January 9, 2024 • 35 mins
CW: Gore, cannibalism.
The village of Hautefaye was a sleepy town in France best known for a local fair. But in the summer of 1870, gripped by paranoia and political anger, the villagers turned on a young nobleman and unleashed a torrent of horrific violence that would scar the town for a century.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener Discretion advised. There was
barely any breathing room in the courtroom as the proceedings
were set to begin. The French town of Paragu was
by no means a major city, but people from all
(00:23):
across the entire region, from all across the entire country,
had come to town in order to see firsthand the
proceedings in what was sure to be the story of
the year. Villagers and notables, lawyers and witnesses all jammed
into every corner of the courthouse, and on a cool
(00:46):
December day in eighteen seventy, Bernard Mathieu took the stand
and appeared before the raucous audience. Bernard Mathieu was the
mayor of a nearby town called Utfai, where a horrific
crime had taken place, the lynching of a man. No
not just a lynching, the prosecution reminded the audience, Bernard
(01:10):
Mathieu had to answer for a carnival of torture, a
four hour procession of brutality, in ungodly murder, and not
just the murder of any villager, but of a young
nobleman who had served his country. A total of twenty
one men, including Mathieu, ranging from sixteen years old to
(01:33):
well passed sixty, were charged with this crime, which had
occurred four months before the trial, and the press had
spent the intervening months gleefully recounting the most horrific details
of the atrocity. These weren't any ordinary villagers, the stories
made clear, but savages, animals possessed by their baser instincts.
(01:59):
Bernard Mathieux he was well aware of the public's perception
of the gruesome stories that were coming out about what
had happened that day in August. What did it mean
for him to be the mayor of a town of
bloodthirsty monsters. Well, he would do everything in his power
when he took the stand to distance himself from the
(02:21):
deplorables of his town. But there was one charge that
Bernard could not quite escape. Some days before he took
the stand, a lady had come before the judge and
testified against him. She supposedly had overheard one of the
murderers telling Bernard that they intended to kill their victim,
(02:44):
to which Bernard had allegedly responded something truly damning, something
that was corroborated by a second witness. The mayor allegedly replied,
eat him if you like. Before all of this, the
tiny town in France had been renowned for its boisterous
(03:04):
fairs and friendly faces. Not one of the twenty one
men charged with the crime had ever had a single
run in with the law before. And yet here was
damning evidence not only of the murder of an innocent man,
but of cannibalism. It seemed to the court and to
(03:25):
the world that on August sixteenth, eighteen seventy, the inhabitants
of a quaint town in western France slaughtered a nobleman
and partook in his flesh. I'm Danas Schwartz, and this
is noble blood. A note before we begin, in case
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you haven't picked up on that, this episode will contain
some gruesome details, so be aware of that if that's
something you might be sensitive to. Starting in the summer
of eighteen sixty eight, Western France was hit by a
series of droughts that made farming in the town of
Utfoy excruciating. By the summer of eighteen seventy, there had
(04:12):
been almost no rain for six months. Whole lakes dried up,
the price of food more than doubled, and an air
of anxiety took hold of the village. Despite these difficulties,
or maybe because of them, the villagers of Utfoy resolved
to hold their annual summer fair. The fair typically drew farmers, artisans,
(04:36):
and livestock dealers from fifteen miles around to an empty campground,
where people haggled over goods, reconnected with old friends, and
turned rowdy at the local inn. To the delight of
many fairgoers, Utfoy was only accessible by footpaths. It was
remote enough that villagers could enjoy the festivities without having
(05:00):
to cater to city folk or to have to curtail
their behavior amidst local police. Coincidentally, this year's fair overlapped
with a national holiday for Napoleon the third. The holiday
took on special significance because France had just declared war
against Prussia. Young Men from the village and from across
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the country were being conscripted to the front, and not
always against their will. Villagers saw Napoleon the Third as
a trusted guardian of their liberties. The villagers didn't trust
many local lords because chances were those lords wanted to
restore ancient privileges over the peasantry. The villagers didn't particularly
(05:46):
trust their local priests, who were feared to have extorted
villagers on behalf of those nobles, and villagers most certainly
did not trust Republican radicals, who were imposing un to
do taxes upon them. Only the Emperor was fighting for them.
Rumors spread throughout Utve some days prior that villagers in
(06:11):
other parts of western France had caught and executed Prussian
spies who were lying under cover amongst common folk. These
rumors were most likely false, but the effect that they
had on the people of Utfa was unmistakable. A fear
of conspiracy lurking below the surface of an otherwise ordinary fair.
(06:35):
The villagers found something to obsess over on August nine,
when a crowd overheard one zealous nobleman by the name
of Camille de Millard proclaimed that quote the Emperor was
done for, referring to a string of military defeats that
France had suffered against the Prussians. As it happened, Camille
(06:56):
was indeed a critic of Napoleon the Third, but in
reality it's unlikely that he was foolhardy enough to have
stated his criticisms out loud, let alone announced them in
a public square, so whether or not he did actually
make a statement like that, it didn't really matter. A
week later, on August sixteenth, when Camille decided to reappear
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in public at oaut Fay's Summer Fair. To Camille's chagrin,
more than one person remembered him as the man who
hated Napoleon the Third. A crowd began forming around Camille
of local farmers and traders, pressing him for a confession
of his crime. One person in attendance went so far
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as to claim that he heard Camille shout out long
Live the Republic, which Camille utterly denied. Fearing for his safety,
he fled the fair ground sometime in the morning. Camille
had a cousin named Alandemnet, another nobleman who decided to
attend this year's fair. By all account, Alone was an
(08:01):
upstanding neighbor. His father was the former mayor of the
nearby town of Bissup, and Elaine himself served as a
member of the town's municipal council. He spent most of
his time managing the four hundred acres that made up
his family's inheritance, building waterworks and tending to the needs
of local commoners. He had come to the fair that
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day in the first place in search of a cow
to give to a poor family. Thirty two years old,
Elaine desperately wanted to join the ranks of the French
army in the war against Prussia, but due to some disability,
the army disqualified him from enlistment. Esteemed compassionate, patriotic, Elaine
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was the last person anyone would have expected to become
a victim of mob violence. There's no record of him
having any prior disagreements with townfolk. Elaine turned up at
the fair grounds around two in the afternoon, which may
seem insignificant, but actually tells us quite a bit about
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the circumstances leading up to the commotion. At this point,
many of the farmers and livestock dealers had packed up shop,
and they were mingling with one another, perhaps headed to
the inn for a pint or two. The crowd at
the center of the fairground was still enraged over what
many believed was Camille's brazen support for the Republic, and
(09:29):
when someone had informed Elaine of the slander against his cousin,
he approached that crowd with the intention of defending his
family name. From Elaine's perspective, it made no sense that
Camille would ever support the Republic. His cousin was, after all,
a closeted advocate for the return of the Bourbon monarchy,
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a completely different political dynasty to the villagers. Though the
distinction didn't matter. Republicans were Bourbons were Prussians. Any elite
claiming authority that did not swear undying fealty to the
bonapartes to Napoleon the Third was a threat. So while
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Elaine remained steadfast in his conviction that Camille was innocent,
more and more villagers attested to having heard his cousin's
treacherous proclamations for the Republic. Why else would he have
been talking about Prussian war victories. Very few people in
this growing mob knew one another well. The aut fe
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fair drew in hundreds of farmers and artisans from all
over the region. While Elaine was well known among some
residents of ote faith, it's plausible that no one in
the mob knew him personally, so no one could speak
to his actual character. This made it all too easy
to cast him as an accomplice to Camille and for
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the villagers to see one another as fellow defenders of
the Empire before law. Sometime around two thirty in the afternoon,
someone accused Elane of being a Prussian spy. Arguments turned
to insults, insults into clenched fists. More and more villagers
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joined without knowing anything about the original provocation or conversation,
and many confused Elane for his cousin. The crowd gained
a momentum of its own, and what began as an
otherwise ordinary day at the summer fair shifted into the
prosecution of an enemy of the state. Someone in the
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crowd warned Elane, one of us will be left beaten
to a pulp. Maybe it was the first punch or
slapped to the face, or the fact that he was
surrounded by a throng of men all holding sticks and stones.
Eventually Allah snapped out of it and realized his life
was at stake. Historian Alain Corbin tells us that had
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understood that his counterparts lived in an entirely different conceptual universe,
one that saw any proud noble as a conspirator against
the Emperor. Maybe he would have survived, but By the
time the first blows were struck, it was too late.
Aloon screamed out in an effort to calm down the crowd,
(12:22):
Long Live the Emperor, but it didn't work. Meanwhile, the
town's priest had been watching the scene developed from right
outside the church. After the first few blows were struck,
he jumped over his garden wall and sprung into action,
putting his body between Allan and the mob with a
revolver in his hand. But even with a gun, it
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didn't take long for the priest to shrink away. When
he heard some members of the crowd express interest in
wanting to gut the man of faith, the priest tried
another tactic. He invited the angry men into his presence,
pretary for free wine and a toast to the emperor's health.
Only some of the men diverged from their path and
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refreshed with free spirits, they simply returned Drunker to the mob.
The crowd pushed and dragged a lot to the house
of Hautve's mayor, Bernard Mathieu. We know Bernard as the
man who allegedly incited the cannibalism. That may be false,
(13:28):
but what is certainly true is that Bernard, fearing for
his property and life, made no effort to calm the
situation down. When a few leaders of the crowd demanded
that the mayor prosecute and imprison the supposed Prussian spy,
the mayor renounced any power and more or less told
(13:50):
the crowd to do as they pleased. One man, a horseshoer,
emerged from the crowd as de facto leader. He suggested
that they take Allah to a cherry tree and hang
him from the branches. The crowd moved their hostage to
the execution site, but unfortunately for them and for a law,
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the branches proved too weak for the hanging. At this
point the crowd changed their mind. They wouldn't be so
merciful as to end the Prussian's life in a matter
of minutes. No, they would draw out the pain, make
the Prussians suffer in a fashion that was equal parts
barbaric and cathartic. Two farmers from the small village of
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Manzak led the charge. They bruised and battered alone, hit
him up the head, and clobbered him with stones. The
whole scene was within view of an inn, where one
man with a rifle turned to the people around him
and announced that they should all protect that poor man.
No one else at the inn said anything, and the
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riflemen sunk back in his chair. The crowd dragged along
back to the Mayor's house and forced him inside a
workshop full of ordinary farm tools that offered themselves up
as useful torture devices. Alom was tied to a cattle crush,
a structure that immobilizes livestock utterly defenseless. He was beaten
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with hoofs and sticks until his head was a bloody mess.
There was something strangely casual about the way that the
torture proceeded. The villagers would batter along for a few minutes,
then take a break, leaving a law alone to howl
in pain. Before they resumed the blood bath. Some of
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the culprits went out for breaths of fresh air. Others
wandered off to other parts of the fair before turning
back to the workshop to see how the violence had progressed.
For a brief moment, Allow was left completely alone in
the workshop, at which point a rescue attempt was made
by the few allies he had had on the fairgrounds.
(16:10):
Four men, including the mayor's nephew and Allan's servant rushed
into the workshop to try to free him from the
cattle crush, but the crowd returned before they could succeed.
The mob doubled down on their torment. One local, who
had just learned that his son had died on the
front lines of the war against Prussia, drove a hook
(16:33):
into Alain's head, which was thought fatal by some witnesses.
By some divine intervention, the crowd around Alao had withered away,
and his rescuers were finally able to wretch him from
the cattle crush. The mayor's nephew pleaded with his uncle
Bernard to take in the wounded man, but Bernard refused.
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His reason. The mayor complained that the mob would smash
up his fire collection of crockery. Bernard Matieu recommended that
they put Elaine in the sheep pen next to the house,
out of sight from the fair grounds. Alayne's battered body
collapsed when he reached the pen. In between gasps, he
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told his four rescuers to purchase a hogshead of wine
and give it to his pursuers. In an attempt at peace.
A friend passed him some figs to eat. Everything slowed down,
but not for long. The horseshoer leading the charge against
a Lah riled up the crowd, calling for them to
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burn down the pen and break down the front door.
One man protected the entryway, while another urged Alan to
change his jacket and shirt for a peasant's blouse. If
the mob wasn't going to die down, their only chance
would be a covered escape. None of those plans came
to fruition, though, as the mass of people burst down
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the pen door and got out hold of Elaine. The
court record's report that one of Elaine's friends asked him
if he'd preferred being shot right then and there. When
Elaine signaled yes, his rescuers demanded that the mob shoot
him to end his suffering, but no one listened. In
a last ditch effort to save Alan's life or offer
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an easier death, his servant wrestled his body away from
the mob and took him to the local inn. The innkeeper,
much like the mayor, refused to let the bloodied man in,
whose leg was nestled in between the front entrance and
the door frame. When the innkeeper shut the door, he
broke Elaine's ankle and amidst all the chaos, the mayor
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allegedly told Alan's servant to quote take him away from
the front of the inn because he was blocking traffic.
Accounts of the precise circumstances of Allan's death diverge, but
it was around this point, some two hours after the
initial mob began, that the victim finally lost consciousness. When
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the mob dragged him once again onto the fair grounds,
Allah seemed overcome with adrenaline, as though he knew this
was his last chance. He picked up a stake and
shoved it into the face of the horse shoer, but
he was promptly disarmed. When Elaine ran under a wheelbarrow
to try to fetch another steak, he was dragged out,
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screaming and finally killed. The murderers began that day as strangers,
but they ended it as accomplices. When Elaine finally died,
they set up his body as a punching bag for
fair goers to beat as they wished. Importantly, they never
used a knife or a blade to spill blood, the
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same protocol shepherds followed when they prepared animals for slaughter.
Some witnesses described farmers poking the corpse's abdomen as they
might sheep. Elaine was dead, but the suffering imagined by
the fair goers transformed the suspected Prussian into the beast
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they believed he was. As night approached, members of the
crowd called for the burning of his body, as though
they were grilling meat for a feast. Elaine was dragged
to the same spot where residents celebrated Saint John's Eve
with bonfires less than a month earlier. One witness describing
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the transfer of the corpse four years after the fact,
reflected he was dragged by the legs through the narrow
streets of the village, his bloody head ringing on the stones,
his torn body jumping up and down, barring the corpse.
The scene could have been mistaken for some sort of holiday.
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Women and children fetched kindling. The mayor showed up the
horse shoer brought a bale of straw and laid it
on top of Elaine's body, asking a group of children
to light the fire with a pack of matches. When
the fuel flared in a horrible blaze, the crowd cheered
Long Live the Emperor. Conflicting accounts of the immolation emphasized
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the dehumanization underlying this horror. One witness said, in court quote,
I saw the fire blaze up, and I could see
the poor man moving under the wood piled on top
of him. Another said, just as the fire blazed up,
Monsieur de Monet flailed his arms and legs and made
sounds like the noises a hog makes when you stick
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the knife into its neck. One farmer commented on how
nicely they roasted the pig. Yet another saw fat dripping
from the corpse onto the charred wood below, and said,
it's a pity all that fat is wasted. When the
body had been charred, when all skin turned to ash,
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there was no way of telling if they had roasted
a man or a pig. The murder of a Landomonet
had nothing to do with the victim and everything to
do with his torturers. On the afternoon of August sixteenth,
the crowds of haut Fe transformed an innocent man into
a reflection of their most profound, primal fears. He was
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a concrete symbol for an amorphous enemy for Prussians, Republicans, nobles, conspirators,
a disease in the national body that needed cleansing. Amidst
the chaos of war and the possibility of famine. Here
was a physical object they could lay hands on. Here
was something they could do to control the circumstances for
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which there was no clear solution. Upon returning home, one
of the ringleaders told a friend, we did it to
save France. Our Emperor will surely save us. Arrests were
made the same night the murder took place. Police from
the local city of Nontent were notified of a murder
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and potentially an uprising. It wasn't too difficult to identify
the main perpetrators. Some of them couldn't stop boasting about
the whole affair, and many earnestly believed their actions would
be protected by imperial writ In total, the police arrested
around fifty people from around Outfit and transferred them to
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the Nont Plant prison, some ten miles away, though only
twenty one would be charged with the crime. That same night,
a doctor was called to perform an autopsy. The doctor's
report itself was meant to describe the physical condition of
the body, but he couldn't help but emphasize the innocence
of the victim, writing the corpse charred almost beyond recognition
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was lying on its back, the face slightly turned to
the left toward the sky, its lower limbs spread apart,
and the right hand clenched above its head as if
to implore, the left hand drawn down toward the left
shoulder and open, as if begging for mercy. News of
the murder spread throughout the region with wildfire, especially amongst
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the nobility. They feared a peasant uprising, which many had
believed were a thing of the past. After the bonfire
and immolation of an innocent man, the major noble families
of the district mobilized a makeshift militia, details of which
are scarce in the historical record. The day after, the
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town of Nauqua mounted a defense against what it believed
was an impending peasant invasion. Two years after the event,
one landowner recalled how out Fey would have turned into
the center of a rebellion had the authorities not stepped
in so quickly. The local the press reflected the anxieties
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of these elites, obsessing over every detail that could reinforce
the monstrosity of the perpetrators. First, the regional papers took
the story and ran with it, calling the villagers a
brutish mob and creatures with human faces. Then, a little
over a week after the murder, some national papers ran
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the story to great intrigue. All of them at least
alluded to cannibalism. Reporters and readers alike only had to
connect the dots. Here were peasants treating nobles like animals.
Of course, they had eaten his human flesh. Cannibalistic depictions
of the villagers strongly evoked colonialist stories that circulated in
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French literature at the time. One writer drew a direct
comparison between the fairgoers and the so called cannibals depicted
in the novel Robinson Crusoe, which features a racist trope
that was an this case, applied to the country farmers
in order to paint them as sub human savages. Perhaps
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what was most shocking to readers was that none of
the men directly involved in the murder had ever perpetrated
a serious crime before. Just as the villagers suspected Prussian
spies lurking in their midst, wealthy newspaper readers grew paranoid
about the explosive potential of mob violence in their own backyards.
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The press openly despised the town mayor, Bernard Matthieu, for
having failed in his duties. He was removed from his
position on August twenty fourth. To make matters worse for
the town of haut Fay, the Bonapartine Empire that the
villagers so attached their hopes to crumbled in early September,
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resulting in the rise of the Third Republic, led by Yes,
the same Republicans that the villagers feared and hated so much.
When the government changed hands that month, administrators worried ot
Fay would turn into the center of a Bonapartine counter rebellion.
No doubt, inspired by the latest reports in the press,
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one administer went so far as to recommend that the
village be literally erased from the map. The recommendation was
dropped when the new mayor of ot Fay pointed out
that the main perpetrators were not actually from the town,
but only visiting for the fair. Meanwhile, the story lost
no steam among the general public. In September, the police
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transferred twenty one prisoners to the courthouse in Perango for
notification of their trial, and a crowd of five hundred
people streamed in to catch a glimpse of the so
called monsters of haut Fay. A reporter that visited some
of the perpetrators in their jail cells, including the horseshoer,
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to described their bodies in brutish terms. One man's eyes quote,
darted about like a badger's as he tried to hide
himself in the midst of his co defendants. The trial
itself took place from September thirteenth to the twenty first,
nine days of spectacle attended by the families of the defendants,
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by the villagers of Perango, and plenty of upper class
locals intrigued by the drama. One man reportedly complained that
his local theater had been closed since the outbreak of
the war, and so the court offered a decent substitute.
Spectators delighted and recoil at seeing the brutish murderers alive
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and up close. While the court proceedings revealed that cannibalism
probably did not occur, they made it clear that everything
leading up to the consumption of human limbs certainly did happen.
No gory detail was spared. The prosecution even presented the
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very stones upon which Elaine's fat had dripped while his
body was burnt. The defense council actually leaned into the
trope of the villager's savagery, claiming that the peasants who
banded together were simply acting like animals. All of the
individuals on the stand were motivated by ignorant superstition and
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collective delusion. How could we severely punish any one person?
Needless to say, the defense lost. Four of the twenty
one perpetrators were sentenced to death, and the remaining seventeen
received prison time. The audience, especially the poorer folks in attendance,
protested the convictions to no avail. The executions were set
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for February. It was anticipated that the executions would take
place in Pergo, the same town the court had made
its decision, but officials decided to move the execution site
to the town of haat Fay itself, on the very
fair grounds where the violence began. In a show of
force and an act of political revenge, the government stationed
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hundreds of soldiers in the village. A crowd of about
a hundred spectators appeared to see the heads of the
four main convicts lobbed off by guillotine. To the frustration
of local priests and officials. Most commoners referred to the
men as martyrs. The innkeepers of out Fay even refused
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to serve the executioners. From their standpoint, even if the
mob was wrong to kill Alende Monet, the Republicans had
no right to treat these otherwise upstanding citizens like animals.
The court's decision only confirmed the sort of conspiracy between
elites that the fair goers feared so much, in the
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person of Elaine. There's one more character in this drama
we have yet to follow up on, Bernard Matthieu, the
former now disgraced mayor. He died on Christmas Day eighteen seventy,
shortly after the trials had ended. Apparently his unscathed collection
of crockery was no source of comfort in those final days.
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That's the gruesome story of the alleged French town of cannibals.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit more about Hutfey's legacy in literature and today.
The primary source for this retelling of the outfe case
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comes from the nineteen ninety history of the event by
the French historian Elaine Corbin. Corbin is something of a
maverick in the historical establishment during the eighties and nineties,
when scholars usually wrote about political dynasties, world wars, or
economic struggles, Corbin investigated more unusual subjects, prostitution, attitudes towards
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the sea, and, as we know, cannibalism. He employs a
literary style that has been cherished by some for its
appeal and detracted by others for issuing academic norms. So
when he tells us about the brutal killing of Alendomnet
in eighteen seventy, he doesn't just flesh out the details,
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no pun intended. He sets the stage, introduces the characters,
and narrates a tragedy between the killer and the killed.
If I may say so, it is a gripping rendition
of the story. Unfortunately, the book's appeal may not have
been so good for the town of Oute Fay. In
two thousand and nine, the longstanding mayor recommended erecting a
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plaque in remembrance of the lynching, but there was enough
of an outcry among the town's residents that the project
had to be scrapped. Where many European cities lean into
their dark local histories, sometimes to attract tourists, the myth
of oat Fay's cannibalism is a delicate subject. The town
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has no more than one hundred and thirty residents today,
only a little larger than it was in the eighteen hundreds,
but the attention that it's received in literature and folklore
has been wildly disproportionate. The story of the killing was
even converted into a popular tune in the late eighteen hundreds.
Some current residents can recall their grandparents' first hand accounts
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of the executions and the bad reputation of the town
that followed. Even though the murder of Alandimane remains a
touchy subject, the town has taken many steps towards reconciliationation
and remembrance. On August sixteenth, nineteen seventy, exactly one century
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after the murder, the oude Fe Church put on a
ceremony of forgiveness featuring the descendants of Elaine Demonet. Noble
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
(34:31):
from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by
me Dana Shchwortz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zuick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
(34:56):
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener Discretion advised. There was
barely any breathing room in the courtroom as the proceedings
were set to begin. The French town of Paragu was
by no means a major city, but people from all
(00:23):
across the entire region, from all across the entire country,
had come to town in order to see firsthand the
proceedings in what was sure to be the story of
the year. Villagers and notables, lawyers and witnesses all jammed
into every corner of the courthouse, and on a cool
(00:46):
December day in eighteen seventy, Bernard Mathieu took the stand
and appeared before the raucous audience. Bernard Mathieu was the
mayor of a nearby town called Utfai, where a horrific
crime had taken place, the lynching of a man. No
not just a lynching, the prosecution reminded the audience, Bernard
(01:10):
Mathieu had to answer for a carnival of torture, a
four hour procession of brutality, in ungodly murder, and not
just the murder of any villager, but of a young
nobleman who had served his country. A total of twenty
one men, including Mathieu, ranging from sixteen years old to
(01:33):
well passed sixty, were charged with this crime, which had
occurred four months before the trial, and the press had
spent the intervening months gleefully recounting the most horrific details
of the atrocity. These weren't any ordinary villagers, the stories
made clear, but savages, animals possessed by their baser instincts.
(01:59):
Bernard Mathieux he was well aware of the public's perception
of the gruesome stories that were coming out about what
had happened that day in August. What did it mean
for him to be the mayor of a town of
bloodthirsty monsters. Well, he would do everything in his power
when he took the stand to distance himself from the
(02:21):
deplorables of his town. But there was one charge that
Bernard could not quite escape. Some days before he took
the stand, a lady had come before the judge and
testified against him. She supposedly had overheard one of the
murderers telling Bernard that they intended to kill their victim,
(02:44):
to which Bernard had allegedly responded something truly damning, something
that was corroborated by a second witness. The mayor allegedly replied,
eat him if you like. Before all of this, the
tiny town in France had been renowned for its boisterous
(03:04):
fairs and friendly faces. Not one of the twenty one
men charged with the crime had ever had a single
run in with the law before. And yet here was
damning evidence not only of the murder of an innocent man,
but of cannibalism. It seemed to the court and to
(03:25):
the world that on August sixteenth, eighteen seventy, the inhabitants
of a quaint town in western France slaughtered a nobleman
and partook in his flesh. I'm Danas Schwartz, and this
is noble blood. A note before we begin, in case
(03:49):
you haven't picked up on that, this episode will contain
some gruesome details, so be aware of that if that's
something you might be sensitive to. Starting in the summer
of eighteen sixty eight, Western France was hit by a
series of droughts that made farming in the town of
Utfoy excruciating. By the summer of eighteen seventy, there had
(04:12):
been almost no rain for six months. Whole lakes dried up,
the price of food more than doubled, and an air
of anxiety took hold of the village. Despite these difficulties,
or maybe because of them, the villagers of Utfoy resolved
to hold their annual summer fair. The fair typically drew farmers, artisans,
(04:36):
and livestock dealers from fifteen miles around to an empty campground,
where people haggled over goods, reconnected with old friends, and
turned rowdy at the local inn. To the delight of
many fairgoers, Utfoy was only accessible by footpaths. It was
remote enough that villagers could enjoy the festivities without having
(05:00):
to cater to city folk or to have to curtail
their behavior amidst local police. Coincidentally, this year's fair overlapped
with a national holiday for Napoleon the third. The holiday
took on special significance because France had just declared war
against Prussia. Young Men from the village and from across
(05:24):
the country were being conscripted to the front, and not
always against their will. Villagers saw Napoleon the Third as
a trusted guardian of their liberties. The villagers didn't trust
many local lords because chances were those lords wanted to
restore ancient privileges over the peasantry. The villagers didn't particularly
(05:46):
trust their local priests, who were feared to have extorted
villagers on behalf of those nobles, and villagers most certainly
did not trust Republican radicals, who were imposing un to
do taxes upon them. Only the Emperor was fighting for them.
Rumors spread throughout Utve some days prior that villagers in
(06:11):
other parts of western France had caught and executed Prussian
spies who were lying under cover amongst common folk. These
rumors were most likely false, but the effect that they
had on the people of Utfa was unmistakable. A fear
of conspiracy lurking below the surface of an otherwise ordinary fair.
(06:35):
The villagers found something to obsess over on August nine,
when a crowd overheard one zealous nobleman by the name
of Camille de Millard proclaimed that quote the Emperor was
done for, referring to a string of military defeats that
France had suffered against the Prussians. As it happened, Camille
(06:56):
was indeed a critic of Napoleon the Third, but in
reality it's unlikely that he was foolhardy enough to have
stated his criticisms out loud, let alone announced them in
a public square, so whether or not he did actually
make a statement like that, it didn't really matter. A
week later, on August sixteenth, when Camille decided to reappear
(07:19):
in public at oaut Fay's Summer Fair. To Camille's chagrin,
more than one person remembered him as the man who
hated Napoleon the Third. A crowd began forming around Camille
of local farmers and traders, pressing him for a confession
of his crime. One person in attendance went so far
(07:39):
as to claim that he heard Camille shout out long
Live the Republic, which Camille utterly denied. Fearing for his safety,
he fled the fair ground sometime in the morning. Camille
had a cousin named Alandemnet, another nobleman who decided to
attend this year's fair. By all account, Alone was an
(08:01):
upstanding neighbor. His father was the former mayor of the
nearby town of Bissup, and Elaine himself served as a
member of the town's municipal council. He spent most of
his time managing the four hundred acres that made up
his family's inheritance, building waterworks and tending to the needs
of local commoners. He had come to the fair that
(08:24):
day in the first place in search of a cow
to give to a poor family. Thirty two years old,
Elaine desperately wanted to join the ranks of the French
army in the war against Prussia, but due to some disability,
the army disqualified him from enlistment. Esteemed compassionate, patriotic, Elaine
(08:44):
was the last person anyone would have expected to become
a victim of mob violence. There's no record of him
having any prior disagreements with townfolk. Elaine turned up at
the fair grounds around two in the afternoon, which may
seem insignificant, but actually tells us quite a bit about
(09:05):
the circumstances leading up to the commotion. At this point,
many of the farmers and livestock dealers had packed up shop,
and they were mingling with one another, perhaps headed to
the inn for a pint or two. The crowd at
the center of the fairground was still enraged over what
many believed was Camille's brazen support for the Republic, and
(09:29):
when someone had informed Elaine of the slander against his cousin,
he approached that crowd with the intention of defending his
family name. From Elaine's perspective, it made no sense that
Camille would ever support the Republic. His cousin was, after all,
a closeted advocate for the return of the Bourbon monarchy,
(09:50):
a completely different political dynasty to the villagers. Though the
distinction didn't matter. Republicans were Bourbons were Prussians. Any elite
claiming authority that did not swear undying fealty to the
bonapartes to Napoleon the Third was a threat. So while
(10:10):
Elaine remained steadfast in his conviction that Camille was innocent,
more and more villagers attested to having heard his cousin's
treacherous proclamations for the Republic. Why else would he have
been talking about Prussian war victories. Very few people in
this growing mob knew one another well. The aut fe
(10:30):
fair drew in hundreds of farmers and artisans from all
over the region. While Elaine was well known among some
residents of ote faith, it's plausible that no one in
the mob knew him personally, so no one could speak
to his actual character. This made it all too easy
to cast him as an accomplice to Camille and for
(10:53):
the villagers to see one another as fellow defenders of
the Empire before law. Sometime around two thirty in the afternoon,
someone accused Elane of being a Prussian spy. Arguments turned
to insults, insults into clenched fists. More and more villagers
(11:15):
joined without knowing anything about the original provocation or conversation,
and many confused Elane for his cousin. The crowd gained
a momentum of its own, and what began as an
otherwise ordinary day at the summer fair shifted into the
prosecution of an enemy of the state. Someone in the
(11:37):
crowd warned Elane, one of us will be left beaten
to a pulp. Maybe it was the first punch or
slapped to the face, or the fact that he was
surrounded by a throng of men all holding sticks and stones.
Eventually Allah snapped out of it and realized his life
was at stake. Historian Alain Corbin tells us that had
(12:01):
understood that his counterparts lived in an entirely different conceptual universe,
one that saw any proud noble as a conspirator against
the Emperor. Maybe he would have survived, but By the
time the first blows were struck, it was too late.
Aloon screamed out in an effort to calm down the crowd,
(12:22):
Long Live the Emperor, but it didn't work. Meanwhile, the
town's priest had been watching the scene developed from right
outside the church. After the first few blows were struck,
he jumped over his garden wall and sprung into action,
putting his body between Allan and the mob with a
revolver in his hand. But even with a gun, it
(12:44):
didn't take long for the priest to shrink away. When
he heard some members of the crowd express interest in
wanting to gut the man of faith, the priest tried
another tactic. He invited the angry men into his presence,
pretary for free wine and a toast to the emperor's health.
Only some of the men diverged from their path and
(13:08):
refreshed with free spirits, they simply returned Drunker to the mob.
The crowd pushed and dragged a lot to the house
of Hautve's mayor, Bernard Mathieu. We know Bernard as the
man who allegedly incited the cannibalism. That may be false,
(13:28):
but what is certainly true is that Bernard, fearing for
his property and life, made no effort to calm the
situation down. When a few leaders of the crowd demanded
that the mayor prosecute and imprison the supposed Prussian spy,
the mayor renounced any power and more or less told
(13:50):
the crowd to do as they pleased. One man, a horseshoer,
emerged from the crowd as de facto leader. He suggested
that they take Allah to a cherry tree and hang
him from the branches. The crowd moved their hostage to
the execution site, but unfortunately for them and for a law,
(14:13):
the branches proved too weak for the hanging. At this
point the crowd changed their mind. They wouldn't be so
merciful as to end the Prussian's life in a matter
of minutes. No, they would draw out the pain, make
the Prussians suffer in a fashion that was equal parts
barbaric and cathartic. Two farmers from the small village of
(14:38):
Manzak led the charge. They bruised and battered alone, hit
him up the head, and clobbered him with stones. The
whole scene was within view of an inn, where one
man with a rifle turned to the people around him
and announced that they should all protect that poor man.
No one else at the inn said anything, and the
(15:01):
riflemen sunk back in his chair. The crowd dragged along
back to the Mayor's house and forced him inside a
workshop full of ordinary farm tools that offered themselves up
as useful torture devices. Alom was tied to a cattle crush,
a structure that immobilizes livestock utterly defenseless. He was beaten
(15:26):
with hoofs and sticks until his head was a bloody mess.
There was something strangely casual about the way that the
torture proceeded. The villagers would batter along for a few minutes,
then take a break, leaving a law alone to howl
in pain. Before they resumed the blood bath. Some of
(15:47):
the culprits went out for breaths of fresh air. Others
wandered off to other parts of the fair before turning
back to the workshop to see how the violence had progressed.
For a brief moment, Allow was left completely alone in
the workshop, at which point a rescue attempt was made
by the few allies he had had on the fairgrounds.
(16:10):
Four men, including the mayor's nephew and Allan's servant rushed
into the workshop to try to free him from the
cattle crush, but the crowd returned before they could succeed.
The mob doubled down on their torment. One local, who
had just learned that his son had died on the
front lines of the war against Prussia, drove a hook
(16:33):
into Alain's head, which was thought fatal by some witnesses.
By some divine intervention, the crowd around Alao had withered away,
and his rescuers were finally able to wretch him from
the cattle crush. The mayor's nephew pleaded with his uncle
Bernard to take in the wounded man, but Bernard refused.
(16:55):
His reason. The mayor complained that the mob would smash
up his fire collection of crockery. Bernard Matieu recommended that
they put Elaine in the sheep pen next to the house,
out of sight from the fair grounds. Alayne's battered body
collapsed when he reached the pen. In between gasps, he
(17:16):
told his four rescuers to purchase a hogshead of wine
and give it to his pursuers. In an attempt at peace.
A friend passed him some figs to eat. Everything slowed down,
but not for long. The horseshoer leading the charge against
a Lah riled up the crowd, calling for them to
(17:37):
burn down the pen and break down the front door.
One man protected the entryway, while another urged Alan to
change his jacket and shirt for a peasant's blouse. If
the mob wasn't going to die down, their only chance
would be a covered escape. None of those plans came
to fruition, though, as the mass of people burst down
(17:58):
the pen door and got out hold of Elaine. The
court record's report that one of Elaine's friends asked him
if he'd preferred being shot right then and there. When
Elaine signaled yes, his rescuers demanded that the mob shoot
him to end his suffering, but no one listened. In
a last ditch effort to save Alan's life or offer
(18:20):
an easier death, his servant wrestled his body away from
the mob and took him to the local inn. The innkeeper,
much like the mayor, refused to let the bloodied man in,
whose leg was nestled in between the front entrance and
the door frame. When the innkeeper shut the door, he
broke Elaine's ankle and amidst all the chaos, the mayor
(18:41):
allegedly told Alan's servant to quote take him away from
the front of the inn because he was blocking traffic.
Accounts of the precise circumstances of Allan's death diverge, but
it was around this point, some two hours after the
initial mob began, that the victim finally lost consciousness. When
(19:05):
the mob dragged him once again onto the fair grounds,
Allah seemed overcome with adrenaline, as though he knew this
was his last chance. He picked up a stake and
shoved it into the face of the horse shoer, but
he was promptly disarmed. When Elaine ran under a wheelbarrow
to try to fetch another steak, he was dragged out,
(19:26):
screaming and finally killed. The murderers began that day as strangers,
but they ended it as accomplices. When Elaine finally died,
they set up his body as a punching bag for
fair goers to beat as they wished. Importantly, they never
used a knife or a blade to spill blood, the
(19:49):
same protocol shepherds followed when they prepared animals for slaughter.
Some witnesses described farmers poking the corpse's abdomen as they
might sheep. Elaine was dead, but the suffering imagined by
the fair goers transformed the suspected Prussian into the beast
(20:10):
they believed he was. As night approached, members of the
crowd called for the burning of his body, as though
they were grilling meat for a feast. Elaine was dragged
to the same spot where residents celebrated Saint John's Eve
with bonfires less than a month earlier. One witness describing
(20:32):
the transfer of the corpse four years after the fact,
reflected he was dragged by the legs through the narrow
streets of the village, his bloody head ringing on the stones,
his torn body jumping up and down, barring the corpse.
The scene could have been mistaken for some sort of holiday.
(20:52):
Women and children fetched kindling. The mayor showed up the
horse shoer brought a bale of straw and laid it
on top of Elaine's body, asking a group of children
to light the fire with a pack of matches. When
the fuel flared in a horrible blaze, the crowd cheered
Long Live the Emperor. Conflicting accounts of the immolation emphasized
(21:16):
the dehumanization underlying this horror. One witness said, in court quote,
I saw the fire blaze up, and I could see
the poor man moving under the wood piled on top
of him. Another said, just as the fire blazed up,
Monsieur de Monet flailed his arms and legs and made
sounds like the noises a hog makes when you stick
(21:38):
the knife into its neck. One farmer commented on how
nicely they roasted the pig. Yet another saw fat dripping
from the corpse onto the charred wood below, and said,
it's a pity all that fat is wasted. When the
body had been charred, when all skin turned to ash,
(22:00):
there was no way of telling if they had roasted
a man or a pig. The murder of a Landomonet
had nothing to do with the victim and everything to
do with his torturers. On the afternoon of August sixteenth,
the crowds of haut Fe transformed an innocent man into
a reflection of their most profound, primal fears. He was
(22:24):
a concrete symbol for an amorphous enemy for Prussians, Republicans, nobles, conspirators,
a disease in the national body that needed cleansing. Amidst
the chaos of war and the possibility of famine. Here
was a physical object they could lay hands on. Here
was something they could do to control the circumstances for
(22:47):
which there was no clear solution. Upon returning home, one
of the ringleaders told a friend, we did it to
save France. Our Emperor will surely save us. Arrests were
made the same night the murder took place. Police from
the local city of Nontent were notified of a murder
(23:10):
and potentially an uprising. It wasn't too difficult to identify
the main perpetrators. Some of them couldn't stop boasting about
the whole affair, and many earnestly believed their actions would
be protected by imperial writ In total, the police arrested
around fifty people from around Outfit and transferred them to
(23:32):
the Nont Plant prison, some ten miles away, though only
twenty one would be charged with the crime. That same night,
a doctor was called to perform an autopsy. The doctor's
report itself was meant to describe the physical condition of
the body, but he couldn't help but emphasize the innocence
of the victim, writing the corpse charred almost beyond recognition
(23:58):
was lying on its back, the face slightly turned to
the left toward the sky, its lower limbs spread apart,
and the right hand clenched above its head as if
to implore, the left hand drawn down toward the left
shoulder and open, as if begging for mercy. News of
the murder spread throughout the region with wildfire, especially amongst
(24:20):
the nobility. They feared a peasant uprising, which many had
believed were a thing of the past. After the bonfire
and immolation of an innocent man, the major noble families
of the district mobilized a makeshift militia, details of which
are scarce in the historical record. The day after, the
(24:41):
town of Nauqua mounted a defense against what it believed
was an impending peasant invasion. Two years after the event,
one landowner recalled how out Fey would have turned into
the center of a rebellion had the authorities not stepped
in so quickly. The local the press reflected the anxieties
(25:02):
of these elites, obsessing over every detail that could reinforce
the monstrosity of the perpetrators. First, the regional papers took
the story and ran with it, calling the villagers a
brutish mob and creatures with human faces. Then, a little
over a week after the murder, some national papers ran
(25:22):
the story to great intrigue. All of them at least
alluded to cannibalism. Reporters and readers alike only had to
connect the dots. Here were peasants treating nobles like animals.
Of course, they had eaten his human flesh. Cannibalistic depictions
of the villagers strongly evoked colonialist stories that circulated in
(25:46):
French literature at the time. One writer drew a direct
comparison between the fairgoers and the so called cannibals depicted
in the novel Robinson Crusoe, which features a racist trope
that was an this case, applied to the country farmers
in order to paint them as sub human savages. Perhaps
(26:07):
what was most shocking to readers was that none of
the men directly involved in the murder had ever perpetrated
a serious crime before. Just as the villagers suspected Prussian
spies lurking in their midst, wealthy newspaper readers grew paranoid
about the explosive potential of mob violence in their own backyards.
(26:31):
The press openly despised the town mayor, Bernard Matthieu, for
having failed in his duties. He was removed from his
position on August twenty fourth. To make matters worse for
the town of haut Fay, the Bonapartine Empire that the
villagers so attached their hopes to crumbled in early September,
(26:52):
resulting in the rise of the Third Republic, led by Yes,
the same Republicans that the villagers feared and hated so much.
When the government changed hands that month, administrators worried ot
Fay would turn into the center of a Bonapartine counter rebellion.
No doubt, inspired by the latest reports in the press,
(27:15):
one administer went so far as to recommend that the
village be literally erased from the map. The recommendation was
dropped when the new mayor of ot Fay pointed out
that the main perpetrators were not actually from the town,
but only visiting for the fair. Meanwhile, the story lost
no steam among the general public. In September, the police
(27:39):
transferred twenty one prisoners to the courthouse in Perango for
notification of their trial, and a crowd of five hundred
people streamed in to catch a glimpse of the so
called monsters of haut Fay. A reporter that visited some
of the perpetrators in their jail cells, including the horseshoer,
(27:59):
to described their bodies in brutish terms. One man's eyes quote,
darted about like a badger's as he tried to hide
himself in the midst of his co defendants. The trial
itself took place from September thirteenth to the twenty first,
nine days of spectacle attended by the families of the defendants,
(28:21):
by the villagers of Perango, and plenty of upper class
locals intrigued by the drama. One man reportedly complained that
his local theater had been closed since the outbreak of
the war, and so the court offered a decent substitute.
Spectators delighted and recoil at seeing the brutish murderers alive
(28:43):
and up close. While the court proceedings revealed that cannibalism
probably did not occur, they made it clear that everything
leading up to the consumption of human limbs certainly did happen.
No gory detail was spared. The prosecution even presented the
(29:03):
very stones upon which Elaine's fat had dripped while his
body was burnt. The defense council actually leaned into the
trope of the villager's savagery, claiming that the peasants who
banded together were simply acting like animals. All of the
individuals on the stand were motivated by ignorant superstition and
(29:25):
collective delusion. How could we severely punish any one person?
Needless to say, the defense lost. Four of the twenty
one perpetrators were sentenced to death, and the remaining seventeen
received prison time. The audience, especially the poorer folks in attendance,
protested the convictions to no avail. The executions were set
(29:50):
for February. It was anticipated that the executions would take
place in Pergo, the same town the court had made
its decision, but officials decided to move the execution site
to the town of haat Fay itself, on the very
fair grounds where the violence began. In a show of
force and an act of political revenge, the government stationed
(30:14):
hundreds of soldiers in the village. A crowd of about
a hundred spectators appeared to see the heads of the
four main convicts lobbed off by guillotine. To the frustration
of local priests and officials. Most commoners referred to the
men as martyrs. The innkeepers of out Fay even refused
(30:36):
to serve the executioners. From their standpoint, even if the
mob was wrong to kill Alende Monet, the Republicans had
no right to treat these otherwise upstanding citizens like animals.
The court's decision only confirmed the sort of conspiracy between
elites that the fair goers feared so much, in the
(31:00):
person of Elaine. There's one more character in this drama
we have yet to follow up on, Bernard Matthieu, the
former now disgraced mayor. He died on Christmas Day eighteen seventy,
shortly after the trials had ended. Apparently his unscathed collection
of crockery was no source of comfort in those final days.
(31:27):
That's the gruesome story of the alleged French town of cannibals.
But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit more about Hutfey's legacy in literature and today.
The primary source for this retelling of the outfe case
(31:49):
comes from the nineteen ninety history of the event by
the French historian Elaine Corbin. Corbin is something of a
maverick in the historical establishment during the eighties and nineties,
when scholars usually wrote about political dynasties, world wars, or
economic struggles, Corbin investigated more unusual subjects, prostitution, attitudes towards
(32:14):
the sea, and, as we know, cannibalism. He employs a
literary style that has been cherished by some for its
appeal and detracted by others for issuing academic norms. So
when he tells us about the brutal killing of Alendomnet
in eighteen seventy, he doesn't just flesh out the details,
(32:36):
no pun intended. He sets the stage, introduces the characters,
and narrates a tragedy between the killer and the killed.
If I may say so, it is a gripping rendition
of the story. Unfortunately, the book's appeal may not have
been so good for the town of Oute Fay. In
two thousand and nine, the longstanding mayor recommended erecting a
(33:00):
plaque in remembrance of the lynching, but there was enough
of an outcry among the town's residents that the project
had to be scrapped. Where many European cities lean into
their dark local histories, sometimes to attract tourists, the myth
of oat Fay's cannibalism is a delicate subject. The town
(33:22):
has no more than one hundred and thirty residents today,
only a little larger than it was in the eighteen hundreds,
but the attention that it's received in literature and folklore
has been wildly disproportionate. The story of the killing was
even converted into a popular tune in the late eighteen hundreds.
Some current residents can recall their grandparents' first hand accounts
(33:46):
of the executions and the bad reputation of the town
that followed. Even though the murder of Alandimane remains a
touchy subject, the town has taken many steps towards reconciliationation
and remembrance. On August sixteenth, nineteen seventy, exactly one century
(34:07):
after the murder, the oude Fe Church put on a
ceremony of forgiveness featuring the descendants of Elaine Demonet. Noble
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
(34:31):
from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by
me Dana Shchwortz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zuick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
(34:56):
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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