Charles-Henri Sanson, full title Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Longval (15 February 1739 – 4 July 1806), was the royal executioner of France during the reign of King Louis XVI, as well as high executioner of the First French Republic. He administered capital punishment in the city of Paris for over forty years. By his own hand he executed nearly 3,000 people, including Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to assassinate King Louis XV. Sanson would later execute King Louis XVI.
Family history
Charles-Henri Sanson was the fourth in a six-generation family dynasty of executioners. His great-grandfather, a soldier in the French royal army named Charles Sanson (1658 – 1695) of Abbeville, was appointed as Executioner of Paris in 1688. Upon his death in 1695, the Sanson patriarch passed the office to his son, also named Charles (1681 – September 12, 1726). When this second Charles died, an official regency held the position until his young son, Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson (1719 – August 4, 1778), reached maturity. The third Sanson served all his life as High Executioner and in his time fathered 16 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood. The eldest of his sons, Charles-Henri, known as "The Great Sanson", was apprentice to his father for twenty years and was sworn into the office on 26 December 1778.
Life
Charles-Henri Sanson was born in Paris to Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Tronson. He was first raised in the convent school at Rouen until in 1753 a father of another student recognised his father as the executioner and he had to leave the school in order to not ruin the school's reputation. Charles-Henri was then privately educated.
Executioner as a career
His father's paralysis and the assertiveness of his paternal grandmother, Anne-Marthe Sanson, led Charles-Henri to leave his study of medicine and to assume the job of executioner in order to guarantee the livelihood of his family. As executioner (), he came to be known as "Monsieur de Paris"—"Gentleman of Paris". On January 10, 1765, he married his second wife, Marie-Anne Jugier. They had two sons: Gabriel (1767–1792), who also worked in the family business and had been his assistant and heir apparent from 1790, but he died after slipping off a scaffold as he displayed a severed head to the crowd, and Henri (1769–1830), who became his successor.
In 1757, Sanson assisted his uncle Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson (1721–1795, executioner of Reims) with the extremely gruesome execution of the King's attempted assassin Robert-François Damiens. His uncle quit his position as executioner after this event. In 1778 Charles-Henri officially received the blood-red coat, the sign of the master executioner, from his father Charles-Jean-Baptiste. He would hold this position for 17 years, being succeeded by his son Henri in 1795 after he showed serious signs of illness. Most of the executions were performed by Sanson and up to six assistants.
Sanson was the first executioner to use the guillotine, and he led the initial inspection and testing of its prototype on April 17, 1792, at Bicêtre Hospital in Paris. Swift and efficient decapitations of straw bales were followed by live sheep and finally human corpses, and by the end, Sanson led the inspectors in pronouncing the new device a resounding success. Within the week, the Assembly had approved its use and on April 25, 1792, Sanson inaugurated the era of the guillotine by executing Nicolas Jacques Pelletier for robbery and assault at the Place de Grève on April 25, 1792. The use of the guillotine transformed Sanson's status under the revolutionary ideology from outcast to citizen, equal in rights and civil duties.
Charles-Henri Sanson performed 2,918 executions, including that of Louis XVI. Even though he was not a supporter of the monarchy, Sanson was initially reluctant to execute the king but in the end performed the execution. As David Jordan notes, "No Monsieur de Paris had ever had the honor of executing a king, and Sanson wanted precise instructions." Sanson experienced the political and psychological pressures of revolutionary Paris. He had the duty to execute Louis XVI under the power of the sitting Provisional Government. Being the heir to a line of executioners, to refuse this duty would have brought shame to the family name and danger to himself and to his family members. He experienced the stress of having to execute not only the king but also successive waves of ousted officials as those in power shifted rapidly in a time of revolutionary change.