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.
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When the condemned was an important figure 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 archival records / zoom
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A platform or ladder made the drama visible from afar:
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The Execution of Hugh the Dispenser by Jean Froissart, zoom |
- Faced with eternity some even admitted crimes considered worse, such a sodomy, though that meant being burnt 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!"
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