Dark History of the Kings & Queens of Europe E-Book

Brenda Ralph Lewis

• Herausgeber: Amber Books Ltd
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Dark Histories
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 367

Beschreibung

‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ - William Shakespeare

‘I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.’ - Catherine the Great

To many, Europe has been the pinnacle of world sophistication and culture. Yet beneath the power, the glamour, and the splendour there has also been scandal, mystery and skullduggery. Dark History of the Kings & Queens of Europe peels away the glory and the glitz to take a wry look at what has really gone on in the corridors, bedrooms and dungeons of European power from the fourteenth century up to the present day. Including Vlad the Impaler’s stakes, Elizabeth Bathory’s razor blades, Philip IV’s starvation of the Knights Templars, the man in the iron mask, many mad monarchs from Juana I the Mad of Spain to Ludwig II of Bavaria, and the troubled life of Princess Grace of Monaco, Dark History of the Kings & Queens of Europe is illustrated throughout and offers a lively, highly varied portrait of continental European monarchy.

Leseprobe

DARK HISTORY OF THE KINGS & QUEENS OF EUROPE

BRENDA RALPH LEWIS

This digital edition first published in 2012

Published byAmber Books Ltd Unite House North Road London N7 9DP United Kingdom

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Copyright © 2012 Amber Books Ltd

ISBN: 978 1 908696 34 2

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All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purpose of review no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or publisher, who also disclaim any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

PHILIP IV OF FRANCE AND THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

CHAPTER 2

ELIZABETH BATHORY: THE BLOOD COUNTESS

CHAPTER 3

TWO FRENCH ROYAL RAKES: LOUIS XIV AND LOUIS XV

CHAPTER 4

THE KING AND THE VAMP: LUDWIG I OF BAVARIA AND LOLA MONTEZ

CHAPTER 5

CASTLES IN THE AIR: THE TRAGIC STORY OF LUDWIG II OF BAVARIA

CHAPTER 6

THE MAYERLING TRAGEDY

CHAPTER 7

MADNESS IN THE SPANISH ROYAL FAMILY

CHAPTER 8

MORE MADNESS IN SPAIN

CHAPTER 9

QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN: A QUESTION OF GENDER

CHAPTER 10

HAEMOPHILIA: THE ROYAL DISEASE

CHAPTER 11

KINGS AND COMMUNISTS: CAROL II OF ROMANIA

CHAPTER 12

THE NETHERLANDS: A ROYAL FAMILY IN TROUBLE

CHAPTER 13

KING LEOPOLD II AND THE BELGIAN CONGO

CHAPTER 14

THE GRIMALDIS OF MONACO

MAP OF KEY LOCATIONS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

History can be dark in many ways, and the royal history of continental Europe is no exception. For example, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais were mass murderers. De Rais and the horrors he perpetrated at his castle entered French folklore in tales of the barbaric Bluebeard, who murdered seven wives and hung their bodies in a blood-drenched cupboard. In the nineteenth century, King Leopold II of Belgium reduced the population of the Congo, in Africa, by 70 per cent, through the appalling punishments and brute exploitation practised in his colony, the Congo Free State.

Vlad III Dracul, a fifteenth-century Prince of Wallachia (now part of Romania), also entered the shock-horror annals of Europe. He was probably the model for Count Dracula, the blood-sucking vampire in Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula, published in 1897. The real Vlad Dracul went a great deal further: he specialized in impaling his enemies by having stakes driven through their bodies, and afterwards leaving them to die a slow, horrifically agonizing death.

Several kings of France appear in the cast list. The most notorious was the fourteenth-century King Philip IV, who coveted the wealth and feared the power and influence of the Knights Templar, the most prestigious of the crusader military orders. Philip devised a truly evil plot to destroy them. Hundreds of Templars died or were crippled after being tortured to confess.

Two later French kings, Louis XIV and Louis XV, were more civilized, but still reprehensible. They specialized in debauchery. Louis XV had his own private brothel near the Palace of Versailles where he regularly serviced a bevy of young girls. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kings were expected to have a mistress as a consolation prize for their duty to enter an arranged marriage and produce heirs to the throne. Both Louis XIV and Louis XV gained a great deal of ‘consolation’ by way of this tradition.

‘The Family of Louis XIV’ painted in 1711 by Nicolas de Largillière. The picture shows some of the legitimate heirs of King Louis but his many illegitimate children were not, of course, included. The small child pictured was the King’s great-grandson and successor in debauchery, the future King Louis XV.

Not all the dark history in this book deals with barbarity, wickedness or immorality. Some royal lives were ruined by the insanity that ran in their families because of the unwise practice of inbreeding.

This was supposed to keep the dynastic line ‘pure’ and retain royal power, wealth and influence within the family. But inbreeding ran too close to incest and produced monsters so damaged in body and mind that their families dared not reveal the truth about their condition.

The Spanish Hapsburgs and the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria were riddled with insanity and its appalling manifestations. They suffered lifelong torment, which included morbid fears, hallucinations and murderous violence. The pity of it was that some of them knew they were losing their minds, yet were inexorably swept on into the maelstrom of madness. Another scourge, haemophilia, the dreaded ‘bleeding disease’, wrecked two European royal families and ruined many lives.

Scandal, of course, proliferates in dark history. King Ludwig II of Bavaria was revealed as a hapless old fool over his infatuation with the femme fatal Lola Montez, who cost him his throne. Queen Christina of Sweden, whose gender was uncertain, scandalized Paris and Rome with her eccentric behaviour. The royal families of Netherlands and Monaco, together with King Carol II of Romania, provided years of salacious copy for the intrusive modern media. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It took a strong stomach to write it. It could require another to read it.

Pictured: Falsely accused of crimes by King Philip IV of France, the Knights Templar burn while Philip (on horseback) looks on.

IPHILIP IV OF FRANCE AND THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

Grand Master Jacques de Molai had nothing to lose when he appeared before an assembly of French prelates to confess, yet again, to a roster of terrible charges first laid against his Order of the Temple of Solomon in 1307.

Jacques de Molai became Grand Master of the Templar Order in 1295.

The accusations, which were entirely bogus, were the work of the Grand Master’s implacable enemy, Philip IV of France. They included denying Christ and his apostles, blasphemy, sodomy and other homosexual practices that were said to be rife within the Order, which was better known as the Knights Templar. It was now seven years since these accusations had first been made against the Order, but whatever happened on this day – 18 March 1314 – de Molai knew that the least he could expect was to spend whatever remained of his life in the stinking holes that served as prisons in medieval times.

LAST-MINUTE RESOLVE

De Molai was about 70 years old, what in his times was considered extreme old age. He was deeply ashamed because, terrified of the agonies of torture and death by fire at the stake, he had already confessed to some of the charges against him. Now, de Molai was required to reaffirm his ‘guilt’ and do it before the crowd of onlookers gathered around a scaffold before the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame in Paris. This time, though, he had found a latent courage and, though well aware of the consequences, he was resolved to recant.

‘It is only right,’ he told the crowd, ‘that at so solemn a moment, when my life has so little time to run, I should reveal the deception that has been practised and speak up for the truth. Before Heaven and Earth and all of you … I admit I am guilty of the grossest iniquity. But the iniquity is that, to my shame and dishonour, I have suffered myself … to give utterance to falsehoods in admitting the disgusting charges laid against the Order … I declare, and I must declare, that the Order is innocent … I disdain to seek wretched and disgraceful existence by grafting another lie upon the original falsehood.’

This pronouncement by the most senior of all Templars created uproar and dismay, all the more so because de Molai was backed by another prominent Templar, Guy de Charnay, Preceptor of Normandy. Before de Molai could say anything else, the two men were summarily seized and dragged back to prison. Two other Templars, Hugues de Rairaud and Geoffroi de Goneville, were either less courageous or less despairing; they distanced themselves from the Grand Master and Preceptor. The damage had been done, however, and the Order of the Temple of Solomon and its Grand Master stood on the brink of ultimate punishment.

All that was left after de Molai and de Charnay were burned at the stake in 1314 was blackened bones and ashes, and nothing could have symbolized more starkly the tragedy and ruin that overtook the Knights Templar between 1307 and 1314. King Philip IV’s revenge was complete.

AN ORDER OF PROTECTION

The Templars had been among the first of the military and religious orders formed to manage the new situation in the Holy Land that followed the brilliant success of Christian arms in the First Crusade of 1095–1099. The Muslim forces were decisively defeated, and Crusader realms were set up in Tripoli, Antioch, Edessa and, most prestigious of all, Jerusalem, which had fallen on 15 July 1099 after a long and bloody siege. The new Christian acquisitions needed defence and succour; for this purpose, military and religious orders of chivalry were created soon after the end of the First Crusade.

PHILIP’S LONG-AWAITED REVENGE

King Philip IV had waited a long time for this moment, the moment when he could destroy the Templars once and for all. His motives included greed for the Templars’ wealth and fear and jealousy of their power. His method was accusation of the worst possible kind. Now, after a seven-year campaign of lies, fake evidence and false witnesses in court, Philip was not going to let de Molai, his prize captive, get away with uncovering his duplicity. A few hours after the Grand Master made his recantation, he and de Charnay were taken to the Ile-des-Javiaux, an eyot in the River Seine that lay between the royal gardens and the convent of Saint-Augustin. They were tied to stakes, the wood beneath them was lit and the two men burned to death.

According to witnesses, de Molai and de Charnay met their terrible end with dignity, calm and courage. To many who saw them die, they became instant martyrs. Some waited until the ashes had cooled in order to sift through for bones that they could keep and revere as holy relics.

Philip IV, nicknamed The Fair, became King of France in 1285. Apart from the Knights Templar, Philip also quarrelled with Pope Boniface VIII, installing in 1305 his own rival pope, Clement V, at Avignon.

This painting by the French artist François Marius Granet depicts the inauguration of a Knight Templar. He painted many scenes inside churches and monasteries and, like many, was fascinated by the Templars.

These included the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, whose task was to defend this most important centre of Christian worship in Jerusalem; the Orders of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, known as the Knights Hospitaller, who provided medical services; and the Knights Templar. Like the Hospitallers, the Templars, who formed in 1118, were mainly composed of Frankish knights. Their task was to provide armed escort and protection for the pilgrims who made the long and arduous journey to the Holy Land.

Jerusalem was the emotional focus of these pilgrimages, which were large-scale events even before the Muslims captured the city in AD 638. But travelling to, or merely being in, the Holy Land could be a perilous business. Unarmed pilgrims were ambushed, robbed, killed, kidnapped and even sold into slavery by bandits who specialized in swift hit-and-run tactics, then melted away into the desert landscape. The first Knights Templar who volunteered to guard and protect the pilgrims against such merciless enemies were only nine in number, but were otherwise well suited to the task.

NOBLE KNIGHTS

All of the Templars were of noble birth, all well connected to powerful families. All came from the area around Champagne and Burgundy in northeast France, and their leader, Huges de Payens, who was born near Troyes, was probably a cousin as well as a vassal of Hugh, Comte de Champagne. The comte was one of the mightiest and most prestigious magnates in France, devoted to the cause of crusade and virtually independent of the French king. He was undoubtedly his cousin’s richest and most powerful patron, but the Knights Templar did not take their cue from his kind of eminence. Instead, they opted for the poverty, chastity, obedience and humility of monks, willing to beg for their food and lead pure, exemplary lives. Their original name, the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, said a great deal about them.

This painting shows the inauguration in 1295 of the 54-year old Jacques de Molai as Grand Master of the Templar Order. We know very little about de Molai’s life up to this point, but he has become the most famous of the Templars’ Grand Masters.

CHANGING FOCUS

In time, however, the realities of life and the nature of Christian society in the Holy Land worked together to change this emphasis. The Templars retained their martial identity and were, in fact, the most effective of all the military orders in the field. But though they exemplified the two great passions of medieval times – fervent faith and fighting prowess – they soon became celebrities, thrilling the popular imagination as valiant champions of Christ, with God undoubtedly on their side. They also attracted rich, powerful backers, including the Pope himself. Only 10 or 12 years after the Order was founded, prominent magnates such as Fulk, Count of Anjou (afterwards fourth Crusader King of Jerusalem) and Thibaud II, a later Comte de Champagne, both became Templars and gifted large sums of money to the Order. Fulk’s contribution alone was 30 pounds of silver a year.

Other, rich revenues together with fine properties were lavished on the Templars by aristocrats and churchmen on a scale that gave the knights a status they had neither sought nor envisaged. They became wealthy, privileged and both politically and diplomatically significant. Eventually, it was reckoned that the Templars owned 900 estates, many of them donated to the Order by new recruits from prominent families, who were not allowed to own personal property. In time, the Order established itself in Britain, Italy, Cyprus, Germany and France, where it owned a total of 870 castles, schools and houses. In addition, the Templars established major castles in the Holy Land – at Jaffa, Acre, Sidon, Safed and elsewhere. But the favours the Templars attracted went beyond the merely material. They were given special papal protection, and a Bull of 1139 issued by Pope Innocent II declared them exempt from any other jurisdiction, whether Church or government. The properties the Templars acquired were tax-free: they did not even have to pay the usual ecclesiastical tithes.

Muslim forces successfully challenged crusader power in the Holy Land, sending crusading zeal into decline.

HONEST MONEY MEN

Possibly the most significant concession Rome made to the Templars was to exempt them from the ban on usury, which had long ago acquired a bad name in the Christian world. This enabled the Order to set up banks and other financial institutions which eventually embraced most of the banking functions common today – current accounts, safe deposits, loans and credit, international money transfers, trustee services, strongholds for keeping secure jewellery, gold or other treasure, and armed guards when it was in transit. The Templars inspired such trust in their honesty and efficiency that several European princes and even some wealthy Muslims allowed them to handle their not insubstantial treasuries.

A Knight Templar in action on horseback, from a fourteenth-century manuscript.

King Philip IV of France seated ‘in majesty’ on his throne, flanked by two lions. Philip was killed when he was mauled by a wild boar during a hunting trip. All three of his sons eventually became kings of France.

Still, the picture was not all glorious. The lavish favours, the special treatment, the mass of wealth and the extraordinary privileges the Templars acquired meant that they were soon regarded as spoiled darlings and were, of course, deeply resented as such. Already, by 1295, when Jacques de Molai became Grand Master of the Order, the Templars were being regularly accused of loving luxury, glorying in wealth and fame, and encouraging the sin of pride, and even arrogance. In 1307, de Molai was personally attacked for failing to emulate the self-denial practised two centuries earlier by Huges de Payens. In the demanding world of Christian piety, these were very serious accusations. What is more, they arose in full force at a time Muslim forces successfully challenged crusader power in the Holy Land, sending crusading zeal into decline. The Muslim forces reoccupied the Crusader kingdoms and other territory in ‘infidel’ hands and, by 1303, had the last Crusaders confined to the tiny island of Arwad, some three kilometres out in the Mediterranean Sea. There was talk in Europe of another crusade, but it failed to arouse sufficient interest.

This medieval manuscript depicts the destruction of the Knights Templar and the death of King Philip IV, who survived martyred Jacques de Molai by only eight months.

DECLINE OF CRUSADERS

This ignominious failure badly damaged the standing of the military orders which had been an integral part of the crusading scene for more than 200 years. It was far worse than simple loss of face. The success and glory, and the certainty that God approved crusader endeavours, had gone as well. Inevitably, to the superstitious mindset of medieval times, their place was filled by fears that the devil and all his works had wormed their subversive way into the Church. In fact, the failure of the Crusades and the decline of crusading gave King Philip IV of France just the opportunity he needed to strike at the two most prestigious institutions of the Christian world: the papacy and the Templars.

Two Knights Templar, tied back to back, are burned for heresy. This was a scene which occurred in several parts of France, and was normally attended by large crowds.

TORTURE AS AN INTERROGATION METHOD

Medieval torture had numerous refinements. Prisoners were stretched on the rack, so dislocating their joints. Thumbscrews, toe-screws or foot-crushing boots were used to shatter their bones. Their mouths were forced open so wide that their jaws cracked. Their teeth or fingernails were pulled out. Their legs were immobilized in iron frames and grease spread over the soles of their feet and set on fire. The agony was so intense and the damage so great that the heel bones of one priest, Bernard de Vado, dropped out through his scorched skin. De Vado confessed, but later retracted his confession and gave his flame-blackened heel bones to his inquisitors as a memento.

Torture by burning the feet persisted even beyond the medieval period. In this painting, an Aztec priest is horrifically tortured by Spanish conquistadores, in the early 1520s.

Although many Templars died under torture, still stoutly proclaiming their innocence, de Vado’s brand of impudent courage was not all that common and the confession rate was high. All but four of the 138 Knights Templar interrogated in Paris confessed to the charges against them, perhaps taking their cue from Grand Master de Molai whose arms, legs and testicles were flayed before he gave in and signed. Other high-profile Templars, including Guy de Charnay, Preceptor of Normandy, and Huges de Pairaud also capitulated. De Piraud was in a particularly invidious position, for several of his fellow Templars had named him as the man who led them astray.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

King Philip’s first target was Pope Boniface VIII, who had declared in 1301, ‘God has set popes over kings and kingdoms.’ This was a direct attack against the growing self-confidence which European monarchs had in their own glory and greatness. In response, Philip sent in the ‘heavy mob’. On 7 September 1303, French troops headed by Guillaume de Nogaret, the king’s chief minister, appeared at the Pope’s private retreat in Agnani, near Rome, and demanded that Boniface resign. When Boniface refused, Nogaret is said to have beaten him up and threatened him with execution, although there appears to be little hard evidence for this. The Pope was released after three days, but never got over the shock. Whatever Nogaret did to him was more than enough for a man of 86 who probably thought his person was sacrosanct. Boniface died a month later, on 11 October 1303.

The Templars, King Philip contended, were not only guilty of blasphemy and homosexuality, but also of cannibalism, infanticide and child abuse, and dabbling in witchcraft and the supernatural.

VICIOUS ASSAULT

Conditions were now ideal for King Philip’s assault on the Knights Templar, and he pulled no punches, couching his accusations, issued on 13 September 1307, in the language of overkill.

‘A bitter thing, a lamentable thing, a thing which is horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of, a detestable crime, an execrable evil,’ was how the King described the ‘abominable work’ of the Templars, whom he claimed surpassed ‘unreasoning beasts in their astonishing bestiality (and) exposed themselves to all the supremely abominable cries which even the sensuality of unreasoning beasts abhors and avoids’.

This statement, with its blatant appeal to medieval superstition and fears of depraved sexuality, set the stage for the accusations finalized in the summer of 1308. The Templars, King Philip contended, were not only guilty of blasphemy and homosexuality, but also of cannibalism, infanticide and child abuse, and dabbling in witchcraft and the supernatural. It was also alleged that they worshipped the Baphomet, the devil in the form of an embalmed head or idol with a goat’s beard and cloven hooves.

One of the many forms of medieval torture was strappado, seen here being applied to a prisoner while his inquisitor looks on. Strappado involved tying up a victim’s hands with rope behind his back, then suspending him in the air, dislocating his arms.

King Philip IV watches as Knights Templar are led to their deaths. The stakes on which they will be burned are shown top right.

After this, Philip spent the next month organizing mass arrests. On 13 October 1307, all over France, some 15,000 Templars and others associated with them – servants, tenants, farmers, shepherds – were seized and thrown in to the royal dungeons or imprisoned in castles. Subsequently, friars were dispatched to churches all over France to preach against the Templars and so rouse popular fury against them.

The proportion of senior Templars detained was relatively small, only around one in 20: they comprised 138 knights and some 500 sergeants and other ‘brothers’ of the Order. King Philip had, however, apprehended the most important leaders, including Grand Master Jacques de Molai who, only the day before his arrest, had been in high royal favour, serving as pallbearer at the funeral of the king’s sister. Philip lost no time appropriating Templar land and property, which he had ordered to be surveyed before the arrests were made. But he never got his hands on the Order’s records: despite intensive searches, the documents disappeared, either burned, hidden or spirited away by some 50 knights who were apparently forewarned of the arrests and made their escape by sea from the port of La Rochelle.

The lack of documentary evidence that the records might have provided was not a problem for the prosecution. Prosecutors in medieval courts relied on confessions extracted from the accused or from witnesses willing to fill in the fine detail of the charges. Not all of them were honest, and some had their own agendas. For example, the first allegations of Templar misconduct to reach King Philip, in 1305, came from one Esquin de Floyran, a criminal who purported to be a one-time member of the Order and clearly harboured a grudge against the Templars. Philip was de Floyran’s second try: his first bid to poison the Templars’ reputation, at the court of King James II of Aragon, failed to convince. Whether King Philip was seeking a cover to conceal his intentions or was more susceptible than James is not precisely known, but he was certainly willing to act on information received.

INCREASING MACHINATIONS

The king also sent agents to locate other dissident Templars. Among several malcontents, Brother Etienne de Troyes and Jean de Folliaco proved particularly useful: both of them alleged that they had been forced to deny Christ and his apostles. De Troyes went further: he recounted how he was forced to spit upon the cross, receive homosexual attentions and venerate an idol in the form of a severed head. Dramatic testimony such as this, designed to shock and awe a courtroom, gave impetus to the guilt by accusation that underlay trials of this nature.

Likewise, torture to extract confessions was a recognized procedure, quite probably on the premise that the devil could be encouraged by pain to disgorge his evil secrets. The Roman Inquisition set up in 1231 by Pope Gregory IX was permitted to use torture in 1252, but, short of that, psychological pressure was exerted. Prisoners were kept awake and starved on bread and water. Only if they refused to confess at this stage did the Inquisition proceed to the next level and begin the torture.

Ultimately, King Philip’s inquisition extracted confessions from most of the Templars in France, in exchange for promises of pardon and freedom. The victims soon discovered just how cynical these promises were. When the torture ceased, they were invariably taken back to their icy, unhealthy cells, where there was no straw to lie on and no covering to keep out the cold.

‘The human tongue,’ an anonymous, pro-Templar chronicler wrote in 1308, ‘cannot express the punishments, afflictions, miseries, taunts and dire kinds of torture suffered by the … innocents.… The truth kills them, and lies liberate them from death.’

A few Templars were displayed for propaganda purposes. They were sent to repeat their confessions before tribunals. Others, however, reneged, including Huges de Pairaud and Grand Master de Molai. In 1309, both Pairaud and de Molai withdrew their confessions in the presence of two cardinals sent to Paris by Pope Clement V to report on the Templar trials. The Pope was initially minded to protest against the persecution of the Order, but later changed his mind in the face of threats from King Philip, including hints that his life would be in danger if he refused to toe the royal line.

The Templars had no hope of just treatment, for Philip did everything possible to ‘fix’ the final judgment against them. Anyone who confessed, then withdrew his confession could be condemned to burn as a lapsed heretic.

That line was profoundly cynical. The Templars had no hope of just treatment, for Philip did everything possible to ‘fix’ the final judgment against them. Anyone who confessed, then withdrew his confession could be condemned to burn as a lapsed heretic. Philip’s sinister protegé, the lawyer Guillaume de Nogaret, circulated anti-Templar rumours even while the accused were still giving evidence in court. The king packed the courtroom with hostile witnesses and brought in theologians from the University of Paris to trumpet his credentials as a champion of Christ and the Church, valiantly fighting the ‘depraved’ Templar Order.

THE FINAL BLOW

At last, in 1310, King Philip took steps to bring the cycle of confession and retraction to an end. On 12 May of that year, 54 Templars, all lapsed heretics, were taken to open country near the Pont St Antoine des Champs, outside Paris, and were burned at the stake by slow fire. Another 67 died the same way by the end of the month.

SLAUGHTER IN THE CASTLE: GILLES DE LAVAL, BARON DE RAIS

Outwardly, Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais (1404–1444), gave no sign of the murderous nature that would one day appall the whole of Christian Europe. Instead, he appeared to be a valiant warrior and a generous patron of music, literature and art. He was also renowned for his religious piety and his charity towards the poor. Yet beneath this prestigious mask lay an undercurrent of extraordinary sadism.

After the death of his parents in 1415, Gilles de Laval was brought up by his godfather Jean de Craon. While in de Craon’s indulgent care, Gilles developed into a spoiled brat, intent on having his way in everything. No one, it appears, attempted to rein him in. When he was 16, Gilles kidnapped a rich heiress whom he afterwards married. In time, he squandered both her fortune and his own. His conduct in battle was also less than honourable, for he showed an early taste for bloodletting and pillage.

CHILD SACRIFICE

The symptoms of depravity went unrecognized or perhaps ignored for several years, until Gilles retired from military service and took up residence at the castle of Tiffauges, near Nantes in western France. At Tiffauges, Gilles began experimenting with the occult and was persuaded by a Florentine sorceress that he could regain his lost fortune by sacrificing children to a demon called Barron. Before long, children, most of them young boys who had been sent to Tiffauges to beg for money, were failing to return home.

In time, fearful stories began to filter out of Tiffauges, stories of sexual orgies as well as allegations of torture, sodomy and black magic. At first, given Gilles’s heroic reputation, these stories were dismissed as mere gossip and impossible to believe when they involved so illustrious a figure as the Seigneur de Rais. Until the Seigneur made a big mistake.

On 15 May 1440, he had an argument with a clergyman, Jean le Ferron, over the ownership of a château. In a rage, Gilles de Laval seized le Ferron and held him captive. This was so much out of character for a much-respected, devout and chivalrous knight that Jean de Malestroit, the influential Bishop of Nantes, decided to investigate Gilles de Laval’s activities. What he uncovered at Tiffauges was utterly horrific and, in September 1440, Gilles de Laval was arrested and threatened with torture. Faced with this ghastly prospect, Gilles preferred to confess to a long list of hideous crimes.

Giles de Laval, Seigneur (Lord) de Rais seen seizing a young boy, doubtless to add to his roster of slaughtered victims.

Parts of his confession were so gruesome that, at his trial, many of the details were removed from the record. These and other evidence, which included the bodies of 50 young boys dug up inside Gilles’s castle, revealed that the illustrious Seigneur de Rais had committed satanism, heresy, sodomy, apostasy, sacrilege, kidnapping and the torture, murder and mutilation of between 80 and 200 children. The children were usually beheaded, and the court heard how the Seigneur’s accomplices, Henriet and Poitou, used to place the severed heads on display so that they could choose which one they liked best.

‘CARNAL DELIGHT’

In the courtroom, Gilles de Laval seemed to be two totally contradictory people. One moment, he was the fierce, proud nobleman, insulting the judge for daring to bring him to trial. The next, he would assert his devout Christian faith, then break down in tears. However he behaved, he made no secret of how much he enjoyed watching his young victims die slow, agonizing deaths. When asked for an explanation, he replied that it was for the ‘pleasure and carnal delight’ the spectacle afforded him. Gilles de Laval, Henriet and Poitou were hung for their crimes in October 1444. Gilles was simultaneously burned.

Those who lived in the harsh, cruel world of medieval Europe did not shock easily, but Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais, had committed so many of the worst possible crimes that he became a universal symbol of evil. His name soon entered European legend and, as so often happens, he was invoked by parents as a bogeyman to frighten children into obedience. The folk tale of Bluebeard, first recorded by Charles Perrault in his History or Tales of Past Times (1697) may also derive from the grisly story of Gilles de Laval. Bluebeard was a rich nobleman who murdered seven of his wives and hung their bodies on the walls of a blood-drenched room in his castle. The Seigneur de Rais slaughtered 30 times that number. This dubious achievement enabled him to retain his place among the world’s most prolific and horrific serial killers.

The seal of Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais, showing him on horseback, sword in hand. This design was typical of aristocrats who were military leaders as well as feudal lords and great landowners.

Pope Clement V, elected in 1305, collaborated with King Philip IV of France in the destruction of the Templars. Like Philip, he died in 1314 shortly after the Templar knights were finally eliminated.

Others who had always denied the accusations were imprisoned for life. Only those who confessed and stood by their confessions had a hope of escaping prison. Eventually, on 5 June 1311, after sessions lasting more than two years, the trials were brought to a close.

DIVIDING THE LOOT

Eight months later, Pope Clement V issued a Papal Bull formally suppressing the Templar Order. Templar property, which King Philip had been persuaded to relinquish, was handed over to the Knights Hospitaller. Philip kept 10 per cent as his commission on the deal. Some of the property passed into other hands in Germany, Italy and Cyprus, while in England it was initially given to guardians appointed by the king Edward II. Afterwards, Edward, who had a penchant for expensive homosexual favourites, gave it to his boyfriend of the moment, Piers Gaveston. In 1312, however, the year Gaveston was murdered by Edward’s infuriated nobles, the pope ordered that Templar lands should be handed over to the Hospitallers and, despite resistance from the English king, the transfer was duly effected in November 1313.

The following month, Jacques de Molai and the three other senior Templars were again put on trial in Paris, this time before a formidable battery of experts – cardinals, prelates, theologians and lawyers. After a trial lasting three months, fresh confessions were expected, but de Molai refused to deliver. Instead, he stood by his last recantation and died in the flames without flinching, so redeeming himself and his honour in what was his finest as well as his final hour.

Philip IV did not live long to enjoy his triumph over the Templars or the Pope, who learned a salutary lesson about royal egos and never again attempted to place themselves above kings. Philip died on 29 November 1314, eight months after Jacques de Molai. Some said the cause of death was the will of God; others, hardly less judgmental, called it guilty conscience.

Medieval orders of chivalry like the Templars expressed their military ethos in mighty castles that exuded an air of power. This impressive castle was built by the Knights of St. John Hospitaller on Rhodes after they subjugated the island in 1309.

Pictured: A portrait of Stephan Bathory, King of Poland from 1576 to 1586, the uncle of Elizabeth Bathory.

IIELIZABETH BATHORY THE BLOOD COUNTESS

Elizabeth (Erzsébet) Bathory (1561–1614) belonged to one of the richest and most influential families in sixteenth-century Hungary. Members of this powerful Protestant family had been rulers of Poland and Transylvania – warlords, political leaders, clerics, judges and landowners on a vast scale. One of them, Stephan Bathory, fought with Vlad III Dracul (the model for Count Dracula) during his wars against the Turks. Elizabeth, who was born in 1560 or 1561, was herself a niece of another Stephan Bathory, who was King of Poland.

Elizabeth Bathory looks innocent in this portrait but she was one of history’s most infamous torturers and serial killers.

With her prestigious connections and the promise of extraordinary beauty she already showed at a very young age, Elizabeth was a great ‘catch’ for an ambitious husband, and several suitors showed an interest after she was placed on the ‘marriage market’ in around 1570. The successful suitor was Count Ferenc Nadasdy, aged 25, who sought to increase his renown through his marriage: this was why he took the unusual step of adopting the Bathory surname as his own, rather than Elizabeth adopting his.

All the same, Nadasdy possessed his own prestige. He was wealthy, a famous war hero and an athlete, although even his mother admitted that he was ‘no scholar’. Elizabeth, by contrast, was well educated and able to read and write Hungarian, Greek, German and Latin. This disparity was of little consequence in an age of political marriages, when royal or noble males earned renown by their exploits on the battlefield and literacy was regarded as an inferior activity fit only for clerics and women.

What Elizabeth and Nadasdy shared, though, was much more important to the events that marked their marriage, which took place on 8 May 1575, when she was aged 14: both of them were sadists.

AN INHERITED EXCESS?

Nadasdy had a furious temper which, when roused, prompted savage beatings and floggings, and earned him the nickname of the ‘Black Hero of Hungary’. Nadasdy’s cruelties, however, paled beside his wife’s, which afterwards led to the most horrific scandal that ever occurred among the nobility of Eastern Europe. What was more, where Nadasdy had his limits and was disgusted by some of Elizabeth’s excesses, her brand of cruelty seemed to know no bounds. Subsequently, she became known as the ‘Blood Countess’ and, although it was a fearful nickname, it actually understated the nature and extent of her crimes.

One source of Elizabeth’s frightening behaviour derived from the Bathory family and their practice, common among European aristocracy, of inbreeding to preserve the ‘purity’ of the noble line. Both of Elizabeth’s parents, György and Anna, belonged to the Bathory family, which produced many examples of mental derangement, including schizophrenia, sadomasochism, bisexuality and the purely sadistic streak which Elizabeth inherited.

Count Ferenc Nadasdy might look like an innocent young man here, but his horrific crimes, carried out with his wife Elizabeth Bathory, make him worthy of infamy.

GRISLY SPECTACLE

As a child, Elizabeth Bathory witnessed a display of public execution that was in many ways typical of the period, one which involved the execution of a gypsy who had been sentenced to death for treason. In the sixteenth century, and for a long time afterwards, gypsies were considered to be barely human and in some places were liable to be shot on sight, like animals. This perception may have explained the unusual nature of the execution Elizabeth witnessed. First, the belly of a live horse was dissected. The gypsy was pushed into it and sewn up inside. The spectacle proceeded as the horse writhed in agony amid blood and gore, while the hapless gypsy struggled in its belly in a hopeless bid to escape. Only when both horse and gypsy lay still, and evidently dead, did the barbaric spectacle come to an end and the onlookers start to disperse. Whether or not this ghastly event triggered Elizabeth’s dormant brutality is a matter of conjecture, but it is at least possible that it had some influence on her future actions, which were callous in the extreme.

Stephan Bathory, the uncle of Elizabeth, is regarded as one of Poland’s greatest kings. He is pictured here at the siege of Pskov, during the Livonian wars of the 1500s.

Elizabeth also displayed dismaying symptoms of her own. At age four or five, she began to have epileptic fits. She became prone to seizures that brought on violent, uncontrollable rages. She suffered extreme mood swings, one moment being cold and aloof, the next changing to murderous outbursts of temper. Elizabeth’s instability was not helped by her upbringing. She was badly spoiled as a child, for a girl in her high position was considered too privileged to be disciplined by any of the numerous governesses who took charge of her. As a result, Elizabeth grew up vain, imperious and preoccupied with her own beauty. She was also susceptible to the callous and barbaric nature of the time and place in which she lived. Public executions, for example, were treated as a form of entertainment, which can hardly have helped to curb her instincts for cruelty and callousness.

This callousness was further encouraged by the circumstances of Elizabeth’s married life. As a warlord, her husband was frequently absent from their home, the Castle of Cachtice, high up in the Carpathian Mountains of northwest Hungary. The military campaigns he conducted against the Ottoman Turks were prolonged; in the gloom and boredom of the castle, Elizabeth had plenty of time to develop skills in the ‘dark arts’ and the finer points of torture. She had the opportunity, too, for her companions at Cachtice were her Aunt Klara, a sadomasochist and expert in flagellation, and Thorko, a retainer, who introduced Elizabeth to occult practices. She quickly moved on to experiments with potions, drugs, powders and herbal, possibly toxic brews.

Where Nadasdy had his limits and was disgusted by some of Elizabeth’s excesses, her brand of cruelty seemed to know no bounds. Subsequently, she became known as the ‘Blood Countess’.

Castle Cachtice, where Elizabeth Bathory committed her crimes, is in present day Slovakia. Built in the mid-13th century, it was a wedding gift from the Nadasdy family on Elizabeth’s marriage to Ferenc Nadasdy in 1575.

Elizabeth’s husband, Count Ferenc Nadasdy, shared the gruesome tastes of his wife Elizabeth, but was completely outclassed by her cruelty.

AN OBSESSION WITH BLOOD … AND YOUTH

Star-kicking was definitely a depraved formed of torture, but even this was not the ultimate extreme to which Elizabeth was willing to go. As she aged, she became obsessed with preserving her beauty and particularly the creamy smoothness of her skin. One day, a servant girl accidentally pulled Elizabeth’s hair while brushing it, and received a slap in the face from her mistress that was so hard it made her nose bleed. As the girl wiped away the blood spots that had splashed her hand, Elizabeth thought she noticed that the skin where it had fallen seemed regenerated. At that, Elizabeth reputedly had the young girl’s throat cut. She drained her blood into a vat and bathed in it while it was still warm. This, it seems, became regular practice at Castle Cachtice, with dozens of girls – all virgins – murdered to provide blood baths for the countess. Local gossip whispered that Elizabeth did not content herself with bathing in blood, but actually drank it and even ate the flesh of her victims after she bit their necks and breasts.

SPIRALLING APPETITES

Somewhere along the line, Elizabeth discovered the delights of torturing the most vulnerable among her servants, the adolescent girls who were the general dogsbodies of their class. They were the least likely, through fear of the consequences, to tell tales about their mistress’s behaviour. Elizabeth ensured that they kept their mouths shut about what went on at Castle Cachtice by employing five of her most trusted servants to make certain that they remained silent.

The slightest mistake or omission could be the excuse for excessive punishment. Elizabeth once sewed up the mouth of a girl who talked too much. Girls were beaten until they bled, then thrashed again with stinging nettles. This was nothing, though, to the punishments given servants suspected of stealing; Elizabeth would order them to strip, then torture them by placing red-hot coins on their skin.