9 - The Bande d'Aubagne

Summary

The first round of murders in Aubagne was an aftershock of the prison massacres elsewhere. Nor was Aubagne alone in suffering these tremors. Murders or prison massacres occurred in smaller centers like Polyzoan, Lambesc, Eygalières, Noves, Salon, Eyragues, Graveson, Barbentane, Senas, and Roquevaire. In the Basses-Alpes, there were murders of prominent republicans at Manosque and Sisteron.

In the Vaucluse, there were dozens of shootings, stabbings, beatings, and even a decapitation in that terrible summer of the Year III. In Avignon, the trial of the judges of the Popular Commission of Orange inflamed opinion enormously. Every day, angry crowds gathered at the courthouse. Outraged spectators assaulted the prison that held the former judges. All were found guilty and guillotined on the Place du Palais on 8 Messidor (27 June). As their bodies were being transported to the cemetery, the crowd overwhelmed the escort and seized the corpses. They threw them into the Rhône because, in another example of the highly significant gesture of exclusions that dominated the legal and extralegal executions of the period, “the people did not wish the same earth to cover both the victims and their executioners.” The Criminal Tribunal also sentenced a clerk of the Popular Commission to the pillory where the crowd seized and murdered him. They dragged his body through the streets as they had other corpses earlier, and then hurled it into the Rhône as well.

Young toughs with white gloves pinned to their hats terrorized Avignon.