In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged,
the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals. A great
confusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape of
private housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat.
Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his
pocket, and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easily
slip out and become once more a free marauder. There was no want of a
sanctuary where he might harbour until troubles blew by; and accomplices
helped each other with more or less good faith. Clerks, above all, had
remarkable facilities for a criminal way of life; for they were
privileged, except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be plucked
from the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a tribunal of their
own. In 1402, a couple of thieves, both clerks of the University, were
condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken to
Montfaucon, they kept crying "high and clearly" for their benefit of
clergy, but were none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. Indignant
Alma Mater interfered before the King; and the Provost was deprived of
all royal offices, and condemned to return the bodies and erect a great
stone cross, on the road from Paris to the gibbet, graven with the
effigies of these two holy martyrs.[10] We shall hear more of the
benefit of clergy; for after this the reader will not be surprised to
meet with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, or even priests and
monks.
To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly belonged; and by
turning over a few more of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear
idea of their character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are names
already known; Guy Tabary, Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault,
who was both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks and melted
plate for himself and his companions--with these the reader has still to
become acquainted. Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and
enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their doings with the
picklock. "_Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum_," says
Tabary's interrogation, "_sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est
forcius operator_." But the flower of the flock was little Thibault; it
was reported that no lock could stand before him; he had a persuasive
hand; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the term
_gang_ is not quite properly applied to the persons whose fortunes we
are now about to follow; rather they were independent malefactors,
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some serious
operation, just as modern stockjobbers form a syndicate for an important
loan. Nor were they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. They
did not scrupulously confine themselves to a single sort of theft, as I
hear is common among modern thieves. They were ready for anything, from
pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, had neglected
neither of these extremes, and we find him accused of cheating at games
of hazard on the one hand, and on the other of the murder of one
Thevenin Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time had
only spared us some particulars, might not this last have furnished us
with the matter of a grisly winter's tale?
At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was
engaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, _circa festum
nativitatis Domini_, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule
Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to
have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the
course of the afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles in his time,
and languished in the Bishop of Paris's prisons on a suspicion of
picking locks; confiding, convivial, not very astute--who had copied out
a whole improper romance with his own right hand. This supper-party was
to be his first introduction to De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan, which was
probably a matter of some concern to the poor man's muddy wits; in the
sequel, at least, he speaks of both with an undisguised respect, based
on professional inferiority in the matter of picklocks. Dom Nicolas, a
Picardy monk, was the fifth and last at table. When supper had been
despatched and fairly washed down, we may suppose, with white Baigneux
or red Beaune, which were favourite wines among the fellowship, Tabary
was solemnly sworn over to secrecy on the night's performances; and the
party left the Mule and proceeded to an unoccupied house belonging to
Robert de Saint-Simon. This, over a low wall, they entered without
difficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper garments; a ladder was
found and applied to the high wall which separated Saint-Simon's house
from the court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows in their
shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twinkling; and
Master Guy Tabary remained alone beside the overcoats. From the court
the burglars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they
found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed with four
locks. One of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up the
corner, forced the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut
wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only three locks, which
were all comfortably picked by way of the keyhole. In the walnut
coffer--a joyous sight by our thieves' lantern--were five hundred crowns
of gold. There was some talk of opening the aumries, where, if they had
only known, a booty eight or nine times greater lay ready to their hand;
but one of the party (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nicolas,
the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was ten o'clock when they
mounted the ladder; it was about midnight before Tabary beheld them
coming back. To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a share of a
two-crown dinner on the morrow; whereat we may suppose his mouth
watered. In course of time, he got wind of the real amount of their
booty and understood how scurvily he had been used; but he seems to have
borne no malice. How could he, against such superb operators as
Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux; or a person like Villon, who could have made
a new improper romance out of his own head, instead of merely copying an
old one with mechanical right hand?
The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the gang. First they made
a demonstration against the Church of St. Mathurin after chalices, and
were ignominiously chased away by barking dogs. Then Tabary fell out
with Casin Chollet, one of the fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat,
who subsequently became a sergeant of the Chatelet and distinguished
himself by misconduct, followed by imprisonment and public castigation,
during the wars of Louis Eleventh. The quarrel was not conducted with a
proper regard to the King's peace, and the pair publicly belaboured each
other until the police stepped in, and Master Tabary was cast once more
into the prisons of the Bishop. While he still lay in durance, another
job was cleverly executed by the band in broad daylight, at the
Augustine Monastery. Brother Guillaume Coiffier was beguiled by an
accomplice to St. Mathurin to say mass; and during his absence, his
chamber was entered and five or six hundred crowns in money and some
silver plate successfully abstracted. A melancholy man was Coiffier on
his return! Eight crowns from this adventure were forwarded by little
Thibault to the incarcerated Tabary; and with these he bribed the jailer
and reappeared in Paris taverns. Some time before or shortly after this,
Villon set out for Angers, as he had promised in the "Small Testament."
The object of this excursion was not merely to avoid the presence of his
cruel mistress or the strong arm of Noe le Joly, but to plan a
deliberate robbery on his uncle the monk. As soon as he had properly
studied the ground, the others were to go over in force from
Paris--picklocks and all--and away with my uncle's strongbox! This
throws a comical side-light on his own accusation against his relatives,
that they had "forgotten natural duty" and disowned him because he was
poor. A poor relation is a distasteful circumstance at the best, but a
poor relation who plans deliberate robberies against those of his blood,
and trudges hundreds of weary leagues to put them into execution, is
surely a little on the wrong side of toleration. The uncle at Angers may
have been monstrously undutiful; but the nephew from Paris was upsides
with him.
On the 23rd April, that venerable and discreet person, Master Pierre
Marchand, Curate and Prior of Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of
Chartres, arrived in Paris and put up at the sign of the Three
Chandeliers, in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the day after, as
he was breakfasting at the sign of the Armchair, he fell into talk with
two customers, one of whom was a priest and the other our friend Tabary.
The idiotic Tabary became mighty confidential as to his past life.
Pierre Marchand, who was an acquaintance of Guillaume Coiffier's and had
sympathised with him over his loss, pricked up his ears at the mention
of picklocks, and led on the transcriber of improper romances from one
thing to another, until they were fast friends. For picklocks the Prior
of Paray professed a keen curiosity; but Tabary, upon some late alarm,
had thrown all his into the Seine. Let that be no difficulty, however,
for was there not little Thibault, who could make them of all shapes and
sizes, and to whom Tabary, smelling an accomplice, would be only too
glad to introduce his new acquaintance? On the morrow, accordingly, they
met; and Tabary, after having first wet his whistle at the Prior's
expense, led him to Notre Dame and presented him to four or five "young
companions," who were keeping sanctuary in the church. They were all
clerks, recently escaped, like Tabary himself, from the episcopal
prisons. Among these we may notice Thibault, the operator, a little
fellow of twenty-six, wearing long hair behind. The Prior expressed,
through Tabary, his anxiety to become their accomplice and altogether
such as they were (_de leur sorte et de leurs complices_). Mighty polite
they showed themselves, and made him many fine speeches in return. But
for all that, perhaps because they had longer heads than Tabary, perhaps
because it is less easy to wheedle men in a body, they kept obstinately
to generalities and gave him no information as to their exploits, past,
present, or to come. I suppose Tabary groaned under this reserve; for no
sooner were he and the Prior out of the church than he fairly emptied
his heart to him, gave him full details of many hanging matters in the
past, and explained the future intentions of the band. The scheme of the
hour was to rob another Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte, and in this
the Prior agreed to take a hand with simulated greed. Thus, in the
course of two days, he had turned this wineskin of a Tabary inside out.
For a while longer the farce was carried on; the Prior was introduced to
Petit-Jehan, whom he describes as a little, very smart man of thirty,
with a black beard and a short jacket; an appointment was made and
broken in the de la Porte affair; Tabary had some breakfast at the
Prior's charge and leaked out more secrets under the influence of wine
and friendship; and then all of a sudden, on the 17th of May, an alarm
sprang up, the Prior picked up his skirts and walked quietly over to the
Chatelet to make a deposition, and the whole band took to their heels
and vanished out of Paris and the sight of the police.
Vanish as they like, they all go with a clog about their feet. Sooner or
later, here or there, they will be caught in the fact, and ignominiously
sent home. From our vantage of four centuries afterwards, it is odd and
pitiful to watch the order in which the fugitives are captured and
dragged in.
Montigny was the first. In August of that same year he was laid by the
heels on many grievous counts--sacrilegious robberies, frauds,
incorrigibility, and that bad business about Thevenin Pensete in the
house by the Cemetery of St. John. He was reclaimed by the
ecclesiastical authorities as a clerk; but the claim was rebutted on the
score of incorrigibility, and ultimately fell to the ground; and he was
condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. It was a very rude hour for
Montigny, but hope was not yet over. He was a fellow of some birth; his
father had been king's pantler; his sister, probably married to some one
about the Court, was in the family way, and her health would be
endangered if the execution was proceeded with. So down comes Charles
the Seventh with letters of mercy, commuting the penalty to a year in a
dungeon on bread and water, and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James
in Galicia. Alas! the document was incomplete; it did not contain the
full tale of Montigny's enormities; it did not recite that he had been
denied benefit of clergy, and it said nothing about Thevenin Pensete.
Montigny's hour was at hand. Benefit of clergy, honourable descent from
king's pantler, sister in the family way, royal letters of
commutation--all were of no avail. He had been in prison in Rouen, in
Tours, in Bordeaux, and four times already in Paris; and out of all
these he had come scatheless; but now he must make a little excursion as
far as Montfaucon with Henry Cousin, executor of high justice. There let
him swing among the carrion crows.
About a year later, in July 1458, the police laid hands on Tabary.
Before the ecclesiastical commissary he was twice examined, and, on the
latter occasion, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary. What a
dismal change from pleasant suppers at the Mule, where he sat in triumph
with expert operators and great wits! He is at the lees of life, poor
rogue; and those fingers which once transcribed improper romances are
now agonisingly stretched upon the rack. We have no sure knowledge, but
we may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, would
go the same way as those whom he admired.
The last we hear of is Colin de Gayeux. He was caught in autumn 1460, in
the great Church of St. Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in
the pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont. He was reclaimed by
no less than two bishops; but the Procureur for the Provost held fast by
incorrigible Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year: for justice was making
a clean sweep of "poor and indigent persons, thieves, cheats, and
lock-pickers," in the neighbourhood of Paris;[11] and Colin de Cayeux,
with many others, was condemned to death and hanged.[12]