Jacques Chausson

Jacques Chausson (c. 1618 – 29 December 1661) was a French ex-customs manager and writer. He was arrested on 16 August 1661 and charged with attempted rape of a young nobleman, Octave des Valons. He was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death. His tongue was cut out and he was burned at the stake (without being suffocated first, the more common and "merciful" practice). "This Friday, twenty-ninth day of the month of August, is judged before us one dressed in a cinnamon-colored garment, he who declared to us that he was coming in order to obey our ruling of yesterday, he whom we had questioned and interrogated in the manner and fashion that follow: Asked his name, he answered that he is Octave des Valons, Equestrian, son of Germain des Valons, Equestrian, lord of Duchesne; and of the late Louise Angelique du Vesnien, his wife. Asked his age, he answered that he turned seventeen years old the eighteenth day of this past March. "Asked the subject of the dispute he had had on Tuesday the twelfth of last August, with the named Jacques Chausson and Jacques Paulmier, in a third-floor apartment in a house on rue Saint Antoine, near the old rue du Temple, occupied by the same Chausson, he answered that, having known Chausson, and having been led to his home by a young man named le Sueur, he had finally gone August twelfth. Paulmier said to Chausson while speaking of Octave des Valons, 'There is a pretty blond!' to which Chausson replied 'I believe he is a pretty enough boy to offer us his services.' When des Valons retorted that he wished to be appropriate to the task, Chausson made a statement, and said that the service they were asking of him would cost him nothing, and that the same Paulmier was for his part obliged to treat him the same way when he wanted. Des Valons having had the misfortune to realize that he had not asked to have carried out for him the wish that he was obliged to grant Paulmier, Chausson advanced, and while embracing him undid the button of his pants at the same time, and then Paulmier began knowing him carnally, and committing with him the crime of sodomy.