Blood Royal

Little, Brown and Company

The Provost

One day near the end of October 1407, when Louis of Orleans had less than amonth to live, a cart carrying two condemned men rumbled through the hugefortified gatehouse at the Porte Saint-Denis, across the wooden drawbridge, andinto the northern suburbs of Paris. Behind the departing cart and its well-armedescort, above the great encircling wall, rose "the city of a hundred bell-towers," the largest metropolis in Europe, a mile-wide panorama of spires andsteeples all reaching toward Heaven amid a smoky haze exhaled by tens ofthousands of kitchen fires.

Veering right, away from the freshly harvested vineyards covering the slopes ofMontmartre in autumnal red, the execution party headed for another, moreinfamous hill to the east. The two felons in the cart, their hands bound andhemp nooses already around their necks, could see the grisly public gibbetlooming before them as they lurched along an unpaved track toward the hill knownas Montfaucon. They may have smelled it too—scores of blackened corpsesdangled there, exposed to the wind and the sun, pecked and nibbled by the crowsand rats that scavenged among the dead.

Riding on his horse at the head of the somber procession was the provost ofParis, "superb in his furs and scarlet robes." He was followed by his lieutenantand his bodyguard, a dozen mounted sergeants known as the Twelve. Behind thesergeants rode a gray-cloaked friar who would hear each prisoner's lastconfession. Then came the burly executioner atop his horse, and behind him therattling cart containing the two prisoners. After the cart came a troop ofsergeants, some mounted, others marching on foot with wooden staff in hand.

Following along behind the sergeants in a less orderly fashion was a crowd ofspectators, larger and noisier than usual. Some of them had come because theyhad nothing better to do, simply for their own amusement, eager to watch the twohanged men struggle and kick their way out of this world and into the next. Butothers were there in protest, for the case involving the two men had aroused agood deal of controversy. Some, wearing the hooded robes of coarse black orbrown woolen cloth that marked them as university men, were even shoutingangrily at the provost and his officers, denouncing the imminent hanging. Theprisoners, as if still hoping to be rescued during their short, final journey tothe gibbet, loudly joined in, crying out, "Clergie!Clergie!"—"We're clergy!"

The gradual upward slope of the ground soon turned steeper as the group began toascend Montfaucon, or Falcon Hill—named for "the ghastly sight of thosebirds of prey plunging down on to crows and ravens as they flew away withgobbets of flesh from dead bodies." Shouts from the approaching crowd nowcompeted with "the cawing of crows and the cries of birds of prey."

The immense gibbet towered some forty feet in the air above the hilltop, "ahideous monstrosity" visible for miles around and lurid with the whitewashdaubed onto it from time to time. Sixteen massive limestone piers stood in arectangular array on a raised foundation about forty feet long and thirty feetwide. Three separate tiers of heavy wooden beams held the weathered ropes andrusty chains that could suspend at least sixty bodies at one time. Even so, thecontinuous demand for space often kept the gibbet filled to capacity.

The place "was like an outdoor Chamber of Horrors" with its vast "crowd ofskeletons swinging aloft, making mournful music with their chains at every blastof wind." In addition, "the remains of criminals previously beheaded, boiled orquartered were brought from all over France to hang in wicker baskets beside thepeople actually executed in situ." And "delinquents and blasphemers" werechained alive to the pillars, in the company of the dead.

The odors of the grisly place and the cries of these unfortunates kept mostpeople away, except when there was a hanging. And Montfaucon's evil reputationfor body-snatching and sorcery ensured that almost everyone avoided it afterdark. "Dabblers in black magic were reputed to steal and use not only the bodiesof dead criminals, but also pieces of rope, chains, nails, and wood from thegallows." The gibbet, some said, was haunted by the Devil himself.

The provost of Paris leading the procession that day amid the crowd's taunts andprotests was a knight named Guillaume de Tignonville. Sir Guillaume, who hadbeen appointed provost by the king, was essentially Paris's chief of police,although he also had the powers of a judge, district attorney, and head of thelocal militia. In matters of law and justice, the provost, "after the king, wasthe most important person in the city." As the king's top law officer, Guillaumewas responsible for maintaining order, investigating crimes, presiding over thecity's chief tribunal, and carrying out the sentences handed down there. Shortlyafter he took office in 1401, his powers had been further enlarged by a royalordinance authorizing him "to do justice to all malefactors throughout therealm." In a civil emergency, Guillaume could close all the city gates, mustertroops and post them in the streets, and call for the townsmen to armthemselves—with staffs, clubs, knives, or "whatever they hadhandy"—and keep watch in front of their houses, with big fires burning inthe streets all night. He could also order great iron chains, specially forgedfor the purpose, to be stretched across streets throughout the city to preventthe sudden rush of invading enemy troops or mobs. He had wide civic authority aswell, since a popular revolt in 1383 involving the provost of the merchants hadprompted the king to abolish that office and grant its powers to the provost ofParis. Guillaume thus enforced the trade statutes governing silk makers,armorers, and other artisans' guilds, and he was responsible for garbagedisposal and the half dozen or so leper hospitals on the city's outskirts.

Besides his personal bodyguard, the Twelve, Guillaume commanded several hundredpolice sergeants as well as scores of clerics who made and kept the officialrecords. There were two kinds of sergeant: the sergent à verge, ortipstaff, who "did the local work," patrolling the city on foot; and thesergent à cheval, a mounted officer who "went further afield, both as apoliceman and as part of the town's militia." All had the power to make arrests,though some were as dishonest as the criminals they pursued, even to the extentof acting as their accomplices. One officer reportedly "sent two or threefiddlers in advance of him, so that their noisy playing would alert wrongdoersto his approach." But Guillaume himself, said a chronicler, was "a veryrespected knight" with a reputation for personal integrity and aggressivelyenforcing the king's laws. As provost, "he refused to do many strange things hewas asked to do, such as relaxing the demands of justice."

In 1407, Guillaume was probably in his early to middle forties. Descended froman old noble family in the Loire, he had inherited his father's title, estate,and coat of arms—six gold macles on a field, gules. Wellborn, he also hadgreat ability and drive. In 1388, when he was probably still in his twenties,Guillaume had ridden as a knight banneret, leading troops under his own command,in a royal expedition to the duchy of Guelders, in Flanders. In 1391 he wasappointed a chevalier d'honneur and a chamberlain, one of the king'spersonal advisers. In 1398, he became a member of the royal council—theinner circle of royal relatives and close advisers around the king. A highlyvalued diplomat as well, Guillaume had served on important embassies to variouscities in Europe, including Rome, Milan, and the papal court at Avignon. In themid-1390s, Guillaume saw further military service during a one-month siege atMontignac, in the south of France, where he helped lead an expedition of "twohundred men-at-arms and one hundred and fifty crossbowmen" who had been sent tocrush the robbers and brigands terrorizing the region. As a man-at-arms,Guillaume had battlefield courage and impressive skill with a sword as well asthe toughness it took to ride all day and bivouac overnight. And as a well-traveled, well-connected royal official with years of experience at court, hewas intimately familiar with the workings of the French government and thelevers of power in general.

Guillaume served as provost at the king's pleasure and could be sacked at amoment's notice, but in the autumn of 1407, he had held office for over sixyears, a lengthy tenure suggesting his competence and success. No portrait orphysical description of him survives, but his contemporaries praised him for hismind, character, and personal presence. "Of noble lineage," he was also "wise,knowledgeably and well spoken, and greatly valued by the king for his advice,"says one source. Another says that he was "renowned for his mind and hisknowledge" and that he spoke in "a loud, clear voice." In all, Guillaume seemsto have been "a highly intelligent and cultivated man" with an "independentmind" who was "moderate in his politics" and, "above all, loyal to the king."

Besides being a knight, diplomat, and officer of the law, Guillaume was also aman of letters. He was wealthy enough to keep a personal library, then a rarity,with books such as Aesop's Fables, an encyclopedia known as On theProperties of Things, and other works in Latin and French, all copied out byhand and bound in leather or heavy cloth. Like many educated noblemen, Guillaumehad written some courtly verse. More unusually, he had also translated anoriginally Arabic collection of philosophical wisdom entitled Moral Sayingsof the Philosophers from Latin into French, an achievement that had earnedhim a modest literary fame. The translation was probably completed around 1402,after he became provost. One of the stories collected in the book recounts howAlexander the Great once refused to pardon a man condemned to hang despite theman's claims of penitence. "Hang him at once," ordered Alexander, "while he isstill sorry for what he did." A more measured quote found elsewhere in thetext—"There is no shame in doing justice"—was particularly apt tothe challenges faced by the provost.

A man devoted to the law and to letters, Guillaume was evidently fond of courtlyand literary society. His friends included the celebrated poet EustacheDeschamps, who had died just the year before, in 1406. Guillaume had alsobefriended Christine de Pizan, a rare woman in the male-dominated world ofletters, supporting her defense of women in a famous literary quarrel over theRomance of the Rose and even helping her with legal advice.

Guillaume had a wife named Alix and a daughter, and he lived with them in thecity. As provost, he was provided with a residence at the Petit-Châtelet, asmall château facing the river on the Left Bank, but Guillaume chose instead tolive at his own house in the Rue Béthisy, not far from the Louvre—the hugesquare fortress guarding the western edge of Paris. Guillaume's house had oncebelonged to the lords of Ponthieu, a county north of Paris in Picardy. Animposing stone mansion, located in a prestigious quarter, it identified itsowner as a wealthy, distinguished noble. At the end of a long busy day on thejob—studying documents and writing reports, issuing orders to hisofficers, questioning prisoners and witnesses before his tribunal, orsupervising a hanging—Guillaume probably went home with relief to hisfamily and the neighborhood's quiet and comfort.

The two men whom Guillaume was leading to the gibbet that day were named OlivierFrançois and Jean de Saint-Léger. Both claimed to be students at the Universityof Paris, and this was the reason their case had caused such controversy andprotest.

They had been arrested earlier that month, charged with "robbery and murder onthe high roads." After their imprisonment, they had demanded "benefit ofclergy," the right to a trial in a special ecclesiastical court. The university,known as "the daughter of the Church" because it answered to the pope ratherthan the king, enjoyed great independence in matters of law, as was typical ofuniversities throughout Europe at this time. From its founding in the twelfthcentury, the University of Paris had been an independent corporation with itsown royal charter granting it special rights and protections. For example, likepriests and friars and monks and nuns, students and professors were consideredclergy and thus were under the jurisdiction of the Church courts, a separatelegal system distinct from the secular courts wherein laypeople were tried.There was a good reason for this: clerics tried in a Church court under theauthority of the local bishop generally got more lenient treatment; even thoseconvicted of capital crimes, including theft, murder, and rape, often got awaywith very light sentences or nominal fines.

After arresting the two men, Guillaume had conscientiously "gone to the rectorand officials of the university and offered them the malefactors charged in thecase" for trial in a Church court. But the university, wanting nothing to dowith these accused "murderers, thieves and highwaymen," or "infamous evildoers,"as another source describes them, had washed its hands of the matter, refusingto acknowledge the two men as its own. Guillaume next went to the Parlement ofParis, the highest secular court in France, and requested that judges beappointed in order to try the case in that venue. The Parlement duly assignedseveral magistrates to hear the case. The two men were convicted and sentencedto hang.

Word of their condemnation angered their fellow clerics, who began to complain,raising a vociferous protest intended to rouse the university authorities toaction. There were threats of a strike, which meant canceled classes and asuspension of preaching—an attempt to enlist popular support for the causeby withholding spiritual benefits from the people. But Guillaume had carefullyfollowed the law in all of his proceedings, and he held firm in the face of theuniversity's noisy opposition. The provost, wrote a monk, wished to demonstrate"that from now on, scholars and priests would be punished just like everyoneelse." In his account, the monk, perhaps fearing a new precedent, failed tomention that Guillaume had already given the university a chance to try the twoclerics in its own court. But ordinary people may have welcomed the idea that noone was above the law or beyond its reach.

When the execution party finally reached the top of Montfaucon, Guillaumeordered one of his sergeants to unlock the sturdy gate in the wall surroundingthe gibbet. The wall helped keep out wolves and dogs as well as the thieves whostole bodies from the gallows for medical or more occult purposes. The wall alsodiscouraged friends or relatives of the condemned from visiting the site atnight to cut down the bodies and give them proper Christian burials.

By now the stench of the place would have been overwhelming. Besides the odorfrom scores of rotting corpses swinging back and forth above whenever jostled bya breeze, a foul smell arose from the charnel pit below, where the remains ofthe dead were eventually thrown without ceremony to make more room on thegibbet. Some of the attending officers may have worn scent-soaked cloths overtheir faces to ward off the smell, although the two condemned men had towithstand its full, unmitigated force.

It was customary to allow the condemned to go to confession before they died,and now the friar in gray stepped forward to perform this office. Confession hadnot always been allowed to criminals prior to execution, a withholding ofultimate pardon that cruelly added spiritual torment to the physical agony, butattitudes had changed over time, and by the early 1400s, even felons convictedof capital crimes were allowed to put themselves right with God before sufferingtheir sentences. Had not Christ himself forgiven the repentant thief on theCross?