We can gather a further idea of the strange and dismal appearance of the Gibbet of Montfaucon, if we consider that the quantity of bodies attached to it, and ceaselessly renewed, attracted thousands of carrion birds to the spot. But that its hideous aspect and pestilential surroundings prevented not the establishment, in its immediate vicinity, of places of amusement and debauch, one would almost have been slow to believe were it not for the testimony of ancient poetry:—
“Pour passer temps joyeusement,
Raconter vueil une repeue
Qui fut faicte subtillement
Près Montfaulcon, c’est chose sceüe,
Tant parlèrent du bas mestier,
Qui fut conclud, par leur façon,
Qu’ils yroyent, ce soir-là, coucher
Près le gibet de Montfaulcon,
Et auroyent pour provision,
Ung pasté de façon subtile,
Et menroyent, en conclusion,
Avec eulx chascun une fille.”[38]
So wrote Villon—also called Corbeuil,—in the middle of the fifteenth century. We shall have occasion, later on, to show that human nature on the hill of Montfaucon, in the darkness of the Middle Ages, was the same as human nature in a great English midland town in the enlightened nineteenth century.
Monsieur de Lavillegille tells us that there was another and a smaller gibbet, not far from Montfaucon, called “Le gibet de Montigny.”[39] This was to supply the place of the great scarecrow, when the latter was under repair, because, of course, Justice never stands still. The bodies of men decapitated, quartered, torn to pieces by horses, or boiled, were hung up in sacks of sackcloth or leather; such as committed suicide also,[40] and lay figures of persons condemned in contumaciam. The corpse of the great Captain Coligny, who was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, was hung up by the heels at the gibbet of Montfaucon. L’Etoile reports that Catherine de Medecis—“pour repâitre ses yeux”—went to view him one evening.
It was the custom in France to try, condemn, and hang on the gibbet, in human clothing, certain animals under special circumstances. So a sow, who had killed a child, was hung up at Montigny. A bull was similarly tried and condemned for killing a man, but whether the beast was gibbeted is not recorded. It may be that the difficulty and inconvenience of carrying the matter out, or perhaps the trouble to obtain garments large enough, caused our fantastic neighbours to draw the line at the bull. But we may fairly admire the principle of mediæval times, which seems to have been that justice should be meted out equally both to man and beast. It is pleasant to know that in many English towns at the present day societies are active in seeing that not only simple justice, but, what is much better for them, mercy also, is dealt out to the poor dog, the poor horse, the necessary or unnecessary cat, and other harmless, helpless creatures.
