Raipur

RAIPUR, a town and district of British India in the Chhattis garh division (q.v.) of the Central Provinces. The town is 188m. E. of Nagpur and has a station on the Bengal-Nagpur railway. There are ruins of an immense fort with many tanks and old temples. The town and civil station is situated on a red laterite plain and the climate is extremely hot. Besides the usual insti tutions at the headquarters of a division and district, there is the Rajkumar college, where the sons of the chiefs of Chhattisgarh, as well as of chiefs of Orissa, are educated under a European principal. The college also admits sons of the greater land holders.

The DISTRICT OF RAIPUR (area 9,717 sq.m. ; pop. [1931], 1,527,573) occupies the south and centre of the Chhattisgarh rice plain (see CHHATTISGARH, DIVISION). The district is traversed by the Bengal-Nagpur railway from Bombay to Calcutta, and numerous roads were constructed in the famines. Raipur will now shortly be connected by rail with Vizianagram on the east coast section of the Bengal-Nagpur railway and from there with the port of Vizagapatam.

RAIS

(or RETZ), GILLES DE marshal of France, the central figure of a Isth-century cause celebre, was the son of Guy de Montmorency-Laval, the adopted son and heir of Jeanne de Rais, and of Marie de Craon. He was born at Mache coul in September or October 1404, and was brought up by his grandfather, Jean de Craon. Chief among his great possessions was the barony of Rais (erected in the 16th century into the peerage-duchy of Retz), south of the Loire, on the marches of Brittany. He joined the Montforts, supporting Jean V. of Brit tany against the house of Penthievre. He helped to release Duke John from Olivier de Blois, count of Penthievre, and was re warded by extensive grants of land, subsequently commuted by the Breton parliament for money payments. In 1420 he married Katherine of Thouars, a great heiress in Brittany, La Vendee and Poitou. In 1426 he raised seven companies of men-at-arms, and began active warfare against the English under Artus de Richemont. He accompanied Joan of Arc to Orleans, fighting by her side at Orleans, and afterwards at Jargeau and Patay. He had advocated further measures against the English on the Loire before carrying out the coronation of Charles VII. at Reims. On July 17 he was made marshal of France at Reims. In the winter he was in Normandy at Louviers whether with a view to the release of Joan, then a prisoner at Rouen, cannot be stated. He expended great sums in the king's service and maintained a court more suited to royal than baronial rank. He was a munificent patron of literature and of music, and his library contained many valuable works, he himself being a skilled illuminator and binder. At the chief festivals he gave performances of mysteries and moralities, and it has been asserted that the Mystery de la Pas sion, acted at Angers in 1420, was staged by him in honour of his own marriage. The original draft of the Mystery of Orleans was probably written under his direction. In his financial diffi

culties he began to alienate his lands, selling his estates for small sums, providing his heirs with material for many lawsuits. Among those who profited by his prodigality were the duke of Brittany, and his chancellor, Jean de Malestroit, bishop of Nantes, but in 1436 his kinsfolk appealed to Charles VII., who proclaimed further sales to be illegal. Jean V. refused to acknowledge the king's right to promulgate a decree of this kind in Brittany, and replied by making Gilles de Rais lieutenant of Brittany and by acknowledging him as a brother-in-arms.

Gilles hoped to redeem his fortunes by alchemy, and also spent large sums on necromancers, seeking to guarantee himself from evil consequences by extravagant charity and a splendid celebra tion of the rites of the church. The abominable practices of which he was really guilty seem to have escaped the notice of his equals or superiors, though suspected by the peasantry. His wife left him in 1434-35; and when his brother Rene de la Suze seized Champtoce, family considerations no doubt imposed silence. His servants kidnapped children, generally boys, whom he tor tured and murdered. The number of his victims was stated in the ecclesiastical trial to have been 140. In 144o he came into con flict with the church by an act of violence which involved sacrilege and infringement of clerical immunity, and in the autumn he was arrested and cited before the bishop of Nantes on various charges, the chief of which were heresy and murder. With the latter count the ecclesiastical court was incompetent to deal, and Gilles re fused to accept its jurisdiction (Oct. 8). Terrified by excommuni cation, however, he secured absolution by confession.

A parallel inquiry was made by Pierre de l'Hopital, president of the Breton parliament, by whose sentence he was hanged (not burned alive as is sometimes stated), on Oct. 26, 144o, with two of his accomplices. In view of his confessions his guilt seems cer tain, but the irregularities of the proceedings, the fact that his chief accomplices went unpunished, taken together with the fin ancial interest of Jean V. in his ruin, have left a certain mystery over a trial, which, with the exception of the process of Joan of Arc, was the most famous in 5th-century France. His name is connected with the tale of Bluebeard (q.v.) in local tradition at Machecoul, Tiffauges, Pornic and Chemere. The records of the trial are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, at Nantes and elsewhere.

See Eugene Bossard, Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe Bleue (2nd ed., 1886), which includes the majority of the documents of the trial published originally by De Maulde; E. A. Vizetelly, Bluebeard (1902) ; H. C. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition (iii. 468, seq.) ; A. Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de France (No. 4185). Huysmans in describes his hero as engaged on a life of Gilles de Rais, and takes the opportunity for a striking picture of the trial.