It began with an egg, and with a word the mayor wished to forbid. Street laughter turned into an affair of state; a few months later, the burning of a warehouse belonging to that very mayor furnished the pretext for a trial that kept several inhabitants in mortal peril for years. The chronicle calls these citizens the martyrs of Marceillan; the appellation recalls the duration of their ordeal, not an end upon the scaffold.
The sieur Rigaud de Belbèze, a wealthy resident, former mayor, and captain of the coastguard, had already engaged in lawsuits with several of his townsmen. According to Champagnac, he bore the reputation of a haughty and difficult man. Yet the first incident was of a nature that ought to have dissolved in general merriment. In 1773, the parish priest Lunaret, a venerable and esteemed old man, shared his table with his curate Cauvet, a young priest whose conduct he disapproved of. One day in Lent, Cauvet is said to have snatched an egg from the priest’s hands, eating it with a laugh; following a gentle remonstrance, he repeated the offense. Thereupon Lunaret revoked his place at the table.
Cauvet turned the scene into a public jest. But the town took the pastor’s part: people began shouting “à l’yoau,” the patois term for an egg, mocking the curate. Little by little, the cry subsided. Rigaud, then serving as mayor, resolved to make it vanish by force of authority. Perhaps he sought to curry favor with the Bishop of Agde, Cauvet’s patron, the chronicle suggests; the motive remains an interpretation of the author. Rigaud first forbade the repeating of the word by verbal command, and then had it proscribed to the sound of trumpets. The decree produced the contrary effect: the forbidden word ran through the streets once more.
Rigaud wrote to the provincial commander that Marceillan was in combustion, plunged into turmoil and revolt. The Count of Périgord ordered an inquiry into these complaints and deemed them greatly exaggerated. The episode might have ended there. But the mayor waited for the feast of Saint John, an ancient festival during which bonfires were lit, and the youth danced in masks. In 1773, a peasant woman donned her husband’s clothes and led a troop of masked youths about a fire. To the townsfolk, this was harmless revelry; Rigaud saw in it a mocking parody of the official fire lit by the municipal body.
Informers represented this celebration as an enterprise aimed against the authorities. They alleged that participants had donned robes and hoods to ridicule the municipal officers, cassocks and clerical bands to deride the curate, that a man in a dressing gown had ridden about in a cabriolet distributing mock blessings, and that obscene songs had accompanied these antics. Champagnac asserts that these allegations vanished before legal scrutiny. Rigaud, however, carried them in a memorial to the Duke de la Vrillière, governor of the province, tendering them as proof of a conspiracy.
The inhabitants began to fear that municipal authority was turning into a weapon against them. Fourteen leading citizens formed an association on July 11, 1773. The instrument was flawed in the strict eye of the law, but the chronicle notes that such practice was common in the province, and that Rigaud himself had formed a similar association in 1771. Henceforth he imputed another meaning to it: under his pen, the townsmen’s precautions became a treasonous cabal. Toward the close of October, a subdelegate of the intendance arrived to investigate. Rigaud invited him to lodge beneath his roof; and it was in that very house that the depositions were taken.
Thirteen letters of cachet were the consequence. At dawn on March 3, 1774, thirty mounted constables of the maréchaussée entered Marceillan to execute them. The priest Lunaret was banished three leagues from his parish; other inhabitants were sent to various distances or confined within diverse fortresses and prisons. The peasant woman who had danced was taken to Béziers, a day laborer to Pézenas. Those targeted surrendered to the constables or took the road into exile without resistance. The source describes them as bearing upon their brows the serene countenance of innocence; at the very least, nothing in this opening stage resembled the insurrection Rigaud had foretold.
Two days earlier, a fire had broken out in his warehouse, adjoining his dwelling and facing the public square. The inhabitants, among whom were three or four of the persons subsequently exiled, had rushed to fight the flames. Rigaud lost only a portion of his timber, his fodder, and the warehouse roof. A remark was entered into the record that was to weigh heavily upon the future: in the midst of those who labored to extinguish the fire, Rigaud was said to have told them to let it burn, since he would be paid for all of it, and he was sure of his ground. On March 3, the very evening of the arrests, he lodged a formal complaint against persons unknown, declaring that the fire had shown itself through the windows of the hayloft.
The local judge recused himself. Rigaud obtained the appointment of a magistrate delegated by the lord of high justice. A monitory invited the townsfolk to testify regarding matters entirely foreign to the fire; a Recollect friar devoted to his cause preached from the pulpit to overawe scrupulous consciences. The mayor even petitioned the Council of Dispatches to evoke the cause and decide it administratively, on the pretext that the arson was linked to the letters of cachet. The Council dismissed this connection as a chimera and remitted Rigaud to the ordinary courts. Upon review, the minister acknowledged that the alleged disorders had been mere outbursts of high spirits and that public order had never been compromised; the letters of cachet were soon revoked.
The revocation, however, did not stay the prosecution. Rigaud returned to Marceillan and procured decrees against Benezech, Salelles, Billiers, Jacques Marquet, Antoine Fabre, and Élisabeth Delaire. Dated July 31, 1774, they were served only toward the end of September. The interrogations, the chronicle recounts, took the form of snares set for memory and good faith. When the delegated judge proved insufficiently pliant, a second was appointed in his absence. This magistrate converted the simple decree of summons against Benezech into an order of bodily arrest. Benezech, forewarned, surrendered himself to the prison and demanded to be heard.
Rigaud then made use of a document signed by the jailer of Marceillan, a peasant who could scarcely write his name. He had presented the paper to him by night, alleging that the signature was a harmless formality. The document made the jailer say that Benezech had appeared to surrender himself, had then refused to remain confined, and was walking freely about the priest’s house. As soon as the jailer grasped the use to which it was put, he lodged a protest before a notary, explaining the circumstances under which he had signed. But the paper had already served to wrest an order from the Parlement of Toulouse transferring the preliminary inquiry to Béziers. Benezech was conveyed thither with humiliating display; the others were forced to quit their hearths to follow the proceedings.
When the preliminary examination was concluded, the public prosecutor concluded for the discharge of all defendants, with reparation of honor and damages against the civil party. The sentence pronounced by no means answered these conclusions. Benezech was condemned to the ordinary and extraordinary question; Salelles, to three years’ banishment and seventeen thousand livres in damages to Rigaud; a witness named Marie, declared a perjurer, to the amende honorable and banishment. The accused appealed. The Parlement of Toulouse reversed the judgment, discharged the prisoners, and condemned Rigaud to pay damages. One of the initial judges, summoned to the bar, was suspended from his functions for three months.
Rigaud journeyed to Paris and petitioned the Council for the cassation of the decree, portraying himself as the victim of his zeal for public order. The King’s Council quashed the Toulouse ruling on September 11, 1775, and remitted the cause to the Requêtes de l’Hôtel. Tronson du Coudray appeared for the defense; far from Marceillan, they had to await the sovereign judgment of February 5, 1779. All defendants were then discharged from the accusation, with permission to have their decree of absolution printed and posted at their own expense; Rigaud was condemned to all costs.
The town had first laughed at an egg, only to know letters of cachet, exile, and gaols. Those warrants had soon been recalled; the prosecution born of the fire was to drag on for nearly five years. Over the charred warehouse, men had fought for the power to interrogate, to remove a trial, and to compel an illiterate jailer to sign away his honor. At the conclusion of this ordeal, the accused obtained the right to post their acquittal abroad, at their own charge. After the commands proclaimed to the trumpet’s blast and the tidings of arrest, it remained for them to pay for the paper that would publish their innocence.