The Return of Martin Guerre

The case

The trial was almost over, and by most accounts the accused was winning, when a man with a wooden leg arrived in Toulouse in 1560 and said that he was Martin Guerre. The man in the dock had been living as Martin Guerre for more than three years. He had shared a house and a bed with Martin's wife, Bertrande de Rols, raised Martin's son, fathered children of his own, and convinced most of the village of Artigat, including Martin's four sisters, that he was who he said he was.

The real Martin was born around 1524 in the Basque town of Hendaye. His family moved to Artigat, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, when he was a small child, ran a tile works and changed their name from Daguerre to Guerre. At about fourteen Martin was married to Bertrande, a girl from a comfortable local family, but the couple had no child for eight years; when a son, Sanxi, was finally born, the village had long whispered that the marriage was bewitched. In 1548, accused of stealing grain from his own father, Martin vanished. Under church law Bertrande could not remarry while he might still be alive. She waited.

In the summer of 1556 a man arrived claiming to be Martin, now changed by eight years of absence but able to recall places, people and private moments in convincing detail. Bertrande accepted him, as did Martin's sisters and his uncle Pierre Guerre, who had married Bertrande's widowed mother in the meantime. The newcomer and Bertrande had two daughters, of whom one, Bernarde, survived. Trouble began over property. Martin's father had died while he was away, and when the returned Martin demanded an account of the estate from Pierre and took him to law over it, Pierre's doubts hardened into certainty. A passing soldier added fuel by saying that the real Martin Guerre had lost a leg in the wars.

Pierre made inquiries and decided that the man was Arnaud du Tilh, known as Pansette, from Sajas, a village some distance to the north-west, a man with a poor reputation. Since only the wronged wife could properly bring the charge, Pierre brought it in Bertrande's name, and she was pressed to support it. At the trial in Rieux in 1560 Bertrande testified that she had been deceived. Yet she and the accused gave matching accounts of their private life before 1548, and when he offered to accept death if she would swear that he was not her husband, she said nothing. More than 150 witnesses were heard. Some swore he was Martin, others that he was Arnaud, and many would not commit themselves. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

He appealed to the Parlement of Toulouse, where the judges, among them the jurist Jean de Coras, were inclined to believe him. He answered every test of memory, and Pierre and Bertrande were themselves arrested on suspicion of false accusation. Then the one-legged man appeared. He knew less about the couple's past than the accused did, but when the family saw the two men side by side, Pierre, Bertrande and the four sisters all recognised the newcomer as Martin.

The court condemned Arnaud du Tilh for imposture and adultery in September 1560. After sentence he confessed, explaining that men who mistook him for Martin had given him the idea, and that he had gathered details of Martin's life before arriving. He asked forgiveness of Bertrande and the family. He was hanged in front of the Guerre house in Artigat. Bertrande was not punished; the court accepted that she had been deceived. The real Martin, who had served in Spanish armies and lost his leg at the battle of St Quentin in 1557, at first rebuked her for having been fooled, then returned to live with her.