A very prominent and very flagrant case was that of Count Lally-Tollendal, who was denounced as having betrayed the interests of France, and caused the loss of her Indian possessions. He was of Irish extraction, a hot-headed, hare-brained Irishman, whose military skill was unequal to a difficult campaign. His had been an eventful career. He became a soldier in his tender years, and held a commission in Dillon’s Irish regiment when no more than twelve and was engaged in the siege of Barcelona. He rose quickly to the command of a regiment, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general at the early age of thirty-seven. At one time he conceived a plan for landing a body of ten thousand on the English coast to support the rights of the Pretender, and spent a large portion of his fortune in the carrying out of the scheme, which, of course, came to nothing. During his career as commander in India, the Count committed very grievous blunders, and lacked the tact and diplomacy which had brought success to his great predecessor, Dupleix. Count Lally began by committing fearful excesses, and showed his contempt for the native religion by desecrating the most honored temples and sanctuaries. He triumphed over the English for a time, and drove them back into the heart of the country, whence they turned and attacked afresh; and having delayed his retreat he was defeated with considerable loss. Other disasters speedily followed until he was eventually surrounded and besieged in Pondichéry, which he defended and held with desperate bravery, but was forced at last to surrender.
Lally became a prisoner of war at the fall of Pondichéry and was sent to England. He heard there of the storm of abuse that was vented upon him in Paris, and he asked permission to go over and stand his trial. He was released on parole for the purpose, and arrived in his native country, taking with him “his head and his innocence,” as he wrote to the Duc de Choiseul. A man of fierce temper and overbearing demeanor, he had made numerous enemies and incurred the bitter jealousy of his colleague, the naval commander in Indian waters, Comte d’Ache. When brought to trial after a long and wearisome detention for fifteen months in the Bastile, the long list of charges against him contained many that were pitiful and contemptible. When at last arraigned, the trial lingered on for more than a year and a half, when fresh evidence was found among the papers of Father Lavuar, the superior of the Jesuits in Pondichéry. The priest had gone to Paris to claim a pension from the government, but died suddenly, and it was found that he had left a large amount of gold and a number of documents compromising Lally-Tollendal’s character and accusing him of treason and malversation. This testimony was accepted and led to his conviction and sentence to death.
His demeanor during his trial won him a certain sympathy with the crowd. The vehemence of his denials of guilt and his violent temper impressed people with an idea that he was a much wronged man. In England he had many apologists and supporters. It was said on his behalf that he went to India a perfect stranger to the country, he made native allies who proved false to him, his troops mutinied, he had no horsemen; yet he took ten fortresses, won nine battles and made a good fight until he was out-numbered, and all through was badly seconded by his own officers. Voltaire’s opinion of him is worth quoting: “I am persuaded that Lally was no traitor. I believe him to have been an odious man, a bad man, if you will, who deserved to be killed by any one except the executioner.” Again, “It is very certain that his bad temper brought him to the scaffold. He is the only man who ever lost his head for being brutal.”
The sentence of the Parliament was death by decapitation, and Lally was sent from the Bastile to the Conciergerie to hear his sentence. Great precautions were taken along the road as it was feared the populace might make some demonstration in his favor. He resented being compelled to kneel to hear sentence, and was greatly incensed when told he must die. “But what have I done?” he vainly protested. The sentence produced a great effect upon him, but he regained his self-possession on returning to the Bastile. Many persons interceded on his behalf, but the King remained unmoved, although public opinion remained the same and disapproved of his execution. The authorities, however, feared that the people might be inclined to rescue him, and therefore ordered him to be gagged while being led to the Place de Grève. The Count strongly resisted this mode of treatment, but the gag was placed in his mouth, and he was otherwise held in check. Just before the execution took place he ordered the headsman, young Sanson, to remove a handsome vest he (Lally) was wearing, composed of the golden tissue made only in India, and directed that it should be presented to the executioner’s father, who was also present. The first blow from the younger was not successful, so the final act was performed by old Sanson, and was greeted with a cry of horror from the assembled crowds.
A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since Ravaillac had suffered for the assassination of Henri Quatre and had brought no diminution of the savage cruelty of the French criminal law. In 1757 the extreme penalty was inflicted upon another culprit who had dared to lift his hand against the cowardly voluptuary who occupied the throne, and in precisely the same bloodthirsty and abominable fashion. Ravaillac killed his victim; Damiens did no more than prick his man with the small blade of a horn handled penknife. Louis XV was so frightened at this pitiful wound that he “trembled between the sheets,” under the strong belief that the weapon had been poisoned. A confessor was instantly summoned, and absolution was pronounced after the King had detailed his sins. This absolution was repeated aloud every minute of the night.
What had actually happened? It was an intensely cold night, the 5th of January, 1757, and the King, clad in his furs, came down-stairs at Versailles to enter his carriage. A crowd of courtiers, footmen and an escort surrounded the doorway as the King emerged on the arm of his grand equerry. Suddenly the King exclaimed, “Some one has struck me and pricked me with a pin. That man there!” and as he spoke he inserted his hand beneath his fur coat, to find it smeared with blood when he withdrew it. “That is certainly the man,” added the King, pointing to Damiens. “Let him be arrested, but do not kill him.” In the wild confusion that now arose, Damiens might easily have slunk away, but he stood his ground and was seized by the guards. Immediate vengeance was wreaked by his removal to the nearest guard-house, where he was put to the torture by the application of red-hot irons to his legs, but he would say no more than that he had not desired to kill the King, but only to give him a salutary warning.
Deep anxiety prevailed when this trifling attempt upon the life of a worthless, self-indulgent monarch was known through the country. The story was exaggerated absurdly. “This fearful attempt is of a nature to cause so just an alarm that I do not lose a moment,” writes one of the ministers, “in diminishing your apprehension and acquainting you with the facts of this terrible event.” After “the terrible accident,” the King was bled twice. “The wound is healthy, there is no fever, and he is perfectly tranquil, and would be inclined to sleep, were it not that the wound is on the right side, that on which his Majesty is accustomed to lie,” continued the minister. The provinces were greatly excited. “I found the whole city of Bordeaux in the greatest consternation,” writes the Lieutenant-Governor of Guienne. At Aix the courier was expected with breathless impatience, and good news was received with shouts of joy and clapping of hands. The delight at Marseilles when good news came was equal to the terror inspired by the first evil report.
Damiens was taken straight to the Conciergerie, where the legal machinery could be best set in motion for his trial and the preliminary torture. His conviction was a foregone conclusion, and his sentence in all its hideous particulars was on exactly the same lines as that of Ravaillac. He was to be subjected to the question, ordinary and extraordinary, to make the amende honorable, to have his right arm severed, his flesh torn off his body with red-hot pincers, and finally, while still alive, to be torn asunder limb from limb by teams of horses in the Place de Grève. The whole of the details are preserved in contemporary accounts; but having been described in the case of Ravaillac, they are too brutal and revolting for a second reproduction.
The motive by which Damiens was led to this attempted crime is generally attributed to his disapproval of the King’s licentious life. Louis so thought it, and for a time was disposed to mend his ways, to give up the infamous Parc aux Cerfs where he kept a harem, and to break with Madame de Pompadour. But the favorite was not dismissed from the apartments she occupied upon the top floor of the palace at Versailles, and the King still saw her from day to day. Her anxiety must have been great while the King’s wound was still uncured, for she feigned illness and was constantly bled; but she soon recovered her health when she was reinstalled as the King’s mistress. The occasion had been improved by the Jesuits, for the King when sick was very much in the hands of the priests; but de Pompadour triumphed, and the matter ended in their serious discomfiture and expulsion from France.
Although Damiens did not himself see the interior of the Bastile, many persons suspected of collusion in the crime were committed to it; some supposed to be accomplices, others as apologists or as authors of lampoons and satirical verses. Among the prisoners were Damiens’s nearest relations, his wife and daughters, his father, mother, nieces, several abbés, ladies of mature years and young children. The detention of some of these was brief enough, but one or two were imprisoned for twenty odd years. The Dauphin was charged with complicity, but there was no more proof of it than that he was little at court, and was known to sympathise with the Jesuits. As a matter of fact no one was shown to be privy to the attempt. Damiens, in spite of the most horrible tortures, never betrayed a soul.