Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)Griffiths, Arthur
History
Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Griffiths, Arthur
Crime; Police
The members of this gang were arrested and examined separately. They
altogether repudiated the charge, but Du Moulin's servant was
dumbfounded when some bad money was found in his quarters. On this he
turned king's evidence, and his accomplices were convicted.
CALAS.
A case in which "justice" was manifestly unjust is that of the shameful
prosecution and punishment of Calas, a judicial murder begun in wicked
intolerance and carried out with almost inconceivable cruelty.
Bitter, implacable hatred of the Protestant or Reformed faith and all
who professed it survived in the South of France till late in the
eighteenth century. There was no more bigoted city than Toulouse, which
had had its own massacre ten years before St. Bartholomew, and
perpetuated the memory of this "deliverance," as it was called, by
public fêtes on its anniversary. It was on the eve of the fête of 1761
that a terrible catastrophe occurred in the house of one Jean Calas, a
respectable draper, who had the misfortune to be a heretic--in other
words, a criminal, according to the ideas of Toulouse.
Marc Antoine Galas, the eldest son of the family, was found in a
cupboard just off the shop, hanging by the neck, and quite dead. The
shocking discovery was made by the third brother, Pierre. It was then
between nine and ten p.m.; he had gone downstairs with a friend who had
supped with them, and had come suddenly upon the corpse.
The alarm was soon raised in the town, and the officers of the law
hastened to the spot. In Toulouse the police was in the hands of the
_capitouls_, functionaries akin to the sheriffs and common councillors
of a corporation, and one of the leading men among them just then was a
certain David de Beaudrigue, who became the evil genius of this
unfortunate Calas family. He was bigoted, ambitious, self-sufficient,
full of his own importance, fiercely energetic in temperament, and
undeviating in his pursuit of any fixed idea.
[Illustration: MEDALS STRUCK IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW
MASSACRE.
1. Obverse, Pope Gregory XIII. Reverse, Angel smiting Protestants.
2. Obverse, Charles IX. Reverse, The King as Hercules slaying
the hydra of heresy.
3. Obverse, Charles IX. Reverse, The King on his throne.
]
Now, when called up by the watch and told of the mysterious death of
Marc Antoine Calas, he jumped to the conclusion that it was a murder,
and that the perpetrator was Jean Calas; in other words, that Calas was
a parricide. The motives of the crime were not far to seek, he thought.
One Calas son had already abjured the Protestant for the true faith,
this now dead son was said to have been anxious to go over, and the
father was resolved to prevent it at all cost. It was a commonly
accepted superstition in those dark times that the Huguenots would
decree the death of any traitors to their own faith.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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