What a sombre and striking figure in the deeply coloured background of history is the headsman, that passive agent of strange tyrannies, that masked executor of laws which were often but the expression of man’s violence! He stands aloof from the brilliant web of life, yet, turn where we will, his shadow falls across the scene. In the little walled towns of mediæval Europe, in the splendid cities, in the broad lands held by feudal lord or stately monastery, wherever the struggle for freedom and power was sharpest and sternest, the headsman played his part. An unreasoning and richly imaginative fear wrapped him in a mantle of romance, as deeply stained as the scarlet cloak which was his badge of office. Banished from the cheerful society of men (de Maistre tells us that if other houses surrounded his abode, they were deserted, and left to crumble and decay), he enjoyed privileges that compensated him for his isolation. His tithes were exacted as ruthlessly as were those of prince or baron; and if his wife chattered little on summer days with friendly gossips, she was sought in secret after nightfall for hideous amulets that blessed—or cursed—the wearer. From father to son, from son to grandson, the right was handed down; and the young boy was taught to lift and swing the heavy sword, that his hand might be as sure as his eye, his muscles as hard as his heart.
Much of life’s brilliant panorama was seen from the elevation of the scaffold in the days when men had no chance nor leisure to die lingeringly in their beds. They fell fighting, or by the assassin’s hand, or by the help of what was then termed law; and the headsman, standing ever ready for his rôle, beheld human nature in its worst and noblest aspects, in moments of stern endurance and supreme emotion, of heroic ecstasy and blank despair. Had he a turn for the marvellous, it was gratified. He saw Saint Denis arise and carry his severed head from Montmartre to the site of the church which bears his name to-day. He saw Saint Felix and Saint Alban repeat the miracle. He heard Lucretia of Ancona pronounce the sacred name three times after decapitation. Ordericus Vitalis, that most engaging of historians, tells us the story of the fair Lucretia; and also of the Count de Galles, who asked upon the scaffold for time in which to say his Pater Noster. When he reached the words, Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, the headsman—all unworthy of his office—grew impatient, and brought down his shining sword. The Count’s head rolled on the ground, but from his open lips came with terrible distinctness the final supplication, Sed libera nos a malo.
These were not trivial experiences. What a tale to tell o’ nights was that of Théodoric Schawembourg, whose headless trunk arose and walked thirty paces from the block! Auberive, who has preserved this famous legend, embroiders it with so many fantastic details that the salient point of the narrative is well-nigh lost; but the dead and forgotten headsman beheld the deed in all its crude simplicity. Had he, on the other hand, a taste for experimental science, it was given him to watch the surgeons of Prague, who in 1679 replaced a severed head upon a young criminal’s shoulders, and kept the lad alive for half an hour. Panurge, it will be remembered, was permanently successful in a similar operation; but Panurge was a man of genius. We should hardly expect to find his like among the doctors of Prague.
Strange and unreasonable laws guaranteed to the headsman his full share of emoluments. He was well paid for his work, and never suffered from a dull season. From the towns he received poultry and fodder, from the monasteries, fish and game. The Abbaye de Saint-Germain gave him every year a pig’s head; the Abbaye de Saint-Martin five loaves of bread and five bottles of wine. Cakes were baked for him on the eve of Epiphany. From each leper in the community he exacted—Heaven knows why!—a tax at Christmastime. Les filles de joie were his vassals, and paid him tribute. He had the power to save from death any woman on her way to the scaffold, provided he were able and willing to marry her. He was the first official summoned to the body of a suicide; and standing on the dead man’s breast, he claimed as his own everything he could touch with the point of his long sword. He might, if he chose, arrest the little pigs that strayed in freedom through the streets of Paris,—like the happy Plantagenet pigs of London,—and carry them as prisoners to the Hôtel Dieu. Here, unless it could be shown that they belonged to the monks of Saint Anthony, and so, for the sake of the good pig that loved the blessed hermit, were free from molestation, their captor demanded their heads, or a fine of five sous for every ransomed innocent. It was his privilege to snatch in the market-place as much corn as he could carry away in his hands, and the peasants thus freely robbed submitted without a murmur, crossing themselves with fervour as he passed. The representative of law and order was not unlike a licensed libertine in the easy day of old.
The element of picturesqueness entered into this life, sombre traditions enriched it, terror steeped it in gloom, the power for which it stood lent to it dignity and weight. In Spain the headsman wore a distinctive dress, and his house was painted a deep and ominous red. In France the ancient title “Exécuteur de la haute justice” had a full-blown majesty of sound. In Germany superstition grew like a fungus beneath the scaffold’s shade, until even the sword was believed to be a sentient thing with strange powers of its own. Who can forget the story of the child Annerl, whose mother took her to the headsman’s house, whereupon the great weapon stirred uneasily in its cupboard, thirsting for her blood. Then the headsman besought the mother to allow him to cut the little girl very lightly, that the sword might be appeased; but she shudderingly refused, and Annerl, abandoned to her destiny, was led thirty years later to the block. Executions at night were long in favour, and by the flare of torches the scaffold stood revealed to a great and gaping crowd. For centuries la place de Grève was the theatre for this ghastly drama, until every foot of the soil was saturated with blood. Only in 1633 were these torchlight decapitations forbidden throughout France. They had grown too turbulently entertaining.
The headsman’s office was hereditary, and if there were no sons, a son-in-law succeeded to the post. Henri Sanson, the last of his dread name, claimed that he was of good blood, and that the far-off ancestor who handed down his sword to nine generations had been betrayed by love to this dark destiny. He had married a headsman’s daughter, and could not escape the terrible dowry she brought him. It is not possible to attach much weight to the Sanson memoirs,—they are so plainly apocryphal; but we know that the family plied its craft for nearly two hundred years, and that one woman of the race bore seven sons, who all became executioners. In 1726 Charles Sanson died, leaving a little boy, Jean Baptiste, only seven years old. Upon him devolved his father’s office; but, in view of his tender infancy, an assistant was appointed to do the work until he came of age. It was required, however, that the child should stand upon the scaffold at every execution, sanctioning it with his presence.
The pride of the headsman lay in his dexterity. The sword was heavy, the stroke was sure. Capeluche, who during the furious struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians severed many a noble head, was a true enthusiast, practising his art con amore, and with incredible delicacy and skill. When the fortunes of war brought him in turn upon the scaffold, he proved no craven; but took a lively and intelligent interest in his own decapitation. His last moments were spent in giving a practical lesson to the executioner; showing him where to stand, where to place the block, and how best to handle his weapon.
The vast audience that assembled so often to witness a drama never staled by repetition was wont to be exceedingly critical. Bungling work drew down upon the headsman the execrations of the mob, and not infrequently placed his own life in danger. De Thou’s head fell only at the eleventh stroke, the Duke of Monmouth was mangled piteously, and in both these instances the fury of the mob rose to murder point. It was ostensibly to save such sufferings and such scenes that the guillotine was adopted in France; but for the guillotine it is impossible to cherish any sentiment save abhorrence. Vile, vulgar, and brutalizing, its only merit was the hideous speed with which it did its work; a speed which the despots of the Terror never found fast enough. In October, 1792, twenty-one Girondists were beheaded in thirty-one minutes; but as practice made perfect, these figures were soon outdistanced. The highest record reached was sixty-two decapitations in forty-five minutes, which sounds like the work of the shambles.
Charles Henri Sanson, the presiding genius of the guillotine, has been lifted to notoriety by the torrents of blood he shed; but his is a contemptible figure, without any of the dark distinction that marked his predecessors. His pages of the family memoirs are probably mendacious, and certainly, as M. Loye pathetically laments, “insipid.” He poses as a physiologist, and tells strange tales of the condemned who long survived beheading, as though sixty-two executions in forty-five minutes left leisure for the study of such phenomena. He also affects the tone of a philanthropist, commiserates the king who died by his hands, and is careful to assure us that it was an assistant named Legros who, holding up the severed head of Charlotte Corday, struck the fair cheek which blushed beneath the blow. We are even asked to believe that he, Sanson, whispered to Marie Antoinette as she descended from the cart, “Have courage, Madame!”—counsel of which that daughter of the Cæsars stood in little need.
The contrast is sharp between this business-like butchery, where the condemned were begrudged the time it took to die, and the earlier executions, so full of dignity and composure. The vilest criminals felt intuitively that the fulness of their atonement consecrated those last sad moments, and behaved often with unexpected propriety and grace. Mme. de Brinvilliers was a full half hour upon the scaffold. The headsman prepared her for death, untying her cap-strings, cutting off her hair, baring her shoulders, and binding her hands. She was composed without bravado, contrite without sanctimoniousness. “I doubt,” wrote her confessor, the Abbé Piron, “whether in all her life she had ever been so patient under the hands of her maid.” Some natural scorn she expressed at sight of the crowd straining with curiosity to see her die: “Un beau spectacle, Mesdames et Messieurs!”—but this was all. The executioner swept off her head with one swift stroke; then, hastily opening a flask, took a deep draught of wine. “That was a good blow,” he said to the Abbé. “At these times I always recommend myself to God, and He has never failed me. This lady has been on my mind for a week past. I will have six Masses said for her soul.” Surely such a headsman ennobled in some degree the direful post he bore.