The Woman Who Survived Her Own Beheading - Hélène Gillet
Hélène Gillet was born around 1605, the only daughter of a lord of Bourg-en-Bresse, France. Hélène was a sheltered and reserved girl, reportedly seldom seen in public except at church.
According to Hélène, when she was about 20 years old, her brothers' tutor became obsessed with her. She rebuffed his advances, but he convinced one of her mother's maids to assist him in getting Hélène alone. The maid locked Hélène into a room with the tutor and he raped her.
Hélène was too ashamed to tell anyone about the attack. But it seems her rapist had made sly allusions to what had happened and smeared her character, because the town was soon awash with whispers that Hélène was unchaste.
But Hélène didn't seem to notice. She was in a state of shock and denial about what had happened to her. She ignored her growing belly. Perhaps her innocence and the way she'd been sheltered by her parents, combined with the trauma, made her refuse to believe she could possibly be pregnant.
What happened next is somewhat murky, but all sources agree that the infant was found dead, stuffed in the cavity of a stone wall. A soldier saw a crow pecking at a bit of cloth, and became curious enough to investigate. That's when he found the baby.
The tiny body was wrapped in a blanket or shirt that had Hélène's monogram embroidered on it. The child apparently had no obvious injuries, or that would have been noted in the records.
One tale has it that Hélène's mother assisted her in the birth and that while she was tending to Hélène, who was was passed out from exhaustion afterward, a man came in and took the child, wrapping it in the nearest piece of cloth that came to hand. It was thought later to be the child's father, who had been lurking around Hélène's home in the last few weeks, but the tutor disappeared and could not be questioned.
Because of the persistent rumors she had been unchaste and the monogrammed blanket, the local authorities investigated and Hélène was examined by matrons, who determined that she had given birth recently.
Hélène always stoutly denied she had killed the child, but the law stated that any woman who concealed a pregnancy and let a child die without the sacrament of baptism would be considered guilty of that child's murder.
Hélène was found guilty and sentenced to die on February 6, 1625. Because of her noble blood, she would not be hanged, but instead would be beheaded.
Hélène's father disowned her and ordered his family not to assist in her defense, but her mother stood by her and appealed the sentence. The execution of this noblewoman was contentious and the case went all the way to parliament of Dijon, which confirmed her sentence on May 12, 1625. Hélène was told she was to die the next day.
Hélène's mother was in a state of agony over her daughter's fate and spent hours in the nearby convent chapel, face-down on the pavement before the altar, praying for Hélène to be saved. Her religious devotion impressed the convent's nuns, and they were soon ardent supporters of Hélène's cause.
The elderly abbess, a woman of famed piety, made a rare public statement, prophesying that Hélène would not die at the hands of the executioner, but would instead live to be an elderly woman, dying after a long and edifying life.
But that didn't seem to be what was going to happen on the 13th of May. Hélène was led from her prison cell to the scaffold. According to one account, she was dressed all in white, proclaiming her innocence, but a noose was tied around her neck, which was intended to humble her.
As she walked toward the tall scaffold, a large lock of her braided hair fell loose from its pins, concealing the noose from the audience, which some thought was a sign of God's blessing on the girl. That lock of hair would turn out to have greater import in just a few moments.
The guards led her to the top of the tall scaffold and left her there, joining the line of men that stood around the base. For a long moment, Hélène stood there alone.
The executioner, Simon Grandjean, was still in the nearby chapel, praying, having taken communion that morning. He was clearly uncomfortable at having to execute a noblewoman, especially one whose innocence was fiercely supported by so many.
Grandjean took up his heavy broad-bladed sword and headed outside. His wife — who seems to have served as his assistant — walked with him. She carried a pair of heavy shears, meant to cut off the hair of the condemned so it would leave their neck bare for the executioner's blade, but for some reason, when they reached the scaffold, she didn't perform this task.
Grandjean addressed the crowd and told them he'd been ill for several months, and wasn't sure he could perform his duty. Some in the crowd shouted at him to get on with it. A representative of the king was present, and he also urged Grandjean to do his duty.
Grandjean asked Hélène's pardon, as was tradition, and she granted it, kneeling down on the scaffold to whisper her final prayers. He lifted the sword and brought it down, but missed his target, slashing deep into her shoulder instead of her neck. Hélène cried out in agony and fell over onto her side.
The crowd screamed at Grandjean. Not only had he brought dishonor on himself by failing to carry out the execution in one, clean blow, the girl was suffering. They shouted at him to finish it. Grandjean's wife picked up the sword he'd dropped in dismay and told him to be a man and finish the job.
He lifted the sword again, and this time, the blow was deflected by the knot of hair that had fallen down as Hélène walked to the scaffold. A small nick on the side of her throat was the only result. (He obviously must not have swung the sword very hard!)
The crowd was now in a frenzy. They began to throw things at Grandjean. It was traditional for souvenirs and food to be sold at executions, and the executioner probably found himself being pelted by the remains of people's lunch before more deadly missiles began to strike him — cobblestones from the road soon rained down.
Grandjean fled for the safety of the chapel. His wife grabbed Hélène and dragged her down below the scaffold where the crowd couldn't reach them because of the line of soldiers surrounding the structure. But if Hélène thought she'd been brought down there for safety from the flying rocks, she was badly mistaken.
Grandjean's wife decided to carry out the sentence herself. The stories vary here, too. One version says she put the noose back around Hélène's neck and tried to choke the life out of her, and when that failed, she attacked her with the shears she'd brought for the girl's hair.
While this was happening, the enraged crowd dragged Grandjean from the chapel and beat him to death. Perhaps "beat to death" is a mild way of putting it, because the accounts say the crowd literally tore him to pieces. When they were finished with him, there was nothing left but a shapeless mass of bloody bits of bone.
Two men managed to force their way past the soldiers. After watching what happened to Grandjean, the soldiers probably weren't in the mood to resist much. The men made their way beneath the scaffold and seized the executioner's wife. They dragged her out and thew her to the crowd, who finished her off as they had her husband.
Hélène was bloodied and bruised, her face and shoulders gashed by the shears and her original scaffold wound. One of the stabs from the shears had barely missed her jugular, and another had pierced deep into her chest, barely missing her spine, but she was still conscious. "I knew God would come to my aid," she's recorded to have said. The two men gave her some water and took her to a local surgeon, who stitched up her wounds. Under the surgeon's care, she recovered.
But Hélène's fate was still uncertain. She was condemned to die, after all, but Dijon no longer had an executioner. The appeals of the people reached the king. His sister, Henrietta Maria, had just married England's Charles I. He decided to use this occasion as a reason to dispense some mercy. “[A]t the recommendation of some of our beloved and respected servants, and because we are well-disposed to be gracious through the happy marriage of the Queen of Great Britain,” Hélène was given a royal pardon.
The prophecy of the abbess came true. Hélène decided to devote her life to God after her pardon came through and joined the convent. There she lived to at least ninety years of age before passing away.
A note on the image: No portrait of Hélène Gillet or her execution is known to exist. The image is a 17th century woodcut of another execution.
