Madame la Guillotine

Podcat Transcript

The Guillotine has become infamous for being a symbol of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

It has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people since it was first used in 1792.

But, of all the ways to execute people, why did they create an elaborate contraption when simpler methods were available?

Learn more about the guillotine, why it was invented, and its impact on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Before the development of the guillotine, beheadings in France were rare.

Beheadings required a skilled executioner, so more efficient forms of execution were used, including such classics as being burned at the stake or being hanged.

The other reason why there were few beheadings is that beheading was considered to be more humane.

In Ancient times, Greeks and Romans believed that beheadings were quicker and more painless than almost any other form of execution and less dishonorable.

For example, St. Paul was beheaded because he was a Roman citizen, and Roman law forbade crucifixion for citizens, allowing them a more “honorable” execution method.

Other early Christians, particularly non-citizens like St. Peter, were often crucified, burned, or thrown to wild animals because they lacked this legal protection.

This was later adapted into English culture, where it was a nobleman’s privilege to be beheaded.

King Charles I, Anne Boleyn, Thomas More, Mary Queen of Scots, Thomas Cromwell, and Lady Jane Grey were all members of the nobility who were beheaded.

There were a few early “proto-guillotines.”

The Halifax Gibbet was an early beheading device used in the town of Halifax, England, from at least the 13th century until the mid-17th century. It consisted of a tall wooden frame with a heavy axe blade mounted in a groove, which was raised and then released to fall onto the neck of the condemned.

It is considered a precursor to the guillotine and may have influenced its later design. The gibbet was primarily used to execute thieves, particularly those who stole goods worth more than thirteen pence.

The invention of the guillotine is often incorrectly attributed to Joseph Guillotin.

Guillotin was a physician and freemason in France and happened to be an opponent of the death penalty. He hated the forms of execution being partaken by the French government, finding them gruesome, and believed that capital punishment should be more humane.

It was because of these moral qualms that he proposed that a new, less painful form of punishment be implemented.

The guillotine was actually invented by Antoine Louis, a French surgeon, and Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer. The device was originally named the “Louisette” or “Louison” after Antoine Louis.

The reason Guillotin receives this credit is that he suggested to King Louis XVI that decapitation should be the standard form of capital punishment.

This led to the King forming a committee, including Louis, Schmidt, and Guillotin, to create the beheading machine we know today as the guillotine.

Guillotin has his name associated with one of the infamous forms of execution because of his advocacy for a more humane form of punishment, despite actually being against Capital punishment.

As Alanis Morissette might say, Isn’t it ironic?

So, how does the guillotine work? It’s actually remarkably simple. It consists of a tall frame, standing upright with an angled, in theory, razor-sharp blade suspended over a pillory.

A pillory is similar to a stock, where a person’s head and hands are placed inside wooden boards and locked together. The difference for the pillory is that only the head is placed inside.

For the guillotine, the pillory is placed directly below the weighted blade, right above the person’s neck. When the almost 90-pound or 41 kilogram blade is released, it drops from a height of about 14 feet or 4.2 meters. The actual decapitation takes approximately one-tenth of a second.

After the blade hits, the head of the victim is separated from the body and rolled into a basket placed below the machine.

Before the guillotine, beheadings typically took more than two blows to cut off the person’s head with an axe or a sword.

Nobles would often pay for the executioners to sharpen their blades before the execution took place. As for peasants, the typical punishment, hangings, would take minutes. As you can imagine, these prolonged, painful deaths were not popular among the French populace.

Though the guillotine’s method of execution is certainly violent, its methods fell into the ideals of the Enlightenment. The guillotine was quick and standardized by class. It was painless, easy, and dignified.

Death was now considered democratic…which I’m sure was a great comfort to those who lost their head.

It was soon required by French law that all death sentences be “carried out by means of machine.” As it was considered more humane and painless.

Unfortunately, its ease of use would make the tool the perfect weapon to enact the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

The person who had the unfortunate distinction of being the first person executed by guillotine was a French Royalist named Louis Collenot d’Angremont. He was a secretary for the National Guard and was executed for conspiring against the new Revolutionary government.

This execution took place on August 21, 1792, three years after the French Revolution had begun.

Before I go into how the Guillotine was used by the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, let me recap the events surrounding the Revolution.

The French Revolution began on May 5, 1789, and lasted until November 9, 1799.

The rigid structure of the traditional Ancien Régime divided society into three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The vast majority of the population fell into the Third Estate, bearing the burden of taxation while having almost no political power.

France was also mired in debt from years of war, and privileged elites blocked attempts at reform. Widespread food shortages and rising bread prices intensified public anger.

The Enlightenment disseminated new ideas about liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty, inspiring many to challenge the legitimacy of absolute monarchy.

In 1789, the advisory body known as the Estates-General was convened, and the Third Estate broke away to form the National Assembly, setting the revolution in motion.

This set in motion a chain of events that led to widespread political chaos across France, including events like the Storming of the Bastille and methodically stripping the monarchy of power.

After King Louis XVI was fully stripped of his power, he was arrested, leading to the declaration of the First French Republic.

…Which brings us to the Reign of Terror, which was the subject of a previous episode. Over roughly a year, 17,000 people are estimated to have been killed by the guillotine, most notably King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette.

As I stated before, the guillotine was considered to be more humane, classless, and standardized.

These ideas were crucial in the French Revolution because the main idea was to achieve equality. Enemies of the state, regardless of class or standing, would be equal in death. In other words, the Guillotine was the physical embodiment of what the Revolution was meant to achieve.

“The Great Terror” was brutal, and perceived enemies of the state, such as the Jacobins, were sent to prison or the guillotine without a trial.

Unfortunately, for victims of the Guillotine, the method of execution was not necessarily as painless and swift as promised, creating some controversy about the weapon.

Onlookers to executions were unsure if it was immediate, as some claimed to see awareness and sensations after the person had been decapitated.

Additionally, sometimes, the guillotine would not cut completely through the neck.

The machine was soon nicknamed “the widow” due to the number of lives it took. It was also dubbed “the National Razor” as well as “Madame la Guillotine.”

The Reign of Terror ended with the execution of its primary instigator, Maximilien Robespierre, who himself met his fate at the hands of “Madame la Guillotine.”

Throughout the Revolution, most of the executions in Paris took place at the Place de la Revolution.

The executions were considered to be a spectacle, with programs of the day’s executions being handed out in the crowds.

Less relevant, but a fun fact nonetheless, was that the guillotine also inspired women’s fashion during the Revolution.

Many women began wearing a red choker around their neck, representing where the blade cut the neck of someone they knew or loved.

A red shawl that would be worn over thin dresses also become popular. The thin dress was inspired by prisoner shirts. The shawl is attributed to Charlotte Corday. She was executed by guillotine after she assassinated revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat.

Another fashion trend was the “guillotine cut,” a hairstyle that gained immense popularity during the revolution. The style was short and showcased the women’s neck, a radical and new look for the time. It was meant to model the prisoners whose hair would be cut before being taken to the guillotine so that it wouldn’t block their necks during the execution.

The guillotine has been used outside of France, but not nearly to the same extent.

The Caribbean, which was heavily colonized by the French, had the guillotine used, but it was much rarer than in France. The two islands that had used the guillotine were Guadeloupe and Martinique. Its use in the region concluded in 1965.

In North America, only one execution by guillotine has been recorded. A guillotine was brought to the island of St. Pierre, off the coast of Newfoundland, from Martinique and was used to kill a convicted murderer, Joseph Néel, in 1889.

St. Pierre was under French legal jurisdiction, and the law said that the guillotine needed to be used as the method of execution and that the execution needed to be done near the scene of the crime.

This led to the guillotine being brought up and used because Saint Pierre didn’t have one of their own.

This was the subject of the 2000 film The Widow of Saint-Pierre.

In South America, the guillotine was used in French Guiana. Almost everyone executed was a convict who had previously been exiled from France and had been sent to penal colonies, such as Devil’s Island.

150 people were recorded as being executed by guillotine in French Guyana.

In the Southern Hemisphere, it was only officially used in two colonies: New Caledonia, which also had a penal colony, and Tahiti, which only executed two people with the device.

Vietnam, which was a former French colony, used the guillotine as well, though it was not in an official capacity. It was used as a fear tactic on the rural populations in Vietnam.

In Europe, the guillotine was used commonly outside of France.

Germany was the other most notable user of the Guillotine, which was known in German as the Fallbeil or the “falling axe.”

The method was popular in Germany after the Napoleonic era and remained legal in Germany until the 1960s when East Germany discontinued its use in 1967.

The German variant of the guillotine differed slightly from the French model, being more sturdy and effective, with heavier blades and a slightly shorter design. This made the method of execution faster.

Other countries in Europe have used the guillotine as a legal method of Capital punishment, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, and Sweden.

After the French Revolution, the guillotine continued to be the standard method of execution in France until 1981.

Public executions via the guillotine were still used in France until 1939, when Eugen Weidmann, a man convicted of six murders, was executed in Versailles.

State Security crimes or military court sentences were carried out by firing squad, but civilian death sentences were carried out by guillotine.

The final use of the guillotine by any government, French or otherwise, occurred in September of 1977. The final victim of the guillotine was a convicted murderer by the name of Hamida Djanboubi.

In 1981, the French abolished Capital Punishment, making it illegal to use.

But, up until that point, a Guillotine was kept in the Paris city center, ready for use.

Since 1977, the guillotine hasn’t been used in any official capacity by any government in the world.

The guillotine was a paradox. On the one hand, it was designed to be an egalitarian and humane method of execution. However, it became a symbol of terror and fear. That is why it has been completely eliminated from use around the world.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by Olivia Ashe.

Today’s one-star review comes from listener EndOnTime over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write.

You also have USA listeners

Apparently the reader has never heard of miles, yards nor feet.

Thanks, EndOnTime! I shared this review with a few people I know who listen to the show and they all had the exact same reaction I did.

I almost always use both metric and imperial units. I make it a point to do that unless the topic warrants just using one or the others.

That being said, I think it beehoves any American to at least have a cursory understanding of the rough equivalents between metric and imperial units in your head. It is a good skill to have considering that pretty much everywhere else in thew world, and all of science, using metric measurements.

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