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Gilles de Rais (1404 - 1440)
Gilles de Laval, Marechal and Baron de Rais (Rays, Rayx or Retz)

Gilles was born in 1404 in the château of Machécoul. His father died when he was nine, and his mother immediately married again and abandoned her two children to die two years later. Gilles and his brother René must have felt alone in the world.

Their father's will made provision for them to be brought up by a cousin and educated by two priests; instead they were sent to live with their grandfather, Jean de Craon, who had a violent temper, but was too wrapped up in his own affairs to pay attention to his grandsons. His own son had been killed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, so that Gilles became heir to the entire vast fortune. He was an intelligent child who read Latin fluently and loved music. But he had a taste for the "forbidden" and secretly devoured Suetonius, with his details of the sexual excesses of the Roman emperors. Since Gilles himself was homosexual, these stories must have encouraged the tendency to sexual fantasy, to which he admitted at his trial.

Gilles came from a family of mediæval knights, and was himself trained as a soldier. The Hundred Years War with the English had been going on since 1338, so training in arms was essential for any gentleman.

Five years later, he went to the court of the Dauphin, the uncrowned heir to the throne, and made a considerable impression with his good looks and fine breeding.

He spent his time and money in collecting a fine library, including a copy of Saint Agustine's City of God; but above all he devoted himself to making the religious services held in the chapels of his castles as sumptuous and magnificent as possible. He expended such colossal amounts of money on these spectacular services that even his great wealth was diminished. At the height of his power, Gilles de Rais was the richest noble in Europe, and in 1420 his fortune increased by his marriage to an extremely wealthy heiress, Catherine de Thouars.

In 1429 he was at Chinon when a seventeen-year-old peasant girl named Jeanne, from the village of Domremy, demanded to see the Dauphin, and told him that she had been sent to defeat the English, who were now laying siege to Orléans. The Dauphin thought she was mad, but decided it was worth a try. He ordered Gilles to accompany "the Maid" (la pucelle) to Orléans, perhaps because he had noticed that Gilles was fascinated by the girl's boyish figure and peasant vitality.

Gilles fought by her side when she raised the siege of Orléans, and again at Patay, when she once more defeated the English. At twenty-four, Gilles was a national hero. When the Dauphin decided it was time for the crowning, Gilles was awarded the honor to collect the holy oil with which the king was to be anointed. After the coronation, Gilles was appointed Marshall of France and allowed to include the fleur de Iys in his coat of arms. But after her military triumphs, jealous ministers soon undermined Joan of Arc’s career, and the king was too weak and self-indulgent to withstand the pressure. In the following year she was captured by the English, and burned at Rouen in 1431 with the Church and most of the french noblemen consent; she was only nineteen. (Jeanne who has been made a saint since is one of the great figure of France history and a paradox, she saved thousands of people and pushed the english back to their filthy Channel but she was treated with the most cruelty by the very one who profited from her; she was guided by God’s voice but was called a witch and burned…).

Gilles still had one more martial exploit to come--the deliverance of Lagny from the English. After the coronation of Charles VII, he retired to his estates, at Machecoul, Malemort, La Suze, Champtoce and Tiffauges. After the years of glory, he seems to have found life unbearably dull. And during the course of the following year, according to his later confession, he committed his first sex murder, that of a boy. His grandfather seems to have suspected what had happened; he willed his sword and cuirass to the younger brother René. The grandfather died in the following year, and Gilles was suddenly able to do what he liked.

One of these was a youth called Poitou; he was brought to the château and raped, after which Gilles prepared to cut his throat. At this point, Gilles de Sille pointed out that Poitou was such a handsome boy that he would make an admirable page. So Poitou was allowed to live, and to become one of Gilles' most trusted retainers.

Gilles' attacks of sadism seem to have descended on him like an epileptic fit, and turned him into a kind of maniac. A boy would be lured to the castle on some pretext, and once inside Gilles' chamber, was hung from the ceiling on a rope or chain. But before he had lost consciousness, he was taken down and reassured that Gilles meant him no harm. Then he would be stripped and raped, after which Gilles, or one of his cronies, would cut this throat or decapitate him--they had a special sword called a braquemard for removing the head.

But Gilles was still not sated; he would continue to sexually abuse the dead body, sometimes cutting open the stomach, then squatting in the entrails and masturbating. When he reached a climax he would collapse in a faint, and be carried off to his bed, where he would remain unconscious for hours. His accomplices would meanwhile dismember and burn the body. On some occasions, he later confessed, two children were procured, and each obliged to watch the other being raped and tortured.

Gilles was not merely sexually deranged; he was also a reckless spendthrift. He surrounded himself with a retinue of two hundred knights, for whom he provided. He loved to give banquets and fêtes; in 1435, when the city of Orléans celebrated its deliverance by Joan of Arc, Gilles presented a long mystery play about the siege, with enormous sets and a cast of hundreds, playing, of course, the leading role himself. He also provided food and wine for the spectators. Like a Roman emperor he must have felt that he was virtually a god.

In a mere three years he had spent what would now be the equivalent of millions of dollars. Back at Machécoul, he had to sell some of his most valuable estates. His brother was so alarmed that he persuaded the king to issue an interdict forbidding any further sales of land. For a man of Gilles' unbridled temperament, this was an intolerable position. He went into a gloomy and self-pitying retirement. And now, suddenly, he saw a possible solution. Ten years later, his coffers empty, he believed black magic the answer to his problems.

Years before, when he first went to court, he had borrowed a book on alchemy from an Angevin knight who had been imprisoned for heresy. Alchemy was prohibited by law, and for a man with Gilles' romantic craving for "the forbidden," this must have been an additional incentive to learn more about it. Now, ten years later, with his coffers empty, he realised that alchemy might be the answer to his problems.

He asked a priest named Eustache Blanchet to find him a magician. Several were tried, but the results were poor--one of them, a man named Fontanelle, succeeded in conjuring up twenty crows. The others were not even able to conjure up a few birds. But Fontanelle also claimed he had conjured up a demon called Barron; and it was clear to Gilles that, if his magical operations were to succeed, he was going to need the active co-operation of Barron and his fellow demons.

Gilles was advised that his only way of learning to make gold was to agree to sell his soul to the Devil. At that time, it was taken for granted that "magic" was performed through the agency of the Devil, the ancient tradition of "white magic" having long ago been stamped out by the church. Now in spite of his taste for killing children, Gilles remained a devout Catholic; so deciding to invoke the Devil must have seemed a far more frightening step than murder.

But finally, he and his cousin Gilles de Sille locked themselves in the basement of his castle at Tiffauges, together with a magician, and prepared to converse with demons.

The magician warned them solemnly not to make the sign of the cross, or their lives would be in great danger. Sille stayed by the window, prepared to jump out; Gilles ventured fearfully into the magic circle and watched the beginning of the conjuration. The legend says that the three men were brutally ejected from the donjon before the roof collapsed. One magician drowned on his way to the castle, and another died soon after he arrived. Gilles was advised that his only way of learning to make gold was to agree to sell his soul to the Devil, but he refused to go this far.

All the same, he needed money so badly that there seemed no other way than continuing with his magical experiments. In 1439, he sent the priest Blanchet to Italy to search for a more skilled magician; Blanchet returned with a "clerk in minor orders" called François Prelati, a young man of great charm--and also, apparently, a homosexual. They would have to offer a child's blood and parts of its body as a sacrifice to the Devil; there was no problem about this.

It is hard to know whether he was simply a confidence trickster, or whether he had some genuine knowledge of the magic arts; it seems clear that Gilles found him immensely attractive and trusted him completely.

Prelati told him that they would have to offer a child's blood and parts of its body as a sacrifice to the Devil; there was no problem about this, and Gilles hastened to sodomize and murder another young boy. But he still refused to take the final step, of selling his soul to the Devil. Prelati told him that in that case, he would have to continue the conjurations alone. During one of these sessions, Gilles and his cousin heard loud thumps from inside the room; they looked in and found Prelati "so hurt that he could hardly stand up." He explained that he had been beaten by the demon Barron, and had to take to his bed for several days, during which time Gilles nursed him tenderly.

On another occasion, he rushed out to tell Gilles that he had finally conjured up a heap of gold. Gilles rushed back to see it, but Prelati was there first; as he opened the door, he staggered back and shouted that a huge green serpent guarded it. Gilles fled. When he returned, the gold had vanished, leaving only piles of dust...

During all this time, he continued to murder children, girls as well as boys. In the case of girls, he rubbed his erect member against the stomach or between the thighs until he ejaculated, "saying he had more pleasure and less pain than acting in nature." Afterwards he would frequently play with the heads. It was the fear that excited him, the feeling of having the power of life and death over another human being.

The records of the case contain a list of children who vanished: Lost, at La Rochebernart, the child of the woman Peronne, a child who did go to school and apply himself to his book with exceeding diligence. Lost at St Etienne de Montluc, the son of Guillaume Brice, and this was a poor man and sought alms. Lost at Machécoul, the son of Georget le Barbier, who was seen a certain day knocking apples from a tree behind the hotel Rondeau, and who since hath not been seen. Lost at Thonaye, the child of Mathelin Thouars, and he had been heard to cry and lament, and the said child was about twelve years of age.

At Machécoul, the day of Pentecost, mother and father Sergent leave their eight-year-old boy at home, and when they return from the fields they did not find the said child of eight years. At Chantelou, two little children of the age of nine who were brothers and the children of Robin Pavot of the aforesaid place, and since that time neither have they been seen nor doth any know what became of them.

A widow living close to the castle reported the disappearance of her eight-year-old son, "a comely lad, white of skin and very capable."

Two weeks later another boy vanished, and there was an outcry in the village. Gilles decided that something had to be done, and sent his cousin to explain that the boys had been given as part of a ransom for his brother, who was being held by the English; they would be trained as pages ...

During his years of murder, Gilles often came close to discovery. In 1437, his family heard that he intended to sell the castle of Champtoce, in spite of the royal interdict; they hastened to seize it. Gilles was terrified; he had left the mutilated bodies of dozens of children there. He was also afraid that the castle of Machécoul would be next--the remains of many children had been thrown into a locked tower. He and his companions removed about forty dismembered bodies from Machécoul. When he regained control of Champtoce in 1438 he hastened to remove another forty or so corpses, which had apparently remained unnoticed. Meanwhile, the Duke of Brittany had imposed a huge fine on Gilles, aware that Gilles would be unable to pay. He also began an investigation into the disappearance of hundreds of children.

In July 1440, Gilles made a fatal mistake. He had sold a castle called Mermorte to Geoffroy de Ferron, treasurer to the Duke of Brittany, Gilles' suzerain [overlord]. For some reason, Gilles decided that he was entitled to repossess the castle, which had not yet been occupied by its new owner. By entering a church and permitting violence, Gilles had committed sacrilege, a capital offence. The keys, it seemed, were in the hands of Geoffroy's brother, a priest called Jean de Ferron. Here Gilles' impatience was his undoing. Instead of waiting until Jean de Ferron was in his home, he led his men into the church of St Etienne de Mermorte soon after mass, and had the priest dragged outside, where he was beaten.

Gilles' companions later revealed that, even on this expedition to recover his castle, he had been overcome by his craving for rape and murder. After leaving the church, he had halted for the night in the town of Vannes and taken lodging in a house near the bishop's palace. One of the ex-choristers of his private chapel, André Bouchet, had brought him a ten-year-old boy. Since his present lodging was not private enough for rape and murder, the boy was taken to another house near the market, and there sodomised and decapitated; the body was thrown into the latrines of the house, where the smell was less likely to cause its discovery.

Bishop Malestroit seized this opportunity to bring Gilles to court, on charges that he had secretly been preparing since July 29. The bishop was joined by the Inquisition, which pressed for a charge of heresy and a civil trial was called for in the ducal court. The duke, bishop and inquisitor stood to gain a tremendous fortune by declaring Gilles a heretic, and they subsequently confiscated his property. Forty-seven charges were leveled against Gilles, including conjuration of demons, abuse of clerical privilege, and sexual perversions against children. The invocation of spirits charge was embellished with accusations of human sacrifices.

In sum, Gilles was accused of being a "heretic, apostate, conjurer of demons... accused of the crime and vices against nature, sodomy, sacrilege and violation of the immunities of Holy Church." On September 13, 1440, the bishop summoned Gilles before the court. Preliminary hearings took place on September 28, October 8, 11 and 13, and the formal trial opened on October 15. The Duke of Brittany, John V, sanctioned a concurrent trial, which started on September 17. The indictment was forty-nine paragraphs long, and included many charges of child murder. Gilles was at first arrogant and defiant but after six sessions, on Friday, October 21, 1440, he was tortured until he promised to confess "voluntarily and freely" (as the court records states. Everything charged against him he now admitted and of course the crimes to which he admitted were unbelievable and quite impossible. To procure additional evidences of his alleged crimes, his servants and four alleged accomplices were also tortured. In all, 110 witness (including informers) were heard. Charged with him were his steward Henriet Griard and his page Etiène Corillaut, called Poitou.

According to Thomas Mann, de Rais embodied "the religious greatness of the damned; genius as disease, disease as genius, the type of the afflicted and possessed, where saint and criminal become one." In his agonies of guilt (and perhaps self-justification), he said to the families of the murdered: “You who are present--you, above all, whose children I have slain--I am your brother in Christ. By Our Lord's Passion, I implore you, pray for me. Forgive me with all your hearts the evil I have done you, as you yourselves hope for God's mercy and pardon”.

On October 26, 1440, at Nantes, Gilles de Rais was strangled and his body was placed on the pyre with two of his associates, Henri Griart and Poitou. When de Rais was theatrically executed, the children's parents, his judges, and hundreds of spectators, gave way to floods of tears. De Rais was the first to be put to death. His fellow criminals followed soon after. But before he died, he sang the De Profundis in a voice louder than all the rest while standing under the gibbet. He urged his henchmen to "thank God with him for a manifest sign of His love," and to continue praying for a little while longer. He prayed on his knees, and the hundreds of spectators prayed with him.

His corpse was placed on a pyre, but his relatives were allowed to remove his body before the flames reached it, and he was interred in the nearby Carmelite church. His two companions were less lucky; they were burned alive.

It is important to note here that Gilles was not allowed any testimony in his defense, nor was he given any legal advice or council. The proceedings of the trial were highly irregular, even for trials of heresy. Not one of his 500 servants was summoned to give defensive evidence and his own attendants were tortured and, having testified against Gilles, freed. This treatment is consistent with how the ecclesiastical courts handled witch and heretic trials during this time. Some historians have suggested that Gilles was crooked and that the duke and the bishop conspired to seize his lands.

The fifteenth century chronicler Monstrelet indicated his suspicion of the motives of Gilles trial, noting, "The greater part of the nobles of Brittany, more especially his own kindred, were in utmost grief and confusion at his disgraceful death. Before this event, he was much renowned as a most valiant knight at arms". The Duke of Brittany was so certain of the verdict that he disposed of his own share of Gilles' lands fifteen days before the trial began.

For further details about Gilles’ life, please refer to Georges Huysmans and H.G. Wells (Crux Ansata) who have written two very good romans on the subject.