The Shocking Twist That Unmasked a Four-Year Impostor in a French Village Courtroom
In court, things initially seemed to be going well for the new Guerre. While witnesses were split on whether he was genuine or an impostor, the man himself held incredible composure.
Public DomainIn 1560, Judge Jean de Coras documented his account of the Martin Guerre case.
“The accused was once more subjected to rigorous questioning about his past, and by all accounts, he performed flawlessly. His statements were checked and double-checked, and no contradictions were found,” Johnson explains. “The supposed Martin Guerre eloquently argued his case before the Toulouse judges, who seemed inclined to believe his version of the story.”
There was even a moment in the courtroom when the new Guerre challenged his wife to declare him to be an impostor. She would not do so.
Then, an unexpected guest arrived at the trial: the real Martin Guerre. This Guerre was, in fact, missing a leg, and while he was unable to recite his own personal history to the level of the new Guerre, his family was almost immediately certain that this Martin Guerre was the real one.
As it turned out, Pierre’s suspicions had been correct. The impostor was a man named Arnaud du Tilh. According to du Tilh, he had been mistaken for Guerre several times. Consequently, he decided to learn as many personal details as possible about him and, in a sense, become him.
When it became clear that du Tilh had been found out, he confessed, asked for forgiveness, and refused to state that Guerre’s wife, Bertrande, knew he was an impostor. Du Tilh was eventually hanged for his crime.
Did Bertrande De Rols Know The Truth?
Over the course of this story, one question tends to stick with both historians and casual readers alike: How much did Bertrande de Rols know?
At the time, the judges accepted that Bertrande had been deceived. However, some historians — specifically, one scholar named Natalie Zemon Davis — dispute this.
“Davis argues that Bertrande was complicit, that she knew — not immediately, perhaps, but that at some point during those nearly four years, she recognized the man in her bed was not Martin Guerre, and she chose to say nothing — chose, in fact, to participate, to build something like a life with a man who was in every practical sense a better husband than the one who had abandoned her: more attentive, more present, more interested in the management of the household, and the raising of their son,” Johnson explains.
Public DomainMartin Guerre returned to France in the midst of the trial against his impostor.
“The evidence Davis marshals is circumstantial but certainly not trivial,” Johnson continues. “The intimacy of the details Arnaud possessed argues for an inside source. Four years of apparent domestic contentment argue against sustained, undetected deception. And then there is the silence in the courtroom, the moment when Arnaud offered Bertrande an unambiguous way out, and she did not take it.”
It should be noted that this is not a historical consensus and that some dispute Davis’ recounting of events. In a criticism, author Robert Finlay accused Davis of not having enough evidence to support her claims and that her work relied on too many assumptions to come to valuable, verifiable conclusions. Davis later responded to Finlay, agreeing with some of the critique but claiming that he had misinterpreted her argument.
Given the limited historical record, historians will likely never know what exactly happened here — but the mystery will likely continue to enchant us for centuries.
All That’s Interesting reached out to Johnson via Instagram direct message.
For more historical tales of impostors, learn about “Princess Caraboo,” a woman who managed to convince a city that she was the princess of a fictional island. Then, read about the strange disappearance of Walter Collins.
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