Robert-François Damiens

Robert-François Damiens (La Thieuloye 9 January 1715 - Paris 28 March 1757) was a Frenchman who attained notoriety by unsuccessfully attempting the assassination of Louis XV of France in 1757. He was the last person to be executed in France with the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty used for regicides, which was drawing and quartering.

[edit] Early life

Damiens was born in 1715 in La Thieuloye, a village near Arras in Artois, and enlisted in the army at an early age. After his discharge, he became a domestic servant at the college of the Jesuits in Paris, and was dismissed from this as well as from other employments for misconduct, earning him the epithet of Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil). During the disputes of Pope Clement XI with the Parlement of Paris, Damien's mind seems to have been excited by the ecclesiastical ferment which followed the refusal of the clergy to grant the sacraments to the Jansenists and Convulsionnaires; and he appears to have thought that peace would be restored by the death of the King. He, however, asserted, perhaps with truth, that he only intended to frighten the King without wounding him severely.

[edit] Assassination attempt

Damiens before his Judges

On January 5, 1757, as the King was entering his carriage, Damiens rushed forward and stabbed him with a knife, inflicting only a slight wound. He made no attempt to escape, and was apprehended at once. He was then tortured so as to have him divulge his accomplices or those who had sent him. This was unsuccessful. He was condemned as a regicide by the Parlement of Paris, and sentenced to be drawn and quartered, by horses at the Place de Grève.

[edit] Death

Before the torture, on 28 March 1757, he said "the day will be hard".^{[cite this quote]} He was tortured first with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted assassination, was burned using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens' limbs and ligaments did not separate easily; after some hours, representatives of the Parlement ordered the executioner and his aides to cut Damiens' joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His torso, apparently still living, was then burnt at the stake. He is viewed by some people as the Guy Fawkes of France, since both of these men tried to kill their Kings but failed and were brutally executed.

After his death his house was razed to the ground, his brothers and sisters were ordered to change their names, and his father, wife, and daughter were banished from France.

[edit] Aftermath

The execution was witnessed by famous 18th-century adventurer Giacomo Casanova, who included a scandalized account in his memoirs.^[1]:

We had the courage to watch the dreadful sight for four hours(...) Damien was a fanatic, who, with the idea of doing a good work and obtaining a heavenly reward, had tried to assassinate Louis XV; and though the attempt was a failure, and he only gave the king a slight wound, he was torn to pieces as if his crime had been consummated.(...)I was several times obliged to turn away my face and to stop my ears as I heard his piercing shrieks, half of his body having been torn from him, but the Lambertini and Mme XXX did not budge an inch. Was it because their hearts were hardened? They told me, and I pretended to believe them, that their horror at the wretch's wickedness prevented them feeling that compassion which his unheard-of torments should have excited.

—Book 2, Volume 5, Chapter 3

An allusion to Damiens's attack and execution, and Casanova's account of it, are used by Mark Twain to suggest the cruelty and injustice of aristocratic power in chapter XVIII of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

Damiens's execution is described and discussed at length in the introduction to Michel Foucault's study of systems of punishment, Discipline and Punish. Science fiction writer James Morrow draws on the incident for the trial of God in his novel Blameless in Abaddon. There is also a description of the death of Damiens in Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade. The incident figures prominently in Hanns Heinz Ewers' frame-tale "The Execution of Damiens". Thomas Paine in his Rights of Man mentions Damiens' cruel execution as an example of the cruelty of the French (or any other) government at that time. Paine argues that these methods were the reason why the masses dealt with their prisoners in such a cruel manner when the revolution occurred.

[edit] References

1. ^ (English) Giacomo Casanova (1787). The Complete Memoires. Project Gutenberg. http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/etext-project/Biography/casanova/chapter59.html. 

[edit] External links

• Boeglin, Edouard (1999-01-06). "On a voulu tuer le Bien-Aimé" (in French). Journal L'Alsace / Le Pays. http://www.alsapresse.com/jdj/99/01/06/MA/article_12.html. Retrieved 2008-10-06. 

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.