The Supper and the Warrant
The Provost of Auvergne had dined with the Viscount of La Mothe-Canillac. A few hours later, he was commanded to arrest him. Precaution had been taken not to alert him beforehand: friendship is an excellent thing, but the magistrates newly arrived from Paris had no desire to ascertain, on that particular night, how swiftly it might cause a horse to be saddled.
The bailiff was therefore to assemble the archers, find the provost, and only then reveal the name of the expected prisoner. Canillac was already abed. The warrant was read in a voice sufficiently loud to dispel all ambiguity; the nocturnal visitor bore neither an invitation nor an obliging message. He who, by daylight, still belonged to the society of men received at one’s table entered that of men conducted under escort.
We are in Clermont, in October of the year 1665. The Grands Jours had established an extraordinary court of justice in the heart of Auvergne, charged with prosecuting violent acts that local customs, high protections, and fear had long conspired to sustain. The lords were no longer sovereign masters of their domains. Complaints found an open ear; certain of those whom they concerned sought out a bye-way. Canillac had himself counseled others to take their leave. He, however, had stayed.
In him, confidence had withstood the precautions he judged necessary for his neighbors. His name was great; his affair, or so his circle believed, was ancient and privately accommodated. Yet there lay, at the end of that affair, a dead man whom no private accommodation had restored to life.
The Cavalry Monies
The origin of the conflict reached back to the years of the Fronde. Canillac had received sums intended for the levy of cavalry in the cause of the Prince of Condé. He had entrusted several thousand livres to d’Orsonnette, that the latter might procure horses. Neither the horses nor the monies returned as expected. The prince grew incensed; the viscount was compelled to account for an enterprise for which he no longer held the funds.
Between the two men, the dispute hardened into an acknowledged debt, then a deferral, then an open enmity. The money kept its place in the ledgers; the slight assumed another, far more sweeping, in their personal relations. They no longer crossed paths innocently. A threat might hang suspended above a high road for a long while before finding its day.
That day came. Canillac appeared with a troop of horsemen; d’Orsonnette was attended by a far smaller company. Blows were exchanged, the debtor was wounded, and a falconer of his retinue was killed by one of the viscount’s men. Such was the bloody kernel around which several conflicting accounts of the fray would subsequently wrap themselves. Had Canillac been surprised? Had he merely returned fire? Was it a chance encounter turned brawl, or the execution of an ancient menace?
The principal adversaries had ultimately arrived at a settlement. Between surviving gentlemen, it had been possible to weigh wrongs, arrange interests, measure what it was proper to demand, and determine what it had become prudent to concede. But the dead falconer could not sign his portion of the peace. When the Grands Jours reopened the dossier, the Procureur Général prosecuted in the name of an authority that neither party had asked to countersign their release.
The affair thus changed hands. It ceased to be merely the quarrel of two men capable of coming to terms after having fought. Royal justice intended to recognize within it a homicide for which it was bound to demand an account.
The Pardon That Accused
Canillac sought his salvation in letters of grace. To obtain a royal pardon, one was obliged to set forth the facts; to deserve it, one had to frame them in such fashion as to render the fault excusable. His petition acknowledged that he had fired upon d’Orsonnette and that a man of his troop had killed the falconer. It presented the encounter, however, as an act of defense against a premeditated assault.
This was to offer the magistrates one half of a proof while requiring them to accept the other on faith. The confession established his participation; self-defense was supposed to efface its criminal character. Yet the testimonies failed to follow the viscount that far.
According to Fléchier’s account of the proceedings, Canillac commanded thirteen or fourteen horsemen. D’Orsonnette was but the fifth man in his company. Two bailiffs accompanied him on an errand pertaining to their office. These men hardly constituted the ambushed band that the petition for grace required to have encountered. Above all, d’Orsonnette had fled. The pursuit had dragged on for over two thousand paces, as far as a neighboring village, without any resistance capable of transforming the pursuers into the besieged.
There was, moreover, a warning delivered by Murat, detached from Canillac’s party: d’Orsonnette was ordered to withdraw, failing which they would charge. To this incident were added prior threats, precise enough to have formerly prompted a complaint before the court of Riom.
The pieces of the dossier converged in a manner far different from what the petitioner had desired. His own declaration placed him within the action; the other testimonies attributed the initiative to his company; the sustained pursuit made the necessity of self-defense appear increasingly implausible. The hoped-for pardon had furnished the prosecution with a confession from which it became impossible to extricate oneself.
Upon the stool of interrogation, Canillac sought to retract his statements and disavow the letters presented to save him. What had been committed to writing, however, remained before his judges. He might challenge its interpretation; he could not restore his petition to the state of an unspoken thought confided to no one.
Fourteen Men Deliberate
His cause was not abandoned without resistance. Reminders were made of the debt, the antiquity of the dispute, and the private transaction that had followed. The validity of certain procedural points was contested. Above all, it was argued that Canillac was not, among the men of his family, the one whose violence gave rise to the most frequent complaints.
This argument carried weight in the fashionable world. It carried far less before a tribunal whose precise duty was to establish that an illustrious name could not absorb all individual responsibility. To be less feared than one’s kinsmen did not suffice to make one an innocent stranger to a murder committed by one’s own men.
Fléchier, who relates the affair with a marked sympathy for the condemned, also allows the weight of political circumstances to be seen. Canillac had served a party opposed to the King; his name was unfavorably known at court; he was the first nobleman to be seized. These circumstances illuminate the gravity accorded to his trial. They do not, of themselves, suffice to wipe away the deeds debated before the bench.
The reporting magistrate, Le Coq, spoke at length in his favor. Fourteen judges took part in the deliberation; twelve voted for death. The memorialist records their embarrassment and their distress. This tribunal could feel genuine compassion for the accused and nonetheless pronounce the decree that condemned him. The sensibility of the judges was no second court of appeal.
The Gates of Clermont
On the twenty-third of October, Canillac was condemned and straightway executed before the cathedral. Between the judgment and its execution, there remained but a few hours. His wife had petitioned the magistrates; his young daughter had joined in the entreaties of the family. They had been able to approach the judges, plead for their assistance, and move them to pity. They had not obtained a alteration of the sentence.
Fléchier and his companions sought to leave Clermont for a walk, so as to escape the spectacle and the talk it provoked. The city gates were barred. They remained within the walls and spoke of other illustrious condemned men, of their demeanor in the face of death, and of what an execution left behind in the memory of the living.
The contrast is striking. Around the viscount, names, friendships, a family, political memories, and a long-sustained conversation survive. The slain falconer, for his part, remains almost faceless in this chronicle. The trial had momentarily restored him to the heart of the affair; the world of high society, as soon as the decree was handed down, returned to gazing chiefly upon the gentleman of quality. Between those two deaths, inequality had already resumed its accustomed course.