The Great French Revolution gave the world examples of beautiful declarations symbolizing freedom and democracy.
"1. People are born and remain free and equal in rights..."
Who could argue? In Russia, too, everyone is equal, only some are more equal than others.
"5. The law can only prohibit acts that are harmful to society. Everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted, and no one can be forced to act not prescribed by law.”
This insidious thing is freedom. More recently, during the heyday of the criminal revolution in Russia in the 90s of the twentieth century, politicians repeated to us like a mantra: “Everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted.” But at the same time they acted according to the principle: “What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to a mere mortal.”
"8. The law can establish punishments only strictly and indisputably necessary..."
Very little time will pass and the most “necessary” punishment in France will be the death penalty.
Four years later, the French decided that they needed a more radical Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Such a declaration, included in the Constitution of January 24, 1793, read:
“1. The goal of society is universal happiness...”
"13. Since everyone is presumed innocent until the contrary is established, if it is necessary to subject someone to detention, any kind of severity not caused by necessity during detention should be severely punished by law.
"15. The law must impose punishments that are strictly and indisputably necessary; punishments must be proportionate to the crimes and beneficial to society.”
However, the declared rights very soon ceased to have any value. Within six months, the promised rights and freedoms had to be forgotten.
The Mass Recruitment Decree of 23 August 1793 ordered that all Frenchmen were henceforth declared to be in a state of permanent requisition.
The “Law on Suspects” of September 17, 1793 looked even more unconstitutional. It read:
Art. 2. The following are considered suspicious:
1) those who, by their behavior, or their connections, or their speeches or writings, show themselves to be supporters of tyranny, federalism and enemies of freedom;
2) those who cannot... prove the legality of their means of subsistence and the fulfillment of civic duties;
H) those who were refused to issue certificates of good reliability;
4) officials, by decision of the Convention or its commissioners, temporarily removed from their duties or dismissed and not restored to their rights...;
5) those of the former nobles, as well as their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, as well as emigrant agents who did not constantly demonstrate their devotion to the revolution...”
And for those who tried to protest, the Revolution already had a diabolical invention - the Guillotine.
The French doctor Joseph Guillotin, who gave his name to the killing machine, wanted the best. As a member of the Constituent Assembly, in December 1789 he proposed making the execution process in France less painful and more democratic. Previously, even in death there were class differences. The noble execution was applied to representatives of the authorities - their heads were cut off, and the shameful execution was applied to all others - they were hanged.
Guillotin, as a doctor and anatomist, understood the physiology of death better than other deputies. Therefore, he proposed creating not only a democratic method of execution, but also a mechanized one. In one of the books about Italy, Joseph Guillotin saw an illustration depicting an execution with a mechanical ax in Milan. That’s why I got the idea to create a more advanced mechanical ax in France.
A special commission was formed to implement Guillotin's proposal. At first they wanted to entrust the actual production of the mechanism to the carpenter Gidon. He asked for 5,600 livres for the work. This price was considered excessive, and the order was transferred to a more modest craftsman - Tobbias Schmidt from Strasbourg. Actually, Schmidt was involved in making pianos, but he figured that he could also handle a device for cutting off heads. At first he asked for 960 livres, then settled on a price of 812 livres.
This price suited the authorities. Soon, a commission, which included Dr. Antoine Louis and Tobbias Schmidt, jointly designed an apparatus for cutting the neck. Its main detail was a heavy oblique knife, weighing from 40 to 160 kilograms, which was sometimes called a “lamb”, falling down along vertical wooden guides. The knife was raised on vertical wooden posts to a height of 2-3 meters and held with a rope. The head of the person being guillotined was placed in a special recess at the base of the mechanism, after which the rope holding the knife was released, and it slid down the guide grooves at high speed, falling on the convict’s neck and cutting it.
According to legend, King Louis XVI himself, who was fond of metalwork and loved to tinker, took an active part in the development of this device. In this case, he literally built a car on his own head.
The first tests of the guillotine were carried out on three corpses in Bicêtre on April 17, 1792, “in the presence of a commission that included Doctor Louis, Doctor Cabani, the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, accompanied by his brother and two sons.” Having tested a new device for execution on the dead, members of the commission decided to try it on a living person. On April 25, 1792, he executed the famous robber Jacques Peletier in Paris on the Place de Greve. The first executioner to test him in action was Charles Henri Sanson. The mechanical ax immediately caught the hearts of Parisians. They affectionately christened him "Louisette" in honor of Antoine Louis. But this name did not catch on, when the heads of deputies, and not robbers, went under the knife of the new machine; they immediately remembered the deputy Guillotin. And they baptized Louisette into Guiltin.
It remains a big mystery why the French fell in love with the guillotine so much. They came to admire her bloody work, as if they were watching a performance with the participation of stars. They dedicated poems and jokes to her. They called it “the best remedy for headaches.” The guillotine became one of the landmarks of France, it was replicated in souvenirs, and French chefs dedicated a special dish to it. A mahogany guillotine and a large dish filled with marzipan dolls with heads caricatured as famous political figures were served at the table. Each guest could choose a politician “to his taste” and guillotine him. A sweet sauce of a deep scarlet color oozed from the doll, which was eaten by dipping the marzipan “corpse” of the doll into it, and the severed head of the political doll could be taken as a souvenir.
And French beauties sported earrings in the form of a small gioltin with a pendant representing a severed head in a crown.
However, those who were about to experience the effects of the guillotine were no longer laughing. And there were many of these during the French Revolution.
During the 718 days of the revolution in Paris, 2,742 executions were carried out, including the beheadings of 344 women, 41 children, 102 seventy-year-olds, 11 eighty-year-olds and one 93-year-old. In total, more than 18 thousand people were guillotined in France in 1793–1794.
Moreover, people often lost their heads for the most insignificant reasons. For example, the 18-year-old daughter of the Marquise Hervé de Fodoa once wrote: “My dog gave birth to three little republicans.” This became the basis for bringing her, her father and his sister, Madame de Beaurepaire, to trial. All three were executed on the 25th Messidor of the 2nd year (July 13, 1794), “without pity for old age, respect for virtue and compassion for youth.”
The most famous person executed, of course, was the King of France from the Bourbon dynasty, Louis XVI. In principle, he frankly “slept through” the revolution. And then I tried to adapt to it. Adopted the constitution of 1791, abandoned absolutism and agreed to become a constitutional monarch. Meanwhile, the revolutionaries continued to infringe on the monarch more and more. They stripped Louis XVI of the title of king and gave him the surname Capet, in honor of the founder of the royal dynasty, Hugo Capet. Of course, the further Louis went, the more and more he did not like what was happening, and he decided to flee the country. On the night of June 21, 1791, he and his family secretly left in a carriage towards the eastern border. However, at the Varennes post station he was identified by his profile, which was minted on coins and was well known to the French. The king and queen were detained and returned to Paris under escort.
Louis was imprisoned with his family in the Temple and accused of plotting against the freedom of the nation and a number of attempts against the security of the state. The Girondins tried to prevent the trial of King Louis XVI and give him the opportunity to travel abroad. But on January 11, 1793, the trial of the king in the Convention began. Louis behaved with great dignity and, not content with the speeches of his chosen defenders, he himself defended himself against the charges brought against him, referring to the rights given to him by the constitution. Robespierre convinced the Convention of the need for execution with the words: “Either Louis is guilty, or the revolution cannot be justified.” On January 20, the king was sentenced to death by a majority of 383 votes to 310.
It seems that it was still not easy for the French to overthrow and put to death the sacred person of the king. To do this, it was necessary to overcome a certain barrier in consciousness, but Louis XVI himself contributed to ensuring that this barrier was destroyed brick by brick. When there was a shortage of bread in the country and terrible prices for it arose, the authorities only angered the people with their decisions. For example, instead of measures to rectify the situation, in 1786 an order was issued to prohibit reaping rye with sickles.
In general, Louis XVI resembles the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. This is how the character is described: “He was a man of a kind heart, but of an insignificant mind and an indecisive character. He showed the greatest inclination towards physical activities, especially plumbing and hunting. Despite the depravity of the court around him, he retained the purity of morals, was distinguished by great honesty, simplicity of manners and hatred of luxury. With the kindest feelings, he ascended the throne with the desire to work for the benefit of the people and to eliminate existing abuses, but he did not know how to boldly move forward towards a consciously intended goal. He submitted to the influence of those around him, sometimes aunts, sometimes brothers, sometimes ministers, sometimes the queen (Marie Antoinette), canceled decisions made, and did not complete the reforms he had begun.”
Approximately the same can be said of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas, only the name of his wife should be changed. Although it is worth remembering that both spouses were foreigners, and the people did not like them for this. He called the French queen “Austrian”, and the Russian queen “German”. Both of them had great influence on their less decisive spouses. Louis loved to do carpentry in his spare time; they say that he even worked as a craftsman in the manufacture of the first guillotine in France. And Nikolai liked to cut wood for his health.
And the fates of these two monarchs have amazing analogies. After the accession of Nicholas II and after the wedding of Louis XVI, popular festivities were marked by a stampede that resulted in significant casualties. Louis XVI, like Nicholas II, did not attach importance to the popular unrest that became the harbinger of the revolution. In 1788-1789 In France, peasant uprisings and major unrest began among the urban lower classes in large cities. In April 1789, workers destroyed the houses of the owner of a large manufactory, Revellon, and a major industrialist, Henriot. Arriving troops opened fire on the workers. The revolt was suppressed, but the authorities did not understand that “from a spark the flame of revolution can flare up.”
When “Bloody Sunday” happened in St. Petersburg, Nicholas II was enjoying a vacation in one of the country palaces and did not even make an attempt to return to St. Petersburg to reassure his people. On the day when the people stormed the Bastille, Louis XVI wrote in his diary that he was hunting and did not catch anything. There is no mention of the blood shed at the Bastille.
On January 15, 1793, the National Convention almost unanimously found Louis XVI guilty, but slightly more than half of the deputies voted for the death penalty.
On January 21, at about 10 a.m., Louis XVI was taken in a carriage to the Place de la Revolution for execution. The scaffold rose near the pedestal where the statue of Louis XV had previously stood. And the entire surrounding space was filled with crowds of people. Louis XVI showed much more firmness on the scaffold than on the throne. He accepted death with the dignity of a true aristocrat. And before putting his head under the guillotine knife, he said:
I die innocent, I am innocent of the crimes of which I am accused. I am telling you this from the scaffold, preparing to appear before God. And I forgive everyone who is responsible for my death.
At 10:20 a.m. France had no king. The people uttered a unanimous cry: “Long live the Republic” and burst into a roar at the moment when the executioner raised the head of Louis XVI. It was assumed that at this moment a cannon shot should also have fired. However, the organizers of the execution considered that the king’s head should not make more noise when falling than the head of any other criminal.”
The body of the executed king was buried in the cemetery of St. Magdalene. Where more than a thousand Frenchmen were buried, who died 23 years ago in a stampede at the celebration of the wedding of Louis XVI and the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette.
After the execution of the king, happiness did not descend on France. The problems were not resolved by executing the monarch. An inter-party struggle broke out between the revolutionaries. In Paris, hunger, unemployment, speculation and unrest increased. A counter-revolutionary peasant revolt broke out in the province of Vendée.
In Paris, terror intensified by the Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal.
First, the French revolutionaries decided to finish what they started and destroy the royal family so that no one alive would remind them of the “damned monarchy.” First on this list was the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, who was famous for her beauty and commitment to her native Austrian court. In France, she was disliked and was given the nickname “Madame Deficiency.” There was not enough bread in Paris, and two million livres were poured into the construction of the queen's residence - the Petit Trianon, where even the king himself could only appear with the permission of his wife.
The revolutionaries became aware of the plans of the Marquis of Rougeville to rescue Marie Antoinette from her cell in the Concierge Tower, where she was kept under guard. After this, her trial was accelerated. The Queen was accused of maintaining ties with foreign countries and betraying the interests of France. On October 16 at 4 a.m., the death sentence was read out to her. After this, the executioner Henri Samson tonsured the queen's head and put shackles on her hands behind her back. Marie Antoinette, wearing a white pique shirt, with a black ribbon on her wrists, a white muslin scarf thrown over her shoulders, and a cap on her head, went to her execution. At 12:15 p.m., the queen was beheaded in what is now the Place de la Concorde.
The execution of Marie Antoinette was brilliantly described by Stefan Zweig:
“Around eleven o’clock the Conciergerie gates open. Near the prison there is an executioner's cart, something like a wagon, harnessed to a mighty horse, a beater. Louis XVI followed solemnly to the place of execution - in a closed royal carriage, protected by glass windows from the painful attacks of hatred and rudeness of onlookers. During this time, the revolution in its rapid development has gone very far: now it demands equality even in the procession to the guillotine, the king should not die with greater comfort than any other citizen, the executioner's cart is good enough for the widow Capet...
... First, officers emerge from the gloomy corridor of the Conciergerie, followed by a company of guard soldiers with guns at the ready, then Marie Antoinette walks calmly, confidently. The executioner Sanson holds her on a long rope, with one end of her hands tied behind her back, as if there is a danger that the victim, surrounded by guards and soldiers, will run away….
The huge Square of the Revolution, today's Place de la Concorde, is black with people. Tens of thousands of people are on their feet from the very early morning, so as not to miss the rare spectacle of seeing the queen - in accordance with the cynical and cruel words of Hébert - “shave off the national razor.”
The cart stops at the scaffold. Calmly, without outside help, “with a face even more stony than when leaving prison,” rejecting any help, the queen climbs the wooden steps of the scaffold, climbs just as easily and elatedly in her black satin high-heeled shoes along these last steps, as once upon the marble staircase of Versailles. Another sightless glance into the sky, above the disgusting commotion surrounding her. Can she discern there, in the autumn fog, the Tuileries, in which she lived and suffered unbearably? Does she remember at this last: at this very last minute the day when the same crowds in squares like this one greeted her as heir to the throne? Unknown. No one is allowed to know the last thoughts of a dying person. Everything is over. The executioners grab her from behind, a quick throw onto the board, her head under the blade, the lightning of the knife falling with a whistle, a dull blow - and Sanson, grabbing the bleeding head by the hair, lifts it high above the square. And tens of thousands of people, who a minute ago held their breath in horror, now in one impulse, as if having gotten rid of a terrible witchcraft spell, burst into a jubilant cry. "Long live the Republic!" - thunders as if from a throat freed from a frantic strangler. Then people quickly disperse. Parbleu! Indeed, it’s already a quarter past twelve, time for lunch; hurry home. Why hang around here! Tomorrow, all these weeks and months, almost every day on this very square you can see a similar spectacle again and again.
Noon. The crowd disperses. In a small wheelbarrow, the executioner takes away the corpse with a bloody head at its feet. Two gendarmes remained to guard the scaffold. No one cares about the blood slowly dripping onto the ground. The square is empty."
The French Revolution was the first to clearly show how political parties, united for a coup d'etat, then inevitably enter into confrontation. Their political struggle turns into terror, after which everyone dies one after another in the political arena, as if in a gladiatorial fight in the arena of an amphitheater.
Just as in Russia after the October Revolution the “red terror” was preceded by the murder of Uritsky, so in France the surge of revolutionary terror was preceded by the murder of the Jacobin leader Marat.
On July 13, 1793, 25-year-old Charlotte Corday d'Armont stabbed Marat to death in the bathtub, thinking that she was saving France from her worst enemy. To get into the apartment of the sick revolutionary, Charlotte said that she wanted to give him information about a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Tyrants and revolutionaries regularly fell for this trick, Marat was no exception. And he was stabbed in the heart with a dagger.
“I killed one villain to save hundreds of thousands of innocent souls,” she told the tribunal.
After such sacrilege, she was sent to the guillotine that same day. As Charlotte bravely and with dignity ascended to the scaffold, Deputy Adam Luks shouted from the crowd:
Look, she surpasses Brutus in greatness!
This public statement resulted in Lux losing his head some time later from the same guillotine.
From the first days of the existence of the revolutionary Convention, a confrontation broke out between the most influential parties - the Girondins and the Jacobins. One of the leaders of the French Revolution, Maximilian Robespierre, was famous for his speech that convinced the convention to vote for the death penalty for the king. His second target was the Girondins. Robespierre attacked them with passionate speeches. Soon the Girondins were expelled from the Convention and subjected to repression.
On October 31, 1793, their leaders who prepared the overthrow of the monarchy in France: Brissot, Verniot, Jeansonnet and others were executed by guillotine.
The Marquis de Condorcet, a philosopher and encyclopedist who joined the Girondins, upon learning of their arrest, fled and hid in the quarries. However, local sans-culottes quickly realized that de Condorcet, dressed in rags, was not a “miner.” Firstly, the marquise was betrayed by his polite speech, and secondly, by the volume of Homer, with which he never parted. De Condorcet was transported to prison, where, without waiting to be executed by guillotine, he poisoned himself.
The Jacobin, deputy of the Convention Chabot, who developed the plan to storm the Tuileries, was also arrested. He was ruined by an attempt to bring to light the revolutionary officials who “warmed their hands” on the abolition of the French East India Company. Even revolutionaries do not like anti-corruption fighters. Chabot realized that he could not escape the guillotine and decided to commit suicide. March 17, 1794, shouting “Long live the Republic!” he drank a full cup of sulfuric acid in his cell. This drink did not bring death, but caused terrible agony. For three days, Chabot lay in the prison infirmary between life and death, continuously suffering from acid burns. But he had barely recovered when he was sent to the guillotine.
Among the remaining revolutionaries, three main “factions” emerged - the right (Danton), the middle (Robespierre) and the left (Hébert), between which disagreements began. The Hebertists were the leaders in the Commune; they were the first to be arrested and tried. They were charged with preparing an uprising, connections with England, disrespect for the republic and even... stealing linen. On March 24, 1794, they were all executed. Including the famous republican journalist, leader of the Parisian poor, Hebert.
After the Eberists, it was the turn of the “right”. On the night of March 30, following a denunciation by Saint-Just, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Gero-de-Séchal, Lacroix and other Dantonists were arrested. Danton and his supporters, like the Hébertists, were accused of being bribed by foreigners, and the charge stated that if the Hébertists sought to bring the republic to collapse by extreme measures, the Dantonists tried to achieve the same with their moderation. Danton, the leader of the revolution, the man who saved France in 1792, declared before the tribunal: “We are being sacrificed to the ambition of a few cowardly robbers, but they will not long enjoy the fruits of their treacherous victory... Robespierre will follow me!”
The following story already testifies to the attitude of the people towards the revolutionary leaders at that time. When they came to arrest Camille Desmoulins, he opened the window and began loudly calling citizens to help him, cursing the violence of the tyrants. Nobody responded. Then Desmoulins fell silent, surrendered to the gendarmes and, asking permission to take two books with him from the home library and hug his wife goodbye, went under escort to prison.
On April 5, 1794, Georges-Jacques Danton and Camille Desmoulins were guillotined in Paris. On the way to the scaffold, Danton encouraged himself with the words: “Go ahead, Danton, you must not know weakness!” And driving past the house where Robespierre lived, Danton shouted:
Maximilian, I'm waiting for you!
Before his execution, Danton, according to eyewitnesses, swore in vulgar words, and Desmoulins cried. The executioner Sanson later described the execution procedure as follows:
“First, Hero de Sechelles ascended the scaffold, and Danton with him, not waiting to be called. The assistants had already grabbed Gero and put a bag over his head when Danton came up to hug him, since Gero could no longer say goodbye to him. Then Danton exclaimed: “Fools! Will you stop the heads from kissing in the sack?..” The guillotine knife had not yet been cleared when Danton was already approaching; I held him back, inviting him to turn away while the corpse was removed, but he just shrugged his shoulders contemptuously: “A little more or less blood on your car, what’s the importance; just don’t forget to show my head to the people; It’s not every day that you see such heads.” These were his last words."
It must be said that Robespierre was a witness at Desmoulins' wedding in the spring of 1789. In addition to him, Petion and Brissot put their signatures on the marriage document. Several years passed and Robespierre and Desmoulins sentenced first Pétion and then Brissot to death. Pétion, the first democratic mayor of Paris, hid from the revolutionary court in the forest, where he was killed by wolves. Brissot, a Republican journalist and hero of 1791, had his head cut off by the guillotine. Then Robespierre sent Desmoulins, the mastermind of the storming of the Bastille and the first republican of France, to the scaffold. In order not to listen to the curses addressed to him by Demoulin’s young wife, Lucille, eight days after her husband’s execution, he sent her to the guillotine.
After the death of the left and right, the “second triumvirate” came to power in France - Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon. But the main one among them was Robespierre.
The new triumvirate continued to implement the principle formulated by Robespierre: “The basis of democratic government is virtue, and the means for its implementation is terror.”
On June 12, 1794, on the initiative of Maximilian Robespierre, the Convention adopted a law reorganizing the revolutionary tribunal. The new law prohibited appeals and cassation, hearing witnesses and preliminary interrogations of the accused. Every citizen was obliged to inform on the conspirator and arrest him. The death penalty was recognized as the only measure, and a sufficient basis for passing a sentence was the jury’s “moral conviction” of the defendant’s guilt. As a result, if over the previous 13 months of the existence of the tribunal in Paris 1,220 people were executed, then only from June 20 to July 27 - 1,366 people.
Among the activists of the Jacobin terror, not only Robespierre's triumvirate, but also individuals distinguished themselves. After the capture of rebellious Nantes, the deputy of the Convention, Jacobin Carrier, who commanded a punitive detachment, organized the executions and guillotining of royalists and Girondins. The executioner who served the guillotine and the firing squad were exhausted, sending political opponents of the Jacobins to the next world. Then Carrier put 90 arrested priests in the hold of the barge, took the ship to the middle of the Loire and sank it. “The sentence of exile,” Carrier sneered, “was carried out vertically.”
Carrier liked drowning, and he began to practice a similar execution, which the English historian T. Carlyle described as follows: “...Men and women are tied together by the hands and feet and thrown. This is called the “Republican wedding”... Numb, no longer aware of suffering, the pale, swollen bodies of the victims randomly rush towards the sea by the waves of the Loire; the tide throws them back; clouds of ravens darken the river; wolves roam the shallows.”
The French terror generally made an indelible impression on Carlyle, so he did not spare colors to describe it: “The guillotine and the “Marat company” in knitted caps work without rest, guillotining small children and old people. The revolutionary tribunal and military commission located there are guillotined and shot. There is blood flowing in the ditches of Place de Terreault.”
In the end, the executions and proscriptions of Robespierre got to the surviving parliamentarians. While Robespierre was “pushing” his accusatory speeches at the Convention, none of them could be calm for their lives.
When Saint-Just began his next accusatory speech at the Convention on Thermidor 9 (July 27), he was not allowed to speak. Robespierre rose to the podium, but cries of “Down with the tyrant” were heard from all sides. The Convention immediately decided to outlaw and arrest Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon and some of their supporters. Robespierre exclaimed heartily:
The Republic is dead, the robbers are winning!
However, several Jacobins tried to recapture Robespierre from the “robbers.” But the gendarmes prevented them. One of them crushed Robespierre's jaw with a pistol shot.
Therefore, on 10 Thermidor (July 28, 1794), Robespierre went to execution with a bandage on his face. Together with him, other triumvirs were taken to the guillotine - Saint-Just and Couthon, as well as his brother Augustin. Along the way, the mob, who had recently rejoiced at the reprisals against the political opponents of the Jacobins, now rejoiced that Robespierre was being taken to the scaffold. She ironically greeted him with cries of “king” and “your majesty.”
Over the next two days, about a hundred more supporters of the Jacobin dictatorship were executed. Among them was Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who was particularly cruel. He became famous for his death sentences and speeches, in each of which he immediately gave opinions on 25-30 different criminal cases. Largely thanks to him, A. Lavoisier, A. Chenier, J. Danton, C. Desmoulins and other famous people were executed.
The death penalty imposed on his initiative immediately became famous for the 53 Frenchmen he convicted on trumped-up charges of attempting to assassinate Robespierre. Emphasizing his attitude towards Robestpierre as the “father of the nation,” Tenville ensured that the condemned were subjected to the ritual of execution for committing parricide. The condemned were dressed in red shirts and led barefoot to the place of execution.
Fouquier-Tinville also tried to improve the usual ritual of executions. They say that it was he who proposed bleeding the condemned before execution in order to weaken their strength and courage.
One of the charges against Fouquier-Tinville was that he carried out the execution of women who declared themselves pregnant, and about whom doctors could not speak definitively. This was the case, for example, with the widow of the minister Jolie de Fleury, with Madame Ginnisdal and many other, less famous ladies.
At that time, in France, legislation did not allow pregnant women to be sent to execution. This was laid down in Article 23 of Chapter XXV of the Criminal Ordinance of 1670. Pregnant women were given a reprieve from execution of the sentence, and during the investigation in the Middle Ages they were even forbidden to be tortured.
However, the figures of revolutionary terror, among whom Tenville played one of the leading roles, surpassed even the medieval inquisitors in cruelty. Often, doctors simply did not make conclusions about the pregnancy of the defendants, fearing the displeasure of the authorities and judges. For example, there is a known case when on the 7th and 8th of Thermidor, after examining eight women who declared themselves pregnant, they declared seven of them. And even if doctors found the courage to give a conclusion that this or that woman was carrying a fetus, it was not a fact that Fouquier-Tinville would have shown mercy to her on this basis. He seemed to pay more attention to animals than to people. Once, Tenville initiated criminal proceedings against a certain butcher “for killing a pregnant cow in order to destroy its fetus.”
However, pregnancy saved a certain Madame Serilly from execution. She was sentenced to death, but given the opportunity to first give birth in the Episcopal Prison Hospital. Serilly remained alive by a lucky chance - her name was mistakenly included in the lists of 21 floreals already executed (May 10, 1794) and she was simply forgotten. But they remembered again at the trial against Fouquier-Tinville, where she appeared like a ghost from the other world to testify about cruel cases.
Cérilla itself had previously been tried by a tribunal presided over by Dumas, a supporter of the Convention, and Tenville, a supporter of the Commune, as the prosecutor. The woman told how that trial proceeded:
“21 floreals, my husband and I, along with 23 other defendants, were sentenced to death here. My husband and I were accused of complicity in conspiracies on February 28, June 20 and August 10. The whole trial consisted of us being asked our names, ages and rank. This was the end of the entire debate, because Chairman Dumas did not allow the accused to speak and he himself did not listen to anyone. Then I saw my husband and friends here, in the dock, and now I see their murderers and executioners in their place.”
At that time, Dumas and Tenville formed a brilliant tandem, not knowing the pity of the judges. But soon “a black cat ran between the Convention and the Commune.” Dumas was arrested and Tenville, with a sense of duty fulfilled, sent him to the guillotine. True, after some time, the “national razor” shaved off his head.
Robespierre's grave does not exist; his remains rest together with his associates executed on 10 Thermidor in an unmarked grave.
The French Revolution of 1789 is recognized by history as a great destructive force, which in the name of freedom crushed not only the monarchy, but also itself.
France, Marseille
On September 10, 1977, Tunisian emigrant Hamid Djandoubi, convicted of murder, was executed in Marseille; he became the last criminal to be executed by guillotine.
The guillotine as a device for carrying out the death penalty has been documented since the 13th century, when it was used in Ireland, Scotland and England, especially during the Republic of Oliver Cromwell, as well as in Italy and Switzerland.
During the French Revolution, the guillotine was introduced by decree of the French National Assembly on March 20, 1792 as the only instrument for executing capital punishment, regardless of the social status of the person sentenced to death. The idea of this law was submitted in 1790 by the doctor and revolutionary Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who himself was an opponent of the death penalty; he considered guillotining a more humane means of execution than hanging, beheading or shooting. Two years later, according to the design of the military surgeon Antoine Louis, a French version of a similar device was built, it was tested on corpses, and on April 25, 1792, the first person, the common thief Nicolas Pelletier, was executed on it in Paris on Place de Greve. The public, accustomed since the Middle Ages to “exquisite” torture, was disappointed by the speed of the execution.
Subsequently, the guillotine, as the device soon became known, was transported to the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde), where more than 10,000 people were executed during the French Revolution, including the former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Figures of the French Revolution were also guillotined - Georges Danton, Robespierre, Louis Saint-Just, Desmoulins. Contrary to popular belief, Joseph Guillotin himself was not executed by guillotine, but died naturally.
In 1868, the guillotine was improved - it became dismountable and was transported to the place of execution, as a rule, to the square in front of the prison gates. Around the same time, the positions of regional executioners were abolished, and the main, Parisian executioner with assistants, if necessary, began to travel to various cities of the country.
In Germany, which introduced guillotining in 1803, executions by guillotine continued until 1949, and in the German Democratic Republic until 1960. Switzerland abandoned the use of the guillotine in 1940. The last public execution by guillotine in France was carried out in 1939, and the last execution by guillotine in general was on September 10, 1977. This was also the last death penalty in Western Europe.
In 1981, France abolished the death sentence as a form of punishment, automatically abandoning the guillotine as a means of executing a person.
Over its almost two-hundred-year history, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people, ranging from criminals and revolutionaries to aristocrats, kings and even queens. Maria Molchanova tells the story of the origin and use of this famous symbol of terror.
It was long believed that the guillotine was invented at the end of the 18th century, however, recent research has shown that such “decapitation machines” have a longer history. The most famous, and perhaps one of the first, was a machine called the Halifax Gibbet, which was a monolithic wooden structure with two 15-foot posts topped by a horizontal beam. The blade was an ax that slid up and down along slots in the uprights. Most likely, the creation of this “Halifax Gallows” dates back to 1066, although the first reliable mention of it dates back to the 1280s. Executions took place in the town's market square on Saturdays, and the machine remained in use until April 30, 1650.
In 18th-century France, aristocrats held “victim balls” of the guillotine.Halifax Gallows
Another early mention of an execution machine is found in the painting Execution of Marcod Ballagh near Merton in Ireland 1307. As the title suggests, the victim's name is Marcoud Ballagh, and he was beheaded using equipment that bears a striking resemblance to a late French guillotine. A similar device is also found in a painting depicting a combination of a guillotine machine and traditional beheading. The victim was lying on a bench, with an ax secured by some kind of mechanism and raised above her neck. The difference lies in the executioner, who stands next to a large hammer, ready to strike the mechanism and send the blade down.
Hereditary executioner Anatole Deibler, “Monsieur de Paris,” inherited the post from his father and executed 395 people over a 40-year career.
Since the Middle Ages, execution by beheading was only possible for rich and influential people. Decapitation was believed to be more generous, and certainly less painful, than other methods. Other types of execution, which involved the quick death of the convict, often caused prolonged agony if the executioner was insufficiently qualified. The guillotine ensured instant death even with minimal qualifications of the executioner. However, let us remember “Halifax Gibbet” - it was undoubtedly an exception to the rule, since it was used to carry out punishment for any people, regardless of their position in society, including the poor. The French guillotine was also applied to all segments of the population without exception, which emphasized the equality of citizens before the law.
The guillotine remained the official method of execution in France until 197718th century guillotine
At the beginning of the 18th century, many methods of execution were used in France, which were often painful, bloody and excruciating. Hanging, burning at the stake, and quartering were commonplace. Rich and powerful people were beheaded with an ax or sword, while the execution of the common populace often involved alternating between death and torture. These methods had a dual purpose: to punish the criminal and to prevent new crimes, so most executions were carried out in public. Gradually, indignation at such monstrous punishments grew among the people. These discontents were fueled mainly by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Locke, who argued for more humane methods of execution. One of their supporters was Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin; however, it is still unclear whether the doctor was an advocate of capital punishment or ultimately sought its abolition.
Execution of French revolutionary Maximilian Robespierre
Guillotin, a doctor and member of the National Assembly, professor of anatomy, politician, member of the Constituent Assembly, friend of Robespierre and Marat, proposed using the guillotine in 1792. In fact, this beheading machine was named after him. The main part of the guillotine, intended for cutting off a head, is a heavy, several tens of kilograms, oblique knife (the slang name is “lamb”), which moves freely along vertical guides. The knife was raised to a height of 2-3 meters with a rope, where it was held in place by a latch. The head of the guillotined person was placed in a special recess at the base of the mechanism and secured on top with a wooden board with a recess for the neck, after which, using a lever mechanism, the latch holding the knife opened, and it fell at high speed onto the victim’s neck. Guillotin later oversaw the development of the first prototype, an impressive machine designed by the French doctor Antoine Louis and built by the German harpsichord inventor Tobias Schmidt. Subsequently, after using the machine for some time, Guillotin tried in every possible way to remove his name from this weapon during the guillotine hysteria in the 1790s, and at the beginning of the 19th century, his family unsuccessfully tried to petition the government to rename the death machine.
The way executioners dressed when going to the scaffold dictated fashion in France.Portrait of Doctor Guillotin
In April 1792, after successful experiments on corpses, the first execution with the new machine was carried out in Paris, on Place de Greve - the first executed was a robber named Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier. After Pelletier's execution, the beheading machine was given the name "Luisette" or "Luizon", after its designer, Dr. Louis, but this name was soon forgotten. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the history of the guillotine is the extraordinary speed and scale of its adoption and use. Indeed, by 1795, only a year and a half after its first use, the guillotine had beheaded more than a thousand people in Paris alone. Of course, when mentioning these figures, one cannot ignore the role of time, since in France the machine was introduced only a few months before the bloodiest period of the French Revolution.
Execution of the French King Louis XVI
Eerie images of the guillotine began to appear in magazines and pamphlets, accompanied by highly ambiguous humorous comments. They wrote about her, composed songs and poems, and depicted her in caricatures and frightening drawings. The guillotine affected everything - fashion, literature and even children's toys; it became an integral part of French history. However, despite all the horror of that period, the guillotine did not become hated by the people. The nicknames given to her by the people were sad and romantic rather than hateful and terrifying - “national razor”, “widow”, “Madame Guillotin”. An important fact in this phenomenon is that the guillotine itself was never associated with any particular layer of society, and also that Robespierre himself was beheaded there. Both yesterday's king and an ordinary criminal or political rebel could be executed on the guillotine. This allowed the machine to become the arbiter of supreme justice.
Guillotin proposed the machine as a humane method of executionGuillotine in Prague Pankrac prison
At the end of the 18th century, people came in whole groups to Revolution Square to watch the machine do its terrible work. Spectators could buy souvenirs, read the program listing the names of the victims, and even have a snack at a restaurant nearby called “Cabaret at the Guillotine.” Some went to executions every day, most notably the "Knitters" - a group of female fanatics who sat in the front rows directly in front of the scaffold and knitted between executions. This eerie theatrical atmosphere also extended to the convicts. Many offered sarcastic remarks or defiant last words before dying, some even dancing their last steps down the steps of the scaffold.
Execution of Marie Antoinette
Children often went to executions and some of them even played at home with their own miniature models of the guillotine. An exact copy of a guillotine, about half a meter high, was a popular toy in France at that time. Such toys were fully functional, and children used them to cut off the heads of dolls or even small rodents. However, they were eventually banned in some cities as having a bad influence on children. Small guillotines also found a place on the dinner tables of the upper classes, they were used for cutting bread and vegetables.
"Children's" guillotine
As the popularity of the guillotine grew, so did the reputation of executioners; during the Great French Revolution, they gained enormous fame. Executioners were judged on their ability to quickly and accurately organize a large number of executions. Such work often became a family affair. Generations of the famous Sanson family served as government executioners from 1792 to 1847, bringing blades to the necks of thousands of victims, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of the main executioners went to the Deibler family, father and son. They held this position from 1879 to 1939. People often praised the names of the Sansons and Deiblers in the streets, and the way they dressed when going to the scaffold dictated the fashion in the country. The criminal world also admired the executioners. According to some reports, gangsters and other bandits even got tattoos with dark slogans like: “My head will go to Deibler.”
Last public execution by guillotine, 1939
The guillotine was used intensively during the French Revolution and remained the main method of executing capital punishment in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981. Public executions continued in France until 1939, when Eugene Weidmann became the last victim "under open air" Thus, it took almost 150 years for Guillotin’s initial humane wishes to be realized in order to keep the execution process secret from prying eyes. The last time the guillotine was used was on September 10, 1977, when 28-year-old Tunisian Hamida Djandoubi was executed. He was a Tunisian immigrant convicted of torturing and murdering 21-year-old Elisabeth Bousquet, an acquaintance of his. The next execution was scheduled to take place in 1981, but the alleged victim, Philippe Maurice, was granted clemency.
If you are not sure that you want to see this execution, then it is better not to read further.
People are usually proud when their name remains for centuries, being a kind of passport to history. But this is not the case - at the end of his life, this man tried to turn to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to rename the device, which was given his name. But it didn’t work out...
Namesake of the guillotine
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His name was Joseph Ignace Guillotin, and exactly 221 years ago, on April 25, 1792, the first execution was carried out on the Place de Greve in Paris using a mechanism named after him. He, of course, did not invent it - similar devices had been tried before in Scotland, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, etc. And Guillotin was only a lobbyist for the idea of a mechanism improved by Dr. Antoine Louis and German mechanic Thomas Schmidt for carrying out the death penalty by cutting off the head.
At that time in France there was no equality of all before the death penalty, and depending on the crime and social status, there were several types. Regicides and parricides were executed by quartering. Murderers and thieves were hanged. Those guilty of aggravated murder and robbery were rounded up. Heretics, arsonists and sodomites were sent to the stake. Counterfeiters were dipped into boiling oil. And the noble privilege was execution by cutting off the head with an ax or sword.
There are two main types of French guillotine. Left: 1792 model, right: 1872 Berger model
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Dr. Guillotin believed that if the death penalty cannot be avoided (and he was its opponent), then the execution should be the same for everyone and as less painful as possible. Speaking in the National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament) on October 10, 1789, during a debate on the death penalty, he argued: “With my machine, you can cut off a head in the blink of an eye, and the condemned person won’t even feel it.”
And then he added: “He will only have time to feel the cool breath on his neck.”. The last poetic comparison then caused slight laughter in the hall, but during the Great French Revolution, a significant part of the deputies gathered there would no longer be laughing - they would be able to find out from their own necks whether these words were true.
But the Parisians did not like its first use - they were disappointed by the brevity of the show. But a year after this, the Age of Terror began in France and the speed of execution by guillotine began to be redeemed by the frequency of its use and the loudness of the names of those executed.
Public execution by guillotine in 1897
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In RuNet, article after article duplicates the story that the medieval ritual words were announced to the person sentenced to the guillotine on the last morning: “Take courage... (name followed)! The hour of redemption has come! All this is bullshit - in fact, everything happened more routinely, much simpler and was completely regulated by prison instructions.
Preparations for the execution began at 2.30. final preparations and the executioner checking the serviceability of the guillotine, for which an hour was allotted. Everything else happened within half an hour.
At 3.30. the director of the prison, the judge, the prefect of police, the lawyer of the condemned man, the clerk, the priest and the guards entered the cell of the condemned man, who did not know about the impending execution. The prison director woke up the prisoner and announced: “Your pardon has been rejected. Get up. Prepare to die."
The prisoner was given time to dress, wash and relieve his natural needs. Then the prison director asked him: “ Is there anything you would like to tell us? Mr. Judge is here to listen to you.” Then it was suggested: “If you want to be alone with the priest, then we will go out for a few minutes.”.
After this, the prisoner was cut off the hair on the back of his head and changed into a white shirt without a stand-up collar. And they provided the opportunity to write a last letter to your family (or anyone), offering a glass of rum or a glass of wine, and a cigarette.
Non-public execution by guillotine in 1905
After which, at 4.00, the condemned man, supported by the arms of two guards, shackled and handcuffed from behind, walked in small steps to the place of execution (the instructions prescribed that the path from the cell to the guillotine should be as straight and short as possible). In case of cold weather, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders.
A French legend (and the French also have their own stories) says that the priest walked ahead of the procession and waved a crucifix in the face of the condemned man so that he would not see the guillotine until the last moment.
At the place of execution, the executioner and his assistant were already waiting for the condemned man; the guards laid the condemned man on a lounger and fixed his head. The executioner released the lock, the horizontal knife fell, and the head flew into the basket.
The headless body was quickly shoved into a deep box of sawdust, where the head was then moved. If the body was requested by the family for burial, it was placed in a coffin and given to relatives. If not, it was transferred to the forensic laboratory.
The execution itself took place very quickly, and very creepy in its ordinariness. I repeat: if you are not sure that you want to see it, then it is better not to watch it.
This is amateur film footage taken at 4:50 am on June 17, 1939 from the window of an apartment in a residential building adjacent to the San Pierre prison in Versailles. The footage captured the last public execution in France by guillotine. Beheaded - Eugene Weidman, serial killer of six people.
It took place with a delay of 45 minutes - according to conversations so that it would dawn, and photographers could capture it better. A few hours later, Paris-Soir came out with a whole page of photographs from the execution site. A big scandal arose, and President Albert Lebrun banned the public execution of the death penalty in France - from then until its abolition, it was carried out in the inner prison courtyard.
After Guillotin's death in 1814, his family officially petitioned the government to rename the guillotine, and upon receiving a refusal, changed their surname. Which one exactly is unknown (French law requires secrecy in such cases).
Guillotin himself died from a carbuncle on his left shoulder, but the rumor that he was executed on a mechanism he invented is not without foundation - during the Great French Revolution, in 1793, in Lyon, his namesake was executed on the guillotine.
And Victor Hugo would later write about him and Columbus: “There are unfortunate people: one cannot attach his name to his discovery, another cannot erase his name from his invention.”…
The last public execution in France by guillotine November 5th, 2015
Some time ago we studied in great detail, and now let’s remember 1939, France. There at that time the last PUBLIC execution was carried out by cutting off the head.
Born in Germany in 1908, Eugene Weidmann began stealing from a young age and even as an adult did not give up his criminal habits. While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime, Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.
June 17, 1938. Eugene Weidman shows police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau in France where he killed nurse Janine Keller.
They robbed and murdered a young New York dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.
Homeland Security officials eventually tracked down Weidman. One day, returning home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman shot at the officers with a pistol, wounding them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.
France became the last EU country to constitutionally prohibit the use of the death penalty.
In France, under the old regime, regicides were executed by quartering. Wheeling, hanging by the rib, and other painful punishments were also widespread. In 1792, the guillotine was introduced, and subsequently most death sentences, except by the verdict of a military court (in this case there was a regular execution), were carried out through the guillotine (in the French Criminal Code of 1810, Article 12 states that “everyone sentenced to death shall be cut off head"). Already on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed by guillotine. This machine was not an original invention either by Dr. Guillotin, who proposed to introduce it as an instrument of capital punishment, or by his teacher, Dr. Louis; a similar machine was previously used in Scotland, where it was called the “Scottish maiden”. In France, she was also called the Virgin or even the Forest of Justice. The purpose of the invention was to create a painless and quick method of execution. After the head was cut off, the executioner raised it and showed it to the crowd. It was believed that the severed head could be seen for about ten seconds. Thus, the person’s head was raised so that before he died he could see how the crowd was laughing at him.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, public executions took place on boulevards or near prisons, where large crowds always gathered.
March 1939. Weidman during the trial.
March 1939.
March 1939. Installation of special telephone lines for the court.
As a result of a sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison. On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidmann's request for clemency and commuted Millon's death sentence to life imprisonment.
June 1939. Weidman in court.
Weidman met the morning of June 17, 1939 in the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the whistling of the crowd awaited him.
June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine awaiting Weidman's execution outside the Saint-Pierre prison.
Among the spectators who wanted to watch the execution was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who was 17 years old at the time.
June 17, 1939. Weidman, on his way to the guillotine, passes by the box in which his body will be transported.
Weidman was placed in the guillotine and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defourneau, immediately lowered the blade.
The crowd present at the execution was very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to soak handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs. The scene was so horrific that French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions entirely, arguing that instead of curbing crime, they served to awaken people's baser instincts.
This was the last public execution in France; due to the obscene excitement of the crowd and scandals with the press, it was ordered that executions should henceforth be carried out in prison.
The last execution by beheading by guillotine took place in Marseille, during the reign of Giscard d'Estaing, on September 10, 1977 (in total, only three people were executed during his seven-year term - 1974-1981). The executed man, of Tunisian origin, was named Hamid Djandoubi; he kidnapped and killed his former partner, whom he had previously forced into prostitution and tortured for a long time before his death. This was the last execution not only in France, but throughout Western Europe. François Mitterrand, shortly after taking office in 1981, introduced a complete moratorium on the death penalty, which was given the status of law.
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