Some of the young Knight’s friends manage to flee. The petty bourgeoisie of Abbeville, frightened by the apocalyptic sermons, begins to point the finger at a group of young people, far too idle for their taste, as responsible. The local religious community is looking for the culprits, inviting the population to denounce them during masses on pain of divine vengeance. What should have been a rather banal news item will become a real affair of state. In August 1765, a crucifix on the Abbeville bridge was desecrated. A rather classic adolescence takes place at the time for a son of a good family, although the young man turns out to be rather turbulent and irreverent. Left without an inheritance on the death of his father, who had squandered the family fortune, he joined with his brother one of his aunts, Abbess in Abbeville, in Picardy. What a story that of the Chevalier de la Barre!īorn in Seine-et-Marne, François-Jean Lefebvre de La Barre came from a noble family in decline.
The last executed for blasphemy in the history of France, he contributed to the rejection of the Church by the population, a movement which ended with the Revolution.
Symbol of an 18th century rich in new ideas and dreams of emancipation, he paid a heavy price by undergoing an execution as violent as it was disproportionate. Known to bear the name of a pretty rue Montmartroise, the Chevalier de la Barre, whose statue stands in a small park not far from the Sacré-Coeur, hides a history somewhat forgotten today.