In 1761 Laval, murderer gets gruesome fate

A military court wanted to deter others from crime

It was late in the winter of 1761. With the fall of Montreal the previous September, New France was no more. Nonetheless, Charles Bélanger seemed determined to carry on as he always had.

He was 39, a respectable farmer on Île Jésus, today’s Laval. On the evening of March 7, with his wife, Angélique, and their 11- year- old niece Charlotte, he went visiting a neighbour. He left behind his 15- year- old son, also named Charles, and a servant, François Paul or Saint- Paul.

Bélanger knew that Paul had been a soldier in the French army. He did not know that Paul had discovered where his master had hidden his money and was plotting to make off with it.

Paul waited until he was certain Bélanger was long gone. Then, while young Charles was preoccupied with some chores, he struck. He attacked the boy, first slitting his throat, then for some reason dismembering the body.

But before he could make off with the elder Bélanger’s savings, Angélique and Charlotte unexpectedly returned. Paul didn’t hesitate. He knocked them both out, then stabbed them to death with, presumably, the same long kitchen knife he’d used on young Charles.

Still the bloodbath wasn’t over, for just then Bélanger himself finally got home. Before the farmer could react, Paul struck him with an axe. The blow didn’t kill him and at first he was able to fight off his assailant. But finally he also was stabbed with the long knife.

Paul set the farmhouse alight before fleeing. But instead of covering up his crimes, as he had intended, the fire led to his downfall.

The upper floor of the house was a granary, and as the flames ate through its floorboards the stored grain came pouring down, largely smothering the fire. Smoke continued to rise, however, and it brought the neighbours running. The gravely wounded Bélanger was able to denounce Paul before finally expiring.

The fugitive Frenchman briefly found work in the bush as a woodcutter. But in subsequent days, as news of the murders raced around the island, he was seen with growing suspicion and was arrested.

Civilian courts would not be reconstituted for another three years in the newly conquered colony; justice was dispensed by British military courts. Paul’s was the first murder trial under the new regime and, sitting in Montreal, a panel of 11 officers sentenced him to hang.

The presiding officer, Major John Beckwith, then added, “After death has ensued, your body will be taken close to the place where these horrible crimes were committed, and there it will be suspended in a cage from a gibbet … until its bones fall away one after the other, as a mark of terror against anyone who might be taken by the same evil spirit.”

Later, in his cell, Paul was visited by a blacksmith. It surely was chilling for the condemned man as the smith measured him for the iron cage he’d soon be forging.

Paul was executed on March 18. Apparently, it took a year for his caged remains to be reduced to mere bones.

In time the memory of Paul’s crimes, and the ghastly sight of his rotting corpse, inspired the legend of the “fricot sinistre,” or sinister stew. In one version, a neighbour of the Bélangers named Valiquette was delivering invitations to a meal honouring a newborn son. Passing beneath the cage, Valiquette mocked the dead man, inviting him to share in the stew that would be served.

Surprise: Paul duly showed up in his cage and slyly suggested Valiquette pay a return visit, at midnight, to the gibbet. The farmer was understandably nervous but now had no wish to give offence. After consulting his priest, he indeed kept the macabre rendezvous — but only with his innocent, infant son in his arms, as protection against the dead man’s wrath.