DAMIENS, Robert François, an assassin, by whom Louis XV. of France was wounded in the year 1757. He was born at Ticulloy, in the diocese of Arras, in the year 1714, and seems rather to have been actuated by frenzy or insanity in the perpetration of the horrid deeds of which he was guilty, than by any of the motives to which they have been ascribed. This spirit appeared in the early period of his life; and such were the extravagance and violence of his conduct, that, whilst a boy, he was distinguished by the appellation of Robert the Devil.

When he grew up he entered into the army, served as a soldier at the siege of Philipsburg, and was present at several engagements. He returned afterwards to France, and became a domestic servant in the College of Jesuits at Paris. He married in 1738, which rendered it necessary for him to resign this service. He was then employed in the same capacity by different masters, one of whom, it is said, he poisoned; and having robbed another, he was obliged to abscond, in order to escape the punishment due to his crimes. During a period of five months after the discovery of the robbery, he lurked in the neighbourhood of St Omer, Dunkirk, and Brussels, and was observed to express himself in an absurd and incoherent manner concerning some disputes which at this time prevailed in France. The following soliloquy is said to have been uttered by him in a small town near Ypres: “If I return to France—yes, I will return, I will die there, and the greatest of the earth shall die likewise, and you shall hear news of me.” These expressions were uttered in the month of August 1756; and it is probable that they were regarded at the time only as the ravings of a madman. He spoke indeed in a similar strain in the December following, at the house of a relation, at Falesque, near Arras, saying, “that the kingdom, his wife, and daughter, were all ruined.” It was about this time that he set out for Paris, where he arrived on the 31st of December. He was seen at Versailles on the first day of January 1757. In order to blunt his feelings, and to prepare himself for the perpetration of the horrid act, it is said that he swallowed opium for several days. But the state of mind in which Damiens is described to have been for some time before, seemed to render such auxiliaries unnecessary.

It was on the 5th of January, between five and six o’clock in the evening, that Louis XV. was wounded by the hand of this frantie assassin. Armed with a knife, he struek the king on the right side, whilst the latter was surrounded with his courtiers, and just as he was entering his carriage to proceed to Trianon. Damiens was almost instantly seized, examined or rather tortured at Versailles, and afterwards sent to Paris and confined in the tower of Montgommery, in an apartment prepared for him, near to that which had formerly been occupied by Ravaillae, the murderer of Henry IV. The great court of parliament was charged by the king to institute his process; and although he was subjected to the most cruel tortures, which he bore with unexampled fortitude, no confession or acknowledgment could be extorted which afforded the smallest ground of suspicion that he had a single accomplice. When it was found that the torture failed in effecting the purpose for which it was inflicted, he was condemned to die by the same punishment which Ravaillae suffered.

The 28th of March following was the day fixed as that of his execution. When brought to the Place de Greve, where the apparatus and instruments of destruction were prepared, he beheld all these with an undismayed countenance and a tearless eye, although he must have known well that new and more dreadful tortures yet awaited him. His punishment commenced with the burning of his right hand, in which the knife with which he had wounded the king was placed; his flesh was then torn with red-hot pincers, and the wounds were filled with molten wax, pitch, sulphur, rosin, lead, and boiling oil. In attempting to quarter his body, the four horses which were employed[7:7:609] pulled in vain for fifty minutes. All their efforts seemed to be ineffectual, till the executioners cut with knives the ligaments by which the limbs are attached to the body. Even after the legs had been cut he was still alive; and it was only when the arms had been treated in the same way that he ceased to breathe, and his body was dismembered. The period of his punishment, from the time when he was put upon the scaffold until his death, was not less than an hour and a half, during the greater part of which time he seemed to retain his recollection; for he raised his head many times, and cast his eyes on his mangled and burnt limbs, and on the horses which were then exerting their whole force to tear his body asunder; and even during the severest of his tortures, the firmness of his mind was so little shaken that he affected some degree of jocularity. See Pieces originales et procedures du Proces fait a Robert-François Damiens, Paris, 1757, 4to; also, Reczιeil de Pieces curieuses et rares qui ont paru lors du Procès de Damiens, Paris, 1760, 12mo.