The Sansons, hereditary executioners, in Paris, were gentlemen. In 1684, Carlier, executioner of Paris, was dismissed. His successor was Charles Sanson a lieutenant in the army, born in Abbeville, in Picardy, and a relative of Nicholas Sanson, the celebrated geographer. Charles Sanson married the daughter of the executioner of Normandy, and hence a long line of illustrious executioners. Charles died in 1695; and was succeeded by his son Charles.

Charles Sanson, the second, was succeeded by his son, Charles John Baptiste, who died Aug. 4, 1778, when his son Charles Henry was appointed in his place; and, in 1795, retired on a pension. By his hand, with the assistance of two of his brothers, the King, Louis XVI. was guillotined. This Charles Henry had two sons. His eldest, the heir-apparent to the guillotine, was killed, by a fall from the scaffold, while holding forth the head of a man, executed for the forgery of assignats. Henry, the younger son of Charles Henry, therefore became his successor, at the time of his retirement, in 1795. To fill this office, he gave up his military rank, as captain of artillery. He died Aug. 18, 1840. He was an elector, and had a taste for music and literature. He was succeeded by his son, Henry Clement, Dec. 1, 1840. These particulars will be found on page 27 of Recherches Historiques et Physiologiques, sur la Guillotine, &c., par M. Louis du Bois. Paris, 1843. Monsieur du Bois informs us, that all these Sansons were very worthy men, and that the present official possesses a fine figure, features stamped with nobility, and an expression sweet and attractive. How very little all this quadrates with our popular impressions of the common hangman!

The objection to the guillotine, which was called, for a time, Louison, after M. Louis, Secretary of the College of Surgeons, that it would make men familiar with the sight of blood, was urged by the AbbÉ Maury, and afterwards, by A. M. La Cheze. The Duke de Liancourt, inclined to mercy, that is, to the employment of the guillotine. He contended, that it was necessary to efface all recollections of hanging, which, he gravely remarked, had recently been so irregularly applied, referring to the summary process of lynching, as we term it—À la lanterne.

It is curious to note the doubt and apprehension, which existed, as to the result of the first experiment of decollation. March 3, 1792, the minister, Duport du Tertre, writes thus to the Legislative Assembly—“It appears, by the communications, made to me, by the executioners themselves, that, without some precautions, the act of decollation will be horrible to the spectators. It will either prove them to be monsters, if they are able to bear such a spectacle; or the executioner, himself, alarmed, will fall before the wrath of the people.”

The matter being referred to Louis, then Secretary of the Academy of Surgeons, he made his report, March 7, 1792. The new law required, that the criminal should be decapitated—aura la tÊte tranchÉe; and that the punishment should be inflicted without torture. Louis shows how difficult the execution of such a law must be—“We should recollect,” says he, “the occurrences at M. de Lally’s execution. He was upon his knees, with his eyes covered—the executioner struck him, on the back of his neck—the blow was insufficient. He fell upon his face, and three or four cuts of the sabre severed the head. Such hacherie excited a feeling of horror.” To such a polite and gentle nation, this must have been highly offensive.

April 25, 1798. Roederer, Procureur GenÉral, wrote a letter to Lafayette, telling him, that a public trial of the new instrument would take place, that day, in the Place de GrÈve, and would, doubtless, draw a great crowd, and begging him not to withdraw the gens d’armes, till the apparatus had been removed. In the Courrier Extraordinaire, of April 27, 1792, is the following notice—“They made yesterday (meaning the 25th) the first trial of the little Louison, and cut off a head, one Pelletier. I never in my life could bear to see a man hanged; but I own I feel a greater aversion to this species of execution. The preparations make me shudder, and increase the moral suffering. The people seemed to wish, that M. Sanson had his old gallows.”

After the Louison, or guillotine, had been in operation rather more than a year, the following interesting letter was sent, by the Procureur GenÉral, Roederer, to citizen Guideu. “13 May, 1793. I enclose, citizen, the copy of a letter from citizen Chaumette, solicitor to the commune of Paris, by which you will perceive, that complaints are made, that, after these public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in pools, upon the Place de GrÈve, that dogs came to drink it, and that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle, which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and blood. I request you therefore to take the earliest and most convenient opportunity, to remove from the eyes of men a sight so afflicting to humanity.”

Voltaire, who thought very gravely, before he delivered the sentiment to the world, has stated of his countrymen, that they were a mixture of the monkey and the tiger. Undoubtedly he knew. In the revolution of 1793, and in every other, that has occurred in France—those excepted which may have taken place, since the arrival of the last steamer—the tiger has had the upper hand. Prudhomme, the prince of pamphleteers, having published fifteen hundred, on political subjects, and author of the General History of the crimes, committed, during the revolution, writing of the execution of Louis XVI. remarks—“Some individuals steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood. A number of armed volunteers crowded also to dip in the blood of the despot their pikes, their bayonets, and their sabres. Several officers of the Marseillais battalion, and others, dipped the covers of letters in this impure blood, and carried them, on the points of their swords, at the head of their companies, exclaiming ‘this is the blood of a tyrant.’ One citizen got up to the guillotine itself, and plunging his whole arm into the blood of Capet, of which a great quantity remained; he took up handsful of the clotted gore, and sprinkled it over the crowd below, which pressed round the scaffold, each anxious to receive a drop on his forehead. ‘Friends,’ said this citizen in sprinkling them, ‘we were threatened, that the blood of Louis should be on our heads, and so you see it is.’” Rev. de Paris, No. 185, p. 205.Upon the earnest request of the inhabitants of several streets, through which the gangs of criminals were carried, the guillotine was removed, June 8, 1794, from the Place de la Revolution to the Place St. Antoine, in front of the ruins of the Bastile; where it remained five days only, during which time, it took off ninety-six heads. The proximity of this terrible revolutionary plaything annoyed the shopkeepers. The purchasers of finery were too forcibly reminded of the uncertainty of life, and the brief occasion they might have, for all such things, especially for neckerchiefs and collars. Once again then, the guillotine, after five days’ labor, was removed; and took its station still farther off, at the BarriÈre du TrÔne. There it stood, from June 9 till the overthrow of Robespierre, July 27, 1794: and, during those forty-nine days, twelve hundred and seventy heads dropped into its voracious basket. July 28, it was returned to the Place de la Revolution.

Sanson, Charles Henry, the executioner of Louis XVI. had not a little bonhomie in his composition—his infernal profession seems not to have completely ossified his heart. He reminds me, not a little, of Sir Thomas Erpingham, who, George Colman, the younger, says, carried on his wars, in France, in a benevolent spirit, and went about, I suppose, like dear, old General Taylor, in Mexico, “pitying and killing.” On the day, when Robespierre fell, forty-nine victims were ascending the carts, to proceed to the guillotine, about three in the afternoon. Sanson, at the moment, met that incomparable bloodhound, the Accusateur Public, Fouquier de Tinville, going to dinner. Sanson suggested the propriety of delaying the execution, as a new order of things might cause the lives of the condemned to be spared. Fouquier briefly replied, “the law must take its course;” and went to dine—the forty-nine to die; and, shortly after, their fate was his.

The guillotine, viewed as an instrument of justice, in cases of execution, for capital offences, is certainly a most merciful contrivance, liable, undoubtedly, during a period of intense excitement, to be converted into a terrible toy.

During the reign of terror, matters of extreme insignificancy, brought men, women, and children to the guillotine. The record is, occasionally, awfully ridiculous. A few examples may suffice—Jean Julian, wagoner, sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment, took it into his head, on the way—s’avisa—to cry—Vive le Roi; executed September, 1792.—Jean Baptiste Henry sawed a tree of liberty; executed Sept. 6, 1793.—M. Baulny, ex-noble, assisted his son to emigrate; executed Jan. 31, 1794.—La veuve Marbeuf hoped the Austrians would come; executed Feb. 5, 1794.—Francis Bertrand, publican, sold sour wine; executed May 15, 1793.—Marie Angelique Plaisant, sempstress, exclaimed—“a fig for the nation;” executed July 19, 1794.