| Charles-Henri Sanson | |
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Real Name |
Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval |
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Born |
15 February, 1739 |
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Died |
4 July, 1806 |
Origin[]
Charles-Henri Sanson, 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 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. 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, he came to be known as "Gentleman of Paris". On January 10, 1765, he married his second wife, Marie-Anne Jugier. They had two sons: Gabriel and Henri, who became his successor.
In 1757, Sanson assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson 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.
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. 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. The use of the guillotine transformed Sanson's status under the revolutionary ideology from outcast to citizen, equal in rights and civil duties.
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. 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 pulling his head from the basket immediately after to show to the crowd. 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. Witnesses report an expression of "unequivocal indignation" on her face when her cheek was slapped. This offense against a woman executed moments before was considered unacceptable and Legros was imprisoned for three months because of his outburst.
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. After years of struggling with ill health he succumbed to his maladies on 4 July 1806.
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Charles-Henri Sanson before January 1, 1929 are public domain.
Some Notable Appearances are listed below:
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- The Memories of Sanson
- Memoirs of the Sansons; or, Seven generations of Executioners
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens alludes to Charles-Henri Sanson by comparing Sanson to the biblical Samson.
Notes[]
- 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. Sanson, who owned and maintained all his own equipment, argued persuasively that multiple executions were too demanding for the old methods.