Marie-Joseph Angélique
Slavery in New England and New France was primarily a domestic affair, since unlike the southern part of what would become the United States, the economy was not based on large-scale plantation labour.
Early in 1734, being occupied with estate affairs in Trois-Rivières, the widow asked her brother-in-law Alexis Monière to keep both her slave and her indentured servant Claude Thibault for her until her return.
As mentioned during the trial, Thérèse de Francheville found herself unable to control Angélique and intended to accept an offer by one of her deceased husband's business associates, François-Étienne Cugnet, to purchase her for 600 pounds of gunpowder.
[20] The origin of the rumours seems to have been comments made by Marie-Manon, the young panis slave owned by De Couagne's neighbours, the Bérey des Essars, who claimed she had heard Angélique saying that her mistress would not sleep in her house that night.
They testified at length as to Angélique's character as a badly behaved slave who often spoke back to her owners, but no solid evidence was presented as to her culpability for the fire.
[citation needed] Frustrated by the lack of sufficient evidence to condemn Angélique, the prosecution contemplated asking for permission to apply torture prior to a definitive judgment,[25] a highly unusual procedure which was rarely allowed in New France.
[26] However, an eyewitness suddenly appeared:[27] the five-year-old daughter of Alexis Monière, Amable, testified that she had seen Angélique carrying a shovelful of coals up to the attic of the house on the afternoon the fire started.
Beaugrand-Champagne points out that no one questioned why it took so long for Amable to come forward in a city where the fire and the trial was likely to have been widely discussed; she attributes this willingness to credit the little girl's testimony to the fact that too many people had lost too much and a scapegoat was necessary.
[29] The sentence included the following instructions: And everything Considered, We have Declared the Said accused, Marie Joseph Angelique Sufficiently guilty And Convicted of Having set fire to the house of dame francheville Causing the Burning of a portion of the city.
In Reparation for which we have Condemned her to make honourable amends Disrobed, a Noose around her Neck, and carrying In her hands a flaming torch weighing two pounds before the main door and Entrance of the parish Church of This city where She will be taken And Led, by the executioner of the high Court, in a Tumbrel used for garbage, with an Inscription Front And Back, with the word, Incendiary, And there, bare-headed, And On her Knees, will declare that She maliciously set the fire And Caused the Said Burning, for which She repents And Asks Forgiveness from the Crown And Court, and this done, will have her fist Severed On a stake Erected in front of the Said Church.
Following which, she will be led by the said Executioner in the same tumbrel to the Public Place to there Be bound to the Stake with iron shackles And Burned alive, her Body then Reduced To Ashes And Cast to the Wind, her Belongings taken And Remanded to the King, the said accused having previously been subjected to torture in the ordinary And Extraordinary ways in order to have her Reveal her Accomplices[30] The sentence was automatically appealed to the Superior Council by the prosecutor, as was required by the Ordinance on criminal procedure of 1670.
However, the sentence still required her to be tortured to identify her accomplices, the Councillors apparently believing, as did the Montreal court, that Angélique had not acted alone, especially as Thibault had disappeared a couple of days after the fire and never been found.
Angélique steadfastly refused to confess or name any accomplices, even faced with the boot, an instrument of torture consisting of an assemblage of wooden planks bound to the prisoner's legs.
The judge ordered the question extraordinaire (four strokes on an additional wedge, inserted at the ankles) and Angélique, while repeating that she and she alone had set the fire, begged the court to end her misery and hang her.
[38] Beaugrand-Champagne believes that the authorities, under pressure by an enraged population looking for a scapegoat for their troubles, took the easy way out and condemned Angélique more on the basis of her independent and outspoken character than on any genuine evidence.
Fortunately, the exceptional wealth of detail afforded by the trial transcripts, and a great deal of important contextual documentation, including both secondary and primary sources, is now readily available to everyone in English translation, on the pedagogical site.
Placing that experience in context, he notes that "there were degrees and varieties of unfreedom" in this society that affected servants, engagés, apprentices and soldiers; of course, slavery was uniquely horrible in the way it denied the humanity of the enslaved.
One, the play Angélique by Lorena Gale, loosely based on an unpublished translation of the trial transcripts by Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne,[45] won the 1995 du Maurier National Playwriting Competition in Canada.
Angélique appears almost as a legendary figure, and parts of her story have taken on a life of their own in countries such as Haiti, where, irrespective of documentary evidence, the tale that she was burnt alive with her hand cut off is still told, as if the original sentence had not been reduced.
Others, like Beaugrand-Champagne, find her just as inspiring as an exceptional, outspoken, independent-minded woman, who fought for her freedom and her life with courage and wit, against formidable odds, and in spite of a society that expected submission from women, especially if they were also black and slaves.
