5. From Wanton Spending to Just Wanton
Gilles de Rais grew increasingly more erratic, and in 1440, he quarreled with local church figures. A hot headed nobleman, hopped up on machismo and unused to having his wishes denied, Rais escalated things, until he eventually kidnapped a priest. That triggered an ecclesiastical investigation, which uncovered some horrific stuff. It turned out that the once celebrated national hero had been murdering children – mostly boys, but also the occasional girl – by the dozen. He often lured children from peasant or other lower class families to his castle with gifts, such as candies, toys, or clothing. He initially put them at their ease, fed and pampered them, before he led them to a bedroom where Rais and his accomplices seized their victims.
As he confessed in his subsequent trial, Rais derived sadistic joy from his victims’ fear, when he explained what he planned to do to them. What he planned was nothing good – but we can skip the gory details. Suffice it to say that it involved torture and abuse, and ended with the child’s murder. The victims and their clothes were then burned in the fireplace, and their ashes were dumped in a moat. After Rais confessed to his crimes, he and he and his accomplices were condemned to death. He was executed on October 26th, 1440, by burning and hanging, simultaneously. His infamy inspired the fairy tale of Bluebeard, about a wealthy serial wife killer.
