

The court assembled at terce the next day and the previous day's events were recapped. Although the next day was already fixed for Gilles to present his argument, the judges decided to proceed with the torture immediately. The accused was then brought in and “humbly begged” for the torture to be deferred until the next day, reasonably pointing out that this was the day they had set aside for the purpose. He promised to deliberate on the transgressions he stood accused of, in the hope that he could satisfy them and so make torture unnecessary. He asked that the Bishop of St-Brieuc and Pierre de l'Hôpital – representing respectively the ecclesiastical and secular courts – should hear what he had to say. He made two stipulations: that this must be done somewhere away from the torture chamber, and that he would not talk to Malestroit and Blouyn, only to their representative. The judges readily assented, but would only delay the torture until 2pm of that same day. They conceded that if Gilles were to confess to all or even some of the charges, perhaps they might postpone the torture until the next day “because of their great affection for him”.  Note that at no point did they promise that he would not be tortured at all.

It is noticeable that apart from two passages of direct speech, there is very little in this so-called “out-of-court confession” that could not have been extracted from the articles of accusation, the statements of complainants, or various other points during the course of the trial; all of which were based on  Malestroit's secret letter of the 30th July. The only new information is the dating of the crimes, and even there Gilles refers only to sodomy and differs from the articles by six years. The rest is a mere formula, which Gilles was required to assent to in order to avert the threat of torture.

Gilles' public confession took place the next day, October 22nd, not in the morning, but in the evening; only one other sitting took place at vespers rather than terce, on October 17th, after the interrogation of Gilles' friends. It is almost certain that he was tortured in the interim. His judges had only promised that the torture would be deferred if he confessed, not waived. The most likely method would have been the water torture, an early form of waterboarding in which water was forced into the victim's body through a funnel in the mouth.

Gilles' rank did not spare him from being put to the Question. The confirmation comes in an unexpected form in Charles VII's letters patent of January 1443.  These documents are often dismissed as insincere, but the King expressed himself with great forcefulness for a man making a cynical political gesture. The key word in his letters is attentats, outrages, meaning that Gilles was subjected to severe ill treatment while in prison. This is the strongest possible implication that he was tortured.

A vexing, perplexing, vital book: my review of Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup

On June 17th 1992, The Guardian put a story headlined Second chance for Bluebeard on its front page. "More than 550 years after he was hanged and then burned" it began, with typical inaccuracy, "for offences ranging from sodomy to heresy, Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc's companion in arms, is to be retried in an official process of rehabilitation." This came as a pleasant shock to those of us who had long believed that Gilles was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. A few months later, the verdict was announced: Not guilty. This made news worldwide; the account in The Guardian, and also The New York Times, can be read online. Gilles de Rais' sudden return to the limelight, and rehabilitation, can be put down to one man, Vendéen novelist Gilbert Prouteau, and one book: this one.

Prouteau's masterpiece of revisionist literature has been cruelly treated by history, through no fault of his. It is easily the most influential book about Gilles de Rais ever published, as it is essentially the case for the defence which was put to a special court of appeal under the auspices of UNESCO and led to his sensational acquittal. But the book and the retrial were in 1992, before the internet, and both are mostly forgotten today. Prouteau's book, which I understand was a best-seller in France, has never been translated into English and I have been unable to find any detailed online reviews.

It is a strange book, not obviously a "biography" in the usual sense, and not at all what the tourist board of Brittany expected when they commissioned it. It opens with a recalled rant by Prouteau's late mentor, the lawyer Maurice Garçon, who memorably claims that if he had to defend Gilles de Rais in court he would get him off with "six months with remission". Prouteau then goes on to relate how a local dignitary asked him to write a biography of Gilles de Rais to tie in with a new tourist trail. By implication, Prouteau jumped at the chance.

The resulting book is a curious mish-mash of fact and fiction. Some, including the spectacularly parti pris Jacques Heers , have accused him of writing a romantic novel. It is that, in part, but it is also a lot more.

The biographical/romanesque section of the book proceeds in an eccentric fashion, opening with a character assassination of Rais's nemesis, Bishop of Nantes Jean de Malestroit, an outline of the bad feeling between the two and the trap that the bishop set for his foe. This section ends with Gilles' arrest and Malestroit arranging to have the heavy-drinking nobleman deprived of alcohol in order to weaken his resistance to interrogation.

The book then segues into a romanticised sketch of Gilles' life, written by Gilles himself as he languishes in the Tour Neuve at Nantes. In a way, this is the book the tourist board wanted for their wretched "circuit touristique" - we have the lonely boy wandering the grim castle, the parental neglect, the mother who abandons him (although it is more probable that she predeceased her husband) and, above all, the fallacy of the two young fianceés who both die, thus adding an atmosphere of doom and nodding to the spurious Bluebeard myth.

In the next section, Gilles is still writing, this time long letters to Pierre de l'Hôpital, President of Brittany and representative of the civil court. With much justification, Prouteau felt that Hôpital was sympathetic to Gilles and unconvinced of his guilt. These passages are intercut with extracts from the trial, which Gilles comments on. The final letter is followed by the words "Fin du journal apocryphe de Gilles de Rais" and a few pages describe his execution.

This is not, however, the end of the book. The most interesting section is still to come: it is titled "J'Accuse", in a very clear reference to the Dreyfus case, and it deals with Prouteau's attempt to have Gilles de Rais' name cleared. He sought out the aid of a barrister friend, Jean-Yves Goeau-Brissonnière, who agreed to represent Gilles in court at a specially-arranged tribunal, the details of which are frustratingly vague, and the next sixty or so pages record the peroration that Goeau-Brissonnière delivered before the court. Touchingly, we are not given the verdict; if the book had been held back from the publishers for a few months, it could have included the spectacular triumph of Gilles' acquittal. It seems that Prouteau did not really expect this result and wished to market the book on the sensation of the retrial, believing that the verdict would be a damp squib.

For all its dramatic effect in the real world, this is an imperfect work: Prouteau does, in the romanesque section, print the legend and to some extent play into the hands of the Vendéen tourist board, with their accursed son et lumière and "Sur les Traces de Gilles de Rais" nonsense. He does not cite his sources, so his extraordinary claim that Gilles was an alcoholic who was deprived of his drug in prison in order to extract a false confession from him can neither be challenged nor confirmed. And he does make the mistake of accepting certain parts of extorted evidence as gospel truth, which puts him in the unnecessary position of having to pen a defence of paedophilia.

Still, this is the book that forced France, if not the rest of the world, to look at her prodigal son in a new light. In this new century, one sees its influence on web sites and coffee table books even in the anglophone world. Few books have had such a resounding effect as this one, and it is worth the read, even for those of us who struggle with French as a second language. A translation seems unlikely so long after the original publication, but if one were forthcoming it would certainly repeat its success in a new market.

Gilbert Prouteau lived till the advanced age of ninety-five and died on August 2nd 2012, a round twenty years after La Gueule du Loup was published and Gilles de Rais acquitted. Shamefully, his death barely caused a ripple outside France. Let this book and its reverberations in the real world be his memorial.

Click here to see this review on Amazon.

An Overview:The Truth About Gilles de Rais

People ask why I am so convinced that Gilles de Rais was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. This is why.

The myth of Gilles de Rais has lasted over five hundred years. In this myth, the wealthiest man in France, who happened also to be one of his country´s greatest warriors, suddenly went mad and commenced the wholesale abuse and butchery of children. No real explanation has ever been given for this, apart from trauma caused by the execution of Jehanne d´Arc.

The biographers who believe that he was guilty argue that there was overwhelming proof, human remains were discovered in his castles, the trial was fair and the judges above reproach, a host of bereaved parents came forward with evidence against him, he and his accomplices confessed freely and without torture...

None of these statements is true.

Not one piece of solid forensic evidence was found, not one single bone. Tradition speaks of suspicious ashes in a hearth and a child´s bloodied shirt - but ashes are what you expect to find in a fireplace, and both the ashes and the shirt were found, not at Machecoul, but at the lodging-house of Gilles´ chief alchemist some distance away from the castle.

The court alleged that Gilles had committed around a hundred and forty murders in fourteen years - ten a year. In his confession, Gilles insisted on eight hundred murders over eight years - a hundred a year, almost two per week.

In spite of these huge numbers, and a lengthy enquiry by the Bishop of Nantes, only forty-odd cases could be found. Of these, several were anonymous and only a dozen have a full name given. The hosts of parents amounted to sixteen - the number of missing children who were attested to in court by a mother, father or both. A couple more were represented by aunts or uncles.

I repeat that this was after a full enquiry by the Bishop, another by the civil authorities, and a further appeal for witnesses while the trial was in progress. Many of the cases produced in court were hearsay, anecdotes that had no relation to Gilles at all, and were clearly introduced only to bulk up the numbers. There is no indication whatsoever that more children vanished in this particular area and time than anywhere else in Brittany during this period.

Nor was the trial remotely fair. Gilles was not originally told all of the charges he faced; believing that he was arraigned solely for heresy, he was thus duped into accepting the Vice Inquisitor Jean Blouyn as one of his judges. His anger when he realised how he had been deceived was perfectly understandable - up to this point he had been a model of politeness and calm. Moreover, as he pointed out to Pierre de l´Hôpital, President of Brittany, the ecclesiastical court was acting beyond its remit; it was wholly inappropriate for charges of abduction and murder to be heard there rather than in the civil court. De l´Hôpital seems to have had grave misgivings about the legality of the proceedings and Gilles´ culpability; not only did he allow the condemned man several unheard-of favours at the end, he also neglected to sign the pages of the transcript that contained Gilles´ confession, as he was obliged by law to do.

The judges, too, were not as impartial as they ought to have been in a capital case. Jean de Malestroit had engaged in numerous business deals with the accused, buying his estates at knockdown prices. He was the cousin of Jean V, Duke of Brittany, who had also illegally bought properties from his vassal, including the strategic border castles of Champtocé and Ingrandes. These fortified castles were vital to Brittany´s defence and Jean V´s father had coveted them before him.  Although the Duke finally obtained them, when Gilles´ finances were on the verge of collapse and he could no longer hold on to them, they were sold on condition that Gilles could repurchase them within six years if he wished. Neither Jean V nor de Malestroit was willing to risk such an eventuality, and they knew that Gilles was attempting to restore his fortune by means of alchemy.

As well as this financial motive, there was a political one. Gilles was the pre-eminent warrior of the Loire campaign, after the Pucelle. He was tried in Brittany, which was an independent duchy, allied sometimes with France and at others with England at the whim of the Duke´s politique de bascule. Although Jean V vacillated constantly, de Malestroit consistently favoured alliance with England, which he correctly supposed to offer the best chance of Brittany maintaining its independence from France. Jehanne had already been disgraced and burned, but the charges of heresy against her had failed to stick and she was still regarded as a quasi saint in France and especially in Orléans. If her protector, the brave Marshal of France, could be thoroughly smeared, found guilty not only of heresy but also of black magic, sodomy, murder and offences too disgusting to be described, then her memory might be tainted by association.

Gilles´ confession was not, as the Inquisition formula has it, given freely and without torture. His two servants produced evidence so consistent, and so outlandish, that it could only have been extracted by means of torture. Gilles´ evidence follows theirs exactly - we do not know if he was tortured, though he may have been, but he was excommunicated, which terrified him, and explicitly threatened with torture.

Finally, the reaction of the crowd to Gilles´ condemnation was not to exult and jeer. There was a solemn procession to the gallows and the people wept and prayed for his soul. Those who insist on his guilt claim that the fifteenth century was a more Christian time and a more forgiving one; so forgiving, evidently, that Gilles was buried in a cathedral and the expiatory monument commissioned by his daughter was a place of pilgrimage for three hundred years, until it was destroyed in the Terror. Women would pray there for abundant milk to feed their babies and their prayers, apparently, were answered. All this seems a very strange reaction if they really believed that the dead man had preyed on local children and, among other things, eviscerated them and masturbated over their entrails.

Wrongly, unduly and without cause

Dated January 3rd 1443, the letters patent from Charles VII to Pierre de l'Hôpital and François I (who had succeeded Jean V as Duke of Brittany), summoned them to the Parliament of Paris to account for the wrongful execution of Gilles de Rais. The letters were never acted upon and were probably suppressed for political reasons. Even through the old French, the strength of the language comes across. Reference is made to the "seizure, arrest & detention of [Gilles'] person and refusal and denial of justice, and other wrongs and grievances to be declared more plainly at the [appropriate] time & place, against him and to his prejudice, wrongly, unduly and without reason"; later we read: "The said late Lord de Rais was condemned and put to death by the said de l'Hôpital, unduly and without reason." There is no sitting on the fence; Gilles has been wronged, the King says, and restitution must be made. And indeed, subsequently Gilles' confiscated estates were restored to his daughter, Marie de Rais, an eloquent gesture that seems to be at least a partial rehabilitation.

(Text of the letters patent taken from Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup by Gilbert Prouteau)

The Bibliophile Jacob

Anybody who has read about Gilles de Rais in a biography or on a website and later gone on to read the trial records will have wondered why the latter seem so pallid in comparison. The small details that so enliven other accounts are simply absent. In particular, anybody who has read The Bloody Countess by Valentine Penrose, with its counterpointed story of Gilles de Rais, will have marvelled at the first person quotes and the colourful anecdotes and descriptions.

The reason is that Penrose and other biographers leaned heavily upon a "more circumstantial" record of the trial, penned by Paul Lacroix, The Bibliophile Jacob, in the mid-nineteenth century. It is a very strange document, entirely bogus. M. Lacroix claimed to have had access to a far more detailed copy of the record than the one kept in the archive at Nantes. Instead of being written in a distancing third person, he uses first person speech throughout. Henriet and Poitou come out best in this account, they are clearly distinguished as personalities and their motives for confessing are explained. These do not include torture, the Bibliophile is far from a revisionist. On the down side, we do lose Prelati's testimony as he has unfortunately died before coming to trial. There is a prototype for the veiling of the cross, but it is done by Pierre de l'Hôpital before Henriet gives his evidence; J-K Huymans much improved upon and dramatised the scene.

It is, in short, a piece of fantasy loosely based on Gilles' trial. But it is highly entertaining and of interest, so a link to the full text is given here. Only in French, unfortunately, but not difficult to decipher if you have a little French from school days. If not, you can get the flavour of it from Penrose's book (which deals mainly with Elisabeth Bathory) or from the extracts from that book in Dark Star: the Satanic Rites of Gilles de Rais, edited by Candice Black.

And is the Bibliophile Jacob's work of fiction relevant to our theme? Yes, because it is so obviously and consistently in error throughout that anybody reading it in parallel with a genuine account of the trial would immediately realise that it is unreliable. Yet several reputable biographers, including Bossard, borrow from it to add a bit of colour to their story; and that is how Gilles de Rais has come to be surrounded by myths and untruths, and why a truly authoritative biography does not exist. 

The Veiling of the Cross

The one thing that everyone knows about Gilles de Rais is that, at the most lurid moment of his confession, the Bishop of Nantes veiled the crucifix out of shame. It is a set-piece of several biographies and novelisations.

J-K Huysmans describes it thus -

He seemed to see nothing, hear nothing. He continued to tell off the frightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He was coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he kissed them.

He divulged every detail. The account was so formidable, so atrocious, that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. These priests, tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions, these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of the Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the face of the Christ.

                                            (from Là-Bas)


It was a moment of high drama.

And it never happened.

Gilles de Rais is a magnet for myths and this is one of the most persistent. There is no reference in the record of his trial to Jean de Malestroit veiling the cross. The biographies that mention it do not cite their sources - even Emile Gabory, who was a serious historian and gave proper citations for everything except this claim. There is an similar incident in the Bibliophile Jacob, but in his account the cross was covered by Pierre de l'Hôpital so that Henriet could give his testimony without inhibition.

The veiling of the cross is a myth and it seems to have been invented in its usual form by - J-K Huysmans! Who was writing a novel and not a factual work and may be forgiven for adding a little colour to the dry bones of the trial record and playing fast and loose with the Bibliophile's already fictional version.  There is no contemporary account that includes this touching little scene and no reason to suppose that it is anything but a piece of novelettish whimsy. The genuine historians who have slavishly disseminated this fairy tale have no excuse for their gullibility and lack of research.