Their function is infamous, their personality disturbing... Outcast from society, the executioners have, for centuries, formed veritable dynasties within which they have passed on their duties.
Assistants of the "Paris executioner" place Eugen Weidmann accused of the murder of five people on the guillotine before his public execution, June 17, 1939 in Versailles.
This article is from the magazine Sciences et Avenir Hors-série n°194 "Crimes et Châtiments" dated July-August 2018.
Seven hundred years later, Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi has many similarities with his distant colleague Estevenot le Bourel who in 1300, in Paris, was paid for the hanging of a locksmith guilty of theft. Estevenot then carries out the verdict of death implemented until then by the judges themselves - a "tradition" inherited from Roman civilization. The 14th century thus saw the emergence of a new professional, an individual who, for the time of a gesture, lost all his humanity to become a cog of justice.
Capital punishment or the "permanent spectacle of fatal violence"
Death sentences, still rare at that time, gradually replaced the pillory, physical punishment and banishment for an increasing number of crimes and misdemeanors. In the absence of a penal code and a scale of penalties, judges are free to choose the one they consider fairest. However, at the beginning of the 14th century, the cities in full expansion experienced growing violence, which prompted the magistrates to send messages of firmness. "Staged, put into words, put to death:capital executions offered, on the principle of judicial exemplarity, the permanent spectacle of fatal violence", notes Pascal Bastien, professor of modern European history at the University of Quebec in Montreal. And the more one condemns, the more one must execute. You might as well rely on a man who makes it his business and on whom you can discard, the executor doing the same by returning the responsibility for his action to the magistrate. After all, he only obeys the decision of an immanent justice, like Saad Al-Beshi relies on God.
Strangely, the executioner appears at the same time everywhere in Europe, whether the legal system is accusatory (a popular jury examines the case and pronounces the sanction) as in the Anglo-Saxon countries, or inquisitorial (this role is devolved to judges ) as in France… But it is only in our country that it has a specific name. A term whose etymology is moreover disputed:it could come from the word "stuff" - which means to torment -, or from the profession of saddler, which would have been more in demand than others to provide candidates... or even from a of the first holders of the office, who would have been called Borel. "Historians have found few traces of the first recruitments, and if we have kept the list of the executioners of Paris from Estevenot to Marcel Chevalier (1976-1981), we do not know the profession prerequisite of these executors" , deplores Pascal Bastien. It has happened - rather rarely - that the position has been offered to a convict as an alternative sentence. Researchers often cite the judgment of the court of Bordeaux of April 13, 1674, which requires a certain Dupré to serve as executor in perpetuity instead of going to the galleys.
Seven hundred years later, Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi has many similarities with his distant colleague Estevenot le Bourel who in 1300, in Paris, was paid for the hanging of a locksmith guilty of theft. Estevenot then carries out the verdict of death implemented until then by the judges themselves - a "tradition" inherited from Roman civilization. The 14 e century thus sees the emergence of a new professional, an individual who, for the time of a gesture, loses all his humanity to become a cog in the wheel of justice.
Capital punishment or the "permanent spectacle of fatal violence"
Death sentences, still rare at that time, gradually replaced the pillory, physical punishment and banishment for an increasing number of crimes and misdemeanors. In the absence of a penal code and a scale of penalties, judges are free to choose the one they consider fairest. However, at the beginning of the 14 e century, the cities in full expansion experienced growing violence, which prompted the magistrates to send messages of firmness. "Staged, put into words, put to death:capital executions offered, on the principle of judicial exemplarity, the permanent spectacle of fatal violence", notes Pascal Bastien, professor of modern European history at the University of Quebec in Montreal. And the more one condemns, the more one must execute. You might as well rely on a man who makes it his business and on whom you can discard, the executor doing the same by returning the responsibility for his action to the magistrate. After all, he only obeys the decision of an immanent justice, like Saad Al-Beshi relies on God.
Strangely, the executioner appears at the same time everywhere in Europe, whether the legal system is accusatory (a popular jury examines the case and pronounces the sanction) as in the Anglo-Saxon countries, or inquisitorial (this role is devolved to judges ) as in France… But it is only in our country that it has a specific name. A term whose etymology is moreover disputed:it could come from the word "stuff" - which means to torment -, or from the profession of saddler, which would have been more in demand than others to provide candidates... or even from a of the first holders of the office, who would have been called Borel. "Historians have found few traces of the first recruitments, and if we have kept the list of the executioners of Paris from Estevenot to Marcel Chevalier (1976-1981), we do not know the profession prerequisite of these executors" , deplores Pascal Bastien. It has happened - rather rarely - that the position has been offered to a convict as an alternative sentence. Researchers often cite the judgment of the court of Bordeaux of April 13, 1674, which requires a certain Dupré to serve as executor in perpetuity instead of going to the galleys.
3,800 francs to get "the widow" out of the nail
For the population, the charge is vile and disturbing. The executioner only has his place on the outskirts of society. With Henri IV (1589-1610), it certainly became a royal office whose income provided protection from poverty, but the executor could not aspire to the honors due to any officer of the sovereign's justice. Good people ask themselves, as did the politician and philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821):"What is this inexplicable being who preferred to all pleasant professions, lucrative, honest and even honorable who present themselves in crowds to human strength or dexterity, that of tormenting and putting to death their fellows? Is this head, this heart made like ours?"
Very quickly, the executioner and his family were expelled from the city and had to live outside the walls. This reproach helps to create dynasties. Rejected, the families intermarry and produce children who take over in turn. Which suits everyone. "When a son succeeded his father, not only did the family of the deceased holder ensure the ownership of the office, but justice was also guaranteed that the office would always be held by an experienced executioner", assures Pascal Bastien.
This is how the six generations of the Sansons appear. Between 1688 and 1847, the family executed most of the convicts in France in Paris, the capital being the seat of the Court of Appeal. The last of the line also loses his position in strange circumstances. Executioner from 1840 to 1847, Henri-Clément, inveterate gambler, dabbling and drilled basket, was forced to pawn his guillotine to pay his debts. The Minister of Justice Michel Hébert having summoned him to cut off a new head, he is quite surprised to have to pay 3,800 francs to get "the widow" out of the nail! The dismissal letter will arrive the next day. Henri-Clément Sanson takes refuge in the countryside. And, according to legend, undertakes to write the history of his family. Seven generations of executors , published in 1862 - perhaps written by a "nigger" -, constitutes a first-hand testimony.
The villain must be hanged and the noble decapitated
The dynasty was established at the end of a 17 e century when the death sentences inflicted on offenders - without any political motive - are numerous. In Paris, "the villain must be hanged and the noble decapitated" , specify the legal texts since the previous century. The number of prisoners sentenced to death multiplied with the urbanization of the kingdom. In this context, the Sansons saw their importance grow. Charles-Henri, born around 1739, succeeded - at the age of 15! - to his father Charles Jean-Baptiste, victim of a stroke that left him half paralyzed. He will be the executioner of Robert-François Damiens, who tried to assassinate Louis XV in January 1757. The execution of the regicide on March 27 of the same year borrows from many tortures. For an hour and a half, Sanson burns Damiens' right hand in a sulfur fire, pinches his nipples which he sprinkles with boiling oil and molten lead, before the body is dismembered by quartering. Charles-Henri is not, however, the most skilful of his line. On May 9, 1766, he had to behead Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal, condemned for "having betrayed the interests of the king" - in this case, lost the French counters in India. Sanson, "without measuring his blow, struck him below the skull, much higher than necessary", says Siméon-Prosper Hardy, witness to the execution. Luckily, his father also attended:"The father immediately took the damascus [sword] from the hands of his son, struck the second blow and finished cutting the flesh, which was done in an instant."
This clumsiness had no impact on Charles-Henri's career. On October 9, 1789, on the proposal of deputy Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the Constituent Assembly, in the midst of a reform of the code of criminal procedure, decided that "the same offenses will be punished by the same kind of torture, regardless of rank and position. 'state of the culprit' , which forces us to invent "a human torture" . Charles-Henri Sanson - according to the words attributed to him by his grandson sixty years later - then wrote a memoir exposing all the difficulties represented by the detachment by the sword, and in particular "the impossibility of multiple executions, due to fatigue swords prone to chipping or losing their edge" . Still according to his descendant, the guillotine would be the fruit of the joint reflections of doctor Guillotin, the harpsichord maker Schmidt, the royal doctor Louis and the executioner. Ironically, Louis XVI would have intervened in person in these technical debates to propose an oblique blade, sharper than a straight blade... Which turned out to be wise.
With this machine, Charles-Henri was able to go through the Terror without getting tired, but with intense moral suffering. His grandson indeed describes an executioner shocked by the spectacle of continuous beheadings, shocked by the young age of some of the tortured, and fiercely opposed to revolutionary executions since he had secretly kept royalist leanings.
What surprises the executioner Sanson the most is his resignation in the face of torture. By tradition, those sentenced to death have the right to pronounce their last words in front of the crowd. In 1775 already appeared thus the Last sentiments of the most illustrious persons condemned to death , a work which presents to the public numerous examples of "heroic strength" and "virtue and simple courage" convicts addressing themselves with firmness and resolution to the people who have come to see them die. In the carts of the Revolution that lead to the scaffold, the tears are rare and discreet, the attitudes dolent, the poses bravado. Believers rely on God, royalists are eager to leave an era that rejects them, republicans die proudly for an ideal that has betrayed them.
This is why Charles-Henri Sanson keeps such vivid memories of the execution of Madame du Barry on December 8, 1793. Louis XV's last favorite cried, howled, her teeth chattered and her "face was all purple" . It takes four people to mount her to the scaffold as she struggles and pleads:"One more moment, Mr. Executioner!" And three long minutes will be needed to install it on the scale. "No one said a word and many fled in all directions as if routed", narrates Charles-Henri Sanson, who will later consider that if the condemned had been more numerous to rebel, the guillotine would perhaps have served less.
Between July 14, 1789 and October 21, 1796, Charles-Henri Sanson executed 2,548 men and 370 women in Paris. The executioner of the Revolution died in his bed in 1806. Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, terrible public accuser of the revolutionary tribunal, executed on May 7, 1795 as an epilogue to the Terror he had served so well, will find it difficult to admit that he survives her. "Since we condemn the accuser, there is no reason not to condemn the executioner who is exactly as guilty as him" , he will say to Sanson.
With the end of the Revolution, a page in the history of punishments turns. The First Empire creates the prison. In 1975, in his major work Discipline and Punish , the philosopher Michel Foucault explains how the punishment that afflicts the condemned no longer affects the body but the mind, through the deprivation of freedom. However, prison does not immediately replace death and the two sanctions will coexist for 180 years. Throughout this period, his supporters will continue to plead for the exemplarity of the ultimate punishment.
Fifty executors interviewed in Louisiana
Although a typographer by trade, the last executioner of France, Marcel Chevalier, is part of the "family", just like the Sansons. In 1947, he married Marcelle Obrecht, niece of the executioner André Obrecht, also from the line of executioners Anatole Deibler and Jules-Henri Desfourneaux, the last to have officiated in public in 1939. As tradition dictates, Marcel Chevalier was initially André Obrecht's assistant before being co-opted by him in 1976 to succeed him. He then carried out two executions, including that of Hamida Djandoubi, on September 10, 1977, the last convict put to death in France.
Throughout the world, the number of executioners is declining. But their psychological functioning does not change. In a - rare - study on the executioners of the death penalty in the United States, published in 2005, the psychologist Michael Osofsky shows that they exonerate themselves from their responsibility by highlighting the moral and social justifications of the decision of righteousness. Osofsky thus interviewed about fifty executioners from Louisiana. The tasks assigned to them are very specific:tying up the condemned person, placing the infusions, pressing the buttons triggering the injection of lethal substances. Only three of these officials had mental disorders. The others took refuge behind multiple arguments. Some blamed society and justice, others seemed unaware of the consequences of their act, and still others believed that the sentence was in line with the crime it punished. In his own eyes, the executioner is naturally… innocent.
This article is from the magazine Sciences et Avenir Hors-série n°194 "Crimes et Châtiments" dated July-August 2018.