Procès fait à deux bandits de grand chemin, assassins et voleurs, en 1575 dans le Val de Lièpvre (Archives départementales de Meurthe-et-Moselle, B 9550)

The trial of Bernard le Voisin and Nicolas Houlle lasted a month, from March 21, 1575 (“1574” in the Easter style) to April 20, when the sentence was pronounced. There are few such early legal proceedings, and when they do exist, they differ from Lorraine procedures of the 1580s to 1630s. The Val de Lièpvre was not at the forefront of change. It is an interesting repository of old practices. The trial took place at Zuckmantel Castle, belonging to the Duke of Lorraine, whose authority over the Val de Lièpvre was shared with the Lord of Hattstatt, a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire. It contains several “plaintiffs” of the court, which are like the requisitions and conclusions of a prosecutor (March 21, April 11 and 14); Interrogations (March 21 and April 13), each time under torture, yielded no results the first time and led to confessions the second; and finally, a trial (April 20) and the official record of the execution, which was carried out immediately. The initial accusation rested entirely on the confession of an accomplice executed in another jurisdiction—raising questions about the transfer of information between courts—then the confessions of the two defendants formed the basis of the local accusation and resulted in a sentence of being broken on the wheel alive. An atrocious punishment with both symbolic and practical justifications.