Rare ALS of Marie Antoinette’s Executioner, Henri Sanson

SANSON, HENRI. (1767-1840). French executioner who guillotined French Queen Marie-Antoinette and Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, the notorious public prosecutor during the Reign of Terror. ALS. (“Sanson”). 1p. 4to. Paris, September 4, 1832. To the Paris book dealer Bossange. In French with translation.



“When I came back from the country, my son gave me the volume you did me the honor of sending me. I will read it with all the attention I am susceptible to for my own instruction.



My son would have liked to warn you about the subject of which you speak in your letter, but having received orders at eight o’clock in the evening, he had to order the service with which he is charged as well as mine in my absence and he had barely twelve hours for everything, in such a circumstance I will make it my duty to warn you myself.



Please accept, Sir, the assurances of my respectful homages & believe me with the highest consideration. Your obedient servant…”



Descended from a family of executioners dating back to 1688, Henri was the second son of Charles-Henri Sanson, the executioner of Louis XVI and the first executioner to use the guillotine. Charles-Henri should have been succeeded by his eldest son and assistant, Gabriel. However, in 1790, Gabriel fell from the scaffold while displaying a severed head and died. Instead, with his declining health, Charles-Henri was unofficially succeeded by his younger son, Henri, in April 1793. Henri executed Marie-Antoinette on October 16, 1793, and officially took over the hereditary position of executioner in 1795, the duties of which he carried out for 47 years. In addition to Marie-Antoinette, the many prominent individuals that he executed include Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (1746-1795), the public prosecutor for the Revolutionary Tribunal and supervisor of all political executions during the Reign of Terror.



Our letter likely refers to a recent execution carried out by Henri’s son, Henri-Clément Sanson (1799-1889), the last member of the Sanson family to hold the ignoble office. Conflicted about his duties, Henri-Clément led a drunk and dissolute life, his boundless debts prompting him to operate a macabre museum out of his home and, eventually, sell the family guillotine. The French government bought back the guillotine, ordered Henri-Clément to perform an execution that he had attempted with an axe instead and, subsequently, dismissed him. He later dictated a six-volume memoir Seven Generations of Executioners, Memoirs of the Sanson Family 1688-1847.



Our letter is written to the prominent Paris bookdealer and publisher Bossange, headed by the brothers Martin Bossange (1765-1865) and Adolphe Bossange (1797-1862) who were joined, by the time of our letter, by Martin’s son, Hector (1795-1884).



At the time of our letter Paris was in the grip of a deadly cholera outbreak and three months after the anti-monarchist June Rebellion or Paris Uprising of 1832 (depicted in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables). Of the more than 80 trials of insurrectionists, only a handful resulted in death sentences all of which were commuted to imprisonment.



Folded with scattered light soiling, wear and later marginal notations. With the integral address leaf intact, bearing several ink postal marks. In very good condition and rare. [worldhistory]