Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais Baron de Retz
Gilles de Rais by Éloi Firmin Féron (1835) This oil painting is an artist's impression, since no contemporary portrait or description has survived. The artwork was commissioned by the July Monarchy for display in the Gallery of French Marshals of the Musée de l'Histoire de France (Versailles).[1]
Birth name	Gilles de Montmorency-Laval
Born	c. 1405 ? Champtocé-sur-Loire, Anjou
Died	26 October 1440 Nantes, Brittany
Buried	Church Monastery of Notre-Dame des Carmes, Nantes
Allegiance	Duchy of Brittany Kingdom of France
Years of service	1427 (or 1420 ?) – 1435
Rank	Marshal of France
Battles / wars	Hundred Years' War Siege of Orléans Battle of Jargeau Battle of Patay
Signature
Criminal details
Target	mainly young boys
Victims	Unknown (approx. 140 ?)
Period	1432–1440
Penalty	Death by hanging (corpse partially burned at the stake)

Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais (French: [ʒil də ʁɛ]; c. 1405 – 26 October 1440) was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army during the Hundred Years' War, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later conviction as a confessed serial killer of children.

An important lord as heir to some great noble lineages of western France, he rallied to the cause of King Charles VII of France and waged war against the English. In 1429, he formed an alliance with his cousin Georges de La Trémoille, the prominent Grand Chamberlain of France, and was appointed Marshal of France the same year, after the successful military campaigns alongside Joan of Arc, but little is known about the relationship between the two comrades in arms. He gradually withdrew from the war during the 1430s. His family accused him of squandering his patrimony by selling off his lands to the highest bidder to offset his lavish expenses, a profligacy that led to his being placed under interdict by Charles VII in July 1435. He assaulted a high-ranking cleric in the church of Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte before seizing the local castle in May 1440, thereby violating ecclesiastical immunities and undermining the majesty of his suzerain, John V, Duke of Brittany. Arrested on 15 September 1440 at his castle in Machecoul, he was brought to the Duchy of Brittany, an independent principality where he was tried in October 1440 by an ecclesiastical court assisted by the Inquisition for heresy, sodomy and the murder of "one hundred and forty or more children." At the same time, he was tried and condemned by the secular judges of the ducal court of justice to be hanged and burned at the stake for his act of force at Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte, as well as for crimes committed against "several small children." On 26 October 1440, he was sent to the scaffold with two of his servants convicted of murder.

The vast majority of historians believe he was guilty, but some are wary of reading the records of his double trial at face value. Medievalists Jacques Chiffoleau [fr] and Claude Gauvard note the need to study the inquisitorial procedure employed by questioning the defendants' confessions in the light of the judges' expectations and conceptions, while also examining the role of rumor in the development of Rais' fama (reputation), without disregarding detailed testimonies concerning the disappearance of children, or confessions describing murderous rituals unparalleled in the judicial archives of the time.

A popular confusion between the mythical Bluebeard and the historical Baron de Rais has been documented since the early 19th century, regardless of the uncertain hypothesis that Rais served as an inspiration for Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" literary fairy tale (1697).