PUBLIC EXECUTIONS, RITUALS OF POWER

PUBLIC EXECUTIONS SHOW THE POWER OF AUTHORITY AND HELPLESSNESS OF THE VICTIM  

Under the Old Regime, they were part of a whole in which each element reinforced the others.

# # #

When the condemned was well known or the crime exceptional, executions were popular spectacles that followed a rite: 

Louis IX Administers Justice / zoom

The executioner, escorted by trumpeters, announced the event in public places. Then came a procession of officials, archers, a priest and the condemned, that the population gathered along the streets to view:

Execution of Henri II of Montmorency in Toulouse in 1632, by Maurice Leloir in Théodore Cahu, "Richelieu," 1903 

Hangings took place on pillories rather than trees, to distinguish them from the anarchy of lynchings and arbitrariness of war:

  Hanging Thieves, "The Horrors of War" by Jacques Callot, 1633 / zoom

A Hanging at City Hall in 1583 by T.J.H. Hoffbauer, 19th-century drawing based on archives / zoom

 

 

A platform or ladder made the drama visible from afar:

British Library / zoom, no further information

British Library / zoom, no further information

The Execution of Hugh the Dispenser by Jean Froissart, zoom  

The ordeals were part of daily life: Executioners are breaking a victim's bones before he dies on a wheel raised high, in this  miséricorde* of the church of Champeaux**:

*Half-seat that l"(Demi-siège permettant aux moines de s'appuyer pendant les longues prières chantées, souvent orné de scènes de tous les jours.  

** À une heure à l'est de Paris

Claude Abron

The Horrors of War by Jacques Callot, 1633 (cut) / zoom

The condemned might express remorse or announce a further confession:

• Faced with eternity some even admitted crimes considered worse, such a sodomy, though that meant being burned instead of hanged.  

• Confessions led to finding accomplices, and the prisoner was rewarded with a few hours of life and a good dinner. When a woman who was falsely accused died of a stroke, "I got a dinner out of it," the condemned man said.

• On realizing that the hundreds of comrades who had promised to save him would do nothing, the bandit Cartouche, who had resisted torture, gave names for 18 hours. Among them, that of his mistress: When she was brought before him he said that she was innocent and that he just wanted to embrace her one last time. 

The crowd intoned the Salve Regina and the execution immediately followed.

If a decapitation, the executioner seized the head and cried out, "In the name of the king, justice is done!" (Here, in the name of the Republic):

Execution of Louis Capet, called XVI, January 21, 1793 / zoom

 

*     *    *

Next,

Executioners, indispensable pariahs