473 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. was about concluded when the intruders rushed in with brand- ished weapons, and Gilles addressed Jean : " Ha, scoundrel, thou hast beaten my men and committed extortions on them ; come out or I will kill thee I" It was with difficulty that the frightened clerk could be reassured. He was dragged to the gate of the castle and forced to order its surrender, when Gilles garrisoned it and carried him off, finally imprisoning him in Tiffauges, chained hand and foot.* The offence was one for which the customs of Britanny pro- vided a remedy in the civil courts, but the duke zealously took up the cause of his treasurer and summarily ordered his lieutenant- general to surrender the castle and the prisoners under a penalty of fifty thousand crowns. Indignant at this unlooked-for inter- vention, Gilles maltreated the messengers of the duke, who prompt- ly raised a force and recaptured the place in dispute. Tiffauges, where the prisoners lay, was in Poitou, beyond his jurisdiction, but his brother, the Constable de Richemont, besieged it, and Gilles was forced to liberate them. Having thus submitted, he ventured in July to visit the duke at Josselin : he had some doubts as to his reception, but Prelati consulted his demon and announced that he could go in safety. He was graciously received, and imagined that the storm had blown over. So safe did he feel that while at Josselin he continued his atrocities, putting to death several chil- dren and causing Prelati to evoke his demon. f While the powers of the State thus hesitated to attack the criminal, the Church was busily preparing his downfall. He had been guilty of sacrilege in the violence committed in the church of Saint-Etienne, and he had violated its immunities in the per- son of Jean le Ferron. Yet, in that cruel age, when war spared neither church nor cloister, these were offences too frequent to justify his ruin, and in the earlier stages of the proceedings they are not even alluded to. On July 30 Jean de Malestroit, in whose bishopric of Xantes the barony of Pais was situated, issued pri- vately a declaration reciting that in a recent visitation he and his commissioners had found that Gilles was publicly defamed for
- Bossard et Maulde, pp. 231-5 ; Pr. pp. xxix., cii.-cxvi., cliv.
f Tres Anc. Cout, de Bretagne c. 62 (Bourdot de Richebourg IV. 216).— Bossard et Maulde, pp. 235-6; Pr. pp. liii., lxxi.
