Charles Henri Sanson

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Charles-Henri Sanson, drawing by Eustache Lorsay (1822–1871)

Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval (born February 15, 1739 in Paris , † July 4, 1806 ) was a French executioner, since 1778 the official executioner of Paris and was known as the executioner of the French Revolution .

Life

Charles Henri Sanson was born as the eldest son of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson (1719–1778) and his first wife Madeleine Tronson. He comes from a family of executioners who, originally from Scotland, settled in Abbeville in Picardy and held important offices there. A branch of the family exercised the executioner's office in Paris and Versailles since 1688: Charles-Louis Sanson (1635-1707), a descendant of the cartographer Nicolas Sanson , was in 1662 a lieutenant in the regiment of the Marquis of La Boissière. In 1675 he married Marguerite Jouënne († 1681), the daughter of the executioner of Rouen, Pierre Jouënne. He had to end his military career and went to Paris as a widower in 1687. On September 24, 1688, he inherited the Paris executioner's office of his predecessor Nicolas Levasseur and in 1699 married Jeanne-Renée Dubut. The son from his first marriage, Charles Sanson (* 1681, † September 25, 1726), took over the office from 1707 to 1726 and married Anne-Marthe Dubutt in 1707. He was succeeded by his son Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson. Because of his minority (7 years) his mother and her second husband, François Prudhomme, represented him as "Regent" (French régent , official title of interim hangman ) until 1739.

Charles-Henri Sanson was educated at the monastery school in Rouen until he left the school in 1753, to the regret of the director, at the age of fourteen due to the indiscretion of the father of another pupil, who had recognized the executioner during a visit by Charles-Henri's father had to in order not to endanger their good reputation. From then on, Charles-Henri received private tuition and went to Leiden University to become a doctor . He had a particular aversion to his family's hereditary trade.

Executioner as a profession

Grave 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

A severe paralysis of his father and the assertiveness of Anne-Marthe Sanson, his paternal grandmother, can be attributed to the fact that Charles-Henri broke off his medical studies and started the hated profession of executioner to secure the livelihood of his family in 1754. As an executioner (bourreau) he was known as "Monsieur de Paris" - "The gentleman from Paris" (in the sense of a certain gentleman from Paris ). On January 10, 1765, Sanson married his second wife, Marie-Anne Jugier, who was six years his senior. They had two sons together, Henri (1767-1830), who became his official successor, and Gabriel (1769-1792), who was also involved in executions.

In 1757 Charles-Henri Sanson assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson (1721–1795, executioner of Reims) in the extremely cruel mutilation and execution of the king's assassin Robert François Damiens . His uncle then resigned as an executioner. In 1778 Charles-Henri finally officially got the blood-red coat, the mark of the executioner, from his father Charles-Jean-Baptiste and held this office until his son Henri finally replaced the sick man in 1795. The vast majority of executions were carried out by Sansons up to six executioners. Charles-Henri Sanson performed beheadings in 2918, including the Louis XVI. although he himself was a supporter of the monarchy . Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded by his son Henri, who de facto represented his father since 1793; he himself only attended the execution. Later, a number of prominent revolutionaries followed on the guillotine, such as Georges Danton , Camille Desmoulins , Maximilien de Robespierre and Antoine de Saint-Just , whose condemnation Charles-Henri Sanson noted with satisfaction.

Proponents of the guillotine

Charles-Henri Sanson was an avid supporter of Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin's suggestion that a simple mechanism for beheading would be a more humane way of execution. He argued that the executioner tired quickly after severing his heads several times , that the guiding sword wore out, and that the purchase and maintenance costs were enormous.

Sanson's hobbies included dissecting his victims and making medicines using medicinal herbs that grew in his garden. In his free time he liked to play the violin and cello and evidently enjoyed going to the opera, as he particularly liked the music of Christoph Willibald Gluck . On music evenings he often met the harpsichord maker and music lover Tobias Schmidt , a German who, as a craftsman, was later to create the killing machine or guillotine according to the concept of Antoine Louis , the king's personal doctor, and according to the king's suggestions. On April 25, 1792, it was used for the first time on the Place de Grève (now the Town Hall Square) in the execution of the bandit Pelletier by Charles-Henri Sanson.

An anecdote reports that Charles-Henri Sanson met Napoléon on the street after his resignation . Napoléon asked Sanson if he could still sleep soundly after executing three thousand people. Sanson replied: "If the emperors, kings and dictators can sleep peacefully, why shouldn't the executioner be able to?"

successor

In April 1793 he de facto handed over his office to his son Henri Sanson (1767-1840), who held it for a total of 47 years until his death in 1840. He was a revolutionary soldier (sergent, then captain of the National Guard of Paris, later the artillery and police of the tribunals) and executioner, guillotined Marie Antoinette and the chief prosecutor Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (1795). His younger brother Gabriel (1769–1792), assistant to his father Charles-Henri and brother Henri since 1790, died while showing a severed head by falling from the scaffolding. Charles-Henri Sanson himself died on July 4, 1806 and is buried in the cemetery in the Montmartre district. His son Henri Sanson, his wife Marie-Louise Damidot, the grandson Henri-Clément Sanson and his wife Virginie-Emilie Lefébure are also in the family grave.

Henri-Clément (Henry-Clément) was the sixth and last executioner in the family. He held the post as an assistant from 1830 and officially from 1840 to 1847. He carried out 18 executions (including those of Pierre-François Lacenaire and Victor Avril in 1836) and had to pawn his guillotine in 1847 because of his pathological gambling addiction . When it became known, he was arrested and had to explain everything to the authorities. The French Minister of Justice was forced to pay his hangman's debts. On March 18, 1847, Henri-Clément Sanson was relieved of his official duties. This ended the 159-year tenure of the Sanson family as executioners of Paris. He had one last execution on the triggered guillotine until Charles-André Férey was appointed as his successor in the office of executioner, who was replaced after two years by Jean-François Heidenreich. Henri-Clément Sanson wrote his memoirs and those of his family in the years that followed.

In 1859, Henri-Clément Sanson dealt with the yearbooks of his ancestors, which show that the Sansons had carried out death sentences in the capital of the kingdom since the end of 1685, when Charles Sanson de Longval moved from Normandy to Paris. In 1862 Henri-Clément Sanson's works were published, which since 2004 have been available as complete diaries of the executioners of Paris. Sanson sums it up (p. 11): “Forged by sacred duties to the block and the hatchet, I had to perform the sad task which my birth placed upon me. But in the midst of my career, the only offspring of an executioner dynasty of this kind, I have gladly renounced the purple scaffold and the scepter of death. "

literature

  • Robert Christophe: Les Sanson, bourreaux de père en fils, pendant deux siècles. Arthème Fayard, Paris 1960
  • Guy Lenôtre: The guillotine and the executioners at the time of the French Revolution. Kadmos, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-931659-03-8
  • Hans-Eberhard Lex: The executioner of Paris. Charles-Henri Sanson, the guillotine, the victims. Quickly u. Röhring, Hamburg 1989. ISBN 3-89136-242-0
  • Chris E. Paschold, Albert Gier (ed.): The executioner - The diary of Charles Henri Sanson (From the time of horror 1793–1794). Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1989; ISBN 3-458-16048-5
  • Henri Sanson: Diaries of the executioners of Paris. 1685-1847. First and second volume in one edition, ed. v. Eberhard Wesemann u. Knut-Hannes Wettig. Nikol, Hamburg 2004. ISBN 3-933203-93-7
  • Diaries of the executioners of Paris. Translator: Eduard Trautner
  • Shin'ichi Sakamoto: Innocent , Manga in 9 volumes, 2013, Tokyopop publishing house; ISBN 978-3-8420-3569-0

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sanson, Charles Henri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Longval, Charles-Henri Sanson de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French executioner
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1739
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1806
Place of death Paris