Exécution d’Alain Blanchard en 1419

This illustration by Alphonse de Neuville depicts the execution of Alain Blanchard in 1419, in an urban setting where soldiers, the executioner, and onlookers are gathered. The scene shows the condemned man on the scaffold, surrounded by armed men, while the crowd watches the punishment from the foreground. The composition emphasizes the solemnity of the sentence, the presence of military authority, and the public nature of the punishment. Produced in the nineteenth century for an illustrated history, the image is not a direct witness to the event but a historical reconstruction intended to give dramatic form to the political and judicial violence of the Hundred Years’ War. It reflects the taste of historical illustration for scenes of execution, civic tension, and tragic rupture in the urban history of the kingdom.