He finally had come to the conclusion that the only possibility of turning the King’s mind away from his vicious habits and arousing his soul to sentiments of honor and duty might come through fear, by placing him in the immediate presence of death. This thought preyed so incessantly and so strongly on his mind that he resolved to become the instrument of the King’s redemption, by attacking and wounding, but not killing him. The attempt on the King’s life was therefore the result of a psychological process which was, perhaps, based on wrong and extravagant premises, but which, if all the circumstances are taken into consideration, was rather meritorious than criminal in its aim. The assassin had acted strictly in accord with his preconceived theory. He had in his possession a knife with two blades, one of which was very long, sharp and pointed like a dagger, while the other was quite short and sharp. It seemed to be impossible to inflict a mortal wound with the short blade, and Damiens had used it in wounding the King. He had no accomplices. At first, very likely to mitigate his punishment, he had hinted at the existence of a widespread conspiracy, contemplating the assassination of the King, the Dauphin, and others, but he soon retracted these statements, and even the most severe application of the torture could not elicit from him any other declaration than this: that he had no accomplices, that nobody, not even his wife and his young daughter, had known anything of his intention; that he did not intend to kill the King, though he could easily have done so; that he had only intended to wound him for the purpose of frightening and warning him; that his act had been inspired by the wish of saving France and the dynasty.
But all these statements, which could not be controverted by conflicting evidence, made no impression upon judges who had fully made up their minds beforehand, and who looked upon the man that wanted to touch even the King’s finger with the same horror as upon a regicide who might have stabbed him through the heart and killed him. The sentence passed upon Damiens was therefore in conformity with their preconceived opinion, and cruel in the extreme. It was based upon the sentence carried out against Ravaillac for having killed the greatest of kings and one of the benefactors of mankind. Though Damiens was an eccentric ponderer, a foolish dreamer, who had but slightly wounded a heartless voluptuary that had deserved death a hundred times, his sentence was terrible beyond description, and was actually carried out in the presence of an immense multitude. At first his right hand, in which was placed the knife with which he had struck the King, was burned to the bone. Thereupon his arms, his legs, his breast, his back and his feet were lacerated with burning tongs; molten lead, boiling oil, burning sulphur, rosin, and wax were poured into the open wounds; and finally, while he was still suffering unimaginable pain, four strong horses, hitched to his arms and legs, tried for half an hour with all their might to tear out his limbs. After that time only one arm remained in the body, and it took another five minutes’ work to pull it out of its socket. The body of the unfortunate man had been pulled to almost double its length and width, and its power of resistance amazed all the spectators. When at last the cruel execution was over, the bleeding trunk and the arms and legs were thrown upon a pile of wood near the scaffold and destroyed by fire. The spectacle had struck terror into the hearts of the beholders.