The massacre was not the first attack by French workers on poor Italian immigrant labourers that were prepared to work at cut-rate wages.

With unemployment increasing because of an economic crisis in Europe, the prospect of finding seasonal employment attracted more applicants than usual.

They were divided into three categories: Ardéchois (peasants, not necessarily from Ardèche, who left their land seasonally); Piémontais (Italians originating from across northern Italy and recruited on the spot by team leaders); and trimards (composed partly of vagrants).

Gendarme captain Cabley was trying to protect them, while promising the rioters he would drive out the Italians once they had been accompanied back to the railway station in Aigues-Mortes.

The identities of all of them are known: Carlo Tasso from Alessandria, Vittorio Caffaro from Pinerolo, Bartolomeo Calori from Turin, Giuseppe Merlo from Centallo, Lorenzo Rolando from Altare, Paolo Zanetti from Nese, Amaddio Caponi from San Miniato and Giovanni Bonetto.

The testimonies of the injured Italians as well as inaccurate news agency dispatches (there was a talk of hundreds of deaths, children impaled and carried around victoriously, etc.)

[12] A diplomatic solution was found and the parties were compensated: the Italian workers on the one hand, and France for the riots at the Palazzo Farnese, the French embassy in Rome.

The Paris daily Le Temps, in a dispatch dated 18 August, reported that there were a dozen bodies in the hospital, others must have drowned and yet more would die from their injuries.

He investigated 70, including 17 Italians, and opened 41 files leading to indictments against 17 accused, only eight of whom had previous criminal records.

Charges were laid on 10 September and, at the request of the prosecutor, the Cour de Cassation agreed to hold the trials in Angoulême.

"[25] One defendant, Barbier, who had previously admitted playing an active part in the events of the 17 August, totally retracted his evidence and claimed he had never been there.

The paper went on to exonerate the French government: "All that could be done to secure a fair trial was done by changing the venue to a district undisturbed by local jealousy of foreign labour, and for indicting the prisoners for unlawfully wounding as well as on the graver charge, so that the jury might at least have inflicted a mitigated punishment upon them.

Italia and Popolo described the verdict as scandalous and notorious, but added that the French government could not be held responsible for the acts of juries.

Il Messaggero expressed sympathy with French journalists who, it said, with such honesty and good sense, had described the verdict as scandalous.