On February 10, 1769, nine men assembled at the house of Étienne Leroi, near the château of Réville in the environs of Montreuil. Their faces blackened, they presented themselves at the gate past nine o'clock at night. One of them claimed he bore a letter that must be delivered into the hands of the lady of the house. He was told to return on the morrow, at a less suspicious hour. The band withdrew. A fortnight later, another company returned, armed and resolved to force an entrance.
This two-fold enterprise is recounted by J.-B.-J. Champagnac in his Chronique du crime et de l’innocence, published in 1833. His article cites neither shelfmark nor trial transcript. The online catalogue of the Archives of the Eure preserves an entry under an older shelfmark, E 3129, entitled “Ruling of the Parlement of Rouen and correspondence relating to the assassination committed at the château of Réville (1769–1772).” The direct link to the detailed finding aid currently returns an error 404; the portal's persistent search page indicates the archival classification scheme, yet does not supply the text of the decree. This archival record remains merely an indexical trace, not an independent corroboration of the penalties. The scenes and sentences that follow remain strictly attributed to Champagnac's account. He locates the estate “near Montreuil” and within Normandy: nothing here permits its identification with the modern commune of Réville in the Manche.
During the initial attempt, the letter was intended to furnish a pretext for opening the gate. The eight other men lay in wait close by, prepared to exploit the breach. The door remained shut. Citing the lateness of the hour, the occupants urged the messenger to return the following day. Champagnac notes neither violence nor breach of the dwelling that night. He records that the nine men dispersed with the design of planning their assault more methodically.
He sets down their names: François-Antoine and Jean-Joseph Cotis, Jean Benjamin and Augustin Lecomte, Simon Bernais the elder, Jean Dumoutier, Thomas Énaut, Charles Pannier, and Étienne Leroi. On February 25, at eight in the evening, three among them—Énaut, Pannier, and Leroi—took no part in the renewed assault. The remaining six were joined by five others: Charles Cotis, Robert Bernais (son of Simon), Adrien Perrier, Jean Lejeune, known as Lajeunesse, and Pierre Vavasseur, known as Carrière. They now formed a company of eleven.
Champagnac writes that the assailants were armed with muskets, pistols, sabres, swords, and axes. Three kept watch over the avenues to forestall any relief; the eight others waited for an entrance to be opened. The master of Réville stepped outside. No sooner had the door swung open than the men fell upon him and drove him back into the kitchen. Several pistol shots were fired. The master was wounded in the arm; Jacques Hermey, his shepherd, took a blow to the head and fell. François Chevreuil, the coachman, was struck down and died upon the spot. Catherine Goujon, a servant woman, was wounded. The master also received an axe blow to the head.
The remaining occupants deemed resistance impossible. According to Champagnac, the mistress of the house and several servants fled into the concealed recesses of the building. The aggressors dragged the wounded master from chamber to chamber, commanding him to reveal where his coin lay hidden. He refused. They fell upon the house, splintering doors, furniture, and strongboxes. The chronicler estimates the booty at six or seven thousand livres in gold and silver coin, alongside pocket watches, snuffboxes, jewels, plate, and sundry valuables. This sum is that advanced by the compiler; absent a primary judicial inventory, it cannot be regarded as an established tally.
Having seized all they could carry, the men struck the master of Réville once more, this time running a sword through his lower abdomen. He expired. Champagnac recounts that the band then repaired to the house of Jean-Joseph Cotis to divide their spoil. News of the outrage spread swiftly. The surviving servants made their way to Orbec to raise the alarm with the Maréchaussée.
The early account omits the master’s Christian name. It names two other victims, the coachman François Chevreuil and the shepherd Jacques Hermey, and identifies the maidservant as Catherine Goujon. The mistress of the château remains unnamed, and no formal deposition is reproduced. While one may follow the roles outlined by the chronicle, it remains impossible to reconstruct the familial bonds, the complete household staff, or the depositions gathered during the inquest.
The Maréchaussée rode to the château and, according to the text, drew up their formal report the following day. This instrument recorded the two corpses, the injuries of the shepherd and the servant girl, the devastation of the premises, and the stolen effects. The prosecution was set in motion at the instance of the king's attorney attached to the Maréchaussée. Four men were apprehended and conducted to Orbec: Jean-Benjamin Lecomte, Adrien Perrier, Charles Pannier, and Thomas Énaut. The text states they were interrogated and committed to prison by the officers of the Maréchaussée.
Concurrently, the magistrates of the bailliage of Montreuil visited the scene and issued warrants of arrest against the accused. In Paris, the police apprehended the three Cotis brothers and conveyed them to the Châtelet, where the lieutenant criminel conducted their examinations and confrontations. Three jurisdictions were thus simultaneously seized of the affair: the Maréchaussée, the bailliage of Montreuil, and the Châtelet. Champagnac notes that the King’s Council called the matter up before itself, subsequently referring it to the Tournelle chamber of the Parlement of Normandy to be tried as a court of first and final instance. The records of the proceedings were transmitted thither; the final decree, he specifies, was handed down on July 11, 1769.
According to the article, eleven accomplices were condemned for the murders and robberies of February 25 to be broken alive upon the wheel in the public square of Bernay. Yet Champagnac draws a clear distinction between the sentence pronounced and its actual execution. Only five men suffered the scaffold in person: the three Cotis—François-Antoine, Jean-Joseph, and Charles—along with Jean-Benjamin Lecomte and Adrien Perrier. The six remaining condemned were Simon and Robert Bernais, Jean Dumoutier, Augustin Lecomte, Jean Lejeune, known as Lajeunesse, and Pierre Vavasseur, known as Carrière. The chronicler states that they had fled, were tried in absentia, and were executed in effigy; he adds that they do not appear to have fallen into the hands of justice thereafter. Their subsequent fate is nowhere attested in this source.
The three men who had withdrawn before the assault of February 25 were tried solely for the attempt of the 10th. Thomas Énaut and Charles Pannier were sentenced to the galleys for nine years; Leroi, presented as the instigator who had presided over the meeting and lent his house, was condemned to the galleys for life. Such are the penalties recorded by Champagnac. His text offers no further detail as to when these convicts were transferred or what became of them after sentence was passed.
The contrast between the two nights thus emerges in sharper relief. On the first evening, the door remained barred and the band withdrew. On the second, the master himself stepped across the threshold; the unbolted door offered access to the kitchen, and thence to the private chambers that the marauders ransacked. The judicial investigation did not end with a single arrest; it passed through multiple tribunals before a sovereign court in Normandy rendered its decree. Finally, the eleven capital sentences for murder and pillage did not result in eleven actual deaths. Champagnac clearly distinguishes between the five broken upon the wheel, the six executed in effigy, and the sentences to the galleys meted out for the earlier attempt. The archival index preserves a notice of a decree and correspondence concerning Réville; as the detailed finding aid remains inaccessible through its original link, only the inspection of the primary records could substantiate what lies beyond the compiler's narrative.