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History is a wild battlefield where myths and truth fight an everlasting
battle, embracing each other in a raging waltz of love and hate. Of course,
books stand predominant on this battlefield. They tell the story of the
powerful; they give partial views of events; sometimes they distort facts to
mislead us; sometimes, they simply embellish things to please our taste for romance
and drama. We readers are often the willing accomplices or our own blindness.
True Face of Evil
The peddling editions of The Life of Cartouche... were often illustrated with the same wood engraving of the bandit wearing a three-point hat, and holding a couple of stolen watches in one hand and a pistol in the other hand. People had grown accustomed with this representation and imagined that Cartouche looked just like that. “The suit à la Louis XVI itself is irrelevant,” wrote Maurice. As far as the watches are concerned, he noted that all through the 366 files of the Imperial Archives related to Cartouche and his crew, only one mentions a watch. “There were watches in Paris at the time but they were quite rare,” he wrote. “They were made nowhere in the world but in Geneva, and not exceeding 5,000 copies a year.” Yet, the expert Marie-Agnès Dequidt told the author that there were roughly one hundred watchmakers in Paris at the time, and that watches were few but not quite rare. Anyway, the frontispiece was one of the most striking novelties of Maurice’s book. The caption reads: Cartouche, drawn by Foulques, after a photograph taken by Nadar of the wax bust kept in the library of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. A modern frontispiece, indeed; as Felix “Nadar” Tournachon was responsible for taking the first aerial photograph of Paris in 1858! B. Maurice printed a certificate of authenticity in his book. It came from the library of Saint-Germain: “This wax bust was, on order of the Regent (Philippe, Duke of Orléans, during the minority of Louis XV, ndr), moulded by a Florentine artist directly on Cartouche, a few days before his execution.” Once the property of the Royal family, the framed bust was officially given to the Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1848—it is still there today. Now, meet the true and official face of Cartouche! The story goes that the hair and moustache of the villain were even cut off after his death and used on his bust. As a matter of fact, though represented on stage and since then in many movies, as a tall and handsome man, Cartouche was only 5 feet tall! But his Bohemian friends of Rouen taught him acrobatics, and contemporary writers all described him as an unusually strong man. When arrested, a bowman rudely pushed him in the back; with his hands tied in his back, Cartouche turned back and kicked his offender in the face!
The Cartouchian Myths
Myth#1: Cartouche studied at the Jesuits College where he learnt Latin alongside
Voltaire.
The truth: The villain was born in 1693 and his
father, a cooper, saw some potential in his kid. “He decided to send him to the Jesuits College,” read the Life of Cartouche... “And what lost him was what should have saved
him.” The turbulent kid, longing to wear as nice clothes as his
distinguished classmates, started to rob them and eventually had to run away
from Paris. But B. Maurice is affirmative that Cartouche couldn’t read or
write, as he later initialled and signed his confession by making a cross. It
was even found out that he had never made his first communion—nonsense for a
Jesuit student. Nor was Cartouche the classmate of Voltaire, as suggested
elsewhere. Thus we shall not trust the alleged autobiography of Cartouche,
entitled Les Amours et la Vie de
Cartouche (Loves and Life of
Cartouche) and published after a manuscript said to have been found first in La
Bastille after it was taken in 1789, and then in a shack of Le Bicêtre after
the death of his former accomplice Duchatelet, when it reads: “I’ve always loved Latin; and I have often
spoken it with my learnt cronies when I wanted to remain unintelligible from
those who didn’t understand it.” Every now and then, this fake
autobiography quotes a Latin author, but a posse ad esse non valet consequentia, might have said Voltaire.
Myth#2: Cartouche escaped his father dressed
up as a pastry cook.
The truth: Cartouche probably never went to
school. Thus he never ran away from home after spending two days trapped on the
top of a chest in the room of one of his classmates’ servants—according to The Life of Cartouche..., he was stealing
money when the sick servant came home, and was forced to hide in this
uncomfortable place for two days. But he did
meet a group of Bohemians who taught him all the tricks in the game. And
eventually came back home before falling in love with a linen maid whom he
tried to seduce with valuable presents. Love pushed him to crime and upon
noticing his evil inclination, his father decided to have him locked up in an
institution. While en route, the unaware
kid smelt something fishy and understood that his father had set him up. The
peddling book pretends he escaped by dressing up as a pastry cook with a mere
piece of clothe rolled around his head, thus passing unnoticed in front of the bowmen
who had come for him—Cartouche was very well known for his art of disguise and
this was a nice trick to build. But B. Maurice told it as it really happened: pretending to have a
natural need to satisfy, the kid turned at the corner of a street... and ran
away. Easier, and quite more likely.
Myth#3: The young Cartouche was a mouche, an informer.
The truth: After he had run from home, Cartouche
found himself alone in Paris, where he survived by gambling and stealing
purses. The peddling biography says he then went to see the Lieutnant-General
of police of Argenson to “offer him to
give away all the bandits of Paris for one écu per day.” So Cartouche was a mouche
(a fly), an informer? “How come Cartouche,”
asked B. Maurice, “who had worked on
his own (as stated by the peddling book, ndr) (...) could give away anyone? He didn’t know any bandit then. (...) Plus, informing wasn’t his thing. He
remained faithful to his friends, even when tortured, up until he reached the
scaffold where he realized they were the first ones not to keep their words (they
had sworn to rescue him but didn’t show up).” And the torture he endured, the brodequin, was painful enough to break
the will of the bravest.
Myth#4: Cartouche worked with several
distinguished people.
The truth: The young, beautiful and evil
Jeanneton-Venus was the first mistress of Cartouche. After she was tortured and
just before she was executed in 1722, she confessed her crimes; and she spoke
for thirty-two hours! Most of the villains spoke before being executed as their
confession was an ultimate stay of execution—their confessions were called Testaments de Mort, Death Wills, and were
regarded as trustworthy, being the confessions of people on the edge of death—yet,
some might have added one or two crimes to the list of their misdeeds just to
gain a few valuable minutes. Anyway, Jeanneton-Venus gave dozens of names,
including a few distinguished ones. An observer of the time, one M. Barbier, left
an impressive manuscript about the events of his time that was quoted at length
by B. Maurice. He wrote: “The day before
yesterday, upon an uncertain denunciation (of Jeannaeton-Venus), several Ladies with a crew were asked for;
the exempt (officer) didn’t let them
harness their horses and made them walk. It so happened that the Grande
Jeanneton didn’t know them; their names had been mistaken.” This, stated B.
Maurice, could explain the rumours claiming that Cartouche had acquaintances in
the high society; and that distinguished people had been part of his
troops. “We read,” stated our author, “in the last confession of the criminal:
Asked whether he knew some distinguished
young people in his troops, or if any had ever asked to work for him, he
answered: no, none.”
Myth#5: Cartouche acted as a hit man for the
Regent.
The truth: In May 1721, the corpse of an
unfortunate poet named Viguier was found in the streets of Paris. As a poster
tied around his neck by his murderers read, he had been mistaken for one
Lagrange-Chancel, the author of Les
Philippiques, a critical satire written against the Regent. Some thought
Cartouche and his crew had killed the wrong man on the Regent’s order, and that
the latter, tied by this debt of blood, was doing all he could to prevent
Cartouche from being arrested! “The
rumours that were spreading all over Paris,” states B. Maurice, “were of the highest gravity. They turned the
Regent himself into an accomplice of Cartouche. (...) Of course, Cartouche made a reference to these rumours when, during his
confession at the Hôtel de Ville, he spontaneously declared: That he had
never received any money from any one to kill any body, that he was unaware of
any of his companions having received such an order, and that he wouldn’t have
tolerated it.” The honour of the Regent was safe!
Myth#6: Cartouche was given away by Duchâtelet
after he was arrested.
The truth: Duchâtelet was a top lieutenant of
Cartouche, the most vicious one too—who was said to have once washed his hands
in the blood of a victim. The peddling biography said his landlord who had
spotted some bloodstains on his clothes eventually denounced him. “They never had to arrest Duchâtelet,”
affirmed B. Maurice, “he came all by
himself!” Not only did the villain meet the commissioner of Police, but he
also met the Regent in person, who was deeply involved in the case. “He put his conditions and had a letter of immunity
in hands when he concretely betrayed Cartouche the following day.” Duchâtelet
led the bowmen to the inn where Cartouche was staying—he never had the
opportunity to resist arrest, this time. “We
must be fair to all,” stated B. Maurice. “According to the energetic expression of Duchâtelet, Cartouche had
become impossible. Drunk with
absolute power, he seemed ready to sacrifice the whole crew to his own safety. The
slightest word or suspicion, owed you to be stabbed and killed. His men had
learnt to fear him more than the bourgeois, or even more than the police
themselves.”
Myth#7: The author of the comedy Cartouche, Mr Legrand, gave the prisoner
300 pounds royalty in his cell.
The truth: Cartouche’s name was on everyone’s
lips in Paris, no matter how hard the official French gazette Le Mercure de France tried to ignore him.
The Dutch gazette, Le Mercure Hollandais,
on the contrary, wrote about him almost every day. He had become a living
legend; and while incarcerated in Le Grand Châtelet, he received a lot of
visitors, including the Regent himself, allegedly dressed up as a rich bourgeois but whom he made out at once.
Among the curious were four play writers: two Italians named Thomasso and
Antonio Vincentini, and two Frenchmen named Legrand and Quinault. All intended
to write a play about a man who hadn’t yet been condemned! Legrand wrote his
own play as soon as 1719; it was then entitled Le R. de C. (for Le Règne de
Cartouche, or Cartouche’s Reign)
and had even received the official King’s privilege. But censorship realized it
was very critical toward the people who were hunting down the outlaw, and the
publication was postponed. Legrand went to see Cartouche a couple of times, and
even spent a memorable evening with him, his accomplice Balagny and the King’s
Attorney, drinking and talking together. In his Death Will, the twenty-year old
Balagny related the evening: “They offered
us some drinks then asked us to show them some tricks of the trade and to speak
slang, which we gladly did. The two actors were taking notes and re-enacted
everything. Eventually, the King’s Attorney and the Criminal Lieutenant
exercised at robbing a handkerchief, a watch and a snuffbox. They were first
quite clumsy but got better after a while. Cartouche even stated that the Criminal
Lieutenant was talented; had he been trained from a young age as he had been
himself, he would have become quite a good pickpocket. We all laughed a lot and
spent a very pleasant evening.” The comedy of the Italian authors was
played on October the 20th, only six days after Cartouche’s arrest!
It was given thirteen times, and then interrupted. Legrand’s one also met with
considerable success until it was also banned. But Cartouche never received 300
pounds from the author. As both men were talking inside the prison, Legrand “took notice of a handful of coins of 25
sous, and asked Cartouche if he needed money,” wrote B. Maurice. That’s all
Cartouche ever got from him, apart from a very nicely bound copy of the play
that he sent to the prison a few days later.
B. Maurice claimed that the truth he revealed surpassed fiction. For
instance, the cold and factual report of Cartouche’s brutal questioning he
reproduced is terrible. The brodequin
consisted in breaking one’s legs in a very cruel manner, crushing bones and
flesh by pushing eight pieces of wood between one’s tied legs. The report read:
“After the first piece: said he was
innocent. After the second one, didn’t say a word. (...) After the fifth one, said he was innocent,
and dead. (...) After the eighth one,
said he was innocent, and that we were killing him.” These few and simple
words are horrific! The official report of the execution itself, written by one
Drouet, is also very dull: precise and lifeless, it reminds us of the
unrealistic atmosphere of Victor Hugo’s Le
Dernier jour d’un condamné (1829). The truth thus triumphed in B. Maurice’s
book. But myths are forever, as they transcend history and facts. And no matter
how hard Mr Maurice defended the French language in his book, he never wrote it
good enough to match the wild style of the anonymous author of Loves and Life of Cartouche: “My father was a cooper; his boring probity
had always been opposite to my wishes. He wanted to find some honest position
for me, but as I could never fully understand this senseless idea, I decided to
(...) take a shortcut to fame.” And
when it came to ladies, our mythological hero (or our author, God only knows
who’s who) was as persuasive as if holding a loaded pistol: “She sat on the grass,” he said about a
scared and respectful lady that had just fallen in his power. “Fear, such an excusable and powerful feeling,
probably motivated her first reaction; but when she realized I was as good as
any other one, she surrendered to my charming ardour, and forgetting about her
misadventure, in the middle of pleasure, fully dedicated to the present moment,
she kept on crying, while answering my caresses: Ah! My dear bandit, what a
blissful moment!” If you believe this scene ever truly happened, then you’re probably wrong. But who really wants to be right on that occasion?
© Thibault Ehrengardt
- Cartouche, Histoire Authentique,
by B. Maurice (Paris, 1859). Half-title, frontispiece, title page, 1 page, 276
pages. The book includes the faithful reproduction of the comedy Cartouche, ou les Voleurs, by
Marc-Antoine Legrand, played for the first time on the 14th of
October 1721 (Cartouche was still alive by then).
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