In 1757, King Louis XV was preparing to leave versailles, and as he approached the carriage, a strange man suddenly rushed out and stabbed Louis in the chest, and the guards quickly reacted and subdued him. Damiens – A domestic servant who is fired for theft and is desperate. Fortunately, Louis was only wounded in the flesh, and Damiens was accused of being part of a plot by the Jesuits or the Parliamentary Party against the royal family, and in the absence of conclusive evidence, he was sentenced to death.
On March 28, Damiens was taken to the Place de la Griffe in Paris to greet his own death in a cheering crowd. After Damiens' death, his house was razed to the ground, his siblings were ordered to change their names, and his father, wife and daughter were expelled from France. For executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, however, it was just a day's work.
Born into a poor aristocratic family who had been working as an executioner for generations, Sangsen knew from an early age that his family's "work" was despised by the world. To protect him from humiliation and get rid of this "job," the family arranged for Sanson to go to a school anonymously to study medicine. Unfortunately, at the age of 14, Sangson's father was recognized by another parent and he had to drop out of school to return home. At the age of 16, a stroke prevented his father from performing his duties because he had not found an apprentice, and according to the regulations, Sanson would take over his father's work. I wanted to be a doctor who saved lives and helped the injured, who knew that I had become the god of death who harvested life, and my fate was so wrong.
Charles Henry Sanson
Contrary to the bloody profession of executioner, Sansen was handsome and musically talented, reading, building gardens and playing the violin in his spare time, listening to the music of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. He also led fashion in his style of dressing in green coats, which led to the imitation of a group of nobles led by the Marquise Letorier.
At the time of execution, Sanson must wear a uniform. In his early years, he wore traditional blue breeches and a red coat embroidered with black gallows and ladders, a pink two-corner hat, and a sword around his waist. Later, he wore a long dark green double-breasted gown with a wide white bow tie. Later in his career, he began wearing an elegant tunic and breeches, stockings and buttoned shoes, and a tricorne hat with his own sword.
France has a strict hierarchy under the monarchy, and the judicial system is no exception.
Nobles who committed serious crimes were often beheaded with swords, because swords were cleaner and more effective than axes.
Civilians were generally hanged, a process that required rather complex calculations, and finding a rope of the right length to perfectly break a person's neck was not a random rope.
Roadblockers and those who have committed serious crimes against the socio-political order are tied to wheels, smashed on all fours with a sledgehammer, and then shot to death in the chest, because they can quickly end the suffering of prisoners, which is called the "kiss of grace" (lifting).
Sometimes, prisoners are left with their lives and eaten alive by birds.
Executions were not easy, many tools needed to be prepared, Sanson had to hire assistants to cooperate in the completion, and because of the frequent use and frequent purchase of ropes, belts, axes and other tools, the executioners were never rich. However, Sanssen can increase his income in various ways. The executed had to cut their hair to make sure their necks were clearly visible, and Sangson sold the hair to wig makers. According to the regulations, all the clothes of the deceased were donated to the poor, but the watches and other possessions were handled by Sansen, who also sold the corpses for medical research.
For medical instruction, the Swiss physician Philip Curtius made miniature wax figures for dissection, and he trained his niece Mary Grossholtz (later Madame Tussauds) as an assistant. Sanson made a deal with him to notify the "public enemy" every time the head was cut off, so that they could make a "death mask" before the head was buried.
Madame Tussauds can make a big business with masks
Sanson made a lot of money in the business, but he was still very professional as an executioner. During the French Revolution, in order to show the equality of all classes in society, the government proposed a unified means of beheading all people, and Dr. Guillotin, the main supporter of the guillotine, pointed out:
"The executioner must be very skilled, and the condemned prisoner must be emotionally stable, otherwise it will not be possible to complete the death penalty with a sword. After each execution, the sword is not as sharp as the original, and even breaks into two pieces, and if the number of executioners is large, many swords need to be prepared... The fear and resistance that this method of execution brings to death row inmates must also be taken into account, so that the death penalty becomes a struggle and a massacre. ”
In order to solve these problems and adopt a more humane method of execution, the concept of guillotine is becoming more and more popular.
guillotine
In March 1792, the French physician Antoine Louis and Tobias Schmidt collaborated to invent the guillotine (originally known as "louisette", renamed "guillotine" in honor of Dr. Guillotin, who advocated the humane death penalty). Sanson is a big advocate of the guillotine because not only will it make his job much easier, but it will also mean that he will no longer have to buy a lot of execution tools. He conducted tests, first using straw bales, then live sheep, then human carcasses, and finally came up with some small adjustments based on his years of experience.
In monarchical times, Sanson was despised, and when executioners passed by, people would spit at them out of superstition and disgust. During the Revolution, Sanssen was a veritable "citizen", he went from a butcher to an engineer, and his work was more respected. But this new reputation came at a cost, and the new government wanted him to obey, and the task of executing Louis XVI fell to Sanssen.
The execution took place on January 21, 1793, on a gloomy and damp morning, when Louis XVI stepped up to the guillotine step by step, not wanting his hands to be tied, but finally agreed under the persuasion of Sanssen. For Sanson, the king was the monarch who officially granted him a job, and he couldn't bear it but couldn't help it. Sanson gave the king one last bit of sympathy, and he bound Louis with a silk handkerchief instead of a rope. The blade fell, the crowd cheered, and the French people rushed forward, frantically using handkerchiefs to stain his blood, some washing their hands with his blood, and some even licking it with their tongues.
Death of the King
"The execution was perfect," he wrote in his diary. But the French people did not seem to be happy, and the revolution continued, heading towards violence and bloodshed.
Under the "reign of terror" of the new governments of Danton and Robespierre, paranoia about internal "people's hatred" led to the streamlining of the judicial system and the growing number of death penalties in 1793-1794, and Girondin leaders and their supporters were sent to the guillotine one by one, chanting "Freedom, how many evils in the name of the False Ru!" "Mrs. Roland is one of them.
Robespierre
Sanssen's workload gradually increased, and the invention of the guillotine made his work very efficient. The number of executions per day increased from 3 or 4 to dozens, sometimes more than 60 a day, and during the period of horror, Sanson and his assistants cut off the heads of 300 men and women in three days, 1300 in six weeks, and at least 2831 heads fell into baskets between April 6, 1793 and July 29, 1795. Sanssen's status soared, and now he is affectionately known on the street as "Charlie" and others call him "The Avenger of the People", and his style of dress has become a fashion trend that revolutionaries are following. Guillotines also became more widespread than ever, and children began to send rats to "toy" guillotines.
Immediately after, the Jacobins began to fight among themselves, and Robespierre sent Danton and 15 others to the guillotine to be beheaded. Danton is said to have said on his way to the guillotine: "What bothers me the most is that I am going to die six weeks before Robespierre's death." Robespierre, who killed his comrades with a butcher's knife, rebelled and eventually buried his life on the guillotine.
In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Sanson has killed nearly 3,000 people. It is said that in the early days of Napoleon I's reign, the retired executioner and the emperor met by chance near the Place de la Concorde, and Napoleon asked him how he would sleep at night, and Sanssen replied: "If the king, the emperor and the dictator can sleep well, why can't I, the executioner?" ”