On 16 August 1870, during the annual cattle fair in the village of Hautefaye, in the Dordogne region of France, a local landowner, Alain Romuald de Monéys d'Ordières, was attacked by a crowd, beaten and tortured over roughly two hours, and then burned to death. Aged 32 and exempt from military service for physical reasons, he had asked to enlist for the Lorraine front and had come to the fair to manage his family's estate.
The events took place a month after France declared war on Prussia on 15 July 1870. Reports of early French defeats, and government restrictions on information, encouraged rumors of Prussian spies in the area and of plots among nobles and priests against the Empire. A regional drought and unusually poor fair-day trade heightened the tension, and some fairgoers had been drinking through the hot day. The historian Alain Corbin has explained the killing largely through these political anxieties among Périgord peasants.
The confrontation began after the victim's cousin was accused of spreading defeatist news and of republican sympathies; when the cousin escaped, suspicion shifted to de Monéys, who was wrongly taken for a Prussian and a traitor despite insisting he supported the peasants and intended to fight. Several people — including the parish priest, a village sawyer, a servant, and the mayor's nephew — repeatedly tried to shelter him, but were overwhelmed by the crowd. An attempt to hang him from a cherry tree failed; he was then beaten, dragged through the village, thrown into a dry pond, and set on fire.
Regional and national newspapers reported the events within days, and some described the participants as "cannibals". The source links that label to metaphors about the killing of livestock used at the fair, and to rumors that were examined at trial, where a key witness retracted his accusation against the mayor. The Minister of the Interior publicly condemned the killing, and the mayor of Hautefaye was removed from office by the Prefect of the Dordogne.
Gendarmes made about fifty initial arrests, and twenty-one defendants were tried at Périgueux from 13 to 21 December 1870. The court found four men — Chambord, Buisson, François Léonard (known as "Piarrouty"), and Mazière — directly responsible for the premeditated homicide; they were sentenced to death and executed at Hautefaye on 6 February 1871 after their appeal and request for a pardon were rejected. Jean Campot was sentenced to forced labor for life in New Caledonia, other defendants received prison or hard-labor terms, and one youth was acquitted but placed in a reformatory. The former mayor, who had testified as a witness, died a few days after the trial.
The case has been the subject of several books, including Alain Corbin's Le Village des « cannibales ». On 16 August 1970, a century after the events, a mass of forgiveness was held in the church of Hautefaye, attended by descendants of the victim and of the four executed men.
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