Afua Cooper is an established writer of non-fiction, history, and poetry. She holds a PhD in African Canadian history, with specialties in slavery and abolition, and spent fifteen years researching the intriguing history of Marie-Joseph Angelique. She is the co-author of We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History, which won the prestigious Joseph Brant Award for history. One of Canada's most versatile poets, she has published four volumes of poetry, including the acclaimed Memories Have Tongue. Afua Cooper teaches history at the University of Toronto.
On the morning of June 21, 1734, at 7:00 a.m., Pierre Raimbault, judge of the court for the jurisdiction of Montréal, and Charles-René Gaudron de Chevremont, notary and also one of the court assessors, went to the court chambers in the local prison to pronounce judgment on Marie-Joseph Angélique, slave woman of Madame Thérèse de Couagne de Francheville. Angélique had been found guilty of setting fire to her mistress's house and the subsequent burning of forty-five other buildings. But Raimbault and Gaudron went to the prison to do more than condemn the bondswoman; they also wanted to hear Angélique confess to setting fire to the city, and if she did not confess willingly, they would torture her until she did. Joseph Benoît, physician at the convent-hospital Hôtel-Dieu, and Mathieu Leveille, the hangman and torturer, accompanied Raimbault and Gaudron. Four armed guards, known as les archers, completed the party. In all likelihood, the Sulpician priest, Father Navetier, was included in the group, to administer the last rites to Angélique in case the torture proved too much for her and she expired.
The jailer, one Marchand, brought Angélique before the judge and his party. They sat her down on a chair aptly named "the stool of repentance."The torture instruments—screws, wedges, "wooden boots," and hammer—were ominously displayed on the table in plain view of the accused.
Raimbault would cross-examine Angélique one last time. If she confessed to setting the fire and named her accomplices, there would be no need for the torture. But if she did not confess, she would suffer.The judge began.
raimbault:Tell us your name, age, origin, status, and place of residence.
angélique: My name is Marie-Joseph Angélique. I am twenty-nine years old. I was born in Portugal. I am the slave of the widow Francheville. I lived with her until the fire.
raimbault:Who counselled you to set the fire? Did anyone help you?
angélique: No one told me to set the fire. No one helped me, because I did not do it.
The interrogation was brief. Raimbault wanted a confession. He did not get it, notwithstanding the fact that the instruments of terror were placed before the eyes of the condemned. If Angélique was frightened, she did not show it. She calmly maintained her innocence.
Raimbault now had no other choice but to pronounce the sentence reached by the court and begin the torture. The judge prepared for the forbidding scene that was about to unfold."Go down on your knees," he commanded the slave woman. She did. The greffier, or court recorder, Claude- Cyprien-Jacques Porlier, stood above her and read the sentence handed down by the Conseil Superiéur. Angélique and the others listened in grim silence.
"Marie-Joseph Angélique, you are condemned to make honourable amends [a formal apology], to be hanged and strangled until dead, to have your dead body be attached to a gibbet that will be raised for this purpose.Your body will be then burned and consumed by fire, but beforehand you will be subjected to the la question ordinaire et extraordinaire in order to reveal your accomplices."
