Broken on the Wheel

On March 10, 1762, French Huguenot Jean Calas, who was wrongly convicted of killing his son, died after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin his campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform. From the article:

"Chapter 2: The question extraordinaire

In Toulouse, David de Beaudrigue, the titular Capitoul, was sort of the police detective, prosecutor and magistrate, all in one. A “brutal and hasty man,” in one author’s words, David had bought his office, “which was held for life and carried patents of nobility.”

David arrested Calas and the others without the necessary warrants. Then the call went out for witnesses—with the threat of excommunication for anyone reluctant to come forward, and with an explicit demand for hearsay, embraced as evidence by the French courts. Although more than 100 witnesses surfaced, the investigation failed to turn up a confessor for Marc-Antoine or any other proof of his plans to convert. Instead, the testimony produced convoluted chains of what a tailor told a hosier told a baker’s assistant told a barber’s wife, turning a capital proceeding into a childhood game of Chinese whispers (or “telephone,” take your pick), with predictable results. One writer captured the absurdity with this example:

“One Massaleng, a widow, gave evidence that her daughter had told her that le sieur Pagès had told her that M. Soulié had told him that la demoiselle Guichardet had told him that la demoiselle Journu had made a statement to her from which she (Journu) had inferred that le père Lerraut, a Jesuit, had been the confessor of Marc-Antoine Calas. When the reverend father Lerraut was summoned he showed that the whole of this was without foundation.”

The evidence was mostly rubbish—but there was a lot of the rubbish, and in France at the time, even evidence deemed “half-complete” or “imperfect” could convict, by adding fractions of a proof to make a whole. The church also threw in, putting its stamp on the prosecution’s conjecture. Despite the lack of evidence of any conversion, Marc-Antoine received a Catholic funeral, with thousands turning out for the services.

The case against Jean Calas went before Toulouse’s Parlement, an appellate court that reviewed evidence and deliberated in private. On March 9, 1762, the Parlement voted eight to five to convict and condemn. (And it wasn’t really that close: Only one of the five voted for outright acquittal.) The sentence called for Calas to be questioned while tortured in two ways, then broken on the wheel, then burned. The assumption was that in the throes of agony, Calas would confess and implicate the four others, in addition to any other conspirators yet unknown.

The following day, the sentence was carried out. The proceedings began in the torture chamber, with David conducting the interrogation. His initial round of questions preceded the torture—and a record was kept of all that was asked and answered.

INTERROGATED if he has other accomplices than those who have been designated in the trial

REPLIES that being innocent he has no accomplices

EXHORTED further to tell the truth he says he has told it.

And so it went, on and on. With no concession, the torture commenced. The first form—“The Question Ordinaire,” as it was labeled—called for an elaborate pulling of limbs: “With his wrists tied tightly to a bar behind him, Calas was stretched by a system of cranks and pulleys that steadily drew his arms up while an iron weight kept his feet in place.” But Calas did not confess.

The second form—or, “The Question Extraordinaire”—might sound familiar, having been much in the news in recent years. Calas’s mouth was forced open with two sticks. Then came the water, pitcher after pitcher. “His head was held low and a cloth placed over his mouth and on the cloth a funnel,” is how one author described this torture. “His nose was pinched, but from time to time released, then water was slowly poured through the funnel on to the cloth which was sucked in by the suffocating man.” Still, Calas did not confess.

For David, this had not gone as planned. But there were opportunities left, as the proceedings shifted from private chamber to public spectacle. Calas was taken through the streets to the city’s main square, then led up to a scaffold and tied to an X-shaped cross. Whereupon an executioner, iron rod in hand, crushed Calas’s bones, two blows apiece to the upper and lower arms, two to the upper and lower legs, three to the midsection. Calas, his body broken, was then tied to a wheel, face to the sky, where, for two hours, he refused to convert and refused to confess.

“I die innocent,” he said.

Afterward, he was strangled and his body thrown on a pyre.

The effect was not what David had hoped for. Not only was he deprived of evidence against the others, but Calas’s final hours had made a stirring impression, eliciting sympathy. Calas met his fate, one man later wrote, with “majestic perseverance.”

A week later, to David’s consternation, the judges in Toulouse elected not to condemn any of the others. All were released—although Pierre, Marc-Antoine’s brother, was banished."