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Charles-Henri Sanson

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Charles-Henri Sanson, full title Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval (15 February 1739 – 4 July 1806), was the royal executioner of France during the reign of King Louis XVI, as well as high executioner of the First French Republic. He administered capital punishment in the city of Paris for over forty years. By his own hand he executed nearly 3,000 people, including Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV. Sanson would later execute King Louis XVI.

Charles-Henri Sanson
Imaginary portrait of Charles-Henri Sanson by Eugène Lampsonius in "An Episode during the Terror" by Balzac.
Born(1739-02-15)15 February 1739
Paris, France
Died4 July 1806(1806-07-04) (aged 67)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Occupation(s)Royal executioner of France, high executioner of the First French Republic
Known forPerforming the execution of Louis XVI

Family history

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Charles-Henri Sanson was the fourth in a six-generation family dynasty of executioners. His great-grandfather, a soldier in the French royal army named Charles Sanson (1658–1695) of Abbeville, was appointed as Executioner of Paris in 1688.[1] Upon his death in 1695, the Sanson patriarch passed the office to his son, also named Charles (1681 – September 12, 1726). When this second Charles died, an official regency held the position until his young son, Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson (1719 – 4 August 1778), reached maturity. The third Sanson served all his life as High Executioner and in his time fathered 16 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood. The eldest of his sons, Charles-Henri, known as "The Great Sanson", was apprentice to his father for twenty years and was sworn into the office on 26 December 1778.[2]

Life

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Charles-Henri Sanson was born in Paris to Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Tronson. He was first raised in the convent school at Rouen until in 1753 a father of another student recognised his father as the executioner and he had to leave the school in order to not ruin the school's reputation. Charles-Henri was then privately educated.

Career as executioner

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The "bourreau" under Louis XVI
 
Execution of Louis XVI
 
Execution of Robespierre July 28, 1794; Sanson is figure # 4
 
Headstone of the Sanson family at Montmartre Cemetery: tomb of Charles-Henri Sanson, his son Henri Sanson, with his wife, Marie-Louise Damidot and grandson Henri-Clément Sanson, with his wife Virginie-Emilie Lefébure

His father's paralysis and the assertiveness of his paternal grandmother, Anne-Marthe Sanson, led Charles-Henri to leave his study of medicine and to assume the job of executioner in order to guarantee the livelihood of his family. As executioner (bourreau), he came to be known as "Monsieur de Paris"—"Gentleman of Paris". On January 10, 1765, he married his second wife, Marie-Anne Jugier. They had two sons: Gabriel (1767–1792), who also worked in the family business and had been his assistant and heir apparent from 1790 but who died after slipping off a scaffold as he displayed a severed head to the crowd, and Henri (1769–1830), who became his successor.

In 1757, Sanson assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson (1721–1795, executioner of Reims) with the extremely gruesome execution of the King's attempted assassin Robert-François Damiens. His uncle quit his position as executioner after this event. In 1778 Charles-Henri officially received the blood-red coat, the sign of the master executioner, from his father Charles-Jean-Baptiste. He would hold this position for 17 years, being succeeded by his son Henri in 1795 after he showed serious signs of illness. Most of the executions were performed by Sanson and up to six assistants.[3]

Sanson was the first executioner to use the guillotine, and he led the initial inspection and testing of its prototype on 17 April 1792, at Bicêtre Hospital in Paris. Swift and efficient decapitations of straw bales were followed by live sheep and finally human corpses, and by the end, Sanson led the inspectors in pronouncing the new device a resounding success.[4] Within the week, the Assembly had approved its use and on 25 April 1792, Sanson inaugurated the era of the guillotine by executing Nicolas Jacques Pelletier for robbery and assault at the Place de Grève.[5][6] The use of the guillotine transformed Sanson's status under the revolutionary ideology from outcast to citizen, equal in rights and civil duties.[3]

Charles-Henri Sanson performed 2,918 executions, including that of Louis XVI. Even though he was not a supporter of the monarchy, Sanson was initially reluctant to execute the king but in the end performed the execution. As David Jordan notes, "No Monsieur de Paris had ever had the honor of executing a king, and Sanson wanted precise instructions."[7] Sanson experienced the political and psychological pressures of revolutionary Paris. He had the duty to execute Louis XVI under the power of the sitting Provisional Government. Being the heir to a line of executioners, to refuse this duty would have brought shame to the family name and danger to himself and to his family members. He experienced the stress of having to execute not only the king but also successive waves of ousted officials as those in power shifted rapidly in a time of revolutionary change.

However, the execution of Louis XVI was of particular importance. Fearing rescue efforts, the streets of Paris were lined with troops as Louis's carriage took its somber two hours to travel to the scaffold arriving at 10 a.m. on 21 January 1793. After Sanson efficiently cut his hair, Louis attempted to address the crowd but was silenced with a drum roll and Louis was beheaded, with Sanson's assistant pulling his head from the basket immediately after to show to the crowd.[8] But the execution may not have gone as smoothly as possible: "One of two accounts of Louis' death suggest the blade did not sever his whole neck in one go, and had to be borne down on by the executioner to get a clean cut."[9] Quite possibly, then, the execution went from being quick and fast to being more difficult and painful. As David Andress notes, however, "With his spine severed already, it is nevertheless unlikely that Louis could have uttered the 'terrible cry' that one account claims."[9]

On 17 July 1793, Sanson executed Charlotte Corday. After Corday's decapitation, a man named Legros lifted her head from the basket and slapped it on the cheek. Sanson indignantly rejected published reports that Legros was one of his assistants. Sanson stated in his diary that Legros was in fact a carpenter who had been hired to make repairs to the guillotine.[10] Witnesses report an expression of "unequivocal indignation" on her face when her cheek was slapped. The oft-repeated anecdote has served to suggest that victims of the guillotine may in fact retain consciousness for a short while, including by Albert Camus in his Reflections on the Guillotine. ("Charlotte Corday's severed head blushed, it is said, under the executioner's slap."[11]) This offense against a woman executed moments before was considered unacceptable and Legros was imprisoned for three months because of his outburst.[12]

On 16 October 1793, the queen, Marie-Antoinette, was executed by Charles-Henri's son Henri, an officer in the Garde Nationale. Sanson and his men executed successive waves of well-known revolutionaries, including Hébert, Danton, Desmoulins, Saint-Just, and Robespierre. Less known is Cécile Renault. She was executed together with three family members and fifty others on 17 June; Sanson left the scaffold sick.[13][14][15][16][17]

Guillotine proponent

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After the Revolution, Sanson was instrumental in the adoption of the guillotine as the standard form of execution. After Joseph-Ignace Guillotin publicly proposed Antoine Louis' new execution machine, Sanson delivered a memorandum of unique weight and insight to the French Assembly.[18] Sanson, who owned and maintained all his own equipment, argued persuasively that multiple executions were too demanding for the old methods.

The relatively lightweight tools of his trade broke down under heavy usage, and the repair and replacement costs were prohibitive, unreasonably burdening the executioner. Even worse, the physical exertion required to use them was too taxing and likely to result in accidents, and the victims themselves were likely to resort to acts of desperation during the lengthy, unpredictable procedures.[19]

Death

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After years of struggling with ill health, he died of disease on 4 July 1806.[20]

Legacy

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Sanson's eldest son Gabriel (1767–1792) had been his assistant and heir apparent from 1790, but he died after slipping off a scaffold as he displayed a severed head to the crowd.[21] With his death, the hereditary obligation fell to the youngest son. In April 1793, he handed over his office, de facto, to Henri Sanson [d] (1767–1840), who held it until his death in 1840, a total of 47 years. Henri guillotined Marie Antoinette and the chief prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville (1795), among many others.

The Memories of Sanson are the apocryphal memoirs attributed to Charles-Henri Sanson. Published in 1830, they were written partially by Honoré de Balzac. In 1847, the last representative of the family Henry-Clément Sanson, decided, after money problems due to gambling, to return to the text and to a supplement, under the title Memoirs of the Sansons; or, Seven generations of Executioners, published in 1862.[22] His grandson Henri Clément (Henry-Clément) was the sixth and last executioner in the family. He worked as an assistant from the 1830s, and held the official position from 1840 to 1847, at which point the 159-year Sanson legacy of executioners came to an end.

In the late 1840s the Tussaud brothers Joseph and Francis, gathering relics for Madame Tussauds wax museum, visited the aged Henry-Clément Sanson and secured parts of one of the original guillotines used during the Age of Terror. The executioner had "pawned his guillotine, and got into woeful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property".[23]

Fictionalised accounts

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Novels

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  • Charles-Henri's life is heavily and rather inaccurately fictionalised in German author Hans Mahner-Mons's novel Der Kavalier von Paris (E. The Sword of Satan) (1954).
  • Charles-Henri Sanson appears as a minor but significant character in Hilary Mantel's novel A Place of Greater Safety (1992).
  • Charles-Henri Sanson is a recurring character in the detective story series Nicolas Le Floch (first volume published in 2000).
  • Jim Shepard's story "Sans Farine", from his collection Like You'd Understand, Anyway (2007), presents a fictionalised autobiography of Charles-Henri Sanson.
  • He is a secondary character, playing the part of the Harvester, a being who capture the souls of criminals, in the series Le Manoir (The manor) by Évelyne Brisou-Pellen (first volume published in 2013).
  • Charles-Henri Sanson is the protagonist in the historical novel The Executioner's Heir by Susanne Alleyn (2013).
  • In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens alludes to Charles-Henri Sanson by comparing Sanson to the biblical Samson.

Films and television

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Video games

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Manga

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  • He appears as the highly romanticised main character in the Japanese manga Innocent, and its sequel Innocent Rouge.
  • He appears in the Japanese manga Power Antoinette. In this series, he is depicted as an androgynous cross-dresser loyal to King Louis XVI that is driven to protect the titular Marie Antoinette out of guilt for having executed the King.

Further reading

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  • Geoffrey Abbott. Family of Death: Six Generations of Executioners. Robert Hale, London 1995.
  • Honoré de Balzac. Un épisode sous la Terreur (fiction)
  • Robert Christophe. Les Sanson, bourreaux de père en fils, pendant deux siècles. Arthème Fayard, Paris 1960.
  • Guy Lenôtre. Die Guillotine und die Scharfrichter zur Zeit der französischen Revolution. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-931659-03-8
  • Barbara Levy. Legacy of Death. Saxon House, 1973.
  • Hans-Eberhard Lex. Der Henker von Paris. Charles-Henri Sanson, die Guillotine, die Opfer. Rasch u. Röhring, Hamburg 1989. ISBN 3-89136-242-0
  • Chris E. Paschold, Albert Gier (Hrsg.) Der Scharfrichter - Das Tagebuch des Charles-Henri Sanson (Aus der Zeit des Schreckens 1793-1794). Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1989; ISBN 3-458-16048-5
  • Henri Sanson (ed.) Executioners All: Memoirs of the Sanson Family from Private Notes and Documents 1688-1847. Neville Spearman, London 1962.
  • Henri Sanson. Tagebücher der Henker von Paris. 1685-1847. Erster und zweiter Band in einer Ausgabe, hrsg. v. Eberhard Wesemann u. Knut-Hannes Wettig. Nikol, Hamburg 2004. ISBN 3-933203-93-7

References

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  1. ^ Sargent, Lucius Manlius (1855); Dealings with the Dead, Vol. II, Dutton & Wentworth, MA, USA; p.635.
  2. ^ Croker, John Wilson (1857); Essays on the early period of the French Revolution, John Murray, London; p.570 ff. with enumerated list of all six generations of Sansons.
  3. ^ a b Arasse, Daniel (1989). The Guillotine and the Terror. London: Penguin. pp. 120–21.
  4. ^ Gerould (1992). See pp.23–24: "The guillotine was first tested on April 17, 1792, at the famous Bicêtre Hospital... Accompanied by his two brothers and son, Sanson supervised the proceedings."
  5. ^ Arasse, Daniel (1989). The Guillotine and the Terror. London: Penguin. p. 26.
  6. ^ National Museum of Crime and Punishment Archived 2009-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, Washington, DC. Retrieved August 2010: "...[I]n 1792, Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be put to death with a guillotine."
  7. ^ Jordan, David P. (2004). The King's Trial: The French Revolution vs. Louis XVI. Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 215.
  8. ^ Schama, Simon (1989). Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Vintage. pp. 668–69.
  9. ^ a b Andress, David (2005). The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 147.
  10. ^ La Révolution française vue par son bourreau : Journal de Charles-Henri Sanson, Documents (in French), Monique Lebailly, preface, Le Cherche Midi, 2007, p. 65, ISBN 978-2-7491-0930-5{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link); idem, Griffures, Paris: Éditions de l'Instant, 1988, ISBN 978-2-86929-128-7
  11. ^ Reflexions sur la peine Capitale, a symposium by Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus, Calmann-Levy, p. 139.
  12. ^ Mignet, François (1824), History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814
  13. ^ Sanson, Henri (12 March 1876). "Memoirs of the Sansons: From Private Notes and Documents (1688–1847)". Chatto and Windus – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Naish, Camille (2013). Death Comes to the Maiden: Sex and Execution 1431–1933. Routledge. ISBN 978-1136247620 – via Google Books.
  15. ^ "The Edinburgh Review". A. and C. Black. 12 March 1809 – via Google Books.
  16. ^ Marie Joseph L. Adolphe. The history of the French Revolution, p. 397 Oxford University, 1838
  17. ^ The Edinburgh Review, Band 14, p. 242
  18. ^ Croker (1857); p.534 ff. Croker includes the full text of Sanson's "Memorandum of Observations on the Execution of Criminals by Beheading.".
  19. ^ Gerould, Daniel (1992); Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore; Blast, NY; ISBN 0-922233-02-0. See p.14. |"[I]n March, 1792... he [Sanson] explained the need for a new instrument. His sword grew blunt after each decapitation, (etc.)". See also Croker (1857), p.534: "It is to be considered [wrote Sanson] that when there shall be several criminals to execute at the same time, the terror that such an execution presents... [would be] an invincible obstacle...."
  20. ^ Walsh, Robert (29 August 2016). "France's Prolific Executioner: The Life and Death of Charles-Henri Sanson". The Lineup. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  21. ^ Croker (1857). See p. 556: "It was in exhibiting one of these heads to the people that the younger Sanson [Gabriel] fell off the scaffold and was killed." See also p.570: "He [Charles-Henri] had two sons, but one of these was killed on August 27, 1792, by falling from the scaffold...."
  22. ^ "Memoirs of the Sansons; or, Seven generations of executioners". Library of Congress.
  23. ^ Leonard Cottrell, Madame Tussaud, Evans Brothers Limited, 1952, p. 142-43.
  24. ^ "La révolution française". Oct 25, 1989. Retrieved Sep 6, 2022 – via IMDb.
  25. ^ "Une femme dans la Révolution". Dec 21, 2013. Retrieved Sep 6, 2022 – via IMDb.
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