Hautefaye case

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The Hautefaye Affair, also known as the Hautefaye Drama, was a criminal incident that took place on August 16, 1870, during a fair in the village of Hautefaye in the Dordogne region (France), when Alain de Monéys, a young local nobleman, was beaten, tortured and finally burned alive by the crowd. The case was set against the backdrop of the 1870 war and the heightened passions it aroused in the population of this small village. Following a simple misunderstanding, Alain de Monéys was mistaken for a Prussian, leading to his lynching. The barbarity of the event was further amplified by rumors—attributed to the mayor—that the villagers had committed acts of cannibalism. Of the twenty-one people accused of the murder, the four most responsible were sentenced to death and one to penal labor for life. Several books have been written on the case. For writer Georges Marbeck, it symbolizes the ritualized murder of the scapegoat, while for historian Alain Corbin, in Le Village des « cannibales », the reasons have more to do with the political representations current at the time among Perigordian peasants, representations marked by anguish and fear of a plot hatched by the Republicans, nobles and priests to overthrow the emperor.