Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (30 page)

BOOK: Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders

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Hardly were the words out of his mouth than a tempest of groans and screams burst forth. The paling was broken and trodden underfoot, and hundreds of men rushed on to the scaffold. The smith who had earlier spoken to Jean was among the foremost; he seized the prisoner in his muscular arms, cut his bonds, and prepared to carry him off in triumph. An extraordinary scene now took place; Jean Louschart struggled violently against his saviours, then turned to the executioner and begged for death with the earnestness usually displayed by other culprits in asking for mercy. But his friends surrounded him and at length succeeded in carrying him away.

My grandfather’s position was now perilous in the extreme; separated from his assistants, alone amidst a crowd that knew him only too well, he really thought that his last hour was at hand. His countenance probably betrayed his apprehensions, for the tall smith came up to him and seized his arm; ‘Fear nothing, Charlot,’ the smith exclaimed [Charlot was his nickname, which was also bestowed on subsequent executioners, in the same way as English hangmen were all called ‘Jack Ketch’ after an earlier executioner]. ‘We don’t want to harm you, but your equipment; henceforth Charlot, you must kill your customers without making them suffer first.’ And turning to the crowd he added, ‘Let him pass, and take care he is not hurt.’

This harangue calmed the crowd, and my grandfather was allowed to withdraw. In less time than it takes to write this account, the scaffold and all its accessories were broken into pieces, which were then thrown on to the pile of wood prepared for the burning of the victim’s mutilated body, and the terrible Wheel was placed on the summit as a kind of crown. The heap was set ablaze, and men and women, holding each other by the hand, formed an immense ring and danced around the crackling pile until it was reduced to ashes.’

Upon news of the debacle reaching the ears of King Louis XVI in Paris, he granted a pardon to Jean Louschart; nor was that all, for he decreed that the penalty of being broken on the wheel should be abolished with immediate effect. Regrettably history does not record whether Jean married his Helen – one would certainly like to think so.

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