Marie Salmon

Born in 1760, Marie François Victoire Salmon was the daughter of a day laborer in Méautis, Normandy. When she was young, a pig attacked her and permanently disabled her left hand, leaving her unable to fully open that hand. At 15, after her mother died and her father remarried, she left home to seek employment as a domestic servant. In 1781, a parish priest attempted to rape Salmon; he was caught and convicted, but quickly released. A magistrate named Roland Revel de Bretteville, who knew her through her employer, suggested that she protect herself from the priest by moving to Caen, where he offered her a job in his household. However, Salmon believed that Revel was trying to seduce her, so she found work as a domestic servant for the Huet-Duparc family in Caen instead. == Poisoning incidents ==

Death of Paysant de Beaulieu The Huet-Duparcs were a family consisting of Madame Duparc, her husband, three children, and two grandparents. Marie Salmon's duties for the household included preparing simple porridge meals for the 88-year old grandfather, Paysant de Beaulieu. According to Salmon, Madame Duparc gave her specific instructions for preparing Beaulieu's meals. However, on 6 August 1781, after Salmon had only been employed for 5 days, Madame Duparc interrupted Salmon's meal preparations and sprinkled salt into Beaulieu's porridge, even though Duparc had previously told her to never add salt. Within hours of eating his porridge, Beaulieu became violently ill, vomiting and convulsing. Marie Salmon sat by his sick bed and cared for him as he continued to worsen, while Madame Duparc told her son to ride out of town to inform his father of Beaulieu's condition. Paysant de Beaulieu died that same evening on 6 August 1781. Second poisoning and arrest The following day on 7 August, while Marie Salmon completed her duties and rested, Madame Duparc and her daughter prepared two separate soups: one for the family made with fresh broth and the other for Salmon and the housekeeper made from the previous day's broth. Later, Salmon helped serve the soup with new broth to the Duparc family and their dinner guests, and then she went to the kitchen to eat her own bowl. Shortly after eating their soup, the Duparcs and their guests complained of stomach pains, and Madame Duparc declared that she smelled burned arsenic in the kitchen. People became frantic, with a guest crying out [emphasis in source] () News spread throughout the city, and neighbors gathered at the Duparc home to investigate the commotion. After seeing the frenzied state of the Duparc family, who continued to insist that they had been poisoned, observers called for the authorities to arrest Marie Salmon. == Conviction and delayed execution ==

The () in the court of Caen, Roland Revel de Bretteville, whom Salmon had left a few weeks earlier after she had declined his assistance, was assigned to investigate the case. After conducting what would later be argued was a prejudiced and flawed investigation fueled by personal animus, Revel sought the death penalty for Salmon. .|alt=A drawing of Marie Salmon marching to her execution from Histoire des bagnes (1878) by Pierre Zaccone. On 18 April 1782, the court of Caen found Marie Salmon guilty of poisoning, murder, and theft. She was "condemned to be tortured for the names of possible accomplices, to beg forgiveness in public barefoot and carrying a torch, and to be burned at the stake." The execution would take place in Saint Sauveur square. On 30 May 1782, the day of her execution, Marie Salmon suddenly fainted and then declared she was pregnant. The execution was delayed while two midwives were summoned to examine her. However, because the midwives could not definitively determine if she was pregnant at that time, Salmon's execution was further postponed for two months, as the criminal code of the stipulated that the execution of a pregnant woman should be delayed until after the birth of her child. During this delay, two confessors who had spoken to Marie Salmon in prison wrote to a regionally famous lawyer from Rouen named Pierre Noël Lecauchois, asking him to reexamine her case. Lecauchois took on the case, along with his Parisian colleague Jean-François Fournel, and immediately instructed Salmon's confessors to file an official request to review the trial. He then sought and was granted a stay of execution from the king just days before Marie Salmon was scheduled to be reexamined for pregnancy and possibly executed. == Retrial and exoneration ==

Strategy and Noireterre. The names of those he freed are written below his portrait, including Marie Salmon, referred to as "."|alt=Engraving of Pierre Noël Lecauchois by Cathelin and Noireterre. As part of their efforts to reverse Marie Salmon's conviction, Salmon's lawyers Pierre Noël Lecauchois and Jean-François Fournel wrote three () to argue Salmon's innocence and published them for the general public. Lecauchois wrote and , and Fournel wrote . The briefs were printed by Parisian publisher André-Charles Cailleau. Lecauchois opened Justification by recalling past victims of the unjust criminal code: The lawyers' goal in circulating these legal briefs was to sway public opinion in support of Salmon's innocence while also connecting her unjust victimization by the criminal justice system to the broader movement for judicial reforms at the time. In their briefs, they presented the rules of evidence and judicial process, challenging their audience of laypersons to judge the circumstances for themselves, while also providing an emotionally compelling first-person narrative from Salmon's perspective to "play up [her] candor and vulnerability." As Salmon narrates her story, "the reader is not allowed to forget for long that she is young, tender-hearted, and easily alluring." Arguments Prejudiced investigation that dramatizes the court's recognition of Marie Salmon's innocence, Salmon stands alongside her lawyers Lecauchois and Fournel with her hands clasped in prayer, as they speak to a rapt gallery.|alt=An engraving prepared for Madame de Genlis that dramatizes the court's recognition of Marie Salmon's innocence. Both Pierre Noël Lecauchois and Jean-François Fournel raised issues with the investigation conducted by the prosecutor Roland Revel de Bretteville. In Justification, Lecauchois accused Revel of deliberately conducting a hasty and flawed investigation. Lecauchois argued that Revel collected evidence days after the alleged crime, placed unfair weight on Madame Duparc's testimony against Salmon, neglected to interview key persons of interest such as Madame Duparc's son, and did not consider testimonies that Salmon provided in her own defense. In Consultation, Fournel described the past relationship that Revel had with Salmon shortly before her employment at the Duparc household, in which Revel tried to persuade her to move to Caen. According to Fournel, Revel held a deep grudge against Salmon after she had declined his invitation: While Fournel alludes to the "secret" nature of Revel's profound resentment by describing Salmon's beauty and youthfulness alongside Revel's initial "effusion" of benevolence, modern historians and Sarah Maza state it plainly: Revel felt spurned after Salmon rejected his sexual advances. Lack of evidence or motive Lecauchois argued that the police, surgeon, and lawyer who arrived at the Duparc home to investigate Beaulieu's death readily accepted the Duparc family's accusations against Salmon and possibly even planted evidence against her. In one example, Lecauchois pointed out that when Marie Salmon was searched, a shiny white substance, believed to be poison, was found in her left pocket, but, notably, she never used that pocket because her left hand had been disabled since childhood (see Early life). In Consultation, Fournel directly accused the Duparc family of framing Marie Salmon for the murder of Beaulieu. Lecauchois also argued that Salmon did not have any motive to poison Beaulieu or anyone in the Duparc household. He noted that she did not know the Duparc family prior to working for them, and she had only spoken highly of her employment in the household prior to the Beaulieu's sudden illness and death. Furthermore, he pointed out that she maintained the composure of an innocent person by quickly consenting to searches and agreeing to appear before the king's prosecutor. The Duparc family, by comparison, behaved very differently. According to Salmon, the family did not grieve for Beaulieu; rather, they seemed "relieved" that he was dead. Acquittal Lecauchois and Fournel's arguments were successful in winning Marie Salmon's freedom. On 23 May 1786, after over four years in prison, Salmon was fully acquitted of all charges. A large crowd waited outside the gates of in Paris to cheer for Marie Salmon and her lawyers Pierre Noël Lecauchois and Jean-François Fournel as they emerged. A witness and prolific journaler Siméon-Prosper Hardy wrote about this moment: Afterwards, Salmon and Lecauchois had dinner at the home of their printer André-Charles Cailleau. Hardy went to Cailleau's home and wrote that he witnessed crowds gathered in the street outside to watch Salmon through the first-floor windows. == Freedom and fame ==

Audiences with famous persons In the months following Marie Salmon's exoneration, she and her lawyer Pierre Noël Lecauchois were invited to meet with nobility and celebrities, who bestowed generous gifts. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antionette held a private audience with Salmon and Lecauchois, in which they presented Salmon with a valuable wallet of coins. Hardy wrote that the gift from the royal couple included 25 and a lifetime pension of 300 livres. Salmon and her lawyer also met Madame de Genlis and the princes of the House of Orléans. Lecauchois was so moved by their meeting that he published a manuscript entitled () describing the scene. He wrote that Genlis and Salmon's arms were intertwined on the couch as the princes hugged and kissed Salmon, and he lamented that he could not capture the moment in a painting. Lecauchois shared a note he received from Genlis: In his , Lecauchois also wrote about an audience with "Mr de Cagliostro", the same Italian charlatan and occultist who was imprisoned for nine months in the Bastille during the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Cagliostro ordered that his portrait be gifted to Salmon, and he promised that he would have Lecauchois' legal briefs about Salmon's case translated into English. Salmon also received a sum of money from the Archbishop of Paris. Public appearances On 8 June, Marie Salmon and Lecauchois were invited to performances at the Comédie Française and were directed to sit in the balcony, where they were applauded by the actors and audience. An August 1786 edition of featured a story about () by Salmon. While Salmon was in prison, she had befriended a woman who was imprisoned with her 20-month-old child, and, when that woman died, Salmon continued to care for the child inside the prison. After she was acquitted, Salmon and Pierre Noël Lecauchois took the child to the and asked the priests to care for him there. The child was baptized and named Pierre Noël Daniel Innocent Moreau in a ceremony before 1200 people. Tributes , while another putto places a laurel wreath on her head. Her lawyer Lecauchois stands behind her. Cagliostro is pictured opposite of them on the fan.|alt=A fan with illustrations of Marie Salmon and Lecauchois on one side, and Cagliostro on the other. Tributes in the form of engravings circulated in periodicals throughout France, celebrating Marie Salmon's exoneration as (). Other art forms honoring Salmon, including numerous songs, became popular with the illiterate Parisian public. The French libretist and actor Desforges wrote a ballad about her ordeal, sung to the tune of Richard Cœur de Lion. The first two stanzas are as follows: Marriage .|alt=Marriage announcement for Marie Salmon and "Mr. Savari" On 26 August 1786, a few months after she was exonerated, Marie Salmon married a 28-year-old infantry soldier from Lorraine named Jean-Louis Savary at the Church of Saint Severin in Paris. The wedding ceremony was so popular, with people climbing onto the pews and railings, that soldiers were called to manage the crowds. The marriage was arranged by Madame de Genlis, because she remembered that Lecauchois had previously helped exonerate Jean-Louis Savary after he had been accused of kidnapping and theft several years earlier. Both Salmon and Savary consented to the marriage. The House of Orléans provided the carriage that drove Marie Salmon to the church for the ceremony, and the Duchess of Orléans gifted the newlyweds a of eight or nine thousand livres. Savary was also given a post at one of the castles of the Duke of Orléans. Death Marie Salmon died on 2 May 1827 at the age of 67, surrounded by her family. Her husband had died several years earlier in 1813. ==Legacy==

Marie Salmon's wrongful conviction, in which she was nearly tortured and burned at the stake for a crime she did not commit, became a symbol of the harsh criminal justice system of the . Despite calls to meaningfully reform this system, many reforms prior to the French Revolution were "mostly symbolically charged measures… that cost little, politically, but looked good." One allegorical engraving by and Sergent-Marceau dated 4 May 1789 shows the statesman Jacques Necker in a procession of citizens from all corners of French society, celebrating the death of the "Lord of Abuses" and carrying a coffin with symbols of each of the three estates on top. Leading the procession are famous victims of injustice, identified by their names written on their backs. Marie Salmon is drawn walking beside Jean Calas, who was tortured and executed on the wheel in 1762. Necker had abolished the practice of torturing the accused for confessions in 1780. The practice of torturing the convicted for the names of accomplices, which would have been Salmon's fate were it not for the intervention of her lawyers, was abolished in 1788. Mixelle and Sergent-Marceau's engraving is dated the day before the last Estates General of the Kingdom of France was called on 5 May 1789. At the conclusion of the final Estates General of 1789, the National Assembly was formed, and the French Revolution began. == Notes ==