The trial and execution of the black slave Angélique was a major event in the history of 18th-century Montreal.e century. In this Black History Month, what could be better than remembering his memory and celebrating his thirst for freedom.
We can force the line by summarizing the case as follows: accused without formal proof of having lit a fire which was going to destroy 45 buildings, including the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, Angélique was the scapegoat of popular vengeance, condemned to be humiliated , tortured, to have her hand cut off, then to be burned alive in front of a hateful crowd.
The reality is a thousand times more interesting. Her story is masterfully narrated by Quebec historian Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne in The trial of Marie-Josèphe Angelique (Libre Expression) and by renowned black Canadian historian Afua Cooper in The hanging of Angelique (Editions de l’Homme).
Born in slave-holding Portugal around 1705, the young woman found herself with a New York slave trader who sold her to a Montreal widow, Ms.me de Francheville, where she was at the time of the tragedy, in 1734. Beaugrand-Champagne described her as “cheerful and angry, teasing, abrupt, affable, stubborn and above all, independent”. His desire for freedom is manifest. Too much for its owner, who wants to sell it to a merchant who plans to take it to the French West Indies, where he has business.
This detail is crucial. The cruel “black code” imposed on the slaves of the West Indies had no legal value in New France, which the slaves were perfectly aware of. In Montreal, Angélique’s enslavement is intolerable, but the mistreatment she would be exposed to in the West Indies is nightmarish.
She escapes to New England with her lover, an ex-French soldier, but is found. Then, the fire broke out in the house of its owner and ignited a good part of the rue Saint-Paul. A catastrophe for the colony.
Angelique is the only suspect. But the case is by no means sloppy. No less than 24 witnesses are heard. The accused gives her version (she denies) and confronts the witnesses one by one. In particular, another slave who reports having heard her, the morning of the fire, threatening her owner that she will no longer have a home when evening comes. Her behavior on the day of the fire is suspicious — she stands in the street and looks at the roof, as if waiting for the sight of flames. However, no one saw her setting the fire except for a five-year-old girl, whose testimony is late enough to be suspicious.
Beaugrand-Champagne concludes that Angélique may have committed the crime, but offers several other hypotheses that the investigation did not examine. Cooper, for his part, concludes that the slave is guilty. She maintains that Angélique caused the fire, which she wanted to be limited to her mistress’s dwelling, precisely because she was not free. Slavery is, in itself, culpable.
Could Angelique, today and with the same evidence, be exonerated thanks to the notion of reasonable doubt? This is the opinion of criminologist André Normandeau, whom I consulted. “A current jury, made up of 12 citizens chosen at random, and with the presence of a somewhat seasoned lawyer, even if he was from legal aid, would, in my opinion, end in a dismissal, because there does indeed have a reasonable doubt,” he concludes. Otherwise, Normandeau is certain that the conviction would be overturned on appeal.
The concept of reasonable doubt did not exist at the time, nor the presence of a defense lawyer. It was enough to be judged “sufficiently guilty”. The investigation, the judgment and the sentence took place, notes Normandeau, according to the rules of the art of the time, the number of witnesses heard being exceptional. The sentence also corresponds to the severity of the weather. A white man, Pierre Malherbe, had been hanged 18 months earlier for stealing a barrel of bacon.
If Angelique had been a white man, would she have suffered the same fate? It would have been worse. Since the era was misogynistic and slave-like, the judges concluded that it was not possible that Angélique was the main culprit. Her lover, the former French soldier Thibault, banished from France for fraud, was also accused. During the fire, he refused to take part in the collective drudgery to put it out. He fled the next day.
The prosecutor appealed the conviction, which was automatic in the case of death sentences, before the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the time: the Superior Council, which brought together in Quebec the notables of the time. There was no question of saving Angélique from capital punishment, which applied to all arsonists. But the Council reduced the severity of the sentence: contrary to what the original judgment prescribed, the accused’s hand would not be cut off and she would not be burned alive. This treatment could have been reserved for Thibault, whose responsibility was considered greater.
What about torture? She was barbaric. The executioners did not apply it to obtain confessions before the trial, but in order to extract excuses and incriminate accomplices. The so-called boot technique put unbearable pressure on the knees and legs. Angélique’s torture scene is heartbreaking. The executioner tightens the noose four times. She cracks. Affirms that she is indeed responsible for the fire. But refuses, despite the pain, to accuse Thibault. “Nobody helped or advised me. It is of my own motion. It’s me, gentlemen, kill me. »
Angélique was certainly the victim of an inquisitorial investigation (which we would call “tunnel vision” today), but all the convicts of the time underwent the same treatment, whatever their skin color. Torture, likewise, was inclusive. A year after the Angelique affair, the same judge inflicted the same cruelty on François Darles, a white man, convicted of simple concealment.
The injustice is therefore not due to the judicial treatment, but to the very existence of slavery. Angelique is rightly a symbol of resistance. The alleged arsonist carried an inextinguishable desire for freedom. It was slavery that she wanted to reduce to ashes.
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