Robert-François Damiens

Robert-François Damiens (French pronunciation: ​[ʁɔbɛʁ fʁɑ̃swa damjɛ̃]; 9 January 1715 – 28 March 1757) was a French domestic servant whose attempted assassination of King Louis XV of France in 1757 culminated in his notorious and controversial public execution. He was the last person to be executed in France by drawing and quartering, the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty reserved for regicides.

Damiens was born on 9 January 1715 in La Thieuloye, a village near Arras in northern France. He enlisted in the army at an early age. After his discharge, he became a domestic servant at the college of the Jesuits in Paris, and was dismissed from this as well as from other employments for misconduct, earning him the epithet of Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil).

Damiens' motivation has always been questionable: historians often describe him as mentally unstable. From his answers under interrogation, Damiens seems to have been excited by the schismatic uproar that followed the refusal of the French Catholic clergy to grant holy sacraments to the Jansenists, a sect which was considered (by, for example, Pope Innocent X) heretical. He appears to have planned a punishment for the king, upon whom he placed ultimate blame.

On 5 January 1757, as the King was entering his carriage at the Palace of Versailles, Damiens rushed past the King's bodyguards and stabbed him with a penknife, inflicting only a slight wound. He made no attempt to escape, and was apprehended at once. Louis XV's thick winter clothes were protective, and the knife penetrated less than half an inch into his chest. Nevertheless, Louis was bleeding and called for a confessor to be brought to him, as he feared he might die. When the Queen ran to Louis' side, he asked forgiveness for his numerous affairs.

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