GILLES DE RAIS. 469 promising than that of Gilles de Eais. Born in 1404 of the noble stock of Montmorency and Craon, grandson of the renowned knight, Brumor de Laval, grandnephew of du Guesclin, of kindred with the Constable Clisson, and allied with all that was illustrious in the west of France, his barony of Rais rendered him the head of the baronage of Britanny. His territorial possessions were ample, and when, while still a youth, he married the great heiress, Catharine de Thouars, he might count himself among the wealth- iest nobles of France. His bride is said to have brought him one hundred thousand livres in gold and movables, and his revenue was reckoned at fifty thousand. At the age of sixteen he won the esteem of his suzerain, Jean V., Duke of Britanny, by his courage and skill in the campaign which ended the ancient rivalry between the houses of de Montfort and de Penthievre. At twenty-two, following the duke's brother, the Constable Artus de Richemont, he entered the desperate service of Charles VII. , with a troop maintained at his own expense, and he distinguished himself in the seemingly hopeless resistance to the English arms. When Joan of Arc appeared he was charged with the special duty of watching over her personal safety, and, from the relief of Orleans to the repulse at the gates of Paris, he was ever at her side. In the coronation ceremonies at Reims he received, though but twenty-five years old, the high dignity of Marshal of France, and in the September following he was honored with permission to add to his arms a border of the royal fleurs-de-lis. There was no dig- nity beneath the crown to which his ambition might not aspire, for he maintained himself so skilfully between the opposing fac- tions of the constable and of the royal favorite, La Tremouille, that when the latter fell, in 1433, his credit at the court was unimpaired.* He was, moreover, a man of unusual culture. His restless cu- riosity and thirst for knowledge led him to accumulate books at a time when it was rare for knights to be able to sign their names. Chance has preserved to us the titles of St. Augustin's " City of God," " Valerius Maximus," Ovid's " Metamorphoses " and " Sue- tonius," as fragments of his library ; and on his trial one of the reasons he gave for liking an Italian necromancer was the choice
- Bossard et Maulde, Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe-bleue, Paris, 1886, pp. 16, 43,
49-51, 53, 57, Pr. p. clvii.
