On the occasion of the King’s coronation at Rheims, Gilles de Retz received the baton of Marshal of France. There is a question as to the date, but none as to the fact. Some authorities give the date as June 21, 1429; others, again, say that with other peers of France he was promoted on the day of the coronation of the King, July 17, 1429; still others assert it to have been in the month of September. It is explainable that all three of these dates are correct, for the King might well have announced, on the earliest date, that he was to be promoted to the rank of Marshal of France; the ceremony of installation may have taken place upon the occasion of the King’s coronation, and yet the commission not have been signed, or recorded, until September. That he was an officer in high command upon that occasion, and in favour with the King, cannot be doubted. The Kings of France, from Clovis, the first convert to Christianity, down to Louis XIV., were crowned in the cathedral at Rheims. There is a tradition that upon the crowning of King Clovis a white dove miraculously descended from Heaven and hovered over, if it did not alight upon, the King’s head, bearing in its beak the _ampulla_ containing the consecrated oil for his coronation. The latter was retained and became a holy emblem under the name of Sainte Ampoule, and was preserved in the Abbey of Saint Remy, near the cathedral at Rheims, until it was destroyed during the French Revolution. From Clovis to Louis XIV. it figured in the coronation of every king of France. At the coronation of Charles VII., Gilles de Retz as Marshal of France, Marshal Boussac, Admiral de Culan, and Lord Graville were the four nobles of France chosen as its escort and guard of honour. After the coronation, Gilles remained in the service in his former position of guard, or captain of the guard, of Joan of Arc. He accompanied her to Paris, which the English evacuated and left to the care of the Duke of Burgundy. The capture of Joan at Compiègne took place May 20, 1430, and her execution May 30, 1431. There is no evidence reported of Gilles’s presence during any of this time. There has been found among the records of the barony of Rais, a paper wherein he acknowledged a debt to “Roland Mauvoisin, Captain of Prinçay, the sum of _huitvingtes_ [twenty-eight] crowns of gold, for the purchase of a horse, saddle, and bridle, promised to his dear and well beloved Michel Machafer, captain of a certain company, as soon as they arrived at Louviers, in order to engage said captain to come with him on this voyage.” This paper was dated December 26, 1431, at Rouen, and is signed with his own proper hand. [Illustration: Gilles’s signature and rubric.] NOTE.--The army service of the Baron de Retz, his relation to Joan of Arc, and his investiture as Marshal of France, are authenticated in sundry histories of France. Monstrelet (vol. ii., p. 96) mentions him as a Marshal of France.