Angelique and the Burning of Montreal

By Lionel Lizee

A violent and voracious fire fed by a fierce wind destroyed almost half of Montreal in April of 1734. Before the fire had burneditself out, the Prosecutor had laid an accusation or arson against the slave, Angelique, based on the 'public voice' [hearsay] began by a fifteen year old slave of a neighbour that Angelique has sworn, before the fire, that her owner, Dame Couagne, would not sleep in her bed that night. Pouge, an investigator of sorts, searches for the truth, coming to the realization that she is innocent. His initial review of the evidence he has leads him to accept her innocence. Unable to speak with her because of the rules governing prisoners and jails, he ferrets about for evidence to support his hunch. In the process he comes to the realization that not only is she innocent, but the legal system is being manipulated to result in her conviction. His further involvement develops a sense that the system is being used by a variety of individuals for their own ends. The proceedings are bent to find her guilty, relying, in the end, on a second testimony of a four to five year old girl, who says she saw her go up the stairs inside of Dame Couagne's house with a shovelfull of coals to set the fire. Evidence was given that few houses had lit their fireplaces that day, including the house of Dame Couagne. Pouge shifts his search to determining the motives of a the colony's Intendant, Prosecutor, Judge, and Court Counsellors.
The novel is based on court records.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lionel Lizee
• Release date: Jun 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780988167438

Lionel Lizee

Born in Saskatchewan of French Canadian parents, Lionel became first a school teacher, then a lawyer, a college instructor, and, a financial advisor. Always interested in the power of words, he discovered his ancestry, but without any understanding of what brought them to where he was. An active imagination helped to fill in the blanks left between birth, marriage and death from the elements in motion in their lives. Canadian historical novels garnered his interest and devotion.

Book preview

Angelique and the Burning of Montreal

a novel

by

Lionel Lizee

Published by Lionel Lizee at Smashwords

copyright 2013 Lionel Lizee

ISBN 978-0-9881674-3-8

lionlizee.com

[e-mail]

Dedication

I dedicate this book to those who had the strength and temerity to resist going along with the times to enhance our world with freedom, fairness and fulfillment. When I looked at the material provided by one website, I knew that between the documents provided there was a great deal of truth missing. When I began writing, I realized that the characters had their own composition in mind - it was almost as if they were using my mind to tell their story.

Disclaimer

If you are interested in the bare truth of the events depicted in this book, visit the website noted below. The documents are there to read, decipher, and contemplate. What is written here is based for the most part on those documents. Everything else, not supported by these documents, is a product of my imagination, conceptualization, and arrangement. No person should take umbrage at the family names and the machinations created here. This is a book of fiction based on some elements of the past. Many of the names of the characters in this book do not represent in any fashion the ancestors of any present day living persons. Some characters are historically significant, but again, whether their involvement as described here occurred is a matter of my conjecture. What is meant by this work is to describe with a good plot the kind of things that could have occurred, and the reasons for it. It is meant to make the past enjoyable and pleasant reading.

Particular Appreciation

There are many sources of inspiration, and many individuals who have assisted in the development of this novel. In particular I would single out Barbara Floyd who has expended considerable energy to edit and suggest improvements to the work, and, Wayne Barre who read it as a novel, and to Jacque Lacasse and Alice Léveillé who took considerable time and effort to correct the translation into French. And my wife, Claire Lacasse, who made room in our joint lives for me to spend countless hours tapping away at the keyboard. As well this novel is based upon the information shared in one website:

License

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

www.lionlizee.com [e-mail]

Table of Contents

Chapter One - Fire

Chapter Two - No

Chapter Three - The Confessional

Chapter Four - Dame de Couagne

Chapter Five - Pougé needs to know

Chapter Six - The Waste Paper Basket

Chapter Seven - Interrogation

Chapter Eight - May 3, 1734

Chapter Nine - Inquiries

Chapter Ten - Court Counsellors

Chapter Eleven - June 4th, 1734

Chapter Twelve - Day of Judgement Final

Chapter Thirteen - June 21st 1734

Chapter Fourteen - Ten years later

Chapter One - Fire

From a distance sitting at the top of Mount Royal, one could see over the tops of wild trees and shrubs and tall grasses swaying violently in the strong west wind, the young colonial town of Ville Marie, often referred to as Mount Royal. Beyond the town of Montreal the sometimes rushing waters of the St. Lawrence River created a boundary. The sun was moving off to the west tinting everything with its sunset colours. A brisk wind from the west had been gusting into gale forces, playing havoc with the landscape, severely manipulating the trees, grasses and shrubs to reveal their paler undersides.

Strong spring winds were common at this time of year. The winds would arise with an urgency and without warning and last well into the night. Residents had been cautioned, both from the history of the town, and from the pulpit. Ville Marie, or Montreal as it was becoming more often referred to, had been severely burned on two previous occasions. The last was in 1721 when a good portion of the town had gone up in smoke. Each spring since that year the parish priest, whoever he was, would remind the parishioners of the dangers of hell fire, and of a hell of a fire. The reminder from the pulpit always included a reference to the ordinance of the King, who required as a matter of His Royal Proclamation that all new roofs be built of ceramic tile with an adequate superstructure of solid beams.

Most Montrealors of the day heeded the admonitions by abstaining from lighting their fireplaces during the season. A few did not. Almost no one retrofitted ceramic tile on the roof. Even new construction avoided the costly and almost unavailable tile.

The spring thaw was still in progress, suffered by adults but enjoyed by children. For the adults, the mud and mud puddles in the narrow streets between the rows of townhouses created a challenge to the comings and goings to and from the places in the community: the Churches, the Hôtel Dieu, the brasseries. Women, lifting their long dresses to their knees, hopping sideways over long narrow mud puddles created by cart wheels, attempting to achieve the success of not muddying their shoes. In places they would hug the walls of the houses that boarded the street, their feet clinging precariously to the narrow strip of earth rising there. For the children the attraction was difficult to restrain. Some floated tiny pieces of wood or bark, others encourage the flow of the muddy water in one direction, while others damned the flow or dug channels to manipulate an increasing area of flat water. Children and their clothing were dirty.

The problem with the children and the mud, was not so much that they were unclean. Uncleanliness was not a concept of the day, it was more the fact that mud made it into the food. Mud, in the house, turned to dust which rendered many things uncomfortable. Gritty food developed missing teeth. It was simply that muddy children brought mud into the house, and, in the house it infiltrated almost everywhere, in the bed, and in the food. It affected their smile, chipping off pieces of their teeth, or grinding them down.

As one would view the panorama on the late afternoon of April 10th, 1734, one would not have noticed the smoke emerging from a few chimneys, primarily because most allowed the heat from the morning’s fire to escape. Some few would stress the embers into fire to cook the evening meal. Their smoke would have been violently intermingled with the air. It would have been barely visible except the enhanced blur provided by the sun’s late-afternoon westerly descent towards the horizon.

Maintaining one’s vision to the southwest from this vantage point, one would have noticed the increasing presence, at first, of a more dominant curl of smoke rising in a low incline from somewhere near the Hôtel Dieu. Within moments angry red flames whipped fiercely the base of the single column of smoke. A chimney fire? Perhaps. Someone imprudent? Perhaps. The flames stretched up and eastward along with the billowing building boiling cloud of dispersed white smoke. The wind was unusually strong that day, commencing in the early afternoon.

Very quickly the crackle of flames metamorphosed into a roar. The lion that roared was hungry. It leapt the stone partition between the two houses, savouring the dry thatched roof of the neighbours. Fanned by the blustery gale, the tongues of flame from the numerous houses raised a column of roiling, boiling smoke high into the heavens. The blaze flared from rooftop to rooftop, crossing the narrow street to engulf the Hôtel Dieu, and the houses on that side of the street. When the fire had finally satisfied its hunger, forty-five houses and the Hôtel Dieu had lost its combustible material, and, left standing as it grave markers the stone walls and fireplaces, blackened reminders of the carelessness of a citizen or two, and, the bureaucrats who had not enforced the King’s ordinance.

The wooden church stood facing the St. Lawrence from atop a natural berm. The buildings in front of it were low enough so as not to impede the view. There were few buildings in the town that could accommodate gatherings of any size. It was, as always in these times, the centre of all communal activity. The Holy Days of the Catholic church as well as familial rituals like baptisms and marriages were celebrated here. Because of its imposing and authoritative appearance it was commandeered on many occasions to serve as the seat of justice, and, the square in front of it the location of the punishments meted out to those who had been found guilty of some crime.

In the square, a well-trodden patch of earth in front of the church de Notre Dame, known as ‘Place des Armes’, which had for the better part of two months served as the ‘Interrogation Chambers’, stood a sturdy oak post, six feet above ground with a girth of almost two feet. Its ominous presence thrust terror and dread into all who ventured near, just as it was planned to do. In such a prominent spot, the stake reminded the citizens and parishioners to obey the law. They glanced at it, and immediately lowered their eyes to the earth beneath their feet, deep in the knowledge that within a few days someone would be tied to it, and burned into heaven or hell. The day after the stake had been raised in the square, piece by piece, chopped wooden tamarack and spruce was added, forming a donut around it, Half of the donut of aromatic wood touched the post. To this interesting placement, a dull green and grey dead man’s moss was pushed in amongst the wood in the donut in every available space. It burns so willingly. Much of it is used to ignite fireplaces in the houses of the town.

Montreal had faced the problem before. A good part of it had burnt to the ground thirteen years prior, and prior to that small portions or single homes had been consumed by the devilish flame. The King of France, with the advice of his Barons in the colony, had made regulations that roofs were no longer to be built of shingles or shakes of wood, but of ceramic tiles properly under-pined with sizeable beams and posts. The infrastructure was meant to allow the residents to flee to safety without being blockaded in their homes by burning shingles and tiny trunks of trees. There was a general lack of enforcement. The bureaucracy was small and more focused on other matters. And tile was difficult to manufacture, and, difficult to obtain, and, expensive.

Fire, in the colony of New France, had so many uses: to heat, to cook, to warm, to punish. Once a thing was burned to ashes it was accepted that it had been purified, had expiated their sin, and had brought divine forgiveness. God was known to be a merciless father where transgressions occurred.

The creak, clang bonk of a cart coming down the now hard dried rutted street towards the square drew the attention of the population who had gathered to view the final phase in the exorcism of the sin of one of their possessions: a slave. They lined both sides of the narrow street, the Rue St. Paul, two and three deep to witness a cart a cart that on every other day would have picked up garbage, make its way toward the square. For a good part of its length the Rue St. Paul had on either side the remains of burnt out homes and the Hôtel Dieu. The remnants stood like grave markers, their stone walls partially standing, black and deep brown.

The cart wavered from one side of the street to the other, thrust as it was jostled by the hard-dried ruts. The ox which pulled it tugged this way and that, but accepted the tutelage of its master, who, keeping his eyes lowered to the ground, made their way to the Place des Armes.

The unusual attraction the cart held on this day was its cargo: not garbage. The cargo today was a live human. To accentuate the attraction were two roughly painted signs placed one in front and one in back. Slashed out in tar on rough wooden shingles was a single word: ‘Incendiary’. The occupant had after a trial of almost two months been found guilty of the crime of arson.

The people lining the street were jeering and cheering and aiming all kinds of rotten and decaying fruit and vegetables and the occasional dead rat at the individual confined to the cart by several lengths of hemp rope. The crowd cheered from the side of the street from which had come an accurate throw, and, the person on the cart attempted as best as she could to avoid being struck. Her naked body bore the remnants of fruit and vegetables and the trails left of the filthy juices. The throwers aimed their missiles at their favourite parts of her anatomy: her bare beautiful breasts, her slender, muscular buttocks, or, her matted pubic area.

She was held on the cart by a hemp rope around her neck and circled around her waist. She was a tall, black haired woman. Her nudity revealed all of the beauty that one could find in a woman. She was on the cart, delicately coloured in a dark yet light velvety smooth skin. Her jet black hair was trussed in a bun at the back of her head, revealing her attractively shaped ears with long lobes dangling almost to the length of her chin. Her golden brown eyes with large black pupils highlighted by a thin line of dark eyebrows were like jewels in the sun. The curve of her nose leapt carefully to her large, ruby red lips.

She was tall and shapely.. Her hour glass shaped torso, almost like a vase, provided a healthy basis for her breasts which mounded without a sag, showing deep brown aioli and finely coned nipples. Along the sides of her tummy were the outlines of musculature that continued through her pubic area and down along her long legs to her toes.

Every man along the route of the cart had his own fantasies about this maiden. Every man who launched a projectile towards her, was, in his fantasy, wanting to have thrown himself at her. And, every man’s wife was at ready to cuff her husband severely about the ears. ‘You will burn in hell alongside of her if you don’t chase those thoughts out from under your cap’ or such similar threats were made between couples.

Standing interspersed among the crowd were well attired gentlemen, who attempted to look indifferent at the spectacle passing by. Viewing the rubble that cheered and mocked and threw fruits and vegetable, one would have noticed one gentleman, in particular. In any crowd, he stood out. He was big. barrel-chested and tall, with a huge head on his shoulders. A head covered in coal black hair, moustache and beard, and eyebrows, thick bushy eyebrows that shielded his eyes from view. What also accentuated his presence was the fact that no one stood near him. He had his own free space, as if he were feared by the parade watchers. As she was jostled passed him the well- dressed black haired gentleman slowly passed his tongue across his lips, and, as he sighed his hips gave an almost uncontrollable yet unnoticeable thrust forward. He had not been able to take his eyes off of her from the moment she appeared at the far end of the street up to the point where the cart stopped alongside the donut-shaped wood pile.

In the square in front of the Church, the cart halted. The crowd, which had followed the cart into square, became silent as they pushed and shoved themselves into position around the cart and the stake. They watched as the Gaoler moved extremely slowly, first tying the ox to a heavy piece of wood, then towards her. They gasped as his hands took hold of the rope nearest to her chest, deftly loosening the knot on the rung of the cart.

Her nakedness embarrassed her. She attempted to cover her breasts and her pubic area as he allowed the knot to disengage. With eyes downcast, she entered a trance.

Inwardly, she saw it all happening again. She saw herself, a slave, out on the street, outside her mistress’ house tending to her mistress’ daughter and her friend. The street was muddy, and, she wished the children to stay clean. She ushered them into the small yard at the back of the house. At the time, her mistress was attending a church service to receive the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Her mistress, the Widow Francheville, had become quite a fervent Catholic since the death of her husband in the epidemic of smallpox the previous fall. She often attended mass at the church of the Notre Dame and sometimes the church of the Beau Secours at the opposite end of the street. She wasn’t aware of which church her mistress had gone to.