Tortured and hanged in 1734 for setting a fire that burned down one-10th of Montreal, Marie-Josephe-Angelique has been embraced as either a feminist icon rebelling against the bonds of slavery, or a beautiful black woman whose only crime was the colour of her skin.

In a new book, Le Proces de Marie-Josephe-Angelique, author and historical archivist Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne attempts to set the record straight on the notorious crime and blow holes in a myth that has captivated Montreal for 270 years.

Angelique was forced to endure a painful interrogation where wood planks were placed between her legs, her knees and ankles were bound and a mallet was used to pound a wood peg between the boards to exert pressure on her inner leg.

"The woman was tortured to confess. I tried the method of torture on myself and I would have admitted to setting the fire," Beaugrand-Champagne said at her book launch last night.

"Angelique stayed to help her mistress rescue furniture and items from the fire. The fact she never ran is the proof" she didn't set the fire.

On April 10, 1734, fire gutted 45 houses and Hotel Dieu Hospital, then located on St. Paul St. in what is now Old Montreal.

It was theorized the fire started when hot embers were left on a roof at the home of Angelique's mistress, this being the favoured method of arson before matches.

There were no witnesses to the fire's origin, yet the finger of blame was pointed again and again at two people, the black slave from Portugal and her white, ex-convict lover.

The lover, Claude Thibault, ran away the day after the fire and was never caught. On June 21, 1734, Angelique, 29, was hanged by the neck until dead, then burned on a pyre.

Beaugrand-Champagne's book is a blow-by-blow account of the trial, which was held in true kangaroo-court style.

With court records, torture reports, old street maps and reportage of the hanging and burning obtained from the Archives Nationales du Quebec, Beaugrand-Champagne has pieced together a compelling argument for the slave's innocence.

She didn't set out to write the definitive tome on l'Affaire Angelique, but came across the the trial and sentencing documents while doing research for the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

"I worked on this, off and on, for about 10 years," Beaugrand-Champagne said.

"What struck me was there were 22 witnesses, one who even admitted he wasn't from Montreal and didn't see the fire, but was certain that the 'negress' did it."

The main contention of all the witnesses was that Angelique started the fire as a diversion for her escape with Thibault to New England.

But documents show the two had run away in February,

10 weeks before the fire. After her capture, Angelique worked hard to dissuade her mistress, Therese de Couagne, from selling her.

"The victim was condemned because she was a woman, she was beautiful, she was black and she was a slave," said Andre Bastien, of Libre Expression, the book's publisher.

asutherland@thegazette.canwest.com

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