It is believed that the French Marshal Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais, Comte de Brienne became the prototype of the terrible assassin called Bluebeard. Who was this man and was he so guilty?
Gilles de Rais was born around 1404 in the castle of Mashcoul on the border of Brittany and Anjou, into a noble and very wealthy family. At the age of eleven, Gilles and his younger brother Rene, after the death of their parents, came under the care of their grandfather Jean de Craon.
Ruins of Mashkul Castle
This educated man instilled in his grandson a craving for reading and science. At the age of sixteen, Gilles married the beautiful Catherine de Toire, while receiving a dowry of vast lands in Poitou and two million livres. In 1429, their only daughter, Marie de Laval, was born.
At this time, the Hundred Years War was raging, the British with their allies, the Burgundians, by that time had already occupied half of the territory of France. Gilles de Rais decided to side with the French crown. Due to his enormous fortune, he won over the heir to the king - Prince Charles of Valois and received a place in his retinue.
Marshal Gilles de Rais
Gilles' military career was successful and he managed to achieve resounding fame. He was brave and surprisingly good at weapons. Having formed large armed detachments at his own expense, Gilles de Rais from 1427 to 1429 captured several castles and made successful raids on French lands occupied by the enemy.
At twenty-five, he was promoted to Marshal of France, receiving the honor of including the royal lilies in his coat of arms. When, at the beginning of 1429, seventeen-year-old Joan of Arc appeared before the Dauphin Charles and announced that she would expel the British and crown Charles VII in Rheims, Marshal Gilles de Rais, like many others, was fascinated by her. The king entrusted the baron with the protection of Jeanne, and from Orleans to the unsuccessful siege of Paris, Gilles de Rais was always with her.
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Joan of Arc's victories followed one another. On July 17, 1429 in Reims, where the French kings were traditionally crowned, the coronation of Charles VII took place. On the right hand of the king stood Joan of Arc, on the left - Gilles de Rais.
Confident in the victory of France, Gilles de Rais made a mistake - he made it clear to the newly-made sovereign that now it was time to start paying off the loans. As a result, the marshal fell out of favor and was removed from the court.
The situation at the French court soon changed. Joan of Arc could not be forgiven for the fact that a girl of seventeen knew more about the conduct of hostilities than the best soldiers of France. Rumors about the capture of Jeanne reached Gilles and he rushed to the king and queen, but was refused: Jeanne is an unofficial person and cannot be redeemed.
After the execution of Joan of Arc, Gilles returned to the Tiffauges castle in remote Brittany and began to study alchemy: there was no hope for the king to return the loans, and his financial affairs were going very badly. In 1436, a new Dauphin - Louis (future king of France Louis XI), who was intriguing against his father, visited his castle.
Baron de Rais had to finance Louis by mortgaging his castles one by one. Directly the shadow of the enmity between the king and the Dauphin fell on Gilles - by the highest decree of the king, he was limited in commercial operations with his possessions.
Seeing that his financial situation was catastrophically worsening, Gilles and his alchemist Gilles de Sillet with even greater zeal began to look for a way to obtain gold from lead. Almost the entire first floor of the castle of Tiffauges was converted into an alchemical laboratory, and Gilles's agents bought up on an industrial scale components that were very expensive for those times, for example, such as shark's tooth, arsenic and mercury. However, all was in vain, he never received gold.
Having said goodbye in 1439 to his alchemist Gilles de Sille, he invited Francesco Prelatti, a charlatan, who eventually acquired great power over him, to take his place. Francesco directly stated that he is a sorcerer and has a personal demon through which he keeps in touch with the world of the dead.
Soon rumors of their experiences, some of which were described as devilish, spread throughout Brittany, as a result of which the Duke of Breton, whose vassal was Gilles de Rais, had to react to them.
Monsignor Jean de Malestruet, Bishop of Nantes and Chief Counselor to the Duke of Breton, delivered a sensational sermon to his parishioners in the cathedral in 1440, in which he accused Marshal Gilles de Rais of gruesome crimes "against young children and adolescents of both sexes."
In the end, he called for everyone who has any information about this to inform him about it. Rumors and a fiery speech by the bishop gave the impression that the authorities knew a lot about the crimes of Gilles de Rais, although in reality there was only one known case of the missing child, which was not even associated with the marshal.
From this we can conclude that the top of the Duchy of Breton took advantage of the opportunity presented to get rid of the disgraced Gilles de Rais forever. Gilles de Rais was accused of human sacrifice to a domestic demon, murder of children with their dismemberment and burning of bodies, sexual perversion and witchcraft with "the use of special technical means." Given the worldview of the people of that time, one can imagine the impression all these accusations made on them.
On September 13, 1440, Marshal Gilles de Rais was formally notified of the 47-point indictment. He was asked to come to the Episcopal Court on September 19 to give an explanation. In addition, according to the indictment, the Duke of Breton authorized a secular trial.
Understanding perfectly well what the charges of witchcraft threaten him, Gilles de Rais, unlike his alchemist Gilles de Sillé, who went on the run, agreed to come to court. The public prosecutor of Brittany arrested the bodyguards of Baron Corillo and Griard, as well as the Italian sorcerer Prelatti.
The trial of Marshal Gilles de Rais was announced in the squares of all cities in Brittany, and spectators were admitted freely. Many of them were very aggressive towards the accused. The marshal's request for a lawyer was rejected by the court. Before the judges, Gilles de Rais behaved arrogantly, completely denying his guilt, and then they began to interrogate his people.
The captured alchemist Gilles de Sillé confirmed that the accused marshal took part in alchemical experiments, knowing full well that it was forbidden. For some experiments, different parts of the infant's body had to be placed in the bowl. He also testified about Gilles de Rais' violent sexual abuse of underage boys and girls.
Even more terrible testimony was given by the alchemist Francesco Prelatti, who announced that the marshal had signed an agreement with the demon Barron in blood. For the gift of wealth, power and omniscience, he promised the demon to offer bloody sacrifices. According to him, the accused tried to pay off with a chicken, but the demon demanded the blood of the babies.
Ruins of the Tiffauges castle
The parents of the missing children were also questioned, who said that they had seen the children for the last time, sending them to beg in the marshal's domain. The arrested bodyguards of Baron Gilles de Rais did not become silent either. They unanimously stated that the marshal collected severed human heads and during a search of the baron's castle they were not found only because Gilles de Rais, who felt the danger, ordered them to destroy this collection.
Despite the fact that all these testimonies of witnesses shocked the Marshal, outwardly he remained calm and unperturbed, continuing to declare his innocence and demanding a lawyer. However, he was once again refused.
In the end, tired of unfounded accusations, Baron Gilles de Rais declared that he would rather die on the gallows than continue to listen to false testimonies at this shameful trial. As a result, the marshal was excommunicated, and on October 19, 1440, the court ruled to torture the baron in order to "induce an end to the vile denial."
Torture of the Middle Ages
The most popular torture in those days in France was applied to him - they tied him by his arms and legs, and stretched him on a horizontal lattice, as if on a rack. Having endured terrible pain, Gilles de Rais promised the executioners to be more accommodating at the trial. Kneeling before the bishop, he asked to be excommunicated from the church, and then, in the process of testifying, confessed all his sins.
On October 21, 1440, Baron de Rais was subjected to new tortures, after which he officially admitted that he “enjoyed vice,” describing in detail all his favorite methods of murder and his feelings at the same time. Interestingly, the marshal confessed to killing eight hundred innocent babies, but the court decided that one hundred and fifty would be enough.
For "such grievous sins against the dogmas of faith and human laws that it is impossible for a person to even imagine them" on October 25, 1440, the bishop of Nantes repeatedly "plucked Gilles de Rais from the bosom of the Church of Christ", and the marshal himself was sentenced to death at the stake. He was offered the condition that if he repent and reconciled with the church, he would not be burned alive, but first strangled. The Baron agreed.
The trial of Gilles de Rais
On October 26, 1440, Marshal of France Gilles de Rais and two of his entourage, Henri Griard and Etienne Corillau, were executed. Gilles encouraged his bodyguards in every possible way and, as the chronicle testifies, asked to be executed first in order to teach them how to die.
Standing at the stake, Gilles de Rais addressed the crowd and said that he was a brother to everyone present and asked everyone, and especially those whose children he had killed, not only to forgive, but also to pray for him. And then the incredible happened - the crowd knelt down and began to pray. Gilles de Rais signaled that he was ready to die. The executioner, having thrown a noose of the garrote, strangled him, then set the fire on fire. From that moment on, the French king Charles VII no longer had to give him a huge debt.
Execution of Gilles de Rais and two of his bodyguards
The body of the baron was removed almost immediately and solemnly buried in the tomb of the barons de Rais. According to other sources, relatives refused to bury him in the family crypt, and he was buried under an unnamed slab in a Carmelite monastery on the outskirts of Nantes.
Centuries have passed, but local peasants still repeat that in these castles on the banks of the Loire once lived a wealthy baron, nicknamed Bluebeard, who killed wives and children.
French scientists consider it proven that the prototype of Bluebeard was Gilles de Rais. But was Marshal of France Baron Gilles de Rais really so guilty? The “posthumous trial”, held in the Senate of the French Republic in 1992, fully acquitted Marshal Gilles de Rais.
Used materials history-paradox.ru