Upon the arrest of Gilles and his henchmen, and during their trial before the ecclesiastical court, the army of retainers which had been employed by him, including his chapel and all his familiars, fled as would a flock of young chickens on the approach of a hawk. François Prelati, Eustache Blanchet, Henriet Griard, and Poitou seem to have been all who were arrested with Gilles. Gilles de Sillé and Roger de Briqueville had fled to the south before the blow fell. The rest got under cover as quickly as possible; instead of standing by their master, they got as far away from him as they could. Gilles was the only one tried by the ecclesiastical tribunal. No particular reason has been given why François and Blanchet were not tried with him, for they were undoubtedly guilty, equally with Gilles, of the charges of sorcery and invocation of demons; but they were priests, one of them an Italian priest, and whether they were promised freedom in consideration of their testimony against Gilles, is now unknown.
When, on the 19th of October, it had been decided by the ecclesiastical court to apply the torture to Gilles, it was done on the confessions of his accomplices. Why François Prelati and Eustache Blanchet had been excused or overlooked is, as has been said, unknown; but Henriet Griard and Poitou were then delivered to the civil court for trial. This civil court was presided over by Pierre de l’Hospital, who, as has been seen, had assisted in the ecclesiastical court, and was necessarily officially cognisant of the developments. Pierre de l’Hospital was the chief justice of the duchy of Brittany, and the civil courts were under his authority; so immediately after the confessions of Henriet and Poitou, they were transferred to the civil authorities, and Pierre de l’Hospital, as supreme judge, brought them before the court on the 20th or 21st of October. The civil court held its session at the Bouffay, then, and until 1848, the Palais de Justice. The Bouffay had been a castle, but had been reconstructed and used as the Palais de Justice during many centuries. It was in proximity to the Château de Nantes. It was enclosed in a high wall, possibly to make a jail-yard, and occupied the present Place, or Market, Bouffay.
It was within this palace yard that the celebrated trial by duel took place, by direction or authority of the Duke of Brittany, between Count Robert Beaumanoir and Sieur Pierre Tournemine, on a charge of murder made by the former against the latter.
The castle, or palace, has been destroyed, as well as the wall, and it now stands all open. One side of the Place abuts on the river Loire, adjoining the Bridge de la Poissonerie, over which the prisoners were taken to the Prairie Madeleine, the place of execution.
The proceedings of the civil court need not be followed in their details. Preparing for the trial, as is the custom of criminal courts in France, the prosecutor called the witnesses before him, and took down their depositions, and it is worth our while to pause and examine the record as it appears in the archives of the department of Loire-Inférieure.
The records of the two trials, the ecclesiastical and the civil, on file in the Departmental Archives, are unequal in the extent and detail with which they have been respectively reported. It is to be explained that it is a considerable work, and scarcely possible to have been completed in all its parts as the trial progressed, without immense labour on the part of the clerks and notaries. The proceedings of the ecclesiastical court, reported in Latin, comprise three hundred and eight pages, of which the photograph on page [137] of this memoir is a sample. The proceedings of the civil court, in French, comprise a hundred and nine pages, the two together making four hundred and twenty pages in parchment, without including the sentence, which was in Latin, much mixed with French. The sentence is about the size of the original Declaration of Independence of the United States. It is said to have been written in its entirety in a single night, and an inspection of it corroborates the story, for it bears evidence, by way of erasures and interlineations, of haste and rapid work.
The report of the evidence in the ecclesiastical trial is not nearly so satisfactory, nor has it been recorded so clearly, or with so much detail, as was that in the civil court. It is also much more convenient to render that of the civil trial, and the author has, therefore, used it in making a transcript. (Appendix D.)
It must not be forgotten that the evidence was taken by deposition, out of court; that it was rendered, not in the language of the witness, but of the scribe. The depositions were not signed by the witnesses, but were reported to the court under the signature of the notary or commissioner. Eighty-six witnesses were examined, and their testimony appears to have been reduced to writing by Jean Colin, and certified to by Jean de Touscheronde. The dates of the various sessions are not given, but each witness, or each batch of witnesses, appears to have been examined independently and certified to separately. This examination of witnesses in the civil court seems to have begun about as early as did that in the ecclesiastical trial, for the first record is under date of September 18, 1440. For the purpose of showing the style of the French language in use at that time, that it may be compared with modern French, and the changes noted, the heading of these depositions is here reproduced textually:
“September 18, 1440.
“Informacion et enqueste a trouver, se estre peut, que le sire de Rais, ses gens et complices, out prins et fait prandre pluseurs petiz enffans et autres gens, et les murtriz et occiis pour en avoir le sang, le cueur, le faye et autres parties d’elx, pour en faire sacrifice au deable, et autres malefices, de quoy il est grant clamour. Celle enqueste faite par Jehan de Touscheronde, commissaire de duc, nostre souverain seigneur, en ceste matere, appellé Jehan Colin, pour le prouchain tesmoign que eust en sa compaignie, le xviiie jour de septembre, l’an mil IIII C quarante.”
Before reporting the testimony in the depositions against Gilles de Retz, and that it may be better understood, it should be explained that there were two methods pursued by Gilles in the abduction of children: one, the secret and forcible abduction, and the other the hiring of the child for service as a page, or his being taken with the consent of the parents on a pretended duty, by which he should be attached to the retinue of the Baron. Both systems were pursued, and, it is believed, always by the followers and “familiars” of the Baron, for it does not appear that he was ever personally engaged in either. The demand of the parent for the presence of the child was always put off by indefinite statements: the boy was at another château, or he had gone with the masters, or men-at-arms, and would be absent for an indefinite time; sometimes, that he had gone to a distant province; other times, that he had fled and was a fugitive, and they knew not his whereabouts. These were all equivocal responses, and far from satisfactory to the demanders; but out of them there grew the reports circulated through the country, as set forth in the first pages of Chapter IV.