Victoria’s Read

Marie-Joseph AngÈlique
(ca. 1709-1734).

February is Black History Month

Marie-Joseph AngÈlique was a slave in the early 1730s. Being in her sexual prime, she was expected to breed with male slaves as well as provide sexual services to her master. AngÈlique had other plans, such as freedom and having a normal relationship with her lover Claude Thibault, a white indentured servant from France.

On April 10, 1734, AngÈlique learned that she was about to be sold and in a fit of fear and anger, retaliated by setting fire to her owner’s home. The fire spread and the final damage was forty-six buildings, including the famed Dieu hospital. The conflagration resulted solely in property damage. No lives were lost.

After trying to escape, AngÈlique was captured and brought to trial. The trial, in accordance with the French justice system, was a systematic process that took two months. First, the chief investigator extracted her “confessions” which in essence was a narrative of her entire life. Later, she endured another round of confession, this time under torture, where she admitted her guilt.

On June 21, the day of her execution, she was driven through the streets on a scavenger’s cart, with a rope tied around her neck and signs bearing the word “incendiaire” (”arsonist”) on her chest and back. On arrival at the parish church at Place d’Armes, she was made to kneel and beg for forgiveness from the King, God, and her fellow citizens. Then her hand was cut off.

Placed back in the wagon, she was taken to the gallows where she was publicly hanged by another slave. She was summarily burned at the stake and her ashes were “cast to the four corners of the earth.”

Slavery in New France was tacitly condoned by the church, which sat silent when benevolence became brutality.
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