On a March 1757 Damiens the
regicide was condemned 'to make the amende honorable before the
main door of the Church of Paris', where he was to be 'taken and conveyed
in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax
weighing two pounds'; then, 'in the said cart, to the Place de Grèves,
where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn
from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, his right
hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt
with sulphur, and on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured
molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together
and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and
body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds'
(Pièces originales . . ., 372-4).
'Finally he was quartered,' recounts the Gazette d'Amsterdam
of 1 April 1757. 'This last operation was very long, because the
horses used were not accustomed to drawing; consequently, instead of four,
six were needed; and when that did not suffice, they were forced, in order
to cut off the wretch's thighs, to sever the sinews and hack at the joints
. . .
From Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, page 3.