The Red Inn

When we think of the Auberge Rouge, we immediately think of Claude Autant-Lara's film, Fernandel confessing to Françoise Rosay behind a meat grill, and all those travelers who had the misfortune to stop there and never leave.

True, the story is authentic, the inn existed and is still there, but what exactly is it?
Auberge de Peyrebeille
Best known as the "Auberge Rouge".
It is located in the commune of Lanarce in the Ardèche on a plateau swept by an icy Burle in winter.
The story takes place during the First Empire. This remote corner of the Ardèche acquired a notoriety that continues to this day, thanks to a criminal case that took on incredible proportions despite its insignificance.
It is alleged that the tenants, the Martin couple, with the complicity of their mulatto servant Jean Rochette, robbed and made to disappear some fifty travelers, but only the death of a customer by the name of Jean Antoine Enjolras is clearly established. What's more, his corpse was found several kilometers away, and there is no proof that he was killed at the inn. Nevertheless, the Martin family and Jean Rochette are sentenced to death and guillotined in front of the inn after a resounding trial.
Three people sentenced to death for a murder we're not sure they committed - how did it come to this?
The story
The story goes that for a quarter of a century, between 1805 and 1830, Pierre and Marie Martin (née Breysse) robbed and murdered around fifty travelers who stopped off at their inn.
Their accomplice Jean Rochette, known as "Fétiche", is a native of the Ardèche region of France, but his tanned complexion led to him being described as a mulatto in popular imagery. In fact, in the 1951 film, Autant-Lara gave his role to Lud Germain, a Haitian actor and singer.
Pierre Martin, a man of character with an easy punch and always flanked by Jean Rochette, said to have come "from the Americas", was feared in the neighborhood. What's more, in 1830, the Martins took over management of the inn and lived off their income, valued at 30,000 gold francs (around €600,000). All this fuelled resentment and jealousy. The local population's distrust led to their downfall, for how else could an inn in the middle of nowhere have amassed such a fortune if not by theft? But this is not the case, as we shall see later.
The case began at the end of October 1831 with the discovery on the banks of the Allier, some ten kilometers from the inn, of the corpse of a man with a smashed skull. The man in question was a horse trader by the name of Jean Antoine Enjolras, who had slept at the inn a few days earlier, when a witness reported to the authorities that he "saw Martin, Rochette and an unknown man (believed to be Martin's nephew André) carrying a body on a cart".
That's all it takes for Justice of the Peace Étienne Filiat-Duclaux to visit the Martins to investigate the disappearance of the horse trader. The murder investigation fired imaginations, and several implausible witnesses attributed fifty-three disappearances and several attempted murders and robberies to the Martins.
In fact, the indictment lists only two murders, four attempted murders and six robberies; they were then arrested along with their nephew and Rochette.
The trial
The trial of the "four monsters" opened at the Ardèche assizes in Privas on June 18, 1833.
No fewer than one hundred and nine witnesses were called to the stand, essentially relaying the rumors of the time: Marie Martin "allegedly" fed customers stews and pâtés made from human flesh, some "allegedly" even saw human hands simmering in the pot, others "allegedly" smelled foul-smelling fumes escaping from the chimney, and children "allegedly" were incinerated in the bread oven - in short, nothing very serious, and all conditional.
Seventeen exculpatory witnesses are heard, and the trial is bogged down to such an extent that the acquittal of the defendants is considered for a moment, when a dramatic turn of events occurs: Laurent Chaze, a beggar who had been thrown out of the inn one night because he couldn't pay for his night's lodging, claimed to have witnessed Enjolras' murder from the barn where he had taken refuge. This surely arranged testimony is questionable, as Chaze speaks only in Vivaro-Alpin and the trial in French, making communication difficult.
The defendants' fate was then sealed by Jean Rochette's lawyer, who implicitly accepted his guilt by pleading irresponsibility, as he could not escape the influence of his masters to whom he was devoted body and soul.
In the end, Martin and Rochette were found guilty of the single murder of Enjolras, four attempted murders and six thefts, and acquitted of all the rest. André, the nephew, was acquitted of all charges.
On June 28, the verdict was delivered. Death for the Martins and Rochette; the appeal in cassation was rejected, as was the petition for clemency submitted to King Louis-Philippe.
They were brought back from Privas to the inn to be guillotined at the scene of their misdeeds, as was customary at the time.
Today, a stone marks the spot where the guillotine was erected.
The execution took place on October 2, 1833, at noon, and was attended by a very large crowd - 30,000 people are said to have attended, which may seem an exaggeration, but clearly demonstrates the extent of the publicity surrounding the affair.
When it's Rochette's turn, he cries out: "Damn masters, what didn't you make me do!" which lends credence to the fact that, although they can't be blamed for the delirium reported at the trial, they do have blood on their hands, but to what extent will never really be known.
The bodies of the three victims were buried in the Lanarce cemetery, but their graves have since disappeared.
The night after the execution, the three heads were stolen with the help of the gravedigger. Moulded for phrenological studies, which were in vogue at the time, they are still preserved in the Crozatier museum in Le Puy en Velay.
Analysis of the trial and irregularities.
The prosecution spoke at length about events that had become statute-barred because they were too old, and obviously inadmissible testimony about anthropophagy or the cremation of children was heard, which had a negative influence on the jury.
Furthermore, contrary to the usual practice of giving the floor to the defense last, the president of the Assize Court, Fornier de Claussonne, gave a "summary" of the proceedings after the defense pleadings, which amounted to a second indictment, during which he deliberately ignored the arguments put forward by the defense, which had argued that the main witness Chaze was a drunken tramp, and that his account was implausible and incomprehensible due to his lack of knowledge of French.
Many of the documents in the case file detailing the stages in the lives of the Martin couple have been torn out and have disappeared from the court archives. The mystery of their guilt or innocence will never be cleared up.
Political context and collective imagination
The Auberge Rouge affair needs to be placed in its historical context.
1831 saw a series of uprisings in the royal forests of the Ardèche, following the restriction of peasants' right to gather wood for sawmills. Some of these forests were set on fire at night, and the arsonists' intimate knowledge of the region enabled them to evade the gendarmes. It was against this backdrop that the Martin case was investigated.
It's no secret that the Martin couple belong to the ultra-royalist clan. Marie Breysse hid a refractory priest during the Revolution, while Pierre Martin is a henchman of the local nobility.
It is certain that he put pressure on local landowners to sell their land cheaply to the nobles who returned from exile during the Restoration, which earned him a great deal of animosity from the local population.
What's more, he was suspected of sympathizing with the woodcutters, which made him the target of general discontent.
It was this poisonous context that led to the case being severely tried, with the royalists of the Ardèche being targeted in the process. Louis-Philippe, acting on a report from the public prosecutor, refused to grant a pardon, thereby endorsing partisan justice and local political rancor.
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