DIZY, dit Montplaisir, MARGUERITE (Desbrieux), surgeon; b. 10 Feb. 1663 and baptized the next day at Trois-Rivières; daughter of Pierre Dizy, dit Montplaisir, and Marie Drouillet (or Drouillard), sister of Michel-Ignace and Pierre*; d. 20 Oct. 1730 and was buried the following day in Bastican.

Marguerite Dizy came to the attention of the authorities, and later historians, because of her amorous intrigue with the soldier François Desjordy de Cabanac. At 14 years of age, on 4 Feb. 1677, she had signed a marriage contract with Jean Desbrieux, whom she married soon afterwards. She had a son by him, François, who was two years old in 1681. In that year’s census the couple was reported to be living at Batiscan; the items enumerated were one rifle, five head of cattle, and six arpents under cultivation. Judging by a contract of 3 June 1673, Desbrieux’ land was worked by farmers or indentured employees, while the owner devoted most of the year to his fur-trading expeditions in the territories of the Ottawa (Odawa) and Nipissing.

The lonely Marguerite was not unresponsive to the advances of François Desjordy, a half-pay captain of the colonial regular troops stationed near Batiscan. In Desbrieux’ absence, it was not long before they were living together. On 9 Feb. 1694, as the scandal had been going on “for several years,” the parish priests of Batiscan and Champlain, the Sieurs Foucault and Bouquin, read from the pulpit a pastoral letter from Bishop Saint-Vallier [La Croix] which forbade the lovers Desjordy and Desbrieux to enter these two churches. (There was, however, no question of an excommunication, as has sometimes been asserted.) The affair rapidly became complicated as regards Desjordy and his friend Jacques-François Hamelin* de Bourgchemin, Marguerite Dizy’s brother-in-law, but this is not the place to recount the ins and outs of it. In March, Marguerite Dizy addressed a first petition to the Conseil Souverain, requesting annulment of the pastoral letter and reparation for the offence of which she claimed she was the victim. Tensions were high, particularly between Foucault and members of the army. Alert to the possible encroachment of the church upon matters concerning the state, Governor Louis de Frontenac [Buade*] intervened in the dispute, and the suit was referred to the king’s privy council and quickly forgotten.

Marguerite Dizy, who became a widow on 27 Aug. 1699, settled the affairs of her husband, who had died at Montreal, apparently while in full activity, and from that time on there are few traces of her. She continued, however, to live at Batiscan, on scarcely better terms with her parish priest than at the time of the Sieur Foucault. In fact, on 20 June 1704 Intendant François de Beauharnois* passed judgement against the widow Desbrieux, who was accused of having slandered Father Boy, the parish priest of Batiscan, and of having broadcast these calumnies. (In 1721, in a perhaps ironic turn of fate, Marguerite Dizy would bring an action against Charles Duteau, dit Tourville, who was guilty of slandering her and her family.)

Marguerite Dizy practised the profession of surgeon; it was in this capacity that on 11 April 1730 she signed a certificate in a case involving a wounding.

André Vachon