The village of cannibals

by Alain Corbin

"In August 1870 in the isolated French village of Hautefaye, a gruesome murder was committed in broad daylight that aroused the indignation of the entire country. A young nobleman, falsely accused of shouting republican slogans, was savagely tortured for hours by a mob of peasants who later burned him alive. Rumors of cannibalism stirred public fascination and the details of the case were dramatically recounted in the popular press. While the crime was rife with political significance, the official inquiry focused on its brutality. Justice was swift: the mob's alleged ringleaders were guillotined at the scene of the crime the following winter. The Village of Cannibals is a fascinating inquiry into the social and political ingredients of an alchemy that transformed ordinary people into executioners in nineteenth -century France. Alain Corbin's chronicle of the killing reveals the political motivations of the murderers and the gulf between their actions and the sensibilities of the major