Regicide murdered, or attempted to murder, the king) was especially hard, even in regard to the harsh judicial practices of pre-revolutionary France. As with many criminals, the regicide was tortured so as to make him tell the names of his accomplices. However, the method of execution itself was a form of torture. Here is a description of the death of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV: In "Discipline and Punish", the French philosopher Michel Foucault cites this case of Damiens the Regicide as an example of disproportionate punishment in the era preceding the "Age of Reason". The classical school
Thomas Hammond (regicide) Thomas Hammond (regicide) Thomas Hammond (c. 1600–1658), was an officer in the New Model Army and a regicide. Hammond was the third son of the five children of Dr John Hammond (c. 1555–1617), physician to the royal household under James I, who purchased the site of Chertsey Abbey in Surrey in 1602. In 1642, at the start of the English Civil War he was commissioned as an artillery officer. As he was an experienced officer he must have seen military service in the continental wars that preceded the Civil War although there is no direct evidence of this. His motives