DAMIENS

DAMIENS (Robert François), as he possessed neither literature nor science, is not, strictly speaking, intitled to notice in this Work. His character, however, was so extraordinary, and the noise which he made in the world so great, that a short account of his life will probably be acceptable to a numerous class of our readers.

He was born in 1714 in the suburbs of Arras, called St Catharines. His infancy announced what he would one day become; for such were his wickednesses and knaveryes, that they procured to him the appellation of Robert the Devil.

He served in the army, was at several engagements, and at the siege of Philipburgh. On his return to France, he entered in quality of a domestic into the college of Jesuits at Paris, which he left in 1738 to be married.

After having served different masters in the capital, and poisoned one of them by a glyster, he committed a robbery of 240 louis d'ors; which being discovered obliged him to abscond. He lurked, therefore, about five months in the neighbourhood of St Omer, Dunkirk, and Brussels, holding always the most absurd purposes with regard to the disputes which at that time divided France. At Poperingue, a small town near Ypres, he was heard to say: "If I return to France—Yes, I will return, I will die there, and the greatest man on earth shall die likewise, and you shall hear news of me!"

It was in the month of August 1756 that he uttered these extravagant sentiments. On the 21st of December, in the same year, being at Faleque near Arras, at the house of one of his relations, he talked in the same strain, affirming, "That the kingdom, his wife, and daughter, were all ruined!" His blood, his heart, and his head, were at this time in a dreadful state of effervescence; and in this state of mind he set out for Paris, at which he arrived on the 31st day of the same month. Having appeared at Versailles on the first day of the year 1757, he took opium for two or three days, probably with a view to invigorate his mind for the horrid purpose, which he executed on the 5th of January, about three quarters of an hour after five in the evening.

This execrable parricide struck Louis XV. with a knife in the right side, as that monarch, surrounded by his courtiers, was entering a carriage to go to Trianon. He was seized upon the spot; and after having undergone some interrogatories at Versailles, was sent to Paris to the tower of Montgomeri, where a room was prepared for him, above that which Ravillac had formerly occupied. The king charged the great court of parliament to institute his process; but notwithstanding the most cruel tortures, which he supported with unparalleled firmness, they could not get from him a single confession which could lead them to suspect that he had any accomplices. This miserable wretch

wretch protested, that if he had been blooded as conspicuously as he wished, he would never have committed the crime. After being cruelly tortured to no purpose, he was condemned to die by the same punishment as the infamous assassin of Henry IV.

The same year, on the 28th of March, which was the day of his execution, he arrived at the Place de Greve at a quarter past three, looking with a tearless eye and a firm countenance on the place and the instruments of his punishment. They first burned his right hand, afterwards tore his flesh with red hot pincers, and poured melted lead, wax, and pitch, into the wounds. They then proceeded to quarter him, the four horses trying in vain for 50 minutes to dismember his body. At the end of that time, Damien being still alive, the executioners cut with knives the flesh and tendinous joinings of his legs and arms; which they had formerly been obliged to do to Ravaillac. They began with his legs; and even after they were cut, he continued to breathe till his arms were cut in like manner. His punishment, from the time he was put upon the scaffold to the moment of his death, lasted about an hour and a half; during the greater part of which he retained his recollection, and raised his head seven or eight times to view the horses and his mangled and burned limbs. In the middle of the most violent of the tortures, he even let some jokes escape him.

That the crime of Damien was of the deepest dye, every man, but an assassin like himself, will readily acknowledge; but the cruel and lingering punishment which was inflicted on him, was such as we think no human being intitled to inflict on another. It was likewise impolitic as well as cruel. We can conceive no reason for lengthening out any punishment, or accompanying it with circumstances of horror, but to inspire the spectators with a detestation of the crime; but a punishment too severe produces a contrary effect, by withdrawing the attention from the crime to the criminal, and exciting compassion for his sufferings, and indignation against the authors of them. Such at least would be its effect in this country; but the minds of Frenchmen seem to be differently constituted from those of Britons.

Damien was rather above the middle size: he had a long face, a bold and piercing countenance, and his mouth was a little sunk. He had contracted a kind of convulsive motion, by a custom he had of speaking to himself. He was full of vanity, desirous of signalizing himself, curious of novelty; a stickler against government, though silent; conversing with himself internally; obdurate in prosecuting whatever he projected; bold to put it into execution; full of effrontery, and a liar; by turns religious and wicked; committing faults at one time, and immediately after repenting of them, and continually agitated by violent impulses. "His crime (says a writer of genius) cost us as many groans as improbable projects of his came to light."

How, it has been asked, could a nation so mild and so polished as France, or an age which was called philosophic, produce an assassin of a king so much beloved by his people?

To this question, the French author, whose work we have translated, answers, That at all times there have been wretches, who have taken neither of their age nor their country. A man, from the dregs of the people,

accustomed to crimes, heated by the proposals of some turbulent spirits, in the time of contests which agitate both the church and the state—will end in a parricide. His brain is heated; he puts himself into a ferment of despair, produced by misery, by the fear of the punishment his robberies deserve, and by seditious discourses. Agitated more and more by the contradictory movements which his mind experiences, and meditating on a project of this nature, his mind goes astray as far as it can, and in the height of his frantic delirium, he perpetrates the crime, just as a mad dog precipitates himself upon the first object he meets.

This is perhaps the best account which could be given, at the time it was written, of the conduct of Damien; but subsequent events have shewn that he did not in fact deviate so much as was supposed from the principles of his age and country, though that age was philosophic, and that country highly polished. We have seen a descendant of Louis XV. possessed of ten times his virtues, and entitled to the love and gratitude of the whole nation, murdered openly in the midst of his capital, under the forms of justice, and with circumstances of atrocity, at which the mind of Damien would perhaps have recoiled. The guilt of an insane assassin, who commits a murder in a fit of frenzy, sinks into insignificance when compared with that of legislators, who coolly departed, not only from every principle of justice, but also from the very letter of that law which conferred authority on themselves, to cut off their innocent, their amiable sovereign.