On the occasion of Joan of Arc’s arrival at Chinon, Gilles de Rais enters into calculations of great political consequence. He doubtless knows nothing of these calculations but he serves them and, in serving them, they give him what he did not have a chance of attaining by himself: an effectiveness. In April 1429 he binds himself by oath to the charlatan La Trémoille, who, having become Charles VII’s favorite, is practically the Prime Minister. La Trémoille needs a man whose will is his own; he needs a blind and sumptuous armor for his army, the commanding appearance — and, when the moment comes, the valor — which corresponds to his interests.
La Trémoille, this cunning man, has many reasons for deciding upon Gilles de Rais. Kinship, first of all (I have already mentioned the family tie with the Craons). But most of all La Trémoille fears the influence of anyone other than himself on the King. He could have thought at first of Joan of Arc, but a woman cannot play a political role herself. That is not the case with a man of war who, benefiting from possible successes, would thereafter have access to the King. The choice by a man as calculating and prudent as La Trémoille ought therefore to fall on a man who was able militarily, but who at least must be incapable politically.
La Trémoille apparently did not hesitate. He knew what Gilles de Rais was all about from the start: Craon, the grandfather, was unscrupulous but cunning ; Rais, the grandson, had no more scruples than the first, but when it came to ruses, calculations and intrigues, he was destitute; these things were beyond him. We do not know what La Trémoille thought of Gilles on the occasion of their first ties. But in 1435, after his disgrace, the rake is seen to reproach himself for having taken advantage of the Marshal’s credulity (the two “friends” had the same financial affairs back then).
Abbot Bourdeaut specifies that it became “evident that La Trémoille was taking advantage of the credulity and mad extravagance of his cousin.” La Trémoille must have always taken him for a fool; he finally expresses his opinion in an arresting form, the reproach couched as a joke. He responds without hesitation with this enormity: “It is good,” La Trémoille affirms, “to encourage him to be bad”!
5
Today these words leave us breathless, but how could this mediocre statesman, this cunning man, have imagined an opposition between foolishness and goodness — and between wickedness and intelligence? He apparently did not know Rais’ hysterical cruelty until much later.
Gilles’ wickedness was boundless. However, even he would have been unable to conceive of the calculations and bad faith of a La Trémoille. In the face of this bad faith and these calculations, he felt no repugnance. But if someone did not calculate in his place, he would not calculate. Under La Trémoille’s aegis, he kept his place in Charles VII’s entourage. Close to Joan of Arc in the decisive and very delicate affair of the liberation of Orléans, he played a primary role, evidently right after that of the Maid. Abbot Bourdeaut has shown that the “particular character” of this role had “not been elucidated”; still, in 1445, “when, at the trial to clear the name of Joan, Dunois gave his deposition in an age when nobody boasted of having rubbed elbows with the Marshal … , he put the sad Gilles at the top of the leaders of battle who had commanded the army of the liberation.”
6
But the role of a leader of battle is limited in this period to the great lord’s personal prestige and to the warrior’s valor. Evidently, taking La Jumellière’s advice, Gilles can speak in the councils before the battles. In these battles, above all, he can carry his own and strike.
La Trémoille pushed Gilles into the highest echelon but retained for himself, so far as calculation is concerned, all that was political. If young Baron de Rais had known how to scheme, La Trémoille would have prevented him from becoming a Marshal.
Without La Trémoille, the madcap would have never had a place in history. But if he had not been a fool, that madcap whom we know today — La Trémoille would have never made use of him.
The Foolishness of Gilles de Rais
Usually one avoids noticing that in Gilles de Rais’ monstrosity there is this strange thing: this Marshal of France is a fool!
But our character is bewitching.
At the opposite extreme, Huysmans saw in him one of the most cultivated men of his time!
Huysmans had one sustaining reason: Marshal de Rais, like him, was mad about church music and hymns. From there he draws foolish conclusions based on appearances that prove nothing.
But Huysmans only carried a common reaction to its conclusion. Generally the grandeur and, above all, the monstrosity of our character is imposing. There is a sort of majesty in his ease, one that he keeps even during the tears of confession. There is in the evidence of monstrosity a sovereign grandeur which does not contradict the humility of the wretched man proclaiming the horror of crime.
7
Also this grandeur, in a sense, agrees with the foolishness of which I speak. Indeed, from the foolishness of Gilles de Rais to what one usually designates with this term, the difference is great. At its heart there lies a sovereign indifference which caused him to pay double for what pleased him … This indifference, this absence, made others laugh. But Gilles undoubtedly did not deign to know this.
I have already said how Prelati, who seduced him, took advantage of him. Gilles bore witness that, until the end, he would never withdraw his affection for him. Likewise, with regard to Briqueville, who odiously extorted power of attorney from him (p. 91), he kept a long-lasting loyalty.
The oddest thing is his relationship with La Trémoille, who mocked him and, without wanting to, deceived him! Who wanted to “encourage him to be bad.”
But there are very few occasions in which an excessive indifference, a kind of absence followed by violent reactions, does not appear. A stranger to prudence, he seems to be at the mercy of impulses that reflection cannot control; look at the absurdity of the Saint-Étienne affair! In particular, his attitude at the trial is a result of this boyish brusqueness. First he insults the judges, then suddenly (though we are unable to know the reason for the change) he breaks out in tears; he confesses, exposing at length unspeakable infamies.
He has absolutely no skill in defending himself. He moves about violently from one impulse to another, which destroys him.
I insist: this is a child.
But this child had at his disposal a fortune that appeared inexhaustible to him and nearly absolute power.
Childishness, in principle, has limited possibilities, whereas by reason of this fortune and power, Gilles de Rais’ childishness met with tragic possibilities.
In his crimes, in fact, Gilles is not fully the child that he is at his very core.
His foolishness attains, in blood, a tragic grandeur.
Childishness and Archaism
With Gilles de Rais, there is no longer a question of what we commonly designate as childishness. In effect, the question is of
monstrosity
. Essentially this monstrosity is childlike. But it involves the childishness to which the possibilities of adulthood belong and, rather than childlike, these possibilities are archaic. If Gilles de Rais is a child, it is in the manner of savages. He is a child as a cannibal is; or more precisely, as one of his Germanic ancestors, unbounded by civilized proprieties.
Joined to the god of sovereignty by initiatory rites, the young warriors willingly distinguished themselves in particular by a bestial ferocity; they knew neither rules nor limits. In their ecstatic rage, they were taken for wild animals, for furious bears, for wolves. The Harii of Tacitus augmented the fright provoked by their delirium by employing black shields and, wanting to surprise their enemies, to terrify them, rubbed their bodies with soot. This “funereal army,” in order to augment the terror, chose “pitch-dark nights.” Often the name of
Berserkir
(“warriors in bear skins”) was given to them. Like the Centaurs of Greece, the Gandharva of India or the Luperci of Rome, they became animals in their delirium. The Chetti, whom Tacitus also describes, indulged in
scelera improbissima
: they struck, they executed and they skinned. They were slaughterers, and “neither iron nor steel could do anything against them.” The fury of the Berserkir turned them into monsters. Ammien Marcellin, speaking of the Taifali, is indignant when describing their pederastic practices … They gave themselves up to drinking bouts that finally succeeded in taking away whatever humanity they still had.
8
There was nothing in the Germans’ religion that could offset this cruelty and these juvenile debaucheries. There was not, as with the Gauls or the Romans, a priesthood to oppose learning and moderation to drunkenness, ferocity, and violence.
During the first centuries of the Middle Ages, we should at least consider that something remained of these barbarous customs in the education of knights. In the first place, knighthood was apparently nothing but a continuation of the society of young German initiates. The Christian influence on the education of knights came later. It barely shows before the thirteenth century, the twelfth at a pinch, two or three centuries before Gilles de Rais …
It may be that nothing precise, nothing that we could speak about clearly, had survived of the distant traditions of which I have spoken. But we cannot imagine that nothing had subsisted. An atmosphere of violence and drinking bouts, the relish for terror, must have subsisted for a long time. As a rule, archaic traits continued to dominate the principles of knighthood and nobility, and these traits correspond precisely to aspects of the life of Gilles de Rais.
These traits played a much greater role in his life as he was naive, and as he was no more familiar with the implementation of reason than with a rake’s calculations. In fact, as for the formation of Gilles de Rais’ character, the only elements that left traces are, on the one hand, warlike violence, dragging along with it, as in the time of the Germans, extreme courage and the rage of a wild animal; and, on the other hand, a habit of drinking that we have seen could be traditionally linked to the sexual excesses, homosexuality for instance. Apparently the boys of this time, who acquired vicious or cruel habits at an early age, saw themselves supported by tradition, even if those habits belonged only to limited groups. It seems to me, moreover, that certain of their more unspeakable proclivities could be developed and reinforced in common. Neither the distant past, to which the life of these boys gravitated, nor the necessity of brutal training practices could make them wiser. They had every chance to take almost unmerciful advantage of the young serfs, as well as the young female serfs of their parents: there is no reason to think that Christianity would have sensitively moderated their tendency to pay no more attention to the life of human beings than that of animals.
The principles of courtly love only slowly erected a barrier against the coarseness of a world of arms. As with Christianity, courtly love was relatively opposed to violence. The paradox of the Middle Ages was that it did not want men of war to speak the language of force and combat. Their parlance often became saccharine. But we ought not to deceive ourselves: the camaraderie of the old French was a cynical lie. Even the poetry for which nobles of the 14th and 15th centuries affected fondness was in all senses a deceit: the great lords chiefly loved war; their attitude differed little from that of the German
Berserkir,
who dreamed of terror and butchery. The famous poem by Bertrand de Born is, in other respects, a confession of their violent feelings. These feelings could go hand in hand with courtliness, but this poem permits us to see at what point their hunger for carnage and the horror of war continued burning. Gilles de Rais, more than anyone, must have had the sensibility of violence harkening back to the fury of the
Berserkir.
He also had the habit of drinking; he took strong drinks in order to whet his sexual excitement. For Gillies, as for the barbarians of the past, the goal was in breaking bounds; it was a question of living sovereignly.
The privilege of the German warrior was to feel himself above the laws, and from there to draw violent consequences. I do not say that all young nobles had the same frenzied outlook — even less traditionally were companions in arms inclined to homosexuality — but whether they became softened or not, the habits of these young men who brandished a sword or battle-axe were probably repugnant in part. I do not doubt that it very often accrued to one’s honor to show oneself more hateful than one’s counterpart. They could not help being hardened; they had one foot in the stirrup. Even though it had doubtless lost the character of ritual, homosexuality, without a doubt, must have facilitated things.
Sexual Life: War
It appeared to me possible to situate the vices of Gilles de Rais in an ensemble of traditional cruelties and drinking bouts. Besides, we are informed, albeit imperfectly, on the actual development of his vices.
I have already spoken of the confessions Gilles de Rais himself made that “iniquitously … since the beginning of his youth,” he had committed “high and enormous crimes.” I have also cited what the trial said afterwards: that the origin of these crimes is attributed by the guilty party “to 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.” From here it is difficult to become more explicit. From a vague tradition to begin with (we have to imagine the occasional stories: “this fellow’s son did this, that one did something else”), violent habits, at least of precocious irregularity, could have thus perpetuated themselves. However, two distinct aspects are implicated in the confessions.