THE PARRICIDE DAMENS

FRANCE, 1757

PARRICIDE OR REGICIDE?

At the time when the crime was committed, the word regicide was rarely used even if it is now the one we would use more readily. The word regicide does not appear until around 1540, while parricide has been derived from Latin since 1200. a sovereign and thus threaten the social order. This crime was removed from French law in 1832.

DAMIENS AND RAVAILLAC

The fate of Damiens is certainly shocking by the harshness of the condemnation when he had only slightly injured the king. But this is the fate that was reserved for criminal parricide, the worst crime of the time. François Ravaillac, assassin of Henri IV had suffered the same a century and a half earlier. The name Ravaillac had even been banned in France and those who bore it were forced to change it on pain of death.

AMIENS RENAMED

It is said that the mayor of the city of Amiens, a large municipality located north of Paris, proposed to rename his city, the name of which was considered too close to that of the parricide.

EXECUTIONER’S TEARS, KING’S TEARS

At least two people bitterly regretted Damiens’ ordeal: the executioner and the king. The first when he learned of the long and complicated torture he would have to apply to the condemned, the second who locked himself in his room to cry and pray when he was told about the torture.

GERM OF REVOLUTION

Damiens’ ordeal provoked a gasp of horror in the population, which thronged to witness the execution. Hoping to witness the death of a man, she witnesses the relentlessness and the failed execution of a poor fellow by clumsy executioners. The torture of 1757 is considered one of the seeds that will germinate in the Revolution thirty years later.