Gilles de Rais
Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais was a French knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army during the Hundred Years' War, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He remains chiefly known for his conviction on charges of the rape and murder of several children.
An important lord as heir to some great noble lineages of western France, he rallied to the cause of King Charles VII of France and waged war against the English. In 1429, he formed an alliance with his cousin Georges de La Trémoille, the prominent Grand Chamberlain of France, and was appointed Marshal of France the same year, after the successful military campaigns alongside Joan of Arc. Little is known about his relationship with her, unlike the privileged association between the two comrades-in-arms portrayed by various works of fiction. He gradually withdrew from the war during the 1430s.
His family accused him of squandering his patrimony by selling off his lands to pay his lavish expenses, a profligacy that led to his being placed under interdict by Charles VII in July 1435. He assaulted a high-ranking cleric in the church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte, before seizing the local castle in May 1440, thereby violating ecclesiastical immunity and undermining the majesty of his suzerain, John V, Duke of Brittany. Arrested on 15 September 1440, he was tried in October 1440 by an ecclesiastical court assisted by the Inquisition for heresy, sodomy and the murder of "one hundred and forty or more children." At the same time, he was tried and condemned by the secular judges of the ducal court of justice to be hanged and burned at the stake for his act of force at Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte, as well as for crimes committed against "several small children." On 26 October 1440, he was sent to the scaffold with two of his servants.
A popular confusion between the mythical Bluebeard and the historical Baron de Rais has been documented since the early 19th century, regardless of the uncertain hypothesis that Gilles de Rais served as an inspiration for Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" literary fairy tale.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of the late 19th century reconceptualization of the phenomenon of serial sexual crime, the case of Gilles de Rais has often been interpreted within the criminological framework of the serial killer, although such a categorization is at times regarded as anachronistic. The vast majority of historians believe he was guilty, but some advise caution when reviewing historical trial proceedings. Medievalists and Claude Gauvard note the need to study the inquisitorial procedure employed by questioning the defendants' confessions in the light of the judges' expectations and conceptions, while also examining the role of rumor in the development of Gilles de Rais's fama publica, without disregarding detailed testimonies concerning the disappearance of children, or confessions describing murderous rituals unparalleled in the judicial archives of the time.
House of Retz
Early life
Gilles de Rais, the eldest son of Marie de Craon and Guy de Laval-Rais, descended from a number of great feudal houses. Through his mother, he was linked to the House of Craon, a wealthy western family, and through his father to the Laval family, one of the two most important Breton lineages in the 15th century. The Laval family's ancestors included, by marriage, the Barons of Retz as well as the prestigious House of Montmorency, albeit temporarily weakened at the time.He was born "in a room called the Black Tower" at Champtocé castle, at an unknown date. His birth has been variably dated between 1396 and 1406, and more frequently towards the end of 1404. However, he was probably born not before 1405 given the delays caused by the legal procedures before the Parlement of Paris that conditioned his parents' marriage, according to archivist-paleographer Matei Cazacu, whose interpretation has been accepted by several medievalists. Furthermore, an archival document indicates Gilles's age in February 1422.
Gilles's younger brother René was probably born in 1414. He obtained the seigneury of La Suze when his elder brother assigned him his share of the inheritance on 25 January 1434, before the ducal court in Nantes. From then on, René was known as René de La Suze, thus raising the name borne by the youngest branch of the Craon family.
Gilles and René's mother Marie de Craon died at an unknown date, while her husband Guy de Laval-Rais expired thereafter, at the end of October 1415 in Machecoul, "suffering from a serious bodily infirmity" according to the terms of his will and testament. The cause of Guy de Laval-Rais's death remains unknown, although several authors have mistakenly assumed that he was disembowelled by a wild boar during a hunting accident, a fictional scene initially depicted in a French novel published in 1928.
The two orphan brothers Gilles and René were raised by their maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, lord of La Suze and Champtocé. Jean de Craon's son Amaury died at the Battle of Agincourt in October 1415, a confrontation in which several members of his household perished in addition to his sole male successor. This prompted him to take charge of and manage the property of Gilles and René, who had become his sole heirs. In this way, Jean de Craon broke the will and testament of Guy de Laval-Rais, which appointed Jean II Tournemine de la Hunaudaye as "guardian, tutor, protector, defender and legitimate administrator" of the two orphans.
Matrimonial projects
On 4 January 1417, Jean de Craon betrothed his grandson Gilles de Rais to a wealthy Norman heiress, Jeanne Paynel, daughter of Foulques VI Paynel, lord of Hambye and Bricquebec. However, the Parlement of Paris forbade the marriage until Jeanne Paynel came of age. This marriage project never materialized but not because of Jeanne Paynel's presumed death, as some authors have argued, since she certainly became an abbess of Lisieux's Benedictine convent.Jean de Craon then betrothed Gilles de Rais to a niece of John V, Duke of Brittany: Béatrice of Rohan, daughter of Alain IX of Rohan and Marguerite of Brittany. The contract, dated Vannes 28 November 1418, was not followed up for some unknown reason.
Gilles de Rais eventually became engaged to his third cousin Catherine de Thouars, daughter of Miles II de Thouars and Béatrice de Montjean. In addition to the obstacle posed by the consanguinity of Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars, who were 4th-degree relatives, disputes arose between the House of Craon and Miles II de Thouars, lord of Pouzauges and Tiffauges. Ignoring these constraints and without waiting for an ecclesiastical dispensation, Gilles de Rais abducted Catherine de Thouars and married her in a chapel outside his parish church, without publishing banns of marriage. Despite a marriage contract drawn up on 30 November 1420, the two young people had their union annulled and declared incestuous by the Church.
After the death of Miles II de Thouars, matrimonial alliances brought the houses of Craon and Thouars closer together, helping to regularize the situation of the couple. On 24 April 1422, the papal legate approached Hardouin de Bueil, bishop of Angers, asking him to pronounce a sentence of separation against Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars, and to impose a penance before absolving them of the crime of incest and allowing them to marry in due form. After conducting an investigation, Hardouin de Bueil celebrated their marriage with great pomp and ceremony on 26 June 1422, at Chalonnes-sur-Loire castle. This union strengthened Gilles de Rais's position in Poitou by "linking him to the house of the Viscounts of Thouars, who dominated the Bas-Poitou region as far as the Atlantic."
Gilles de Rais and Catherine de Thouars's only child, Marie, was born in 1433 or 1434.
Family disputes
In accordance with the clauses of Catherine de Thouars's marriage contract, her mother Béatrice de Montjean retained in dower a number of possessions of the late Miles II de Thouars, including Tiffauges and Pouzauges castles. Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais hoped to recover the inheritance of all Beatrice's Poitevin castles at a later date. However, Béatrice de Montjean remarried Jacques Meschin de la Roche-Aireault, former squire to the late Miles II de Thouars and chamberlain to King Charles VII of France. This union compromised the plans of the lord of La Suze and his grandson. As a result, the two men commissioned their acolyte Jean de la Noe, captain of Tiffauges, to kidnap Beatrice. Jean de la Noe also seized Jacques Meschin's younger sister. Béatrice de Montjean was imprisoned at Le Loroux-Bottereau, then at Champtocé. Her son-in-law Gilles de Rais and Jean de Craon threatened to sew her up in sackcloth and throw her into a river if she did not relinquish her dower.To free his wife and his sister, chamberlain Jacques Meschin de la Roche-Aireault had Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais summoned several times before the Parlement of Paris, to no avail. Jacques Meschin dispatched a bailiff to Champtocé before sending his own brother, Gilles Meschin, to head the envoys. Jean de Craon jailed all the bearers of the summons, including Gilles Meschin. Jean de Craon nevertheless agreed to release Beatrice de Montjean at the request of his wife Anne de Sillé, who was also Beatrice's own mother. The other hostages were eventually released on ransom, but Gilles Meschin died a few days later, probably exhausted by the conditions of his detention in Champtocé. Jacques Meschin's younger sister, sent to Brittany, was forced to marry Girard de la Noe, the son of the captain of Tiffauges.
Jacques Meschin took legal action again before the Parlement of Paris, so Jean de Craon and his grandson compromised with their adversary. In a transaction ratified by the Parliament, the chamberlain chose to keep Pouzauges, while Gilles de Rais retained Tiffauges. Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais nonetheless extorted Pouzauges from Jacques Meschin on the pretext that Catherine de Thouars, Gilles de Rais's wife, "bears the name in the world". On his way to Pouzauges to supervise the execution of the transaction, Adam de Cambrai, First President of the Parlement of Paris, was molested and robbed by men in the pay of the two accomplices. The many subsequent sentences handed down to Jean de Craon and Gilles de Rais went unheeded.