Overview
- Damiens stabbed King Louis XV with a small penknife on January 5, 1757, inflicting a minor wound before being arrested on the spot.
- He was condemned for regicide and sentenced to a public drawing and quartering at Paris’s Place de Grève.
- Records describe days of torture that included leg-crushing boots, red-hot pincers, and boiling substances poured into his wounds.
- The dismemberment failed at first, with accounts saying tendons were cut so horses could tear his limbs, and some sources claim he remained conscious.
- His torso was burned after the quartering, his last words were reportedly a plea for death to come, and authorities punished his family and birthplace as part of the sentence.