.

"To recuperate his shattered fortune, Gilles has sold his signorie of
Saint Etienne de Mer Morte to a subject of Jean V, Guillaume le Ferron,
who delegates his brother, Jean le Ferron, to take possession of the
domain.

"Some days later the Marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military
household and at their head marches on Saint Etienne. There, the day of
Pentecost, when the assembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates
himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful,
throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens
to cleave Jean le Ferron, who is praying. The ceremony is broken off,
the congregation take flight. Gilles drags le Ferron, pleading for
mercy, to the chateau, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by
force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to
Tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon.

"Gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of
Brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the
duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing
Jean le Ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the Church.

"The Bishop learns of this outrage and prevails upon the reluctant Jean
V to march against the rebel. Then, while one army advances on Saint
Etienne, which Gilles abandons to take refuge with his little band in
the fortified manor of Machecoul, another army lays siege to Tiffauges.

"During this time the priest hastens his redoubled investigations. He
delegates commissioners and procurators in all the villages where
children have disappeared. He himself quits his palace at Nantes,
travels about the countryside, and takes the depositions of the bereft.
The people at last speak, and on their knees beseech the Bishop to
protect them. Enraged by the atrocities which they reveal, he swears
that justice shall be done.

"It takes a month to hear all the reports. By letters-patent Jean de
Malestroit establishes publicly the '_infamatio_' of Gilles, then, when
all the forms of canonic procedure have been gone through with, he
launches the mandate of arrest.

"In this writ of warrant, given at Nantes the 13th day of September in
the year of Our Lord 1440, the Bishop notes all the crimes imputed to
the Marshal, then, in an energetic style, he commands his diocese to
march against the assassin and dislodge him. 'Thus we do enjoin you,
each and all, individually, by these pres