Titans of History

The victims, who were usually blue-eyed and blond-haired, were either lured to the castle on a variety of pretexts or forcibly taken from the village of Machecoul or the surrounding area. The first victim was said to have been a twelve-year-old messenger boy, who was hanged by his neck on a metal hook, raped by Rais, and then murdered. As more and more children disappeared, the finger of suspicion soon pointed at Rais. However, the locals were terrified and ill-equipped to challenge one of the most powerful and wealthy men in France.

The majority of the victims were tortured in a specially built chamber, where they were strung up or tied down and then raped, before being killed by a variety of methods, including dismemberment, decapitation and disembowelment. At his trial Rais confessed to admiring the severed heads of the more beautiful victims, and taking pleasure from seeing their entrails ripped out. It was also alleged that Rais indulged in black magic and devil worship.

Meanwhile, René de Rais had determined to take control of the family fortune before Gilles spent it all, and threatened to march on Machecoul. The duke of Brittany also had designs on Gilles’ lands, and captured one of his castles. In response, in May 1440, Gilles seized the brother of one of his foes, a priest who had been in the middle of conducting Mass, provoking the bishop of Nantes—who also had a vested interest in Rais’ downfall—to instigate an inquiry into his behavior.

The bishop went on to interview the families of children abducted by Rais, and built up a shocking case against him. Rais was arrested in September 1440, and indicted on thirty-four counts of murder. Within a month he had confessed to his crimes—under the threat of torture—and been found guilty of murder, sodomy and heresy. On October 16, 1440, after expressing his remorse and being granted the right of confession, he was hanged and then burned, along with two of his servants.

To the last, Gilles de Rais professed the strength of his faith. The one charge that he refused to admit to was devil worship, and he broke down in a fit of sobbing when he was told that he would be excommunicated and denied the right of confession. Yet such flashes of conscience had done nothing to stop his campaign of sadism, murder and what he called “carnal delight.”

JOAN OF ARC

c. 1412–1431

I have been sent here by God, the King of Heaven, to drive you, an eye for an eye, from the whole of France.

Joan of Arc, in a letter to the English forces besieging Orléans (March 22, 1429)

France’s national heroine, Joan of Arc, was a simple peasant girl who became a soldier, a martyr, and finally a saint. Convinced that God had told her to free France, she showed remarkable moral and military leadership and inspired the French to fight on against the English in the Hundred Years’ War. Dressed in men’s clothes, Joan defied convention, and the objections of both statesmen and churchmen, and in the end embraced death in her pursuit of salvation.

Joan was just fourteen when she first heard the “voices” of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret calling her to save France from the English. After half a century of war, the French seemed on the verge of losing the contest for their crown. Five years after the death of the Valois king Charles VI, his son, the Dauphin Charles, had still not been crowned, and the city of Orléans, the key to central France, seemed about to fall to the English.

Joan traveled across war-torn enemy territory to seek an audience with Charles, driven on by the persistent voices of the saints. Her quiet unbending determination gained her access to the Dauphin and persuaded him that he must reinvigorate the campaign against the English, and that it was God’s will that he should be crowned at Rheims. She never disclosed what she had whispered to him that day, but Charles and the French leadership were either convinced that she had divine guidance or that this peasant girl would be useful to the French cause, probably a little of both.

Clad in white armor and wielding a battle-ax, Joan rode at the head of Charles’s army to relieve the besieged city of Orléans. The English were routed, and other victories followed—as Joan was somehow sure they would. Hailed by the French as their savior, and accused by the English of being a witch, it seemed that the Maid of Orléans must have some supernatural power, as the myth of English invincibility that had sprung up since Agincourt was conclusively shattered. In July 1429 the Dauphin was crowned as Charles VII at Rheims, with Joan in attendance.