Cartouche

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Cartouche
Cartouche's escape

Louis Dominique Garthausen , better known as Cartouche (also Louis Dominique Bourguignon ; *  1693 in Paris ; † November 28, 1721 there , whacked ) was a French robber , murderer and gang leader.

Life

Cartouche was the son of a wine merchant (the Brockhaus of 1837 speaks of the son of an honest craftsman ) in the Parisian Quartier de la Courtille. He was noticed by theft at school and his father chased him away at the age of twelve. He initially joined a group of idlers and adventurers, and a few years later a band of robbers in Normandy . This elected him soon as the leader because of his successful deeds. Back in Paris he worked for a while for the police lieutenant d'Argenson as an informer and then joined the army. After his return, he founded the band of robbers that raged in and around Paris until Cartouche (according to Sanson ) was captured in a tavern on October 15, 1721 . The information on the dates of the arrest is partly contradictory in the various sources. According to Gilles Henry (Cartouche le Brigand de la Régence) , he was betrayed by his comrade Gruthus on January 4, 1721. The magistrate offered a high reward for Cartouche's capture.

Cartouche was quite popular with the Parisian population and also with the nobility, not least because his pranks often testified to a certain joke. Henri Sanson writes in his diaries of the executioners of Paris (page 175 ff.), In which an entire chapter is devoted to Cartouche:

“The main feature in all of Cartouche's undertakings was the witty joke that almost always accompanied her. The thief was not satisfied with robbing his victims, but teased them as much as possible. That was also a secret of his great reputation; he understood quite well that he would be forgiven for a lot if he also amused those he scared. "

Judgment and death

An attempt to escape, in which the prison wall had already been breached, was foiled at the last minute and so Cartouche was brought into the conciergerie . On November 26th, he and four of his cronies were sentenced to be whacked after passing the ordinary and extraordinary awkward questioning . This took place on the morning of November 27th. These Sanson :

“On the morning of the 27th, Cartouche suffered the ordeal. A fracture, which the doctors found in him, spared him the torture of teetering; on the other hand, he suffered those of the Spanish boots up to the eighth (wedge) with extraordinary firmness and calm; he refused to make any confession. "

News of the impending execution had spread across the city at lightning speed. The Place de Grève and the adjacent streets were full of people. At four in the afternoon the executioner was supposed to lead Cartouche to the place of execution. During the transport, he noticed that he was apparently the only one brought to the execution. When he asked, the executioner told him that there were no other delinquents, that he was alone. Cartouche concluded with the words "The traitors!" That his cronies must have betrayed him in order to secure a milder sentence. He then called the court secretary and told him he still had confessions to make. He was taken to the town hall, where he testified to some gentlemen from Parliament who were still present. He only confessed to the crimes that had been proven to him anyway, but charged an accomplice, namely Pierre-François-Gruthus Duchatelet, by whom he felt betrayed, and also named a few fences.

The next day he was handed over to the executioner again . A retirement that had been granted to him had inadvertently not been given to the executioner in time, so that the delinquent had to endure the actual cycling to the bitter end. Then, as was customary at the time, he was braided onto the bike and survived this ordeal by twenty minutes.

Four days after this execution , other cronies followed him on the way to the scaffold . They too hoped to prolong their lives with additional statements. As a result, the process dragged on for another year and resulted in further convictions and executions.

literature

  • NN: The famous Ertz thief and street robber Cartouche. Leipzig 1722. Digitized and full text in the German text archive
  • Michel Ellenberger: Histoire d'un brigand, un brigand devant l'Histoire . La bibliothèque, 2006, ISBN 2-909688-40-2 .
  • Henri Sanson : Diaries of the executioners of Paris: 1685 - 1847 . Kiepenheuer 1982, ISBN 3-406-09165-2 , pages 175 ff., Original title of the French edition of 1862 Sept generations d´exécuteur
  • Gilles Henry: Cartouche, le Brigand de la Régence
  • Brockhaus Lexicon from 1837 [1]
  • Life and deeds of the world-notorious Spitz boy Louis Dominique Cartouche and his camerades: Sammt their whole process, final judgment, and execution , 1722, digitized

Movie

personal data
SURNAME Cartouche
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bourguignon, Louis Dominique (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French criminal
DATE OF BIRTH 1693
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1721
Place of death Paris