1828: Antoine Berthet, Stendhal inspiration
February 23rd, 2014 Headsman
On this date in 1828, Antoine Berthet capped his gift to the arts by going under the guillotine at Grenoble‘s Place Grenette.
You probably haven’t heard of Antoine Berthet, but if you’ve read The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir) you know his story. Stendhal (a native of Grenoble) published his magnum opus not three years after Berthet lost his head, and the novel’s executed fictional protagonist Julien Sorel bears an unmistakable resemblance to the very real Berthet.
Berthet was a smart seminary student of low birth who hired out as a tutor for the Michoud family but was dismissed under a cloud for an apparent affair with Madame Michoud.
Nothing daunted, Berthet caught on as a tutor in another family — where he proceeded to seduce the lovely daughter Henriette. But a letter from Madame Michoud to the new employers terminated job and liaison alike.
The enraged Berthet stalked his former mistress to Mass and melodramatically shot her right there in the church. He failed to kill his target, and likewise failed his attempted suicide.
Unlike his literary doppleganger — the Julien Sorel character defiantly spurns his former lovers’ attempts to pull strings on his behalf and insists on his responsibility in court — Antoine Berthet mounted an unsuccessful insanity defense. It was the “irresistible derangements of love” drove him to outrage feminine virtue, consecrated grounds, and (maybe most scandalously) the upper classes.
His prosecutor disagreed, attributing all to Berthet’s frustrated “ambitious dreams”: “understanding too late that he could not reach the goal that his pride proposed, Berthet, stripped of his hopes, would perish; but his rage would drag a victim along with him to the tomb that he dug for himself!”
On this day..
- Feast Day of St. Polycarp of Smyrna - 2020
- 1719: Lt. Edward Bird, ungentlemanly - 2019
- 2000: Ahmad Ismail Uthman Saleh and Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar, renditioned - 2018
- 1807: John Holloway and Owen Haggerty, sworn away - 2017
- 1554: Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk - 2016
- 1513: Pietro Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, but not Niccolo Machiavelli - 2015
- 1939: Alexander Kosarev, Spartak Moscow patron - 2013
- 1906: Johann Otto Hoch, bluebeard - 2012
- 1629: John Dean, boy arsonist - 2011
- 1942: Boris Vilde, linguist - 2010
- 1885: Not John "Babbacombe" Lee, the man they could not hang - 2009
- 1838: Andrea Rondola but not Peppino - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Arts and Literature,Attempted Murder,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,France,Guillotine,History,Public Executions,Scandal,Sex
Tags: 1820s, 1828, antoine berthet, february 23, grenoble, julien sorel, literature, novels, stendhal
