Trial of Gilles De Rais (9 page)
Read Trial of Gilles De Rais Online
Authors: George Bataille
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Cultural Anthropology, #Psychology, #True Crime, #European History, #France, #Social History, #v.5, #Literary Studies, #Medieval History, #Amazon.com, #Criminology, #Retail, #History
He then establishes himself in the region of Rais, in the fortress of Machecoul.
He had not sown pieces of silver, he had not locked his horses in a furnace, but the expenditures to which he had just devoted himself had given the same feeling of an ostentatious game, “boastfulness” and unreasonableness, as the extravagances of the Limousin …
It is then that Guillaume de La Jumellière abandons him, this Angevin lord to whom Jean de Craon had entrusted him.
On all these campaigns La Jumellière had assisted him with his counsels. He was still accompanying Gilles when, at the end of 1434, he arrived at Orléans followed by his military assembly.
The blazing, unrestrained expenditure at Orléans signified, at the same time as a definitive renunciation of war, what was in no way another escape, but the recourse to the impossible; far from being a modest throwback of the Limousin extravagances, those at Orléans recall tragedy. Orléans, which in 1429 had foreshadowed Rais’ glory, six years later consecrates his disgrace.
In effect, the stay — after which Rais clearly recognized that the glorious past he had previously lived in this city was dead — signifies that he remains connected to this place.
In the course of this ostentatious existence, he wants once again to be the young Marshal of France that he became beside Joan of Arc, throwing himself with an irresistible fury upon the English, delivering to his country an unexpected victory. This event had a different meaning to him than it did to everyone else. For Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc was evidently unintelligible. How would he be interested in the destiny of a people? What was said about this was troublesome: he was only interested in himself. In a pinch he managed, in his childishness, to partake in the great emotions that he was incapable of understanding … But like every year, on May 8, 1435, Orléans celebrated its liberation; for Gilles this involves garnering for himself a part of the delirious popularity that Joan of Arc possessed from the first day at Orléans. The unfortunate Joan was now four years dead; she had died in the flames, survived by Rais himself, who by her side had had one of the great roles of the day, the greatest after her own perhaps. It was his second chance to relive that day in the enthusiasm of the crowd; but this time he was alone, and the liberation of Orléans, the battle of the Tourelles, became his personal triumph.
This commemoration of the liberation apparently lasted several days. On this occasion, Gilles let the gold flow. He was spending as one drinks liquor, to become giddy; the principle of the feast was, as it still is, the interminable procession that followed the first year the English departed, but the procession was set off with “mystery plays” presented along the way. In these mysteries, one represented episodes of the battle of 1429. We know that, this year, a performance took place at the moment when the procession reached the boulevard of the bridge: it had to do with taking the Tourelles, the fortress that commanded the bridge over the Loire. The City participated in the costs, but — as the municipal reports that we possess show — only assumed a portion of them. Rais had the mysteries performed quite often; he is said to have worked his ruin in this way. He multiplied the purchases of new and magnificent costumes, not wanting them to be used twice; it was possible for him to have the spectators served with wine, hippocras, and delicacies. We know moreover that four years later in 1439, in another performance of this same assault on the Tourelles, a standard and a banner came from him. We cannot doubt that, in this same year when he spent 80,000 crowns, an important part of this fortune went toward the considerable costs of these feasts.
But when he returned to Brittany, his coffers were empty.
His coffers were empty, and his indignant relatives had just obtained royal letters of prohibition against him. At Angers, Tours, Orléans, Champtocé, Pouzauges, and Tiffauges, this prohibition was blaringly announced. He could not have managed this delirium without selling a part of his property, but from then on nobody, in the realm at least, could enter into a contract with him.
It is probable that Gilles de Rais was then not as completely ruined as it might seem. But in addition to his moral disgrace, this prohibition made another disgrace apparent to everyone: his financial disgrace — which must have also depressed him.
A striking character trait ultimately emerges from these great expenditures at Orléans: that which must have sovereignly counted double for Gilles de Rais was to make of his life, and of himself, a spectacular blaze! With this purpose he had a sense of theater. In 1435 he was all washed up. But at Orléans he rediscovered in a theatrical form the grandeur that he had lost. And for that he knew how to ruin himself!
In 1435, at Orléans, he had known how to theatrically magnify the warlike fury that had beaten the English.
In 1440 he will unite an immense crowd into a different glory, a paradoxical and sinister one: that of the criminal! For this last blaze he will pay with his life. And at the end of these few pages, we ought to at least acknowledge the magnificence that he knew how to deliver.
A Desperate Attempt: The Appeal to the DevilBut the prohibition contained in the letters of July 2, 1435, did not have full effect, inasmuch as the Duke of Brittany, Jean V, refused to ratify them in his domain … Yet the situation was no less serious. It was impossible for Rais to follow any course except that to which his disgrace had already led him.
To tell the truth, as of 1432 he went from one crisis to another. The aberration to which he surrendered in this unfortunate year literally withdrew him from the world. This aberration locked him in a tragic hallucination. Yet he had the feeling of being conveyed by a privileged destiny: finally the prodigy — or the monster — that he was would be saved. Such was his naïveté. I was going to say his stupidity. He had no doubt about his two contradictory recourses, one to God, the other to the Devil. This naive, demonic man never entangled himself in anything; in the pact that he offered to the Devil, he exempted his soul and life. In any case, this privileged man could not have conceived that he would not be riding on everyone else’s belly in the next world as in this one. One day he did manage, in his magnanimity, to ask the poor folk to congregate beside him at the Sacred Altar. This did not alter the exaggerated feeling that he had of himself. Worst of all is his certitude at the trial that he would rejoin Prelati, his accessory and accomplice, in paradise at the very hour the executioner hanged them…
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In truth, the presumptiousness at the source of all this drama is more generally the basis of that feudal superiority, insolence, and exploitation essential to the nobility.
The impulse that personifies tragedy can be accounted for by one formula: facing headlong into the impossible! The situation is untenable but it never belies the excessiveness of a Rais, who fights to the finish. This man is threatened with a rapid ruin; ceaselessly, at the limits of remorse, he marches into an abyss; yet for all this, he has an offhand bearing, an incongruous confidence, which makes the catastrophe inevitable.
Day in and day out, he waits for the Devil, his supreme hope … He awaits him for years. If he admits that he has “since his youth, committed and perpetrated high and enormous crimes,” he thinks, at least partly, of his attempts at conjury. As soon as he could, he conferred with everyone who boasted of a power in these domains.
We cannot be sure, but one of the first contacts he had with an alleged Hereafter (which fascinated him) could be related to the meeting, doubtlessly at Angers in 1426, with a person about whom we know very little: he was an Angevin and a knight. Rais must have met him before fighting the English under Yolande d’Anjou’s banner, when he recruited a company of Angevin men-at-arms; he was then twenty-two years old (this age corresponds to the expression “since his youth,” which Gilles himself used). Versed in the arts of alchemy and invocation of the Devil, this knight was subsequently imprisoned: the Inquisition accused him of heresy. In the prison at the castle of the Dukes of Anjou, Gilles conversed with him. The knight possessed a manuscript examining the suspect arts; Gilles de Rais borrowed it from him and had it read aloud to several people in a room. We know moreover that the book was returned to the Angevin, but as to what befell the wretch, we know nothing. This visit to the prison and this reading of a manuscript suggest the initial steps. It is logical that at this period Gilles would have stayed for a long time in Angers, “fourteen years” before the trial in 1440.
At the same time, we must believe Rais’ own affirmations that by 1440 he had practiced the art of conjury for “fourteen years.”
It is possible in this way to think that his demonic initiation, dating from around 1426, began with this information drawn from a prisoner and a book. Evidently numerous contacts followed, leading to the practices prescribed by professional conjurors.
As for these invocations, executed for “fourteen years,” the trial informs us that they were sometimes done in the castles at Machecoul and Tiffauges, and sometimes in the house called La Suze at Nantes. There was one or several attempts at Orléans in the house called the Croix d‘Or. The former are the first to be dated; Lord de Rais’ stays in the house of the Croix d’Or at Orléans take place in 1434 and 1435.
We have, besides, a certain number of details about which conjurors were engaged or about such-and-such precise invocations.
We’re told the names of a trumpeter named Dumesnil, of a “man named Louis,” and of Antoine de Palerne from Lombardy. They may have been in Lord de Rais’ service rather early on, some of them very early. At these invocations, the majority in which Gilles participated, “as much at Machecoul as at other places,” “a circle” was traced “in the soil … of figure in the form of a circle”; whosoever wanted to conjure the Devil “where the intention is to see the Devil…, to speak and make a pact with him must, in the first place, trace this circle on the ground” … On this subject, Rais himself affirmed elsewhere that he was never able to see the Devil or speak with him, “although he did everything he could, to the point that it was not his fault if he could not see the Devil or speak with him.”
In particular, we have the circumstantial account of certain invocations. Gilles de Sillé participated in one of them in addition to Lord de Rais. We do not know the name of the conjuror, but it took place in a room in the fortress at Tiffauges, without a doubt quite early on. The circle was traced on the ground, but on this day the two associates trembled. Rais, who “held in his arms an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” is supposed to have entered the circle filled with apprehension “because the invoker had forbidden him to cross himself, because, if he did, they would all be in great danger; but he remembered a prayer to Our Lady that begins with
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and at once the conjuror ordered him to leave the circle, which he immediately did while crossing himself; and he left the room promptly, leaving the invoker and locking the door behind him; then he discovered … Sillé, who told him that someone was beating and striking the invoker left alone in the room, which sounded as if someone were beating a featherbed; which he … (Rais) did not hear, and he had the door of the room opened and at its entrance he saw the conjuror wounded in the face and in other parts of his body, and having, among other things, a bump on his forehead so large he could barely stand up; and for fear that he might die in consequence of the said wounds, Gilles wanted him to be confessed and have the sacraments administered, but the conjuror did not die, and recovered from his wounds.” Imitating the noise that a demonic attack might have made and wounding himself to drive the point home, the conjuror is evidently employing a traditional ruse which Rais was the victim of at least twice.
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and at once the conjuror ordered him to leave the circle, which he immediately did while crossing himself; and he left the room promptly, leaving the invoker and locking the door behind him; then he discovered … Sillé, who told him that someone was beating and striking the invoker left alone in the room, which sounded as if someone were beating a featherbed; which he … (Rais) did not hear, and he had the door of the room opened and at its entrance he saw the conjuror wounded in the face and in other parts of his body, and having, among other things, a bump on his forehead so large he could barely stand up; and for fear that he might die in consequence of the said wounds, Gilles wanted him to be confessed and have the sacraments administered, but the conjuror did not die, and recovered from his wounds.” Imitating the noise that a demonic attack might have made and wounding himself to drive the point home, the conjuror is evidently employing a traditional ruse which Rais was the victim of at least twice.
Besides the excessive reaction of Rais, who earlier on could still be more frightened, there is one reason to believe that the date of this invocation is early: the role that Sillé plays in it and that he plays alone. Until about 1435- 1436, so far as the conjurors and alchemists are concerned, Sillé seems at first to have been Gilles’ sole procurer (during the same period he seems to have been the principal procurer of children, and it is he, as a rule, who did the killing when his master tired of doing so).
From 1435-1436 on, the priest Eustache Blanchet must have been, in his position, responsible for controlling the conjurors and alchemists (so far as the children are concerned, Henriet and Poitou assume the primary role, but Sillé does not disappear).
In the first place, Gilles de Rais had charged Sillé with seeking conjurors for him “in the region upriver,” but apparently he had no occasion to be satisfied with them. Sillé reported to him that a female conjuror had told him that if his master did not turn his soul away from the Church, in particular from his chapel at Machecoul, he would succeed in nothing; another one, in different terms, had pretty much told him the same thing. A conjuror, whom he was to bring back, drowned. Another came but, as soon as he arrived, died …
Eustache Blanchet, who was subsequently expected to return from Italy with the young and prestigious Prelati, does not seem to have made the slightest mistake in the beginning. The conjuror that Blanchet had called in from Poitiers to Pouzauges stole from Lord de Rais. The latter had a castle at Pouzauges which he owned through his wife, like that at Tiffauges. But it is not in the castle that the invocation was performed. It occurred during the night in a forest nearby. Rais, Blanchet, Henriet, and Poitou were present. (Sillé must have been out of favor then.)
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