As one of the characters in The Three Musketeers used to say, "an executioner can kill and not be a murderer." Following this rule, seven generations of the Sansons family have worked honestly on the scaffold for two hundred years. They took the lives of several thousand sentenced to death, but at the same time remained all respected members of society.
In the Middle Ages, the executioner profession was a respectable occupation, comparable, for example, to the butcher's business. Well, what, in fact, is the difference what to cut into pieces - a cow carcass or a human body? Both are permitted by law, which means that there is nothing reprehensible in this. In accordance with the guild traditions, the position of the city executioner was necessarily transferred from father to son, and in the absence of a male heir, to the daughter's husband. At the end of the 17th century, the hereditary executioner of the city of Rouen thought about a successor. He had no sons. And he took with him to work his son-in-law, young Charles Sanson. The son-in-law came from an old but impoverished family. Sanson's ancestors were nobles, participated in the crusades, but the family went bankrupt, and Charles was forced to marry a commoner (apparently, the executioner's daughter was an enviable bride with a good dowry). Charles himself managed to take part in the battles, smelled gunpowder, saw blood, but when, standing on the scaffold, for the first time saw how his father-in-law carried out the sentence, he could not stand it and fainted. However, he quickly mastered the secrets of the profession and reached such heights of skill that in 1688 Louis XIV appointed him the chief executioner of Paris - the executor there died childless.
In the capital, Sanson occupied a state-owned dwelling, the so-called "Executioner's Palace". There was a small but cozy torture chamber and a grocery store near the apartment. One of the privileges of the foreman's shoulder business was the collection of vegetable and fruit tribute from Parisian shopkeepers, so in his own shop fresh goods were never transferred at dumping prices.
Charles Sanson died in 1695. His position and tools passed to his son - also Charles. From waving the sword on the scaffold of Charles the Younger, only family matters were distracted. The executioner's wife gave birth to several daughters, and therefore when Charles Jean Baptiste Sanson was born in 1719, his father's joy knew no bounds - a successor appeared. When in 1726, after almost 30 years of continuous labor on the capital's scaffolds, Charles Sanson Jr. died, his son was only 8 years old, and he could not even lift his father's heavy ax. Law is law, and on October 2, 1726, little Charles Jean Baptiste was appointed by the Paris prosecutor general as the city's executioner. True, with some reservations. “Since it was impossible,” wrote the chronicler, “so that a child of his age could himself perform the sad duty with which he was clothed, Parliament gave him an assistant executioner named Prudhomme,demanding that he at least be present at all the executions that took place at that time, in order to give them a legal look."
Public execution in the 17th century
Instead of dull school classes, the boy spent time in the fresh air, in constant, albeit short-lived, communication with interesting people. Having reached adulthood, he pushed the assistant aside and himself took up the ax, rope and flint for the fire.
Charles Jean Baptiste tried his best to compensate for his active participation in the decline of the Parisian population. He had 16 children, 10 of whom survived to a venerable age. The most famous of these offspring was Charles Henri Sanson, born on February 15, 1739. Little Charles Henri Daddy's work did not really like. He studied at the school at the convent in Rouen and dreamed not about the execution of people, but about their healing. Unfortunately, the study with the Carmelites had to be interrupted - one of the parents found out that the executioner's son was studying in the same class with his son and raised a scandal. The nuns did not see anything reprehensible in the profession of an executor, but out of harm's way they asked the boy to be picked up from school. Charles Henri continued his studies at home, helping his parent with a heavy heart in his free time. A few years later, he entered Leiden University,where he studied medicine.
Executioner costume, mid-18th century
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Theoretical studies on the structure of the human body did not last long. Dad was paralyzed, and the relatives insisted that Charles Henri take over the family business. He made his debut on the scaffold in 1757, but not in Paris, but in Reims, helping his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson. That was not an easy task. A certain Robber Damien attacked the aged Louis XV and scratched him in the side with a penknife. Despite the frivolity of the wound, the "regicide" needed to be punished approximately. There was public torture and quartering. Without the help of his nephew, the uncle simply could not cope. Charles Henri was able to put into practice his initial knowledge of anatomy for the first time. Gradually, the new Parisian executioner got a taste of his craft. He beheaded General Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tolendal, who surrendered French troops to the British in India (1766),quartered and burned the blasphemer François-Jean Lefebvre de La Bara (1766), wheeled and burned the poisoner Antoine François Deroux (1777). The executions took place with a huge crowd of people, and Charles Henri was a star of the Parisian scale. Every year he "performed" on the scaffold only a few dozen times. It was possible to work in a rather relaxed mode. However, the intensity of the executions changed dramatically with the arrival of the Great French Revolution.
Under the new government, the executioners' work significantly increased, and, what is most annoying, the "vegetable privileges" of the executors were canceled. Fragile production tools like axes and ropes quickly deteriorated. During mass executions, even the experienced Sanson got tired and by the end of the protracted procedure, he separated the heads from the bodies not as delicately as at the beginning, delivering unnecessary suffering to the sentenced. The old profession clearly needed innovation. Citizen Sanson even gave a speech to the national assembly, complaining on behalf of all his colleagues about the harsh working conditions: "The constant renewal of the instruments of execution is an unjust burden that must be borne by the executioner himself." The revolutionary authorities listened to the requests of a valuable specialist and set in motion the latest invention of the doctor and deputy Joseph Ignace Guillotin.
Charles Henri Sanson
The killing machine was made by Sanson's close friend, the piano master Tobias Schmidt. And Charles Henri himself took an active part in testing the novelty. First, he decapitated the straw stuffed animals, then moved on to sheep carcasses, then it was the turn of the unclaimed corpses from the Paris morgue. There were no complaints about the car from the test participants, and on April 25, 1792, Sanson presented the guillotine to the judgment of the discerning Parisian public, executing the thief Jacques Nicholas Pelletier on the Place de Grève.
A couple of months later, the guillotine, transferred to Revolution Square (now Concorde Square), started working at full power - the time had come for the Jacobin terror. The number of people executed by Sanson went to thousands, but the character of the executioner did not change. He remained a quiet, meek, polite person, actively distributing alms, collecting herbarium and with natural science curiosity dissected the bodies of the people he had beheaded. By convictions, Charles Henri was a monarchist, and he really did not want to separate the head of Louis XVI from his own body. Sanson preferred the realities of life to political sympathies: if he refused to execute the king, the monarch would still be beheaded, but immediately after Sanson himself. Experiencing deep moral suffering, the Parisian executioner executed not only the King of France, but also Queen Marie Antoinette,the murderer of Marat Charlotte Corday (Sanson carefully advised her on the way to the place of execution to sit in the center of the cart to shake less) and hundreds of other people. The accumulated fatigue forced the honored master of shoulder affairs to retire, and the main inspirer of the mass executions of Robespierre on July 28, 1794, was already beheaded by his son Gabriel Sanson.
The execution of Louis XVI
In retirement, Charles Henri enjoyed well-deserved honor and respect. He even had a chance to play pranks with Napoleon. Bonaparte sarcastically asked if the man who took the lives of thousands of people was sleeping peacefully. "If conscience does not torment kings and emperors, then where does the executioner get insomnia?" - retorted Sanson. By the way, on the account of the veteran of the scaffold there were 2,918 personally executed sentences. In the list of the most productive executioners, he stands right after his colleagues from the Soviet NKVD organs.
Charles Henri Sanson died in 1806. In 1830, his supposedly written memoirs appeared, which were in great demand. For example, Pushkin read them with interest. And it is not surprising, because the editor of the "Executioner's Notes" and, possibly, their true author was Honore de Balzac.
Sansons family crypt
Representatives of the Sansons family worked for a long time on the scaffolds not for fear, but for conscience. A misfire happened only in 1847, when the grandson of the revolutionary executioner Clement Henri Sanson, who wasted himself to pieces and got into debt, pledged a guillotine to the usurer for three thousand francs. Unfortunately, literally the next day, another death sentence was passed, and there was nothing to execute the criminal with. Despite the executioner's pleas, the usurer flatly refused to give him a guillotine for at least half an hour. Frustrated, Sanson appeared on the scaffold with his great-grandfather's ax. But the authorities have abandoned such an anachronism. While the city budget was buying out the guillotine, the life of the convict extended for several more days. Clement Henri carried out the sentence and was fired the next day. After the shameful resignation, luck suddenly smiled at him: journalist d 'Olbrez paid the ex-executioner 60 thousand francs for the right to publish the fictional notes of seven generations of the Sanson family in six volumes. Happy Clement Henri paid off his debts and healed happily. After a couple of years, he consolidated his well-being, driving the Tussaud brothers for the wax museum they were creating, the remains of grandfather's guillotine during the revolutionary terror. At this time, executioners with other names were already pressing the handle of the new guillotine on the French scaffolds. At this time, executioners with other names were already pressing the handle of the new guillotine on the French scaffolds. At this time, executioners with other names were already pressing the handle of the new guillotine on the French scaffolds.
Dmitry Karasyuk