Trial of Gilles De Rais Read Online Free Page B

what characterized, from his eleventh year, this savage and violent childhood. Apparently the two clergymen, who had instructed him up to this point, quit. We know very little of his relationship with this pair. But twenty years later, in 1436, he has one of them, Michel de Fontenay, arrested; he has him thrown into prison (pp. 98-99), and we know what prison meant then …
    His studies terminated, left to himself, a frightful development began. “On account of the bad management he had received in his childhood, when, unbridled, he applied himself to whatever pleased him, and pleased himself with every illicit act …” Such are Gilles’ own words, which the scribe took down.
    The scribe specifies: “He perpetrated many high and enormous crimes … , since the beginning of his youth, against God and His commandments … ”
    Morality, to tell the truth, was not Jean de Craon’s business. Evidently the grandfather’s avarice alone was at the bottom of one disagreement, which the grandson’s impetuosity was necessarily fated to overcome.
    Finally this grandfather introduces the young black sheep to the court. In 1425, Gilles is with Craon at the interview in Saumur where Charles VII and the Duke of Brittany, Jean V, consider an accord. The accord cannot resolve for long the difficulties that oppose the France of the “King of Bourges” to Brittany, which is divided between fear of an English invasion and the will to avoid French domination.
    However, in 1427 an exceptional occasion presents itself. Jean de Craon receives the lieutenant generalship of the duchy of Anjou from his suzerain, Yolande d’Aragon, Charles VII’s mother-in-law. She intends to be the mother of a true queen; this is why she has the interests of her son-in-law at heart. From time to time she overcomes the inaction of this erratic king. At court two years later she will effectively support Joan of Arc. In 1427 she takes the initiative in a limited, but judicious, action. The struggle against the English will resume in her domains. She comes to terms with Craon, her most powerful vassal, who will take charge of operations. But Craon is old, probably in his sixties. He cannot take part in the campaign. Whereas experienced captains lead the royal contingents, Gilles, at twenty-three years old, is placed at the head of an Angevin army. However, he is not alone. Jean de Craon entrusts him to a kind of mentor: Guillaume de La Jumellière, an Angevin lord, who appears under the name of Monsignor Martigné in Gilles’ records. Gilles’ military knowledge is limited; not so that of La Jumellière, apparently the only advisor in his hire who is what you would call respectable (the others unscrupulously live at the expense of his naïveté). Under these circumstances, Jean de Craon also facilitates for Gilles a certain disposition of his personal fortune; from the start, the future Marshal of France astonishes people by the number of spies he employs and the wages they receive.
    As Gilles’ good luck would have it, this prudently conducted campaign is an undeniable success. Charles VII’s men seize many fortresses from the English. But Gilles does not distinguish himself simply by the abundance of his monetary resources. It is probable that from then on he gives proof of great courage, and that he shows when attacking a warlike fury, the memory of which lasts after his death. It is doubtless that this fury merited his being summoned by Joan of Arc, determined to force the outcome below the walls of Paris. In addition to the Duke of Alençon, Joan of Arc wants this young man, who harbors all the fury and violence of crime, beside her at this time. We mustn’t forget that if a quarrel had not gone through her shoulder, the outcome that the Maid was hoping for would have been possible on this day. Evidently Gilles is a superb leader in battle. He belongs to that class of men thrust forward by the delirium of battle. If Joan of Arc wants him by her side at