La Veuve: The Guillotine in French Culture

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La VeuveThe Guillotine in French Culture
Le Triomphe de la Guillotine en Enfer Nicolas
Antoine Taunay
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Pre-Guillotine Forms 0f Execution
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Hanging

• Reserved for the lower classes
• Resulted in a slow strangulation
• Neck breaking techniques had not been developed
  yet

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Burned at the Stake

• All religious heretics were burned at the stake
• A merciful executioner would strangle the
  condemned before the flames engulfed them

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Broken on the Wheel

• Condemned would be strapped to the wheel and
  tortured or put to the Question
• Used on murderers and bandits to determine
  whether or not they acted alone

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Drawn and Quartered

• Used for criminals convicted of assaulting the
  King or a member of the clergy
• It was the final blow in the condemneds
  execution
• They were first put to the question
• Then hanged till near death
• When near death they were drawn and quartered as
  a final insult
• Often required the executioner to sever the
  victims tendons before the horses could
  accomplish the task

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Beheading

• Reserved only for nobility
• Performed with either a sword or an axe
• Often took multiple swings resulting in a
  gruesome and painful experience for all involved

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Humanitarian Intentions
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Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin

• Born 28 May 1738 in Saintes
• There is a popular story regarding the
  circumstances of his birth
• His mother inadvertently bore witness to a man
  being broken on the wheel. She was so distressed
  by what she had witnessed that she went into
  premature labor
• This is said to be the reason for his drive to
  reform the French penal code and bring equality
  to capital punishment
• He left the Jesuit order in 1763 to pursue the
  study of medicine
• In 1770 he received his doctorate

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Guillotin Addresses the King

• In 1788 Dr. Guillotin put the Pétition des
  Six-Corps des Marchands de Paris before the King
• This was the first ever petition to directly
  address the King
• The petition made four demands
• The number of representatives from the Third
  Estate should be at least equal to the total
  number of representatives of the other two
  estates
• Votes were to be counted by heads
• The deputies of the Third Estate should be chosen
  from this Order
• The representatives of the Third Estate will be
  in proportion to the franchise
• This led to Guillotin being elected to the
  Constituent Assembly as a deputy of the Third
  Estate

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Guillotin's Six Articles

• Article 1. Crimes of the same kind shall be
  punished by the same kinds of punishment,
  whatever the rank or estate of the criminal.
• Article 2. Offenses and crimes are personal, and
  no stain shall attach to the family from the
  criminals execution or loss of civil rights.
  The members of the family are in no way
  dishonored and remain, without exception,
  eligible for all kinds of profession, employment
  and civic dignity.
• Article 3. Under no circumstances whatever may
  order be made of the confiscation of the goods of
  a condemned man.
• Article 4. The body of the executed man shall be
  returned to the family, should the family so
  request. Normal burial shall in all cases be
  permitted and the register shall not specify the
  circumstances of the death.
• Article 5. No one may reproach a citizen with
  the execution or loss of civil rights incurred by
  a relative. Should anyone dare to do so, he
  shall be reprimanded by a judge.
• Article 6. The method of punishment shall be the
  same for all persons on whom the law shall
  pronounce a sentence of death, whatever the
  crime of which they are guilty. The criminal
  shall be decapitated. Decapitation is to be
  effected by a simple mechanism.

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Birth of the Guillotine

• Guillotins sixth article was passed 3 June 1791
• Despite passing it would be nearly a year before
  the guillotine would take its place as Frances
  official method of execution
• After much delay, Dr. Antoine Louis, the
  permanent secretary of the Academy of Surgery,
  was enlisted to design the simple mechanism
• Design was given to Tobias Schmidt a German
  harpsichord maker
• Guillotine was first tested on three corpses at
  Bicêtre Hospital on 17 April 1792
• It failed to sever the neck of the last corpse a
  particularly large man due to the convex shape of
  the blade
• There is an ironic story that says Louis XVI
  suggested that the blade should be oblique
• Story was told by Clément-Henri Sanson and later
  it is included in Alexandre Dumas book, The
  Tragedies of 1793

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Guillotine 1792

• Designed by Dr. Antoine Louis
• Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Surgery
• Machine was originally called louison or
  louisette in his honor
• Based on the Halifax Gibbet
• Built by Tobias Schmidt
• German Harpsichord Maker
• Painted red to hide the blood
• Was placed on a tall scaffold in order for crowd
  to have a better view

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Diagram of the Guillotine
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The Guillotine at Work
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The Last Day of the Condemned

• The condemned is not told ahead of time and
  instead are dragged from their cell the morning
  of while still asleep
• They are allowed a final meal and a chance to
  write a letter to loved ones
• Next they are given the toilette du condamne
• The collar of the shirt is removed and their hair
  is cut above the neck
• Loaded in cart and paraded through Paris on their
  way to the Guillotine
• Once there it takes only seconds from the moment
  they step on the stairs

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The Spectacle

• 25 April 1792 the guillotine takes its first
  live victim, Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, an armed
  robber
• At the guillotines first appearance a massive
  crowd gathered to witness the event
• From the time the condemned mounted the scaffold
  till his death was less than a minute
• Crowd was disappointed by this.
• This attitude would quickly change as the number
  of executions rapidly grew
• During the revolution it is estimated that nearly
  40,000 people were executed by the guillotine

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Madame Du Barry

• Most faced the guillotine with stoicism
• She became hysterical begging for her life and
  struggling with the executioners
• She appeared so pitiful that the masses began to
  feel sorry for her and even wished for her to be
  spared
• It was speculated by many that if all would have
  acted in this manner the guillotine would not
  have taken a central role in the revolution

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The End of the Grand Show

• The Guillotine would remain a public spectacle
  well into the 20th century
• The government tried to reduce the visibility of
  public executions
• First by removing the guillotine from atop the
  scaffold
• Painting it a dark brown instead of the bright
  red of revolutionary times
• Executions began to take place in the early
  morning in an attempt to lessen the crowds
• In 1939 the government finally put a halt to
  public executions and moved the guillotine inside
  the walls of the prison
• The guillotine would remain in use until capital
  punishment was abolished in 1981
• The last execution took place on 10 September 1977

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The Reign of Terror

• The Reign of Terror began in June of 1793
• It would transform the guillotine, which had been
  derived from humanitarian intentions, from a
  machine of justice into a tool the
  revolutionaries would use to spread fear
• The revolutionary tribunal would use the
  guillotine to dispatch all enemies of the
  revolution including
• Nobility
• Clergy
• Anyone not sharing their views
• The Terror would witness the rise and fall of
  many prominent French revolutionaries and
  ultimately their death beneath the blade
• It would end with the execution of Maximillien
  Robespierre, the architect of the Terror

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Georges Danton

• A leading member of the revolution and the first
  president of the Committee of Public Safety
• He played an large role in the overthrow of the
  monarchy
• When Robespierre grew threatened by Danton he
  deemed him a moderate and had him executed
• Executed on 5 April 1794
• Once atop the scaffold he told Sanson, Show my
  head to the people, its worth looking at!

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Maximilien Robespierre

• Born in Arras in 1758
• He was a prominent lawyer and orator
• Originally argued to abolish capital punishment
• During the Revolution he rapidly put himself in a
  prominent position as the leader of the Jacobins
• During the Reign of Terror he acted as a de-facto
  emperor
• Used the guillotine to eliminate anyone he saw as
  an enemy of the revolution
• After the fall of the Jacobins he too fell to the
  guillotine on 27 July 1794

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The Head Lives On
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Charlotte Corday

• She killed Jean-Paul Marat
• He was known for his radical journal The Peoples
  Journal
• A leading member of the revolutionaries who was
  loved by the people
• She was taken to the guillotine dressed in red,
  which was normally reserved for those who commit
  regicide
• After being beheaded the assistant executioner
  lifted her head from the basket and slapped it
• It is said that her face blushed and became
  filled with indignation
• This led to the belief that the head survives for
  some time after decapitation

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Tales of Living Heads

• Allegedly from an account of Sanson
• Two opposing members of the National Assembly
  were executed on the same day. Their heads were
  placed in the same sack at which point one bit
  the other so hard that their heads could not be
  separated
• In 1880 Dr. Dassy de Ligniéres went as far as to
  pump blood from a living dog into the severed
  head of Louis Menesclou
• He witness the face redden and the lips swell at
  which point he announced, This head is about to
  speak
• In 1905 Dr. Beaurieux addressed a recently
  severed head by calling his name
• On the first time he witnessed the eyelids open
  and the pupils focus on him
• He called out a second time and again the eyelids
  opened and the head looked at him with
  unmistakably alive eyes
• The doctor attempted a third time but received no
  reaction
• As late as 1956 similar experiments were being
  carried out on recently severed heads

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Guillotine Parody
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Victim's Ball

• In order to attend one had to prove they had a
  family member that was guillotined
• People would forge documentation
• Guests dressed à la victime
• Women wore dresses with large red xs across
  their upper back
• Both women and men would were red ribbon or red
  thread around there neck
• They also cut there hair to imitate the toilette
  du condamne
• They would greet each other by abruptly dropping
  their head- as if it had just been cut off

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Hairstyles à la Victime
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Guillotine in French Literature
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Victor Hugo

• In 1820 he wrote The Last Day of a Condemned
  Man
• It is written as if it was a manuscript written
  by a condemned man and left behind in his cell
• It describes what he felt would be a truly
  nightmarish ordeal
• It also plays an ominous role in Hugos Les
  Miserables

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Alexandre Dumas

• Wrote The Tragedies of 1793
• The Woman With the Velvet Collar
• In which a man falls in love with a beautiful
  stranger wearing a velvet collar
• He spends the night with her and in the middle of
  lovemaking her head falls off
• It was only held on by the collar

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Villiers de L'Isle Adam

• He wrote the Eleventh Hour Guest
• A story in which a guillotine enthusiast pays to
  perform the duties of the executioner
• Took a contrasting position to Hugo and Dumas
• Believed that by removing the guillotine from the
  scaffold you cheapened the condemneds death and
  robbed them of their stage

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Work Cited

• Arasse, Daniel. The Guillotine and the Terror.
  Trans. Christopher Miller. London The Penguin
  Press, 1989.
• "Axe, Wheel, Guillotine Seven Generations of
  Executioners." New York Times 4 June 1876 10.
• Fife, Graeme. The Terror Under the Shadow of the
  Guillotine. New York St. Martin's Press, 2004.
• Gerould, Daniel. Guillotine It's Legend and
  Lore. New York Blast Books Inc., 1992.
• Opie, Robert Frederick. Guillotine. Phoenix Mill
  Sutton Publishing Limited, 2003.
• Soubiran, André. The Good Dr. Guillotin and His
  Strange Device. Trans. Malcolm MacCraw. London
  Souvenir Press, 1964.