Vulgar History - That Time An Enslaved Black Woman Burned Down Montreal (Allegedly)

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast 0.99

00:00:44.440 my name is ann foster and welcome to season seven part one how do you solve a problem

00:00:50.920 like marie antoinette and i say part one because over the next 15 weeks including this week we're

00:00:58.640 going to be doing the first part of this lengthy journée that we're going on. And so I want to

00:01:06.620 prepare you for this journée that is this season. You might expect us to dive right into life in

00:01:11.740 Versailles or looking at the French Revolution or talking about the whole like, let them eat cake

00:01:16.400 scenario. But we're starting out broader than that. And in fact, the whole season, we're going

00:01:21.620 broader than that. By which I mean, looking at the stars, like for all my astrology girlies,

00:01:27.260 the last time pluto was in aquarius was in the late 18th century aka the 1700s which was a time

00:01:35.440 of major cultural change the energy revolutions breaking out everywhere the american revolution

00:01:41.360 the haitian revolution the french revolution this was also a time and an era of the late 1700s with

00:01:47.980 lots of unexpected and strange weather patterns like wildly hot summers snow in june incredibly

00:01:55.100 cold winters, the coldest winter in 300 years at one point. There was solar eclipse. Just the more

00:02:01.040 that I read about the era in which Marie Antoinette lived, the more I saw similarities to

00:02:05.280 our world right now. And more than ever, people all around the world are affected by things that

00:02:11.040 happen in other countries. And Marie Antoinette's world was similar. And the same way that if you

00:02:18.160 were going to talk about one person living in today's world, it's like, well, what are the

00:02:21.860 effects of so many other cultures and countries and history and politics. Everything's so

00:02:28.400 connected. So Marie Antoinette's life ended during the French Revolution. Spoiler, if you didn't know

00:02:33.860 that, the French Revolution itself was inspired by other revolutionary revolutions that were

00:02:40.360 happening in other places, the Haitian Revolution. It was also connected with the American Revolution.

00:02:44.840 And there's also lots of other revolutions that people smaller scale, ones that maybe weren't as

00:02:49.680 successful some people's lives themselves are revolutionary it was just a time this energy it

00:02:55.360 really reminds me of these days and right now and basically like the major best-known revolutions

00:03:01.260 for instance the french revolution the american revolution just people anywhere being colonized

00:03:06.260 by the british or the french felt the impact of these battles and these wars like the not just

00:03:11.460 the people who were actually on the front lines fighting but also the people who were farmers and

00:03:16.480 like the people living on the streets and stuff, you know, prices of things were affected by all

00:03:20.600 these battles. Often when these revolutions are talking about or talked about, it's looking at

00:03:25.780 like who were the leaders and what were their philosophies and what were the battles and stuff

00:03:29.880 like that. If you're familiar with this podcast or if you're not, you know, welcome. I'm not into

00:03:34.700 battle history. I'm not into the history of the very well-known white men who are most often 0.73

00:03:40.600 discussed because those stories, you can hear them anywhere. There's so many excellent podcasts

00:03:46.400 to tell those stories. I am interested in looking at the stories of people who are less looked at,

00:03:51.320 but who were affected by these decisions other people were making the way that I and you out

00:03:56.660 there listening are affected by the big decisions being made by today's leaders. So if you're like,

00:04:02.020 yes, great. And that's great. But why aren't you talking about Versailles and the famous

00:04:06.760 mistresses and all the kings called Louis and the Habsburgs and everything this week or in

00:04:13.320 the next 15 weeks. So to which I say, Hepburn is here, my cat, if you don't know, she likes to be

00:04:20.080 on the podcast too. Eventually, I'm going to get into that. We're going to just get to it.

00:04:25.340 Marie Antoinette's story is bigger than just the palaces she was living in or who were her specific

00:04:30.060 friends or her siblings or the French royal family. We're going to talk about that, but

00:04:34.920 this story is so much bigger. To understand her story, we need to understand what was happening

00:04:39.360 all around the world. So when Marie Antoinette is looked at or discussed, often people talk

00:04:45.220 about her style or they talk about her fashion, her lifestyle, and then also how her life was

00:04:53.460 cut short, how she was executed as a victim of the French Revolution. And at the same time,

00:04:59.440 there's lots of other people whose lives were short and ended tragically because this was a

00:05:06.400 time where poor people, marginalized people, working class people were living through this

00:05:10.980 time of great inequality. I'm talking about them then, but also kind of now where the rich people

00:05:17.420 were so unbelievably rich. People like Marie Antoinette, like her life was separate and

00:05:22.680 different from a lot of people, but she's not the only person who ended up dying in tragic

00:05:27.260 circumstances. But this was also a time where the foundations of society were being challenged.

00:05:31.820 It was a time of rage and fury, but also optimism and kind of hopefulness that maybe the way the society was structured, like maybe the poor people, the marginalized people, maybe there would be a way that they could get more power, get more opportunities.

00:05:49.580 And also the revolutions of this era that we're going to be looking at over the next 15 weeks weren't just the major ones that succeeded.

00:05:56.900 So season seven, part one, we're looking at people from all walks of life, none of them

00:06:01.520 royal, who lived various kinds of revolutionary lives as we begin to answer the question that

00:06:07.420 we're going to be looking at for a very long time.

00:06:09.760 So get ready.

00:06:10.920 How do you solve a problem like Marie Antoinette?

00:06:13.900 So in these next 15 weeks, some of the episodes I'll be hosting myself.

00:06:19.000 I know that lots of people will be excited to hear that.

00:06:21.640 I've had a lot of guest episodes and people.

00:06:23.600 I do good feedback saying people that they like to hear just at me talking episode and rest assured,

00:06:29.760 rest assured. Some of the episodes come up with just me talking. I talk so much it ends up being

00:06:34.340 a two or even a three part episode. Some of the other episodes I've got amazing experts to come

00:06:40.500 on to help better explore the topics being discussed. So over the next 15 weeks, season

00:06:47.060 seven, part one, we're going to be looking at people in various different countries, including

00:06:51.760 but not limited to America, New Zealand, and Ireland. Not France, which is where I really

00:06:59.580 want to let you know this is a Marie Antoinette season, but kind of the same way that Beyonce said

00:07:05.260 about her amazing album that I've been listening to nonstop for weeks now, Act 2, Cowboy Carter.

00:07:11.940 She said, and not to compare me to Beyonce or this season to that amazing groundbreaking album,

00:07:16.740 but she said you know it's not a country album it's a Beyonce album so for this I'll say like

00:07:22.180 it's not a Marie Antoinette season as much as it's a vulgar history season and Marie Antoinette

00:07:27.100 is kind of the patron saint that connects everything all together and so all the stories

00:07:31.640 we're looking at initially may seem at first glance disconnected or unrelated to Marie Antoinette and

00:07:37.580 her story each person is connected to her in ways we're going to discuss in each episode so we're

00:07:44.060 starting off in the country where I live, Canada, and we're going to be looking at one of the most

00:07:52.220 revolutionary figures in Canadian history, Marie-Joseph Angelique.

00:08:01.200 So I really want to shout out my main reference, my main source for this episode, which is a book

00:08:08.000 called The Hanging of Angelique, The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal

00:08:13.460 by Afua Cooper. And this is, I don't want to tell you the end. I mean, the book is called

00:08:19.940 The Hanging of Angelique, The Burning of Old Montreal. You know, a few things that are going

00:08:24.340 to happen in this story. So there's a question of did Angelique commit this arson or not? 0.85

00:08:30.960 And Afua Cooper spent, I think, 15 years, she says in this book, researching this, looking at all

00:08:36.320 so many documents and all kinds of things. And she came to the conclusion that Angelique

00:08:40.800 did commit this arson that we're going to talk about spoiler. And so, because this is my main

00:08:46.260 resource and because I really trust in the work that Afua Cooper has done, that is going to be

00:08:51.420 my take on this as well. There are people who think that she didn't do it and I respect that

00:08:56.380 point of view, but my main source is coming from a point of like, she did do it. So that's where

00:09:01.000 this podcast is going to come from. So I'm going to be quoting from this book throughout. It's a

00:09:06.140 fantastic book. I really recommend reading it to really sit with this story. There's so much

00:09:11.500 context that she gets into in the book that I won't have time to talk about in this podcast,

00:09:15.880 but it's so good. I also got some more information because I wanted to see how this story has been

00:09:20.140 written about and other points of view and also some updates, some things that happened since the

00:09:23.680 book was written. So I got information from Wikipedia from also, and these links are all

00:09:29.880 in the show notes from a global news article, the Canadian encyclopedia.ca. And then also an

00:09:36.720 article about a film about her from this.org, which I'll talk about later. So to get into this

00:09:43.320 story and we'll do some play setting. So a few weeks ago, I had the episode about the Nalder,

00:09:52.420 the woman from Northern Canada. And we talked in there about the fur trade and things like that.

00:09:59.880 We've also talked recently, we had the episode about Matoka, aka Pocahontas, talking about English colonization in North America.

00:10:07.020 And so this is, we're looking at French colonization in what is now, well, what was then and what is still now called Montreal, a city in what is modern day Quebec in Canada.

00:10:19.360 And so just to set a context for this place and time and how did this all come to happen?

00:10:25.300 So the area known today as Montreal has been inhabited by indigenous people for something like 8,000 years. The oldest known artifact found there was from about 4,000 years old. So by around 1000 AD, nomadic Iroquoian and other peoples around the Great Lakes began to adopt an agricultural lifestyle.

00:10:46.780 so like maize aka corn and so some more settled lifestyles and we've seen this a lot with the

00:10:52.760 places where people settle all around the world you know egypt and places like there is a river

00:10:57.780 the saint lawrence river and wherever there's a river there's fertile land and that's where you

00:11:01.400 can grow stuff and so that's where kind of societies tend to build up so fishing and

00:11:05.460 hunting in nearby forests supported a full diet by the 14th century the people had built fortified

00:11:10.980 villages the first european to reach the area and so this is in the history of colonization

00:11:17.600 there was first in terms of european i'm gonna say like quote-unquote successful colonization

00:11:24.560 like people there's there's europeans kind of came and visited and left but the first people

00:11:29.300 who kind of came and stayed so that's like christopher columbus um in what is now like

00:11:35.420 Haiti, like that region. Hernan Cortez went to Mexico. And so the English and the French got in

00:11:41.740 on this whole situation and they were kind of going more up north because that's where the

00:11:45.740 Spanish wasn't. So the first European to reach the area was in 1535. 70 years later, Samuel de

00:11:51.980 Champlain arrived and he decided to establish a fur trading post at Place Royale on the island

00:11:57.520 of Montreal. And this is the history of Montreal in this region. Like in this story, it's like

00:12:02.120 fur trading like that's there's not gold here like there was in Mexico or somewhere but the

00:12:09.040 fur was really important anyone actually I don't know I'm I'm an old person but when I went to

00:12:15.560 school the Canadian history we learned was very fur trade based so I don't know if that's still

00:12:19.780 the history you're learning but like when you learn the history of Canada it's but the fur trade

00:12:23.760 because that's what was going on we talked in the the Nelder episode about Hudson's Bay company and

00:12:29.140 stuff like this whole what is now canada was really it wasn't like let's start colonies and

00:12:36.200 like for escape religious persecution like the puritans in new england it was more just kind of

00:12:42.680 like let's send over some business people and some trappers and let's do some fur and let's do some

00:12:46.920 commerce and that's what's going on anyway samuel de champlain established a fur trading post but

00:12:51.320 the mohawk based mostly in present day new york successfully defended their hunting grounds um

00:12:56.740 and kicked him out. So it was not until 1639 that the French created a permanent settlement 0.95

00:13:01.500 on the island of Montreal, started by a tax collector called Jérôme Leroyer de la Dovisière.

00:13:08.240 And so once this settlement kind of was there, like it got going. So missionaries and a few

00:13:14.680 French colonists set up a mission named Ville-Marie as part of a project to create a colony dedicated

00:13:19.900 to the Virgin Mary. And so Ville-Marie was repeatedly attacked by the Mohawk. French men 0.97

00:13:27.580 were recruited to bolster this failing colony. So this would become a center for the fur trade.

00:13:33.480 Basically, the French and Iroquois wars threatened the survival of Ville-Marie until a peace treaty

00:13:38.360 was signed in 1701. We're getting closer to when our story takes place. With this great peace,

00:13:44.460 Judy Montreal and the surrounding areas could develop without fear of being raided by the 0.92

00:13:49.400 Iroquois. So by 1716, the French population had grown to just over 4,000 people, French people,

00:13:58.940 while the native population was just over 1,000. Migrants came from all different parts of France.

00:14:05.080 A lot of them came from rural areas, not a lot from the larger cities, because I guess people 0.99

00:14:10.300 in the largest cities in France were like, we're good. Why would we leave? And so these migrants

00:14:14.760 came from different groups, the French migrants and the largest of which were indentured servants.

00:14:19.300 So people who kind of had to work a certain period of time to achieve their freedom. So they were 0.82

00:14:26.560 just on a contract to, it's not exactly the same as slavery and it's not exactly the same as being

00:14:33.580 in prison, but it's just kind of, you're on a contract that you can't ever leave. Like you're

00:14:37.000 on contract to do this work forever. So due to the importance of Montreal to what was now being

00:14:42.220 known as New France, because there's also Quebec and some other places. So fortifications started

00:14:47.520 to be built, like they started to build a wall around the city just to kind of keep invaders

00:14:52.280 out. In 1721, a fire devastated the settlement and the guy in charge passed an ordinance that

00:15:00.620 called for several things. One of them was like, please stop using wooden shingles on your roofs

00:15:04.740 because when you've wooden shingles and a fire starts and the buildings were all so close

00:15:09.320 together, the fire would spread really quickly. There's also a rule that everybody, if a fire

00:15:14.300 started, everybody had to like grab a ladder and some buckets and come and help fight the fire.

00:15:19.940 This is going to just remember that because there's going to be another fire. And do the

00:15:25.060 people, do they follow these rules? You know, we'll see. So that's what's happening. That's the

00:15:30.860 the setting of this whole saga. And then we get into our main character, who is Marie-Joseph

00:15:39.900 Angelique, who I'm going to call Angelique because in the book by Afua Cooper, that's what she calls

00:15:45.100 her. A lot of what we know about Angelique comes from her own words, from later trial transcript.

00:15:50.720 She explained that she had been born in Portugal and she's probably born around 1705. And if I

00:15:58.920 consult my increasingly long spreadsheet of people we've ever talked about on this

00:16:04.700 podcast, just to sort of appreciate who was around when. So like Tanelda Thur was born probably

00:16:12.840 around the same time, the late 1600s, early 1700s. Mary Toft in England, who pretended to give birth

00:16:21.020 to Rabbits, born 1701. Empress Elizabeth of Russia, born 1709. So those are some people

00:16:29.400 who are kind of around at the same time. Reyes of Angelique, born in Portugal. So probably in

00:16:35.280 Madeira, which was a possession of Portugal in the Atlantic and Ireland. So Portugal,

00:16:41.520 let's talk about Portugal, was the first European country to engage in the chattel slave trade in

00:16:46.440 Africa. Portugal really made slavery of African Black people happen. Portugal was big in this

00:16:54.220 game. So in Madeira, enslaved labor was used primarily in domestic agriculture, which was

00:16:59.900 tied to the sugar plantation system. And one of the reasons why Portugal got all in on chattel

00:17:08.560 slavery was because when the Spanish first conquistador, the Americas, the genocide of

00:17:16.220 the indigenous people there meant that they, the Spanish people, had a need for more enslaved labor

00:17:23.040 because the indigenous people were all being killed. And so ownership of Black slaves was

00:17:31.220 extremely prevalent. A historian named A.C. Saunders said, except for beggars, people,

00:17:36.380 and this is Portuguese people, Portuguese people of all classes from laborers to kings owned Black

00:17:41.340 slaves. We've talked in this podcast before about just the marginalizations and the way that Muslim 1.00

00:17:47.520 people and Jewish people in Spain and Portugal had a lot of prejudices against them, a lot of laws

00:17:53.500 telling them what they couldn't do. But in this case, even Muslim and Jewish people were able to

00:17:58.420 own black slaves. Just that was what was happening. So women like Angelique, the sorts of work that 0.92

00:18:07.180 they would be called upon to do in their enslavement would be midwives, wet nurses, 1.00

00:18:12.680 hairdressers, lawn dresses, water sellers, coal vendors. And I just want to emphasize that

00:18:19.500 in this era and time and place where there's a lot of enslaved people, there was resistance

00:18:25.180 from them at the time. So people fighting back, people trying to escape slavery, some enslaved

00:18:33.220 If men would, whose job was to oversee like olive groves and vineyards, they would do

00:18:39.160 things like they would burn the olive groves and vineyards.

00:18:41.880 If their job was to keep sheep and cattle from trampling the planted fields for agriculture,

00:18:49.620 they would release the sheep and cattle so that the fields could be trampled.

00:18:54.840 These things happen so often that the government tried to ban enslaved Black people from working

00:18:59.680 those jobs because so often did they resist in this way. Slaved women, it was not unheard of 0.99

00:19:07.900 for them to talk back or insult their white owners, which we know because there's criminal 1.00

00:19:14.060 records filed against Black female street vendors who did exactly this. And we talked about this 0.63

00:19:19.780 in a while back. I had an interview on this podcast with Nikki M. Taylor about her book,

00:19:25.020 Brooding Over Bloody Revenge, Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance. So that's a nonfiction book.

00:19:30.280 And that's actually what got me thinking about Marie-Joseph Angelique because she mentions her

00:19:34.020 briefly in this book. And so in that book, she's talking about the resistance of enslaved Black

00:19:39.020 women against the people who owned them through things like this, talking back, but also by

00:19:44.880 murdering their owners and things like that. So this story, the story of Marie-Joseph Angelique

00:19:50.380 is very much a part of that, of the resistance that black slaves would manifest against their

00:19:57.460 owners. And so in this setting where slavery was happening, anytime an enslaved woman had a child,

00:20:04.560 the child would inherit the status of the mother, e.g. an enslaved person. So chances are, this is 0.64

00:20:10.420 how Angelique wound up in this life situation. So she grew up in Portugal, probably in Madeira.

00:20:18.400 And at some point as a young woman, she wound up in Flanders, which was at that point, a Dutch speaking country. So perhaps her Portuguese owner sold her to somebody else, or perhaps the Portuguese owner moved to Flanders. But when she got there, she was sold to Nikes Block, a Flemish man.

00:20:37.760 And so the connection between Portugal and Flanders all centers on a city. New podcast listeners might not know, but I have feelings about Antwerp. Antwerp is a city that I once visited as a child. And as my name is Anne, my family lovingly yet annoyingly made numerous jokes about Antwerp. And I, Anne, was a twerp. And I hold that against the city of Antwerp and will for the rest of my life.

00:21:06.800 whenever antwerp comes up in a story i'm just like oh antwerp again but it comes up a lot because it

00:21:11.660 was this hub of trade and so there was a lot of um like warehouses i guess so portuguese trade

00:21:19.420 would go through antwerp to get to like the other places where it was going flemish merchants

00:21:23.620 distributed the portuguese colonial products like the stuff that the portuguese were getting from

00:21:28.100 their colonies the flemish merchants would distribute those to the rest of europe and so

00:21:33.820 Angelique was there in Flanders for a while. And then Nykis Black, her owner, wound up in New

00:21:41.120 England, probably because of the same trade economy for merchant reasons. We don't know

00:21:46.540 how long she worked with him or where they lived, but we do know when she was around 20 years old,

00:21:52.220 he sold her to a man whose name was François Poulain de Francheville.

00:21:59.280 so what we know about Angelique and we do know quite a bit I mean the records are there Afua

00:22:07.100 Cooper really pulled them together to make a narrative but we know from later court transcripts

00:22:13.120 of her explaining her thoughts and her feelings she missed Portugal Portugal was where she had

00:22:18.460 been happiest that was what she considered her home everything that she experienced in the new

00:22:23.580 world she associated with misery and sorrow her goal and dream was to escape and to take a ship

00:22:28.780 back to Portugal and to be there again, which brings us to a brief explanation of the concept

00:22:35.220 of slavery in Canada. And so this is also something that I'm, you know, relearning,

00:22:41.300 reteaching myself because Canada has done, uh, I don't, it's not like a concerted PR job

00:22:49.660 necessarily, but just like Canada has the reputation of being like a nice place full

00:22:53.300 of nice people. And I think the fact that during the mid 19th century, escaped black slaves were

00:23:02.800 brought north to Canada for freedom. We talked about this a bit in the episode where we talked

00:23:07.600 about Mary Ann Shad Carey, because slavery was abolished in Canada before it was abolished in

00:23:11.780 the US. So when I, as a younger person, heard about slavery in relation to Canada, it was just

00:23:18.440 in relation to like, oh, but we didn't have that here. This is where this like enslaved people 0.97

00:23:21.920 could go to be free comma incorrect so like well it is correct that because slavery ended in canada

00:23:30.200 before it did in the u.s that people did come here in the 18th century but um canada like new france

00:23:36.800 like it was founded by english and french people where slavery was done and so people came over

00:23:43.180 here and they owned enslaved people slavery was an institutionalized practice in canada for over

00:23:48.240 200 years. So unlike the U.S., where the economy was based on enslavement, like with a plantation

00:23:55.960 model in the South and stuff, Canada was a society with slaves. So again, if you listen to that

00:24:02.880 episode with Nikki M. Taylor about her book, she's talking also about sort of like in the northern

00:24:07.760 U.S. and what slavery was like there, which was similar to what it was in New France as well,

00:24:12.900 which is kind of more like people working around the house, people watching the children,

00:24:17.080 people tending the field. So it's not this huge plantation with hundreds or thousands of enslaved

00:24:22.860 people. It's more just slavery just looked different here, but there was still slavery

00:24:26.380 gone and it was still terrible. And there's, I'm not going to say one kind of slavery is better or

00:24:32.120 worse than the other. It's all terrible. I will say that just looking at the story of Angelique,

00:24:36.280 you see that one of the special challenges, I guess, of being in the situation she was in is

00:24:42.320 said, you're living in the same house as your owners. So you're living under the roof. They

00:24:47.460 can watch you every minute of every day, like micromanaging what you're doing. You're also

00:24:52.060 vulnerable to things like sexual assault by your owners. That's the context of what this life was

00:24:58.700 like for her. And so again, similar to what happened in with the Spanish colonies, the

00:25:05.480 ongoing genocide against indigenous people led the white colonists to look elsewhere for

00:25:11.080 people to enslave, although there were enslaved indigenous people as well. And there's some of

00:25:15.660 them who are going to come up in this story. So in order to develop the French colony as quickly

00:25:21.280 as the French wanted to, they needed a labor force. They needed a larger people like to build

00:25:28.280 and stuff. And ideally people they wouldn't have to pay, e.g. enslaved people. And so they acquired,

00:25:34.560 the colonists of New France acquired enslaved African workers in various ways and brought them

00:25:41.080 there. So at this time, there's a big connection between this story and France because it's very

00:25:47.500 connected. French law was the same as what the laws were in New France. So in France,

00:25:53.920 there was a legal code called the Code Noir, which regulated slavery in the West Indies.

00:25:59.260 So this was never technically made law in Canada, but the slave owners of New France applied code noir as needed. And code noir dictated that enslaved people were declared movable. So they were treated as possessions. They could be traded and moved like livestock furniture and trade goods.

00:26:20.140 the code noir also mandated that enslaved people be baptized and instructed in the catholic faith

00:26:25.840 at the point that the code noir came out the king in france was louis the 14th who gave his full

00:26:31.900 consent to black slavery in canada not that they needed his permission because he'd already been

00:26:36.600 doing this but he was like god bless like do this sure so there were ways that enslaved people could

00:26:42.600 be freed if they're basically their owners could declare through the process the formal process of

00:26:48.000 menu mission, they could be freed by their owners. Um, and sometimes owners would do this when,

00:26:53.860 um, if the owner died, they're like, you know, when I die, like my enslaved people or person

00:26:59.200 can be freed. Some people did that sometimes. So this was a thing that the enslaved people,

00:27:05.280 if they saw that happening for other people, then that could be maybe a goal for themselves as well.

00:27:09.660 and so in montreal there was an increasing amount of enslaved black people and just by virtue of

00:27:19.840 the fact that it was kind of like a small-ish place like they'd be walking around doing errands

00:27:23.280 running into each other so they would talk and they would chat and they would learn about what

00:27:26.180 other people were up to the amount of notices in newspapers which is the thing afua cooper looks at

00:27:31.300 a lot in her book is like newspaper notices about like this escaped enslaved person like it indicates

00:27:37.440 that this was a common occurrence. Like people were escaping regularly or trying to escape.

00:27:44.300 So if there's kind of, if you're talking to the other enslaved people, like you would kind of

00:27:48.040 hear about their plots and like, how did they do it? And what were their plans? Maybe that would

00:27:51.540 give you ideas of plans for yourself. So I'm going to quote from Afua Cooper's book. So when Angelique

00:27:57.700 arrived in Montreal, it was a place where white subordinated black men and women, men had power 0.96

00:28:05.220 over women and those of high rank wielded authority over the less fortunate. Angelique was 0.89

00:28:10.000 disadvantaged on all three counts of race, gender, and social status. She chafed under such oppression 0.91

00:28:14.960 and had little respect for this world in which she found herself. Alienated from it, she would

00:28:20.620 attempt to destroy it. So this was all a lot of setup, but now we're getting into Angelique

00:28:27.040 literally burning it all down so her new owners so the francheville couple so francois is the

00:28:37.220 husband the wife is called therese and they were bourgeois what we would call today bougie so they

00:28:44.900 weren't aristocrats they weren't lower classes in fact they were merchants which was an emerging

00:28:50.480 like it's this fur trade city so francois was one of montreal's leading merchants and therese had

00:28:56.380 been she still what she was the daughter of another important merchant so they're just like

00:29:00.520 merchant royalty power couple so francois his business was in the fur trade um and he also

00:29:09.140 owned a farm in the suburbs outside of montreal where he grew some crops that he sold he also

00:29:14.520 had a vast estate in nearby trois trois rivières they lived in a two-story stone house on rue saint

00:29:20.860 paul which is the merchant quarter of the town so this is the area where people like them who

00:29:26.480 are merchants they kind of their business was there and then they lived maybe above like people

00:29:32.200 lived and worked all in the same place his he was like third generation new france his grandfather

00:29:37.940 had immigrated from france and worked in the fur trade francois father did that and then he inherited

00:29:42.980 this as well and this is probably part of why he was so successful because he had sort of a the

00:29:47.540 family had been in the fur trade for quite a while. So less than a year after they married,

00:29:51.200 they had a daughter named Marie Angelique. The daughter died after a few months and no more

00:29:55.600 children were born to them after that. At the time that Angelique joined their household,

00:30:01.060 and she was in her twenties at this point. So she was the only enslaved black member of the

00:30:08.840 household. There were paid domestic workers and there were two indigenous enslaved people.

00:30:15.800 So I guess because of the Code Noir, she was baptized at this time, like when they owned her, as Marie-Joseph Angelique.

00:30:24.040 So this is when she got the name by which we know her.

00:30:26.840 This is a name, Afua Cooper describes it as a popular name given to enslaved women.

00:30:32.340 So she, this is kind of like the name you gave.

00:30:35.780 She was working for them for five years though, before she was baptized, which is interesting.

00:30:42.240 Also interesting, she was around two months pregnant at the time of the baptism.

00:30:47.980 We know this because she had a baby, a full-term baby, seven months later.

00:30:52.220 So why did they wait to baptize her until then?

00:30:54.800 Maybe it must be related to her pregnancy.

00:30:58.080 So her son was named Eustace, and she named as the father of the child Jacques César,

00:31:04.960 who was an enslaved Black man.

00:31:07.300 so i mean who knows what the context was of that were they like having a consensual sexual

00:31:14.720 relationship with each other or did francois force them together because any children that

00:31:19.160 she gave birth to would become enslaved to him and this is his way of trying to like get some

00:31:23.360 more enslaved people for himself anyway eustace lived for just one month before she died one year

00:31:30.200 later, she gave birth again to twins named Louis and Marie-Francoise. Louis lived for two days

00:31:39.760 and Marie-Francoise lived for five months. This time, the father's listed as unknown. So was it

00:31:46.880 Jacques César again? Potentially was the father, Françoise de Francheville, her owner? I mean,

00:31:54.320 we don't know who the father was of these twins, but they both died as well. Anyway,

00:31:59.120 But we do know that by 1733, the relationship between Angelique and Jacques César had ended because there was a new man on the scene and she was now in a consensual romantic relationship with Claude Thibault, who was an indentured servant. 0.53

00:32:15.920 So Claude was white.

00:32:18.080 He was from France.

00:32:20.160 He was a former soldier who was hired by Francois on a, well, indentured, like the contract thing.

00:32:27.080 So for three years.

00:32:28.060 he was, he had to work for him for three years. He was from France near the Swiss border and he

00:32:33.100 and Angelique became lovers. So she might've already known him like before he was hired to

00:32:39.920 work in the same house as her because he was a soldier there. And their house where she lived

00:32:45.540 with the Franchevilles was right across the street from the Hotel Dieu, which was a hospital run by

00:32:50.940 nuns. And she is known to have gone there to like visit patients to, I don't know, just to like

00:32:56.440 cheer them up or whatever. So she might've met him when he has a patient there. Also she had free

00:33:01.440 time. Like we know that she kind of like walked around. She would sometimes like hang out, talk

00:33:05.420 with the soldiers. So she might've known him just as a soldier. Anyway, Thibaut was kind of the ideal

00:33:12.760 partner for her because he also gave no fucks. He was not a loyal or hardworking worker for

00:33:19.420 Funchville. He was really mad about being in this contract. He spent most of his time scheming how

00:33:24.120 to break the contract and head back to France. And so he and Angelique, obviously, like she just

00:33:30.440 wanted to get back to Portugal. So they just started plotting like a way to escape together.

00:33:34.720 So as a former soldier, he knew about the terrain around the town. So he kind of would know like,

00:33:41.200 oh, this is a route we could take. This is what it would look like. And because he was a white man

00:33:44.840 and she was a black woman, if they were seen outside of town together, he could pretend like,

00:33:49.580 oh this is my like she's enslaved to me like it would be more suspicious for her to escape by

00:33:55.600 herself because like a black woman wasn't ever really traveling by herself but with him 1.00

00:33:59.940 they would kind of maybe they could get away with it and so they're just like scheming um and in 0.95

00:34:06.900 the midst of all this francois the owner died during a smallpox epidemic because he and therese

00:34:12.780 had no surviving children therese was his heir so she inherited the business the home everything

00:34:17.160 and she was Therese like because her father had been a merchant as well she knew about merchant

00:34:22.140 biz so she took over all that sort of stuff and a few weeks after he died Angélique went to

00:34:30.460 Therese to ask for permission to leave Montreal and to be manumitted to leave slavery and the

00:34:37.160 way she asked this so quickly perhaps implies that Francois had promised her this and she was

00:34:44.380 following up on it. And also at this same time, Claude Thibault was coming to the end of his

00:34:49.660 three-year contract working for the Frenchvilles. And he was presumably planning to go back to

00:34:54.220 France. So it makes sense that she would ask to leave so like they could head back to Europe

00:34:58.060 together. Therese denied this request. Therese is an asshole, just so you know. Previously,

00:35:07.320 like even when her husband had been alive, she used to regularly whip Angelique. She was terrible 1.00

00:35:13.040 to her and it seems like after francois died therese became even more aggressive towards her

00:35:18.320 which afro cooper suggests is maybe to do with maybe francois had been regularly assaulting

00:35:24.900 angelique and maybe therese was jealous about it and now that francois was dead she could really

00:35:29.200 act on those feelings but angelique once she was refused to be freed used her words as a weapon

00:35:36.760 because that's what she had um she went afro cooper describes this as angelique going on a 1.00

00:35:41.540 small reign of terror in the household. She talked back to Therese. She threatened to kill her by

00:35:48.660 setting her on fire. She argued with the other servants in the household, also threatening to 0.96

00:35:53.560 burn them. In fact, so Angelique made life so unbearable for one of the paid servants, a woman 0.93

00:35:59.220 named Marie-Louise Poirier, that Marie-Louise quit her job because she just like couldn't deal with 0.99

00:36:05.200 it anymore. An example of the stuff that got between them to make them argue is stuff like

00:36:10.060 angelique was like drinking allegedly drinking brandy from that belonged to therese and going

00:36:16.180 out after dark when she wasn't supposed to marie louise tried to stop her and angelique told her

00:36:21.200 so angelique said if angelique ever went up in portugal and there were any french people there 0.53

00:36:26.640 angelique would burn them all like dogs they weren't worth anything so she hated new france 0.96

00:36:32.460 she hated france she hated the french and more most of anything she hated therese her owner

00:36:39.140 so Therese had at this point like Marie-Louise was like I'm leaving this toxic work environment

00:36:46.740 goodbye and Therese was like oh actually I'll tell you a secret which is that I am actually

00:36:51.280 planning to sell Angelique in the spring at this point it was late December at which point she

00:36:57.980 could she's like Marie-Louise like if you can hold on until the spring like I'll hire you back 1.00

00:37:02.260 once Angelique is gone and the reason why she couldn't sell why Angelique couldn't leave right 0.99

00:37:07.640 away. It was because the river, the Canadian winter, like it was December. Everything was

00:37:13.080 frozen. Boats couldn't come or go. Like there was no way for her to get rid of Angelique until the

00:37:17.240 river melted. Meanwhile, Claude Thibault was also disobedient and insolent. Therese just couldn't

00:37:24.020 control either of them, much as she seemingly tried to. And so in fact, Therese made arrangements

00:37:29.900 to sell Angelique to a guy in Quebec. The sale price was 600 pounds of gunpowder. And Angelique

00:37:37.460 found out about this or from one of the other servants or enslaved people or just like it's

00:37:42.900 a small town they're all living in a house together like she found out and tensions

00:37:47.180 escalated even more between her and everybody else to the point that Therese was afraid of

00:37:52.320 living under the same roof as Angelique and Claude she was afraid they were gonna murder her

00:37:57.100 I mean I think correct correct fear they are going to so just to sort of like have somebody

00:38:03.800 else in the house she had her young niece marguerite come to live with her who was like a

00:38:07.560 five-year-old girl and then so that was like december so now we're in early february therese

00:38:13.320 removed angelique and claude from the house just because she was so afraid of having them there 0.99

00:38:19.000 specifically her specific fear was that angelique was going to burn down the house with her 0.54

00:38:23.480 in it so angelique and claude were sent to live with therese's brother-in-law

00:38:28.060 who had been given instructions to keep claude employed and to keep angelique there until the

00:38:33.040 ice on the river melted at which time she would be put on a boat to her new owner in Quebec 1.00

00:38:37.500 Angelique told a woman that if Therese sold her she would make Therese burn she I would make her

00:38:47.080 repent I would make her burn the woman was like uh Angelique you'll be hanged if you do that and

00:38:52.460 Angelique laughed and said that would not bother her in the least so at the new house with the 0.51

00:38:57.420 brother-in-law Angelique warned Claude like not to agree to be hired for a job because if he did

00:39:03.040 Then he would be indentured again and he wouldn't be able to escape with her.

00:39:06.700 Even the servants there knew about the plan, like that they're just waiting for the ice to melt to be able to send Anjali to Quebec. 0.99

00:39:12.200 And she's just like, fuck this. 0.93

00:39:15.600 So within 12 hours of arriving at the brother-in-law's house, Anjali's bed and clothes blanket were found to be on fire. 0.99

00:39:25.100 Other people in the house put out the fire and Anjali begged one of the other servants, don't tell the owner about this.

00:39:30.340 It's cool. Don't let them know about me, the person constantly threatening to set things on fire. Don't tell them that I clearly set this fire. So they didn't get in trouble over this because the fire was put out pretty quickly. And then one night later, Angelique and Claude took off. They stole three deer skins on their way. And before they left, Claude apparently told another servant he was going to Quebec and Angelique was going to Europe.

00:39:56.660 But this was not a spontaneous decision. They had nearly fled even before, like back when they're at

00:40:03.680 Therese's house, not at the brother-in-law's house, but Claude wanted to wait for Therese to return

00:40:07.080 from a trip because she owed him some wages and he wanted that money. But during the time they

00:40:11.280 were waiting to escape, he had hid some loaves of bread in a barn across the river in anticipation

00:40:16.700 of them needing food for when they left. So this is kind of the opposite. Therese was waiting for

00:40:22.880 the river to melt so she could send Angelique away. But Angelique and Claude were waiting for

00:40:27.940 the river to freeze enough that they could escape by walking on the frozen river. And indeed,

00:40:34.440 when they left the brother-in-law's house, the St. Lawrence River was frozen solid. So they just

00:40:38.560 walked across the river and made their way to a place called Chamblee. And from there,

00:40:43.500 they could reach a port. They hoped to reach a port probably in New York City. This was a route

00:40:48.200 that was popular with fur traders. And then from New York City, Angelique would hope to catch passage

00:40:52.520 back to Portugal. And perhaps in New England, she had some contacts from her time living there

00:40:57.460 earlier that maybe it would help her with this would have been her plan. This journée from

00:41:02.240 Montreal to Chambly was around 60 miles in Canadian winter in the 18th century. So a challenging

00:41:10.120 route to take, but really speaks to how much, how desperate she was and how much she wanted to

00:41:14.900 escape. But as soon as they took off, meanwhile, back in Montreal, a manhunt was on for their

00:41:20.780 capture. And they were caught after two weeks. They were still in Chambly. They hadn't been able

00:41:25.780 to leave there because just everything was too frozen. They couldn't get on from there. And also

00:41:31.780 they were caught partially because their footprints in the snow could be followed.

00:41:36.020 Claude was put in prison. Intriguingly, Angelique was returned to Therese. And the reason for that,

00:41:41.900 and she wasn't really, she wasn't whipped or punished. But the reason was because Therese

00:41:45.500 was still kind of just like holding her until the river melted and Angelique could be sold

00:41:51.160 to the guy in Quebec. So upon her return, a laborer who was in the house, who was also

00:41:58.600 employed by Therese, was like, Angelique, you know, you're really bad. You shouldn't have run

00:42:02.400 away. If you're not careful, Therese is going to sell you. And Angelique allegedly replied,

00:42:07.960 the devil of whores. If she sells me, she will repent. And he asked, well, what would you do? 1.00

00:42:13.160 and angelique allegedly said we are not saying what we would trouble to do the snow will clear

00:42:17.820 away the earth will be uncovered and the tracks will no longer be visible um he described her as

00:42:22.320 talking with rage and fury and what she seems to be implying here or what he's implying she was

00:42:26.440 implying is basically she was as soon as she was caught she was already planning to escape again

00:42:31.600 but this time she knew to wait until there was less snow another woman who she spoke to asked

00:42:36.540 if angelique was had been beaten for running away and angelique said no therese is not bad at all

00:42:41.980 I will pay her back well. So Claude was in prison because of the escape attempt. Angelique visited

00:42:49.320 him regularly, bringing him food and presumably scheming their next escape attempt. Therese found

00:42:54.560 out she's doing this and told her to stop. I mean, to no one's surprise. I mean, I'm not surprised

00:42:59.600 and you're not surprised. Angelique kept visiting him, kept bringing him meals and they kept making

00:43:04.040 a scheme so claude was released on april 8th after five weeks in prison and right away the

00:43:14.720 plan he and angelique had clearly been figuring out during their visits was was set into action

00:43:19.880 so the day he was released claude went to therese to collect his remaining wages and his belongings

00:43:25.420 and she know what we know about her but also just kind of understandably yelled at him um she was

00:43:31.820 like never come back to this house and she revealed to him at this point angelique had been 0.60

00:43:36.160 sold to a man who would likely then sell her to a west to a slave plantation in the west indies

00:43:41.300 so this is kind of like confirming the sale of angelique but also i mean so she said never come

00:43:48.260 back to this house again obviously he did because no one listens to therese and claude and angelique

00:43:53.440 give no fucks and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors

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00:46:28.480 And we're back.

00:46:30.420 So he visited her, Angelique, repeatedly over the next two days when Therese wasn't at home.

00:46:35.140 And meanwhile, the third character in the story, the river, the ice was thawing.

00:46:41.660 Boats could soon leave for Quebec.

00:46:44.260 As a former soldier, Claude knew the routes in and out of Montreal.

00:46:47.500 And so for this escape attempt, he planned they would leave the same way again, like

00:46:52.080 via Chambly, which would take them near a fort where he'd previously served.

00:46:56.500 So he was familiar with the terrain and maybe he had some friends there or something.

00:47:00.560 And this brings us to Saturday, April 10th, 1734, the day of the fire.

00:47:08.640 So before heading out for noon mass and the church, the Notre Dame Cathedral, which I

00:47:16.000 believe is still in montreal was just like a block away from where they lived in the merchant quarter

00:47:21.400 so their house the francheville's it's like across the street is the hospital like one block away

00:47:25.520 that this church and therese went to the church all the time so she was going to noon mass and

00:47:29.920 before heading out she had yet another yelling argument with angelique angelique threatened to

00:47:34.960 burn down the house with her in it um she also allegedly insulted french people in general 0.97

00:47:41.040 which she did often Therese went for mass um and the people left in the house were Angelique

00:47:46.700 Therese Therese's niece Marguerite this little five-year-old girl and two little girl friends

00:47:52.360 of Marguerite Charlotte and Amable after Therese left Claude came by spoke to Angelique in the

00:47:58.020 kitchen and then left again so after the mess ended Therese returned home Angelique went on

00:48:05.140 errand to a nearby house, stopping to chat with a woman named Marie Manon, who was that house's 0.95

00:48:11.340 enslaved indigenous woman. The two men watched Therese, who was like across the street or just

00:48:16.900 over the way, who was laughing with a friend. And Angelique allegedly said, Therese is laughing now,

00:48:21.840 but soon she would not be laughing as she will not be sleeping in her house tonight.

00:48:26.640 Angelique said so many incriminating things. Like a lot of this comes up later. We're getting to

00:48:33.300 the trial where there is so many witnesses and they all there's a lot of overlap in what they

00:48:40.000 said angelique said like even if they were exaggerating what they said she said it's like

00:48:45.860 she clearly said a lot of anti-french things and spoke often about wanting to burn things down

00:48:53.360 so angelique also in this afternoon there's a woman was walking down the street who was like 1.00

00:48:59.020 a domestic worker. And she's like, Hey, Angelique, are you going for a walk? Are you still living 0.84

00:49:03.500 with Therese? Like I thought you're living with brother-in-law now. And Angelique replied, I don't

00:49:07.440 have time to go for a walk. And she's like, I am still living with Therese, but it won't be for

00:49:11.820 long. Evening fell. Therese went to Notre Dame church again for evening prayers. And then out of

00:49:19.460 the darkest night, a voice was heard to yell, fire, fire. So Marguerite Cesar, who lived like

00:49:29.220 across the street from the Franchevilles next to the hospital, went to her window. She's like,

00:49:33.480 who's yelling fire, fire? And she saw Angelique Dash from the Francheville house yelling fire,

00:49:37.560 fire. The three little girls were also in the street screaming fire. Angelique ran to her

00:49:42.640 next door neighbor yelling fire. She and the guy came back to the Francheville home. They got

00:49:47.720 buckets of water and they headed in the direction of sort of the up so it's a two-story house and

00:49:52.340 the upstairs there's like a storage attic and there's also angelique's room kind of sharing a

00:49:58.200 space and that seemed to be where the fire was coming from so he's like oh the fire i think it's

00:50:02.580 coming from under the ceiling in this attic area i need to get a ladder to reach it and he's like

00:50:07.060 angelique can you get a ladder and she's like nope this house doesn't have a ladder actually

00:50:10.540 despite the fact that from that previous fire there had been a rule that every household had

00:50:15.140 to have buckets and ladders. Anyway, the fire was spreading really rapidly from the Frenchville's

00:50:20.740 house to this guy's house. And so he just like peaced out to go try and save his own house.

00:50:24.860 Because remember the thing about with the previous fire, there was a rule like don't have

00:50:28.720 wooden houses, don't have wooden shingles. No one listened to that. They all still had

00:50:33.360 wooden shingles and the houses were really close to each other. So the fire started spreading

00:50:37.360 quite quickly. So the troops, because there's like military there, were dispatched to come

00:50:43.420 and fight the fire the entire town had been alerted so the flames were spreading from this

00:50:47.500 house to other houses along rue saint paul the fire spread across the street it was also really

00:50:52.200 windy so it's also the fire spreading because of the wood shingles but also just the wind

00:50:56.900 it's probably how it got across the street so the hospital caught on fire a convent attached to

00:51:03.000 hospital caught on fire but the nuns were able to get out to safety they had like an outdoor garden

00:51:06.880 And that's where sort of refugees started to gather in this outdoor garden that because it was outdoor, it wasn't on fire because there wasn't a roof. So the fire continued to spread down Rue St. Paul onto the side streets, over to the houses on Rue Notre Dame, just like spreading everywhere.

00:51:23.740 and so remember there was that rule that if there was a fire all able-bodied people had to come with

00:51:29.180 their ladders and their buckets and come to fight the fire so along with the troops who were like

00:51:33.200 fighting the fire many of the able-bodied citizens came as was required by law to try and fight the

00:51:38.840 fire but the fire was fighting so rapidly they were like changed my mind and then they like

00:51:43.180 many abandoned their efforts to go to their own home to try and save their own personal possessions

00:51:47.420 instead. So about half the houses in this area were stone and the other half were wood

00:51:53.600 and the wooden houses were burning obviously. And then also it's like April. So you're listening to

00:51:59.940 this, it's May, but it was just April and it's the sort of climate. I think it still is in Montreal

00:52:08.380 and in many parts of Canada where the winter takes a long time to melt. And there's a long

00:52:14.980 period where it's just kind of like slush and mud. And then if it's cold overnight, then the slush

00:52:20.580 freezes. So just the mud and the slush and the fact that this was like, you know, a colonial 0.97

00:52:26.260 18th century town, there's not like pavement, I don't think. So the soldiers weren't able to move

00:52:32.480 around very quickly to fight the fire just because of the ground was so slushy. So less than three

00:52:40.720 hours from the start of the fire, 46 buildings, including the hospital were ruined, like burned

00:52:46.480 down. Almost the entire merchant sector was destroyed. And as I mentioned before, the

00:52:51.480 merchants would live and work in the same building. So it's not just like their own personal stuff was

00:52:55.920 burned, but like all their goods, their furs and stuff that they had to sell were also, so like

00:53:00.400 their livelihood was also destroyed. No one died because of this fire though. And some of that

00:53:08.060 credit is due to everybody just being on the ball and like fleeing quickly but also the troops

00:53:15.820 like even while the like able-bodied people kind of stopped fighting the fire the troops kept going

00:53:21.740 and so they helped i guess put out the fire as quickly as possible one former soldier who didn't

00:53:27.720 help fight the fire claude tebow who is seen he was sitting in the outdoor garden of the convent

00:53:34.560 with the other refugees just kind of and the nuns had like brought everyone food and blankets and

00:53:39.100 were like taking care of them and Claude was just there kind of like munching away eating his food

00:53:43.140 and a guy came and was like Claude like why aren't you helping fight the fire you're like an able-bodied

00:53:47.700 person slash former soldier and Claude was like I've had a long day and I'm tired and hungry and

00:53:52.640 he just ate his food and that's the last we're gonna have Claude in this story because he led

00:54:00.260 Montreal and was never seen again. Although, JK, one more thing that Claude did. So after the fire,

00:54:07.840 maybe before he was eating his food, Angelique and Claude were seen together helping to move

00:54:12.540 some of Therese's property to the open garden at the hospital. As they were doing this, Therese

00:54:17.540 confronted Angelique saying like, bitch, you set the fire. And Angelique said, madame, how nasty, 1.00

00:54:23.840 however nasty I might be, I'm not wretched enough to commit an act of that sort.

00:54:27.740 so she and claude were seen together moving the belongings then claude ate his meal and was like

00:54:34.380 i'm too tired to fight the fire and then he peaced out and then that's the end of claude

00:54:38.020 so just lots of people in the courtyard like 46 homes were destroyed right like there's just a

00:54:43.640 lot of people it's a big courtyard and i was kind of gossiping they're all just like what do you

00:54:47.140 think happened like this was clearly arson like this is not an accident like someone set this

00:54:50.820 fire who do you think set this fire and literally everyone was like perhaps angelique the woman

00:54:55.720 who's been constantly threatening to set this house on fire. Angelique was there among them

00:55:00.080 and she overheard that this was being said. And she said, you know, I would not be so stupid as 1.00

00:55:05.320 to do that. And then this is a banana's turn that I was like, what? So suddenly a drummer came down 1.00

00:55:11.480 the street, just like banging his drum. Behind him, the town crier. Who did the town crier work

00:55:17.280 for? Not sure. But the town crier is just a guy with an opinion at this point. And he just like,

00:55:22.920 was like, Hoya, Hoya, town crier here. I'm here to announce. You want to know who set the fire?

00:55:29.440 It was that bitch Angelique. He just announced that, but it's not like the police had investigated, 1.00

00:55:35.060 like no one had charged her. The town crier just felt like yelling that at everybody.

00:55:39.480 And everyone's like, yeah, we know. We assume that as well. And Angelique said she would not

00:55:43.260 be such a fool as to set fire to her own house. And she just like stayed in the courtyard with 0.97

00:55:47.360 everyone else, sharing food and drink. She found a spot for herself. The nuns wrapped her in a

00:55:52.160 green blanket and she went to sleep. And this is the part where like, Claude left. Why didn't she?

00:55:59.720 And Efua Cooper theorizes that at the point where she would have escaped was around the time the

00:56:05.020 town crier came by to be like, Angelique did this. So people were sort of had an eye on her. They

00:56:11.020 would have noticed if she left, but also the city, remember Montreal, walls heavily guarded, like she

00:56:17.220 couldn't just leave. Although the wall, not quite finished. So Claude probably, this is probably how

00:56:23.880 he escaped. He knew that there was some gaps in the wall that he got out of. If she had planned

00:56:28.580 to burn down the house and then escape, that was foiled by the fact that they clocked it as her

00:56:34.360 being responsible immediately. So she just like went to sleep in this courtyard. So before dawn

00:56:40.060 even broke, the police started investigating and everyone they spoke to was like, we're pretty sure

00:56:46.040 Angelique who set this fire. So they went and found her. She was still in the courtyard wrapped

00:56:50.220 in her blanket. And they suspected that she and Claude had done it together, but because he was

00:56:55.740 nowhere to be found and they had to blame somebody. So they just turned on her. She's taken into

00:56:59.900 custody, stayed in jail for one day. And then one day later, like two days after the fire, April 12th,

00:57:06.200 criminal proceedings against her began, which is like, that's the speed of this. It's not similar

00:57:11.080 to contemporary criminal justice system. But a trial began in an investigation slash trial,

00:57:16.800 because even though everyone said she had done it, she couldn't be condemned without a trial.

00:57:21.640 And the way that the court system worked in France, which is what they're implementing in

00:57:26.040 New France as well, was that it was the thing where you're like the presumption of guilt.

00:57:30.580 So like, it's up to you to prove you're innocent. So she kind of had no chance.

00:57:35.920 And so this is where I'll say that after reading F.O. Cooper's book, I am of the camp that I believe that she set the fire.

00:57:46.000 When you see how many people say, oh, she talked about wanting to burn the house constantly.

00:57:50.560 I saw her do all these suspicious things like she probably burned down the house.

00:57:53.520 Like it is possible somebody else set the fire.

00:57:56.820 I will say the fire started next to her bedroom and she was seen going up there at the time the fire was set. 0.90

00:58:05.920 So like there is obviously, it's like what we talked about earlier, like she's like a black enslaved woman, like she's triple marginalization, like she's like the lowest rung in this society.

00:58:19.300 So like, of course, that would be a person who could maybe be a scapegoat, but it's like, but everybody said her, like people weren't suspecting other enslaved black women, like everyone said her.

00:58:29.440 so at least just she was so well known as a person that so like was she a scapegoat for

00:58:34.720 somebody else's thing they did possibly but to me unlikely at this point louis the 14th

00:58:43.700 the king um had forbidden lawyers from practicing in new france don't know why but so this meant

00:58:50.460 that angelique had to defend herself in this court system in which there is a presumption of guilt 0.73

00:58:56.060 So like, I mean, good luck, but this seems pretty impossible for her.

00:59:02.240 She didn't give up though.

00:59:03.380 So she's transported to the courthouse and she's being charged with arson and arson was

00:59:08.340 considered a capital crime, meaning it was punishable by death.

00:59:11.440 If death was not recommended, then the other options would be things like severe physical

00:59:15.200 punishment, long-term imprisonment, or banishment.

00:59:18.460 But also bear in mind, the people investigating this were like among the people who had lost

00:59:22.580 all their houses and possessions.

00:59:23.580 So they were not objective.

00:59:26.060 And they're also kind of out for vengeance against the person who they saw as having set fire to literally the entire city.

00:59:36.000 So the trial guidelines, I guess, only required the testimony of two witnesses.

00:59:40.620 By the time this ended, they brought in 24 different people, including the five-year-old girls.

00:59:46.980 And everybody had all these examples of extremely suspicious things Angelique had done or said, often right before the fire.

00:59:55.380 before she started yelling fire fire fire like she was seen going up to the attic then coming

00:59:59.940 downstairs and she's kind of like walking up and down the street kind of like looking at the house

01:00:03.040 so she's waiting for it to actually catch on fire so she could yell fire fire fire there was a thing 0.99

01:00:07.640 where the the little girls who were there she prevented them from yelling fire earlier where 1.00

01:00:13.800 it's like because she wanted to just spread perhaps potentially like everything she did was

01:00:18.120 incredibly suspicious um and up to the fact that like she had constantly been telling people like 1.00

01:00:26.620 oh i'm gonna burn that bitch like i'm gonna burn my house like she had a real fire compulsion and 0.99

01:00:32.820 maybe maybe she's thinking back to in portugal about how the enslaved black men had burned down 1.00

01:00:37.280 the vineyards and stuff she's just like that's what i'm gonna do too anyway she had a real fire

01:00:42.080 fixation so she's questioned she's questioned numerous times and she always maintained her

01:00:46.980 innocence. One of the questions they asked her was, what did you know about being sold? And she

01:00:52.420 said, I had heard that they were going to send me to the West Indies for what I had done by escaping

01:00:56.520 with Claude for New England. Therese said I was too mischievous and that she did not want to deal

01:01:00.840 with me anymore. And that I was always quarreling with her servant, that I was always creating a

01:01:04.520 commotion in the house. When asked if she had threatened Therese, Angelique said, I never

01:01:09.220 threatened her with any such thing. Whenever my mistress sometimes mistreated me, which was not

01:01:13.440 very often i would become angry and leave the house but i never said anything close to what

01:01:17.500 you were asking me and they had been giving her examples of like did you say that she was a dog

01:01:20.940 that you wanted to burn that you were going to destroy her life she's like no i did not so anyway

01:01:25.580 she's sent back to prison more testimonies were sought by more witnesses so people like brother

01:01:30.940 in law the enslaved people and servants after they talked to 19 witnesses of the eventual 24

01:01:36.420 angelic was brought in again this is like weeks are passing angelic was brought again brought in

01:01:41.280 again for more questioning. And they were like, talk to us about the scenario where the bed and

01:01:45.920 the blanket were burning in brother-in-law's house. And she said, my blanket caught fire

01:01:50.680 because it touched the furnace. A servant awakened me. Claude's blanket also caught on fire because

01:01:54.840 he was sleeping close to the fireplace. That's all. And she was questioned over and over again.

01:01:59.920 Some details of her story changed, which is like, I think anyone's would, whether you were lying or

01:02:05.840 not. Like if you're being questioned almost daily over a series of several weeks and you're being

01:02:10.800 fed like bread and water and living in this tiny prison cell. And like, you know, you're going to

01:02:15.200 be executed at the end of this. It's like, yeah, it's like, so the lawyers sometimes were like,

01:02:19.100 ha ha, before you said this, and now you said this. And she's just like, okay, but I'm confused.

01:02:24.720 So after all the 24 witnesses have been talked to the next part of the trial, and I like this part,

01:02:30.420 and I think bring this back to trials now is where she gets to just like face to face tell

01:02:34.980 off all the witnesses, because again, like she doesn't have a lawyer because you're not allowed

01:02:38.080 to have lawyers in France or in new France. So she just got to have all the witnesses in front

01:02:43.220 of her. And then she could just kind of like tell them off, which the vibe to me is like

01:02:47.540 a Bravo housewives reunion sort of opportunity. So the indigenous, um, enslaved woman, Marie 0.99

01:02:54.600 Manon, the one who had related to the court, the story about how Angelique had said, like, 0.94

01:02:59.020 she's laughing now, but you won't be laughing soon when I burn her house down. Marie Manon was

01:03:03.240 like yeah that's that's what you said to me angelique angelique said to marie manon you are 1.00

01:03:08.560 a miserable liar and a vile person she got to face off with former servant marie louise the 1.00

01:03:14.700 one who had quit um after angelique kept trying to sneak out after dark the one who had in her 0.97

01:03:20.860 testimony marie louise had was the one who brought up that angelique had said she wanted all french 0.92

01:03:25.080 men burned like dogs angelique said i never said that but i did say that the french weren't worth

01:03:32.160 anything yes i did say that she says in a court of french people deciding her life like she gave 0.97

01:03:38.180 no fucks angelique she just makes this a movie you know anyway but she continued to deny her guilt 0.96

01:03:46.060 so the judge kept calling more and more witnesses and re-questioning the same ones to try and prove 0.97

01:03:50.500 her guilt because without a guilty confession although there was like presumption of guilt

01:03:55.260 he just felt like he couldn't find her guilty unless there was like even more witnesses

01:04:01.300 F.O. Cooper in her book wrote, quote, there is no doubt that Angelique was a determined and 0.81

01:04:07.000 feisty woman, even manipulative. And part of why they kept questioning her is because the judge 1.00

01:04:11.580 wanted her to implicate Claude. And so a possible defense she could have had was like, oh, Claude

01:04:18.520 was behind it and he made me do everything, but she never threw him under the bus. And in fact,

01:04:22.740 the judge wanted to demonstrate that actually she was manipulating Claude, like she had been

01:04:27.640 the mastermind behind everything because he wasn't there. So they had to make it seem like

01:04:30.700 she was behind everything. Then in another sort of like, make this a TV show, Therese was brought

01:04:37.440 into jail to confront Angelique, I guess to try to get her to confess. Obviously that didn't work.

01:04:42.520 Months pass, like the fire was April 10th. The trial started April 12th. It's now June 4th.

01:04:48.700 Finally, the judge is ready to give a sentence. So the trial had gone on for nearly two months.

01:04:54.560 angelique was found guilty her sentence was she was sentenced to be tortured until she gave up

01:05:01.580 the name of her accomplice claude then to have her hand cut off and then to be thrown alive

01:05:06.780 into a fire but just reminded that the people offering this sentence had basically all lost

01:05:12.440 their homes furniture um livelihoods in the fire she had set so again they're not objective here

01:05:18.860 but this is sort of like a standard sentence for a capital punishment in france or new france

01:05:23.980 and the part about the detail about being thrown alive into a fire um this was like in a special

01:05:29.000 like catholic thing because it's like if you burned alive then it's something about like you

01:05:34.960 can't get into heaven so they're also like sentencing her to like go to hell forever

01:05:38.440 usually in france and new france execution happened the same day the sentence was delivered

01:05:45.100 but that did not happen here because surprise twist the king's prosecutor announced his intention

01:05:51.200 to appeal the case which is weird because he was the prosecutor and he was the one who had been

01:05:58.320 mounting the case against her and now he wanted to appeal the sentence anyway so now she had to

01:06:05.520 go to Quebec to present her appeal because that's where that happened so it took about a week for

01:06:11.480 Angelique and Entourage everyone to get to Quebec the river it was June the river's unfrozen people

01:06:17.860 are able to like travel again. So on June 12th, she was brought to the highest court of the land

01:06:22.460 led by the most powerful men in the colony who were, you know, just to note this, like all owned 0.95

01:06:30.060 black enslaved people. So they were very powerful and they were pro-slavery, anti-her. And so 0.76

01:06:38.760 they decided a new punishment. So instead of hand cut off, thrown in a fire,

01:06:43.260 she would still be tortured to name her accomplice then she'd have to wear this like big 0.99

01:06:49.200 white baggy shirt with nothing inside of it have a rope put around her neck and then holding a

01:06:55.460 glowing torch like a literal torch electricity not a thing holding a glowing torch weighing not

01:07:01.980 more than two pounds she would be brought to the greatest church in Montreal where she would have

01:07:06.480 to confess and atone for her sins, then be led to a place in public where a special 0.92

01:07:12.240 gallows have been put up and then she would be hanged. And after she was hanged, her body would 0.78

01:07:17.060 be set on fire and the ashes thrown to the wind, which is a lengthy sentence to say.

01:07:24.480 This is, but I guess, less severe. So there's not the hand cut off. There's not the burning alive.

01:07:30.980 So I guess she would still get to heaven potentially. And they're like, great, that's

01:07:34.360 a new sense. So then she's sent back to Montreal again, um, this time in a canoe with various other

01:07:40.260 people going down the river. Um, one of the other people in the canoe with her was a guy named

01:07:44.580 Mathieu Levaillier, who I need to tell you about because he was also an enslaved black person.

01:07:51.320 So Mathieu Levaillier was the torturer slash executioner of New France. So one year prior,

01:08:00.440 the governor of New France was like, Oh, I can't get anyone to stay in this job of like torturer

01:08:04.300 slash executioner. Nobody wants this job. This sucks. So he obtained, I guess, purchased from

01:08:11.220 the Caribbean island of Martinique, an enslaved black man slash convicted murderer, Mathieu

01:08:15.960 Levallet. And they were like, Mathieu, here's the deal. You can either be executed or you can take

01:08:23.080 the job of executioner in New France. And he's like, I choose executioner. So he never really 0.71

01:08:31.140 adapted to life in Canada. So he was, I don't know, Machu, like he was from the Caribbean.

01:08:36.520 I don't know if he had been born there, if he was from Africa, but either way, like he never

01:08:39.420 adapted to the cold temperatures and things in Canada. And in fact, two years after all of this,

01:08:44.420 he died of pneumonia. He was only in Quebec for three years and he did his job. And this is

01:08:50.100 probably the best known part of his job he did because he was the torturer slash executioner

01:08:55.000 of Angelique. So the date of her execution was set for June 21st. And that morning she's subjected

01:09:02.920 to, remember Perver's sentence was like, she'll be tortured until she gives up her accomplice.

01:09:07.560 And so that happened. Machu was brought in to torture her. It was a legs-based torture that

01:09:14.760 I won't get into, but it meant that she couldn't walk afterwards. But once again, they asked her

01:09:19.440 to confess. At first she was like, no one helped me. I did not set the fire. But then the torture

01:09:23.920 commenced. And then she gave in and said, yes, I did set the fire, but she didn't name anyone as

01:09:29.440 an accomplice. They kept torturing her and she wouldn't give up anyone else's names, which is

01:09:33.620 either she's protecting Claude or Claude really didn't do it. Or she doesn't know that they want

01:09:40.040 her to say Claude, but she never said anyone's name. Or she was just like, fuck you. You want 1.00

01:09:45.220 me to say an accomplice? I will die before I do that. And she does. She doesn't die now. But 0.81

01:09:50.720 anyway she didn't give up Claude as an accomplice and so then she was given last rites by a priest

01:09:56.600 and then she's put in the like white shirt which is like a big baggy shirt that hung down to her

01:10:01.720 knees and then because she wasn't able to walk because her legs had been wrecked in the torture

01:10:06.180 she's put in like a garbage cart type thing um and then they gave her this torch to hold and

01:10:14.420 they headed to Notre Dame Cathedral to confess and to ask to beg God for forgiveness which she did

01:10:20.540 and then they took her in her cart with her torch down to where the special gallows had been put

01:10:25.920 so the justices in Quebec really wanted this to be public they wanted everyone to be able to see

01:10:30.260 this happen because people are out for blood like she had burned down the city a lot of people were

01:10:37.160 really mad at her and they wanted to watch her suffer so the gallows had been set up actually

01:10:42.280 just on the street outside of Teresa's where Teresa's house had once did so the setting of

01:10:47.180 the fire. And it was on a Monday, which is a day when people did not work. I'm not sure what that

01:10:53.280 is about, but let's bring that back. So just everyone was like either lined up on the street

01:10:58.140 watching her in the cart, go to the church and then to the gallows or the ethical was watching

01:11:02.480 it. Machu oversaw the hanging. So she was hanged. She, this is when she dies. She was 29 years old.

01:11:11.760 So her body, after she was hanged, the corpse stayed hanging for two hours so the people could come and see it. And then as per the instructions, she was cut down and then thrown in a pyre and her ashes were thrown to the wind.

01:11:26.620 So in that sort of vulgar history thing where we talk about what are people's tombs? How are they remembered? Like she's nothing. Her ashes were just thrown to the wind because this was not a person who the city of Montreal wanted to commemorate at that time.

01:11:41.760 so here is just to sort of sum up everything and sort of my understanding that angelique

01:11:49.640 did do this arson here's what afua cooper writes towards the end of her book quote angelique had 1.00

01:11:56.480 good reason to set the fire and her motive was revenge angelique was an abused slave who was 1.00

01:12:01.380 bent on fighting back she detested the french in general her mistress in particular and wished 1.00

01:12:05.660 them all dead she was a slave but she had no respect for and fear of her mistress in particular 0.97

01:12:10.780 and white society in general. Mentally, she was beyond the control of those who exercised authority 0.89

01:12:15.920 over her. She had decided she was going to take fate into her own hands by burning down her house

01:12:20.880 of bondage. The black slave woman from Portugal, whose body was an item of commerce in the hands 1.00

01:12:25.600 of whites, passed from master to master, from port to port, she whose name changed so many times over 0.99

01:12:31.040 the course of her short life, whose body was whipped by Madame Francheville and perhaps used 1.00

01:12:35.560 by Sir Frangeville would have her revenge. She would roast, burn, and grill them. And so to do 1.00

01:12:42.380 to them what they had been doing to her all her days, with determination, she blew hard on the

01:12:47.660 coals and the crossbeams, and they burst into flames. So in terms of what happened next,

01:12:53.620 I will just note that the 1734 fire did lead to new and more effective fire prevention regulations

01:12:59.840 in Montreal, and maybe everybody would start paying attention to the regulations they were

01:13:04.260 supposed to have been doing anyway, of not using wood and having a ladder and buckets and coming

01:13:11.200 out to fight fires, et cetera. I think they also did some stuff with the roads. They like improved

01:13:17.020 the roads to make it easier to get to and from so that people could come and fight fires more

01:13:21.680 quickly. And so in terms of, we're going to get to the score and everything, but just when we get

01:13:27.880 to significance, remember this. So Afua Cooper suggests that the transcript of Marie-Joseph

01:13:33.200 Angelique's trial constitutes the first slave narrative in North America. So this is from 1734

01:13:39.480 and the trial transcript includes a lot of what she said. And a lot of what she says is like,

01:13:44.640 I was born in Portugal. This is my life story. This is what I did. Like other than this 1734

01:13:50.280 trial transcript, the first recognized slave narrative was published in 1760. This was called

01:13:56.980 A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Britton Hammond,

01:14:00.780 a negro man so that's 26 years later so the trial transcripts were not written by her but they were

01:14:07.440 related by her and they show her words and her story afro cooper says the trial documents must

01:14:13.020 be read as the first piece of black literature written and oral that we have in canada afro

01:14:18.260 cooper further on just to clarify the importance and significance of the way that angelique spoke

01:14:23.680 during the trial and what we see of her personality coming out of this quote from afro cooper when 0.90

01:14:30.140 angelique faced the judges of new france she demanded her place in history and she made

01:14:34.380 visible the enslaved as a thinking feeling intelligent and complex human so in terms of

01:14:40.840 recognizing her like remembering her um and kind of embracing her story so in 1995 a playwright

01:14:50.220 named lorena gale wrote a play called angelique which is based on transcripts of the tribunal

01:14:55.540 This was published as a book as well. In 2006, a plaque was erected on St. Therese Street in Old

01:15:02.820 Montreal. And the plaque was erected not far from the site of Angelique's death slash also where

01:15:07.720 the fire was. And this ceremony was presided over by then Governor General, Michael Jean,

01:15:13.700 who was, she's a Canadian, she is, I'm still an alive person, but she is a black woman. She was,

01:15:19.760 she came to Canada as a refugee from Haiti. So I think there's another sort of context of her

01:15:26.780 being the one to preside over this ceremony, honoring Angelique's life and story. In 2012,

01:15:33.240 actually on February 23rd, 2012, which is the International Day for the Remembrance of the

01:15:37.700 Slave Trade and its Abolition, the public square across from Montreal City Hall was named Place

01:15:43.000 Marie-Joseph Angelique in her honor. So Dan Philip, the head of the Black Coalition of Quebec,

01:15:49.760 said that publicly admitting Angelique's existence that slavery ever existed in Montreal

01:15:54.320 helps erode the myth that Canada's history was shaped exclusively by the British and the French

01:15:59.660 in 2016 a short film entitled C'est Moi by Howard J. Davis explores the history of Angelique set

01:16:06.660 against the anniversary of Montreal Montreal's founding and so we're going to score Marie

01:16:16.080 Joseph Angelique on the Fredigan Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. There's also going to

01:16:22.160 be a special, we're going to do another scoring type situation for her in one second. But first, 0.99

01:16:29.360 where does she fit into this? The pantheon of people we've talked about on the show.

01:16:34.060 The first category is Scandaliciousness, which is a straight up 10, like Marie Joseph Angelique.

01:16:42.760 even if 10% of the things she said that people said she said during the trial were true like 1.00

01:16:48.980 she was an audacious bitch she was just like fuck you I hate you I hate you I hate France 1.00

01:16:56.900 I hate the French like I'm gonna burn you all down like and then she did she burned down 1.00

01:17:02.780 Montreal like she ran away she tried to run away she like 10 straight up 10 for scandalousness 1.00

01:17:10.720 for sure. Scheminess, I feel like her schemes were not always good, but they were effective. 0.99

01:17:19.960 Honestly, I'm going to give her 10 for scheminess because she was always scheming. She wanted to 0.99

01:17:24.060 get back to Portugal. She wanted to destroy everyone who likes all of society. I want to 1.00

01:17:33.980 find that quote again from F.O. Cooper. I thought that that was so, yeah. She had little respect for

01:17:40.500 this world in which she found herself alienated from it she would attempt to destroy it like her

01:17:45.540 all she wanted to there was a part where somebody said well i mean if you if you burn down your

01:17:51.880 mistress then you might get hanged and she's like good bring it on like the scheminess the nihilism

01:17:58.560 iconic significance is interesting so i went on a trip to montreal a few years ago before i had

01:18:05.480 read this book. I knew about Marie-Joseph Angelique, but I hadn't, I'm not an experienced

01:18:09.920 traveler. I should have researched stuff better. But I was like, well, when I'm there, I presume

01:18:14.420 I'm going to run into some sort of monument about her. And I didn't because I was looking for a

01:18:19.440 statue or something. And what there is, is there's a plaque and then there's this park named after

01:18:23.660 her. So I liked that that significance. And I liked that she is being recognized because at

01:18:28.420 first when I went to Montreal and I didn't see anything obvious, I thought, oh, well, of course,

01:18:31.900 I don't want to recognize her. She like burned down the city, which is an interesting thing as

01:18:35.940 well. I think it's in the Afua Cooper book too, that other countries like Australia and like the

01:18:41.760 United States have a history of sort of celebrating mavericks and rebels and people who buck the

01:18:49.340 trend. And Canada doesn't really celebrate people in the same way that sort of like individuality.

01:18:56.820 it's not part of the canadian national identity and so for a long time marie joseph angelique

01:19:02.080 wasn't really celebrated or talked about i think because it's as this culture and there's lots of

01:19:09.540 cultures that came together to be what is now canada but in general sort of the idea that is

01:19:15.000 presented of canada is just kind of like i don't know like a kind of socialist thing where people

01:19:22.220 look out for each other and it's all like we're all team players and so trying to fit a story

01:19:26.720 like this into a national narrative it's it's harder so it's i find her incredibly significant

01:19:33.360 both first like she burned down montreal and that improved fire regulations and maybe prevented

01:19:38.820 other fires in the future um but also just representative of the enslaved black population

01:19:44.600 of canada her story is significant also as the first recorded slave narrative

01:19:51.580 of like honestly and this is what you get when it's an and only episode and there's not a guest

01:19:58.980 to mitigate what i'm about to say but i'm gonna say 10 i'm gonna say 10 for significance marie 0.83

01:20:02.860 joseph angelique the sexism bonus so this is where we see like how much did sexism get in her way and

01:20:09.220 for her it was as it is a lot with people um of marginalized identities when we're looking at this

01:20:16.560 scale. Like the sexism is so intertwined with the racism and with the xenophobia. So like

01:20:22.520 she had these children, like, did she consent to it? Did she want to be having these children

01:20:27.300 with Jacques César? I don't know. Like other enslaved people were in similar situations in

01:20:33.320 the sense of like, they had no control over where they went or what they were doing.

01:20:36.460 They were being sent here or there. I think the sexism was certainly part of her story, but

01:20:43.340 i think a lot of if a man if a enslaved black man had done the same thing i think he would

01:20:50.340 have been treated equivalently badly i think he would have also have been um arrested and found

01:20:57.240 guilty like i don't think her being a woman softened things i think it made it worse in

01:21:01.580 the sense of like the perhaps sexual stuff that happened to her so i'm gonna say straight up just

01:21:06.060 like there was a lot of cultural forces up against her sex and sexism being one of them so i'm gonna

01:21:12.960 give her a five for that which gives her a total score 35 which in the pantheon of everybody um

01:21:23.200 marianne shad kerry also a notable black woman from canadian history also has a 35 i think that's

01:21:30.120 i like that they have a similar number if we're talking about just like figures from black history

01:21:35.040 we've talked about on the show and Jenga, um, of Angola has a 36. So they're all, yeah. I like

01:21:44.980 that those three are kind of have a similar score. So because this is Vulgar History season seven,

01:21:52.560 how do you solve a problem like Marie Antoinette part one, age of revolution. So I want to bring

01:21:58.840 everything back to Marie Antoinette because you know, this story is just like, what does this

01:22:02.560 story have to do with Marie Antoinette. Well, her name is Marie. She did speak French, but just to

01:22:07.460 kind of connect, like I explained at the beginning, sort of the, what we're doing with this series is

01:22:13.080 we're starting very broad and then we're getting closer and closer in eventually to Marie Antoinette

01:22:18.220 herself, but just kind of like the cultural forces that were out there in the world. And so what

01:22:23.540 Marie-Joseph Angelique did, like, it's not a revolution in the sense of like a bunch of people

01:22:29.040 who upset the status quo, but it's a revolutionary spirit. And this helps to sort of the way that

01:22:37.220 because of increased mobility, um, because of trade, including slave, like chattel slave trade,

01:22:46.160 like people in different countries were interacting more with people from different

01:22:50.600 cultures than they had before. And what does that, how does that affect the way that culture

01:22:56.680 develops anyway so if we're looking at this section which i call nothing but net which we're

01:23:04.800 looking at how many degrees of separation is this person from marie antonette herself so and here's

01:23:11.140 the connection that i found so the buildings like montreal itself had been designed by a man called

01:23:16.840 gaspard joseph chaussagro de larry who was the chief engineer of louis the 50th he was the person

01:23:24.740 who designed a lot of the structures in New France.

01:23:27.080 And so at first he designed them.

01:23:29.040 After the first fire, he was like,

01:23:30.180 oh, let's just like improve them this way.

01:23:31.820 Maybe don't use shingles.

01:23:32.960 After this fire happened,

01:23:33.960 like right after the fire happened,

01:23:35.020 he was in New France and he went there

01:23:36.200 and he's looking around to sort of figure out

01:23:37.720 how can I better design this city?

01:23:39.920 So he was there breathing the same air

01:23:42.020 as Marie-Joseph Angelique

01:23:43.640 looking at the remains of the fire she had set.

01:23:47.320 And so he was Louis XV's chief engineer of New France.

01:23:51.440 He knew Louis XV and the royal family.

01:23:54.740 Louis XV is the father of Louis XVI. Louis XVI was Marie Antoinette's husband. So that is four

01:24:02.100 degrees of separation between Marie-Joseph Angelique and Marie Antoinette.

01:24:11.480 So we're in season seven, part one. The next 15 weeks, we're going to be looking at all kinds of

01:24:17.360 different people and I'm going to be posting all over the place. If you want to keep up with what

01:24:21.000 with other people are thinking about this, this, these episodes or these people or what

01:24:25.980 images I'm sharing of all the different things. Like I am on Instagram at vulgar history pod.

01:24:30.460 That's the main place I am. And also I have a Patreon where I'm going to be posting. Well,

01:24:35.800 every week you can, if you become a paid member of the Patreon, which is at patreon.com slash

01:24:40.280 Anne Foster writer for $1 a month, you get early ad free access to all the episodes for $5 or more,

01:24:45.600 you get early ad-free access to the episodes as well as bonus episodes, comma, and whichever

01:24:51.740 tier you're on, there are chats there. There's an open chat for everybody at the $1 a month level

01:24:58.240 on Patreon. You can get it on the website or also in the Patreon app. Then there's special chats for

01:25:02.920 people at the $5 a month or more level. And there's also Discord that you'll get information

01:25:07.520 to join if you join the Patreon at the $5 or more a month level, because I really am so interested

01:25:13.420 in hearing what everybody thinks about everything we're going to be talking about this season,

01:25:18.600 especially because we will be spending some time in North America. And I know that there are some

01:25:24.080 listeners in the United States, for instance, who have long wanted to hear your history discussed, 0.58

01:25:29.440 and I'm going to do it in my own Canadian tits out manner. I also have a sub stack. If you want

01:25:35.900 to just like follow me everywhere and all the places online, my sub stack is called Vulgar

01:25:40.280 History a la carte. And it is more of like a sister project to this podcast. It's not like

01:25:45.780 here's a newsletter about literally what the podcast was this week. It's just sharing other

01:25:50.580 writing that I'm doing, that I have done about other topics at the moment on Substack. So I have

01:25:55.240 a weekly newsletter that goes out every week. And at the moment, we're looking at Tudor history,

01:25:59.760 the women of Tudor history. At the moment, when you're listening to this, we're talking about the

01:26:04.280 Gray sisters, Jane Gray, Catherine Gray, Mary Gray, if you really want to dive into them.

01:26:08.740 I did a whole season about how to lose a queen in nine days, the Jane Grey story. 0.88

01:26:13.100 I also want to mention we have Marie Antoinette is known for her glamour, her beauty, her beautiful 1.00

01:26:18.140 jewelry. And I have a brand partner that I'm so happy to be partners with, which is Common

01:26:24.120 Era Jewelry. So this is a hundred percent woman owned business that creates beautiful jewelry

01:26:29.760 pieces, pendants and rings inspired by history. And a lot of the pieces are inspired by women

01:26:35.760 from history. They have a whole collection called Difficult Women, which is looking at people whose

01:26:40.780 reputations sometimes aren't the greatest, but often that's just because they sort of stood up

01:26:46.160 and were doing things in a way that society was not cool with. On this podcast, we call that

01:26:50.960 Being Tits Out. In Common Era, she's classier, and she calls that the Difficult Women Collection. 1.00

01:26:57.200 So they have people featured in that collection, like Cleopatra is there, Agrippina is there,

01:27:04.320 Anne Boleyn is there, but also figures from mythology like Medusa and Aphrodite for all

01:27:09.700 my sapphics. There's a Sappho piece as well. Anyway, all these pieces are available in solid

01:27:16.000 gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15%

01:27:22.060 off all items from Common Era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar

01:27:27.900 at checkout. And if you want to vibe with this podcast in a visual way, if you want possessions

01:27:35.260 that remind you of some of the in-jokes from this podcast and that sort of thing,

01:27:39.920 I do have merch available at vulgarhistory.com slash store. Or if you're outside the U.S.,

01:27:45.280 because that takes you to the Tee Public Store, which is great for Americans. The shipping is

01:27:49.960 more expensive elsewhere. So if you're elsewhere, I also have a Redbubble shop,

01:27:53.920 which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com and as of yet i don't know what the merch is going to be

01:27:59.720 for season seven part one and that's where you all come into it because honestly the best ideas

01:28:04.700 i've gotten for merch for vulgar history come from you from uh things that you pull out of an

01:28:10.940 episode that you you like hearing or just an in joke that you've noticed has developed or

01:28:16.060 just a phrase or anything so just let me know all the ways you can contact me so instagram

01:28:20.720 those various chats on Patreon and on Discord. Yeah. Or you can also email me. There's a form

01:28:27.040 at vulgarhistory.com where you can send me a message or you can email me at vulgarhistorypod

01:28:31.380 at gmail.com. If you're in Montreal and you are, and you see any of the Marie-Joseph-Angelique

01:28:39.020 things, the park or the plaque, take a picture and let me know. I love to see,

01:28:44.140 I love to see TITSOAP brigades paying their respects to these different places.

01:28:47.960 and yeah, next week we're going to be here. We're going to be looking at the next story

01:28:55.400 is maybe the, I don't know. I was going to say it's the closest, like Marie Antoinette herself

01:29:00.260 is mentioned, but she doesn't actually, I mean, you'll see what I mean next week,

01:29:06.360 but anyway, we're going to be going to Vienna. We're going to be popping in in Europe to see

01:29:12.460 a music-based story. And I'm really excited for you to hear that. And I'm really excited to

01:29:19.320 finally have the season going. And until next week, keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:29:26.160 Vulgar History is researched, written, and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. The editor 1.00

01:29:31.600 is Christina Lumagi. Theme music is by The Severn Duo. The Vulgar History Show image is by Deborah

01:29:38.360 Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malik. Find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - May 15, 2024

That Time An Enslaved Black Woman Burned Down Montreal (Allegedly)

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