On this day in 1721, Jean-Pierre Balagny, alias Capuchin, was broken on the wheel in Paris. He was one of the lieutenants and boon companions of legendary French outlaws Cartouche.

We have noted that that renowned bandit crowned his fame at the last by enduring all tortures, only to voluntarily give up the names of his companions as he approached the scaffold and perceived that they had failed to arrange a rescue.

“Capuchin”, who was with Cartouche when he was captured and subject to much the same interrogation, proved as good as his captain. He, too, endured the boot without breaking. And he, with two companions, likewise reached the scaffold and only there coughed it up.

They gave information as to their accomplices, and made, at the foot of the scaffold, confessions which torture had failed to elicit from them.

They implicated so many persons, that another series of trials began, which lasted as long as the declarations of convicted prisoners compromised other persons, and threw new light on the immense ramifications of an association of miscreants which had for many years defied the police. More than sixty persons were under lock and key at the time of the execution of Cartouche and Balagny. This number increased every day in consequence of the confession of those who hoped to save their lives by denouncing their accomplices, and in June of the following year it rose to one hundred and fifty … all this blood, instead of washing the affair away, seemed rather to make it more serious. Every day brought to light some new discovery; and this shows how profoundly mistaken were those who denied that Cartouche, the centre and wire-puller of this horrible association, possessed the organising spirit without which he could not have extended this immense net over the Parisian society.

One is left to infer from this entry in the memoirs of the Parisian hereditary executioner-family Sanson that Balagny likewise did in his friends over some ornate notion of honor … although if the anecdote is true, one could as easily suppose any number of less “creditable” reasons.

At any rate, Balagny’s evidence added to that of Cartouche’s snowballed into a bloody cycle of tortures and executions and fresh denunciations over the year to come.

Of course, getting rid of all the criminals did not get rid of crime.

“In spite of the executions at La Greve, there are more thieves than ever in Paris,” lamented one observer (quoted here). “Cartouche has died on the wheel; but his name and memory engender robbers.”

On this day..

• 1958: Sass Kalman and Istvan Hollos - 2019
• 2005: Kenneth Boyd, the 1,000th modern execution in the U.S. - 2018
• 1780: Gerald Byrne and James and Patrick Strange, for carrying off the Miss Kennedy's - 2017
• 1884: Howard Sullivan, ravisher and murderer - 2016
• 1302: Audun Hugleiksson, Norwegian nobleman - 2015
• 1917: Lation Scott lynched - 2014
• 1644: Goodwife Cornish - 2013
• 1715: Four Jacobites including George Lockhart's brother - 2011
• 1977: Larry Tacklyn and Erskine Burrows, for the murder of Richard Sharples - 2010
• 1938: Robert Lee Cannon and Albert Kessell, the first gassed in California - 2009
• 1859: John Brown's body starts a-moulderin' in the grave - 2008
• 2005: Van Tuong Nguyen - 2007