La Meffraye

Perrine Martin, La Meffraye, is a strange and, it has to be admitted, convenient figure in the mythology surrounding Gilles de Rais. She seems incongruous; she and her lesser-known crony Tiphaine Branchu are the only women connected to his entourage, the only representatives of old age amid all that youth and beauty. They stalk the countryside like fairytale witches, striking fear into all hearts, to the point where Martin is given her menacing soubriquet of The Terror. She wears black and covers her face with a veil, yet children are curiously drawn to her.

In spite of her inexplicable powers of attraction, the children are not allowed simply to walk with her into the castle - they are accosted by the mysterious empocheurs, anonymous henchmen who overpower them and put them into sacks. This seems rather unnecessary when they are going along with her willingly and when we know that at least one porter is in on the secret - Gilles, presented with a young boy at the Hôtel de La Suze, instructs Martin to lead him to Machecoul and hand him over to the porter. It seems that the mythmakers wanted it both ways: a sinister old crone who lures children away like the Pied Piper, but also violent abduction by thugs who lurk in the bushes.

Martin's testimony has not come down to us, say gullible biographers; like so much else in the heavily-edited trial documents, it has been lost to history. She does not appear to have given evidence in court, but her prison confession is widely broadcast. In fact, her words are often the only link between Gilles and a missing child - one wonders how so many parents came to learn of her accusations. However it came about, it is strikingly convenient for the prosecution, especially as La Meffraye is supposed to have died in prison before being brought to trial.

More strangely yet, although she must have cut an odd and conspicuous figure, the doughty married couple Jean Estaisse and his wife Michele swear that they have never heard of her; nor, indeed, of any rumours about Gilles de Rais until he was arrested.

So who was La Meffraye? Was she, as she is presented, a procuress for Gilles? Was she some witch or local lunatic who could serve as a scapegoat for local child abductions and be used to inculpate him? Did she die under torture? Was she killed? Did she collude with the authorities and earn her release? Or did this shadowy creature exist at all? May she not merely be a figment of the collective imagination, perhaps used to frighten children into obedience, and gratefully latched onto by Jean de Malestroit?

As so often, we are left with more questions than answers and an uneasy feeling that there is something not quite right here.

Illustration by Jean Pleyers

taken from this blog.

Catholic logic

On February 3rd 1930, Aleister Crowley was scheduled to give a lecture about Gilles de Rais to the Oxford University Poetry Society. The lecture was never given; it was printed as a pamphlet instead and is now universally known as The Banned Lecture. It is readily available online and regularly reprinted

Was this some artful self-publicity on Crowley's part or was it really banned? It seems that it was, by the Catholic chaplain, Father Ronald Arbuthnott Knox; alternative arrangements were made for the lecture to be given off-campus, but Knox threatened sanctions against any student who attended and so cancellation was the only option.

The reason for the ban is not clear. In the unlikely event that Knox had seen a draft of the lecture,he would certainly have been outraged by Crowley's thesis that "Gilles de Rais was to a large extent the victim of Catholic logic. Catholic logic: and the foul wish-fantasms generated of its repressions, and of its fear and ignorance." However, he is more likely to have taken exception to the identity of the lecturer, the subject of the lecture, or the horrible combination of the two - the Wickedest Man in the World expatiating on the supposed monstrous child-killer Bluebeard must have been the stuff of nightmare for a staid Oxford chaplain.

Crowley reacted with amusement. He told a reporter: "Perhaps the refusal to let me lecture has come because Gilles de Rais is said to have killed 800 children in ritual murder, and in some way this was connected with myself, since the accusation that I have not only killed but eaten children is one of the many false statements that have been circulated about me in the past. Probably the authorities are afraid that I may kill and eat 800 Oxford graduates."

Having had his little jest, he went on to make a serious point, and make it unequivocally: "The main point about my lecture was to show that the allegations against Gilles de Rais were unfounded, just as they were against Joan of Arc. Those were curious times, and anyone was liable to be burned as a witch on the least evidence."

Crowley loved to provoke, and certainly his vanity would have been piqued by the thought that a Wickeder Man in the World than himself may have existed, but one feels that he was genuine in his defence of Gilles de Rais. His lecture  is frivolous and drifts around in a stream-of-consciousness manner - no doubt it would have been delightful to listen to him deliver it in person - but there is a steely logic underlying it and he makes several telling points. "Did the disappearance of the first four hundred, say, put no parents on their guard?" he asks, disingenuously, and one does wonder why so few apparently intelligent historians over the years have asked that obvious question.

It should be remembered that Crowley did not prepare his lecture in a vacuum; no doubt he was inspired by an attempt to rehabilitate Gilles only a few years earlier, spearheaded by Salomon Reinach and Maurice Garçon. It was widely reported at the time but is now virtually forgotten; only Crowley's apparently ephemeral "banned" lecture remains as its memorial

1992 news reports

For the sake of completeness, here are the 1992 newspaper cuttings from The Guardian and The Times announcing the retrial of Gilles de Rais. The Guardian story that gave the verdict is already on this blog, here.

The Algebra of Need: was Gilles an alcoholic?

According to Prouteau in Gilles de Rais ou la gueule du loup, Gilles was an alcoholic who drank five litres of hippocras per day. This was wine fortified with spices and herbs and, at 20% by volume, twice the strength of ordinary wine. When he was imprisoned, his supply of alcohol was cut off and he was given nothing but water to drink, thus precipitating him into an attack of delirium tremens and rendering him highly susceptible to suggestion. It also meant that the court had in its gift the two things that Gilles could not live without: alcohol and the consolation of the Church. As soon as he admitted to the offences he had been charged with, he would be given hippocras and his excommunication would be revoked.

This is a seductive theory; if Gilles was an addict deprived of his drug, he would have admitted to anything to have it restored to him. As William S Burroughs described the Algebra of Need: "In the words of total need: 'Wouldn't you?' Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way."  Also, a man in the throes of the DTs and hallucinating would be easy to convince that he had, in fact, done the most outrageous things. However, one has to treat it with caution. Apart from the script that Gilles was made to read about the excesses of his life and the exaggerations of the Mémoire des Héritiers, both highly suspect documents, there is no real indication that Gilles was dependent on alcohol. He may have been a fairly heavy drinker who suffered from forced abstinence in prison, but there is no proof that his gaolers deliberately withheld wine from him in order to break his will, although they certainly would have done if they had thought it would help to brainwash him.

This theory has to be regarded as unproven, but it is hardly needed to explain why Gilles de Rais, after refusing for so long to submit to the will of the court, underwent a complete change of character overnight. He had seen the evidence against him. He knew that it had been extracted by torture and that, subjected to the same torture, he would inevitably break and recite the same litany of atrocities. He knew that he would be condemned and executed. He believed that if he went to his death contumacious and excommunicate, he would be plunged into Hell forever. And so he took the only option that would minimise his pain both in this world and the next; he ate humble pie and read the confession that had been prepared for him and that is so clearly based on the forced testimony of Henriet and Poitou, even though that would inevitably lead to shame and death, because shame and death were infinitely preferable to torment on earth that would continue for eternity in Hell.

Illustration from La trilogie Gilles de Rais by Jacques Martin/Jean Pleyer.

(Interestingly, although it is not too difficult to find images of Gilles feasting, representations of him drinking are vanishingly rare.) 

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Warrior and hero

Up until what Leon Daudet called the Stupid Nineteenth Century, although Gilles de Rais was seen as a murderer, he was at least given his due as a military leader. But then a rather Manichean world view took hold: everything was black or white and a man who killed children could not possibly have any redeeming features. Thus Gilles was quietly removed from the history books, to the point where Vita Sackville-West dismisses him in a footnote and Bataille argues that, really, he was not that great a commander. This would be an injustice even if he was guilty, which he was not.

                                               (Illustration by Paul Gillon)

Gilles de Rais began his military career at the age of sixteen in the battle between the Monforts & the Penthièvres - in a breach with his family tradition, he and his grandfather took the side of the kidnapped Jean de Montfort, the Duke of Brittany who was to betray his friendship so spectacularly. He acquitted himself so well that he and his grandfather were singled out for praise and reward by de Montfort.

He first distinguished himself in the war against the English at Lude, where the garrison was commanded by Captain Blackburn, who had sworn to defend it to the death. And so he did: Gilles was among the first to storm the castle, took on Blackburn in single combat & killed him. At that time, Gilles was twenty-two years old.

His part in the siege of Orléans and the Loire campaign was glossed after his disgrace; for example, at Jehanne's rehabilitation trial in 1455, only Dunois mentions him as a leading commander at Orléans. Contemporary chroniclers, however, both French and foreign, tell a different story. He is seen as pre-eminent among the commanders, often at the expense of the others. His name is always linked with Jehanne's at Orléans and a private letter indicates that he was on good terms with her.

Gilles was entrusted with Jehanne's safety at her own request. He took his duties seriously; on both occasions when she was wounded, he hurried to her side, took her to safety, and stayed with her. The reason that he was not present at Compiègne when she was captured was that the King had disbanded the army to pursue peace with England; Jehanne was acting on her own initiative and it may be significant that she fell into enemy hands as soon as her protector was absent.

As we have already seen, it is certain that he and La Hire intended to launch a rescue attempt when they were at Louviers, in occupied Normandy, just across the river from Rouen where Jehanne was imprisoned.

Apart from Jehanne herself, nobody was more covered in glory than Gilles. He was made a Marshal of France in his twenty-fifth year. He was one of the four knights who fetched the Holy Oil from Saint-Rémy to Rheims; some chroniclers of the time give this honour to Gilles alone. He was also, along with Jehanne and her family, given the right to add the French arms, a border of royal fleurs-de-lys, to his armorial bearings; this was a phenomenally rare honour, more often granted to towns than to individuals.

Nor did he, as is popularly supposed, retire to his estates sulking after the capture and death of Jehanne; he continued to campaign for some years after, although apparently with diminishing enthusiasm. As late as 1439 he was still concerned with the struggle against the English, as was apparent when he espoused the cause of the False Pucelle, Jeanne des Armoises, and briefly put her in charge of his troops.

Whatever one chooses to think about the guilt or innocence of Gilles de Rais, dismissing his military achievements is not an option. It is doubtful whether Jehanne's Loire campaign could have succeeded without his strategic genius and reckless courage.

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)

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

As yet another new web page insists that Gilles de Rais must have been guilty because "some time after the trial" fifty human skulls were discovered at the château of La Suze-sur-Sarthe, let us nail this persistent canard once and for all.

There were no skulls, bones or any other human remains found at any of Gilles de Rais' castles at any time. Even Bossard, that fausseur évangile as Prouteau calls him, balked at promoting this myth. He mentions it, but dismisses it as being on a par with the legend of the young girls (girls!) freed from the dungeons. It never happened. And Bossard would have loved for there to have been bones; if there had been, he would have gleefully reported it.

The sum total of forensic proof against Gilles amounted to: -

A bloodied and foul-smelling small chemise found, not at the château, but at the house on the outskirts of Machecoul where Eustache Blanchet lodged along with Francesco Prelati.  Hardly evidence against Gilles.

Some "suspicious" ashes found in the hearth at the same house. But, as Prouteau says, they might just as well have been from a suckling pig.  Ashes are what you expect to find in a hearth.

This seems very little to show for hundreds of murders. Where were the severed heads that Gilles was supposed to keep as trophies?

I repeat: there was no forensic proof against Gilles whatsoever. No credible witnesses. And a forced confession.

Anonymous French illustration, circa 1900

[Incidentally, the château of La Suze-sur-Sarthe did not belong to Gilles. Perhaps there is some confusion with the Hôtel de la Suze. But that was not a castle, it was a house in the centre of Nantes and would have lacked the extensive souterrains for the storage of multiple cadavers.]