Executioner Charles-Henri. An extremely kind, gentle, attractive person (3 photos)

French executioner Chevalier Charles-Henri Sanson de Lonval (1739 - 1806), also known to the common people by the nickname, as the Great Sanson.

Charles-Henri Sanson came from a family of French executioners from the Sanson dynasty.





British actor Christopher Lee as the French executioner Charles-Henri Sanson in the film "The French Revolution", 1989

As a teenager, he realized with horror that he would have to master the craft of his ancestors, like his father.

And so it happened when in 1754, Charles' father, Henri, was struck down by paralysis, and in the same year he inherited the duties of the royal executioner.

At the age of 15, young Henri was already working as the king's executioner, participating in the cruel torture of convicts, breaking them on the wheel, and during the Great French Revolution, he cold-bloodedly cut off the heads of convicts on the guillotine.



Left: portrait of Charles-Henri Sanson, painted by E. Lampson in Balzac's novel "Episode from the Time of Terror". Right: Sanson guillotining Robespierre on July 28, 1794.

Charles-Henri Sanson sent the most prominent French convicts to the next world with the help of the devil's guillotine:

1) Louis XVI - King of France from the Bourbon dynasty;

2) Marie Antoinette - Queen of France and Navarre;

3) Charlotte Corday - hereditary noblewoman Charlotte Corday (killer of the Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, known by the nickname "Friend of the People");

4) Antoine Barnave - lawyer and politician;

5) Jean Sylvain Bailly - Mayor of Paris;

6) Georges Jacques Danton - Minister of Justice;

7) Antoine Lavoisier - natural scientist and founder of modern chemistry;

8) Maximilien Robespierre - revolutionary and influential political figure of the Great French Revolution;

9) Georges Couthon - lawyer and politician, figure of the Great French Revolution;

10) Louis Antoine Saint-Just - revolutionary, military and political figure;

11) Mathieu Jourdan - butcher, figure of the Great French Revolution, bloodthirsty murderer and criminal;

12) Jean-Louis Verger - Catholic priest and murderer of Archbishop Marie Dominique Auguste Sibour;

13) Camille Desmoulins - lawyer, journalist and revolutionary;

14) Antoine Fouquier-Tinville - French lawyer, figure of the Great French Revolution.

During his entire career, the famous royal executioner and executioner of the First French Republic executed about 3,000 people.

The few who knew Charles Henri closely said that he was "an extremely kind, gentle, attractive man" who generously gave alms to those poor people who did not disdain them.

His tone, clothes, and manners were extremely gentlemanly.

He was always exquisitely polite with his clients: for example, when taking Charlotte Corday to the scaffold, he warned her against the jolts of the cart and advised her to sit not on the edge, but in the middle of the bench.



The last execution in Western Europe (France) took place on September 10, 1977

The very last execution in France took place during the reign of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (20th President of the Fifth Republic).

On September 10, 1977, Hamid Djandoubi, a French pimp of Arab origin, was guillotined in the Marseille prison "Baumette" for torture and particularly cruel murder. The era of executioners and victims of the guillotine was over.