with
chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to
attend, to see what degree of pain he could support. Nothing, however,
material was extorted; for what he one moment confessed, he recanted the
next. It is not within our province, and we consider it as a felicity,
to relate all the circumstances of this cruel and tragical event.
Sufficient it is, that, after suffering the most exquisite torments that
human nature could invent, or man support, his judges thought proper to
terminate his misery by a death shocking to imagination, and shameful to
humanity. On the twenty-eighth day of March he was conducted, amidst
a vast concourse of the populace, to the Greve, the common place of
execution, stripped naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron gyves.
One of his hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs,
legs, and arms, were torn with red hot pincers; boiling oil, melted
lead, resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; tight ligatures
tied round his limbs to prepare him for dismemberment; young and
vigorous horses applied to the draft, and the unhappy criminal pulled,
with all their force, to the utmost extension of his sinews, for the
space of an hour; during all which time he preserved his senses and
constancy. At length the physician and surgeon attending declared, it
would be impossible to accomplish the dismemberment, unless the tendons
were separated; upon which orders were given to the executioner to cut
the sinews at the joints of the arms and legs. The horses drew afresh;
a thigh and an arm were separated, and, after several pulls, the
unfortunate wretch expired under the extremity of pain. His body and
limbs were reduced to ashes under the scaffold; his father, wife,
daughter, and family banished the kingdom for ever; the name of Damien
effaced and obliterated, and the innocent involved in the punishment of
the guilty. Thus ended the procedure against Damien and his family, in
a manner not very favourable to the avowed clemency of Louis, or the
acknowledged humanity of the French nation. It appeared from undoubted
evidence, that the attempt on the king's life was the result of
insanity, and a disturbed imagination. Several instances of a disordered
mind had before been observed in his conduct, and the detestation justly
due to the enormity of his crime ought now to have been absorbed in
the consideration of his misfortune, the greatest that can befal human
nature.