The baskets that Françoise Tiers had left halfway along her journey returned on the shoulders of Jacques Sauvan. He had carried them upon his head as far as the stable where, alone as night descended, the young woman was finishing her care of the beasts. At eight o’clock in the evening, he set the baskets down before her and struck one of them with an axe. This violent display, followed by an attempted ravishment, turned an ordinary errand into a struggle for survival, in which Françoise seized the iron bar that secured the door.
Sauvan resided in Vachères-en-Diois. Champagnac notes that he was fifty-five years of age when he first began pursuing Françoise, and that the country folk knew him by the sobriquet of Mille-hommes. The chronicle depicts him as a man who hunted the young women of the canton by guile or by force, recording that he had even violated his own stepdaughter. Françoise was fifteen when Sauvan first turned his attentions toward her. Living in the same village, he initially approached her with honeyed words, seeking to seduce her; later, he lay in wait for those moments when she might be found alone. Françoise fled from him in terror. The chronicle stresses the revulsion he inspired in her, sharpened by the memory of the other women he had pursued. Aided by fortunate turns of circumstance, she resisted his advances and designs for four years.
On April 28, 1782, being then nineteen years of age, Françoise went to the village of Boue, roughly a league from her dwelling, to attend church services. As she set out to return, Sauvan asked her to carry upon her donkey a pair of wicker baskets he had just purchased. Fearing an attack along the road, she at first refused. Bernard, the vendor of the baskets, urged her to relent, and Françoise finally consented. While Sauvan took drink with Bernard, she departed in all haste. The baskets weighed her down, and night was gathering. Halfway along the path, at the hamlet of Les Combes, she set them down by the way and reached her home in the fading light.
She set about her customary domestic duties. Having fed the livestock, she was preparing to shut the stable door when Sauvan appeared, bearing upon his head the baskets she had abandoned at Les Combes. He cast them down before her and seized an axe that lay within reach. Striking the baskets, he threatened to do the like to her if she persisted in her resistance. According to the chronicle of that evening left by Champagnac, Sauvan caught her by the skirt, thrust two six-livre crowns into her bosom, and attempted to force himself upon her. The chronicler reports that the man boasted of having already spread word throughout the parish that he had enjoyed her, and vowed that he would have his way with her at last.
She struggled and cast about for a weapon of defence. An iron bar served as a prop for the door; seizing it, she struck Sauvan upon the back of the head. He staggered, fell, and expired. Finding herself alone in the stable with the corpse, Françoise was seized with fright. Her eleven-year-old brother came out to discover why she tarried. With his assistance, she rolled the body down the sloping meadow toward an abandoned limekiln. She covered it with lime and earth, then concealed Sauvan’s garments in a corner of the stable.
Sauvan’s disappearance alarmed his kin. Relatives and neighbours set out in search of him. They halted near the Tiers dwelling, as shouts and a commotion had been heard in that quarter on the previous evening. François Tiers, the father, came out himself to furnish them with a light. As the searchers raised their conjectures and suspicion threatened to fall upon innocent heads, Françoise stepped forward. She declared that she had slain Sauvan when he sought to ravish her, that she had hidden him within the limekiln, and that she alone had dealt the fatal blow.
Her confession named the young woman as the sole perpetrator of the blow, thereby exculpating her young brother from any hand in the violence. Nevertheless, both the father and the younger brothers were arrested alongside her. All were confined within the seigneurial stables. On May 1, 1782, the magistrates came to view the scene; on the following day, the body was exhumed from the limekiln. Upon disinterment, the corpse was found intact. The court took the report of the surgeon and the depositions of sixteen witnesses, none of whom had witnessed the encounter.
A single deposition diverged from all the rest. A witness asserted that his wife, returning from gathering acorns at dusk, had heard cries and swooned on her way home. Coming to herself, she recounted to her husband what she had heard and the fears it awakened in her. She did not profess to have seen the scene, but only to have heard the shrieks. Her husband resolved to see what was afoot; though she sought to hold him back, he went out into the night. Drawing near the house, he claimed to have discerned in the gloom the arms of a man defending himself. By his account, the young Tiers lad, eleven years of age, was striking Sauvan and putting him slowly to death. This version stood in direct contradiction to Françoise’s declaration, wherein she maintained she had acted entirely alone.
Champagnac disputes this witness’s tale: Sauvan was reputed to be a man of prodigious physical strength, and the chronicler questions how a maiden and a young child could have overcome him in a prolonged struggle. He expresses further astonishment that the witness, had he truly beheld such an assault, should have looked on without intervening. François Tiers was summoned to appear, while Françoise and her young brother were placed under decree of bodily arrest. The judge interrogated the prisoners; persuaded by the inquest, his familiarity with the terrain, and the father’s alibi, he discharged the elder Tiers. Françoise and her brother were transferred to the prisons of Valence to stand trial before the officers of the sénéchaussée.
The dossier was transmitted to the Keeper of the Seals, while Françoise, her brother, and their kin awaited the royal pleasure. An initial missive gave assurance that the young woman would receive clemency. On September 18, 1782, the Keeper of the Seals informed the advocate for the accused that the King had granted them letters of remission.