Massiac was the birthplace of Gaspard, Marquis d’Espinchal, surnammed the Great Devil…
-Henri Durif
With the publication of Dracula in 1897, Bram Stoker introduced to the world a new kind of vampire. In the novel, the eponymous Transylvanian count is a long-lived, nigh invulnerable predator who continuously evades mortal justice. An embodiment, one could say, of the excesses of the old feudal order, he lives a life of parasitic scoundrelism, draining the energies of all who are drawn into his sphere of influence.
About 250 years before Dracula was written, the people of Massiac, a village in Cantal, found themselves in the thralls of an aristocrat who was equally as cruel. This “Great Devil” (as he later was called) was Charles Gaspard d’Espinchal, the Lord of Massiac and Auvergne’s real-life Dracula. Over the course of his life, d’Espinchal — much like his fictional master vampire counterpart — committed a series of kidnappings, murders, and other crimes across regional jurisdictions. Notoriously hard to kill, he became a law unto himself, making as Esprit Fléchier (an ecclesiastic and contemporary of d’Espinchal) asserted, “sport of justice and of the power of men.”
Described as one of the handsomest men in Auvergne — one who could transfix anyone with his eyes — d’Espinchal frustrated all attempts to bring him to justice. Marshals who pursued him into the wilds of Auvergne were told they were “chasing a phantom”. Like Dracula, he seemed to travel like a ghost, engaging his unwitting pursuers in conversation and then vanishing into thin air before they realised who they were dealing with. Vampiric in his taste for violence and his disregard for authority, he became, to quote Fléchier, “the most decried criminal” in Auvergne.
A devilish heritage
All vampires have their origin stories, and in Stoker’s novel, Dracula is described as gaining his supernatural powers by studying sorcery at Scholomance, a school run by the Devil himself. D’Espinchal’s ancestors had originated in and ruled over Apchon, a district known not just for its werewolf legends, but also for its association with Satan. One legend, recorded by the Auvergne historian Jean-Baptiste de Ribier du Chatelet, told that Satan and his infernal minions had fallen to earth on a field next to Apchon’s castle. Since then, the land had been haunted by demonic beings. Perhaps this was the Wold-Newton-style event that set the stage for d’Espinchal’s criminal arc.
The making of a vampire
D’Espinchal initially gained notoriety in Massiac and its surroundings for the violent way in which he asserted his seigneurial “rights”. By the 1640s, when d’Espinchal was in his early twenties, he had already acquired infamy for a flurry of offences, including murder, extortion, and expropriation. No one was safe in Massiac; d’Espinchal stole from and assaulted clergymen, civil authorities, and even his own tenants. To be sure, these were all dark deeds, but they weren’t entirely unsurprising behaviour for a country lord of the Ancien Régime who was living in the “Transylvania of France”, far from the king and his court.
It was only in 1652, at the age of thirty-four, that he began his infamous criminal career. By this time, according to Fléchier, d’Espinchal already had a reputation as a serial philanderer. His wife, Hélène de Lévis, apparently tolerated his infidelities. “They remained,” Flechier wrote, “on good terms.” This all changed when d’Espinchal heard a rumour that his wife was having an affair with her page.
Although his wife professed her innocence, d’Espinchal ordered her to “choose her own punishment”: death by pistol, or death by poison. Unable to persuade her husband otherwise, she took the poison. Miraculously, she survived. In the meantime, d’Espinchal tracked down the page and detained him at his castle, the Château des Ternes. After castrating him, d’Espinchal — in a final act of brutality — murdered the page by having him “bound and hanged to the ceiling with long leather straps“.
Escape from Auvergne and flight to Paris
Rumours about his actions spread like wildfire, but our Auvergne Dracula, too influential to be held accountable, evaded prosecution. The people of Massiac, however, did not forget. They were, Fléchier noted, “so oppressed by his exactions and his violent conduct that he could not longer be endured.” In June 1662, d’Espinchal violently assaulted a man after an argument. Afterwards the victim fled into town, where hundreds had gathered for the Saint John’s Day festival. A mob of celebrants, seizing their chance to trounce the local bête noire, immediately rose to the man’s defence and stormed d’Espinchal’s manor. D’Espinchal made a successful getaway, but the ensuing chaos resulted in the injury or death of several people.
For justice officials in Riom this was the final straw. In August, they sentenced him to death by beheading. Instead of facing the sentence, d’Espinchal went on the run, disappearing into Cantal’s overgrown and trackless forests. By October 1663, d’Espinchal had still managed to avoid the clutches of law enforcement. In a letter, Auguste-Robert de Pomereu, the Intendant of Auvergne, complained that although he secretly wanted to capture d’Espinchal himself, the fugitive “never sleeps two days in one place” and “only goes by inaccessible roads and with twenty or twenty-five criminals”.
Eventually, d’Espinchal fled the mountains of Auvergne entirely and took up residence at the Hôtel de Guise (nowadays part of the Hôtel de Soubise) in Paris. At the time, the Guise family, with whom d’Espinchal was closely allied, was one of the most powerful and respected noble houses in France. He knew that his presence there would, at least temporarily, guarantee his safety. But soon enough d’Espinchal’s old ways caught up with him.
While d’Espinchal was settling into is new life in the capital, one of his victims, a lover of one of d’Espinchal’s mistresses, was trying to find ways to bring a lawsuit against him. A breakthrough came when the man’s brother secured an audience with King Louis XIV. After leaving the Louvre, however, the man was scooped up and thrown into a carriage by men claiming to be police officers. As his captors made their way towards Paris’s outskirts, city guardsmen — hearing the abductee’s screams — went to investigate. They caught up with the carriage in the nick of time, saving the man just as the police impersonators — d’Espinchal’s henchmen — were about to lay their hands on him. The event, according to Fléchier, had a major impression on the king, convincing him of the need to address the growing problem of aristocratic gangsterism in Auvergne.
Exile in Bavaria and return to royal favour
Not long after his botched kidnapping attempt, d’Espinchal realised that he could no longer rely on the protection of the Guise family. He journeyed back to Auvergne, enraging the Court of Riom, which still had a warrant out for his arrest. Finally, in 1666, the Court ordered d’Espinchal to be executed in effigy. The Court also instructed authorities to raze d’Espinchal’s castles and redistribute his remaining property. This should have been the final nail in the coffin, but d’Espinchal exiled himself to Bavaria, finding yet another way to slip through the hands of the law.
Under the protection of Bavaria’s ruler, prince-elector Ferdinand Maria, d’Espinchal began a second life as a military leader. In his 1678 lettre d’abolition — a letter patent of pardon — Louis XIV noted that d’Espinchal had served in Ferdinand’s military as a general and “colonel of a regiment of six hundred cuirassiers” with commanding authority over all soldiers stationed along the Lech river. Clearly touched by d’Espinchal’s achievements, the king restored the disgraced noble to his former glory, giving him full permission to rebuild and expand his properties in Massiac.
One can only imagine the look of despair on residents’ faces when their former oppressor, fresh from his exile in Central Europe, came strolling back into town. Despite all his crimes, their Dracula had returned to rule over them. Here was their final confirmation that d’Espinchal was truly undefeatable, a force of nature that moved outside and beyond the boundaries of earthly law. Surely they all breathed a collective sigh of relief when he passed away in 1686. No one, though, could erase the memory of his ravages, which — like a revenant of the grave — was destined to live on in legends told by the fireside on long winter evenings. For who could forget when the Great Devil — evil incarnate — walked among the mountains of Auvergne?
To receive more information on “Occult Auvergne” — sign up for our newsletter below!
