guillotine

On July 17, 1793, Charlotte Corday d’Armont was executed by guillotine for the murder of Jean-Paul Marat. Assistant executioner Francois le Gros displayed her severed head to the cheering crowd, then slapped the cheek. Spectators swore the head blushed. Le Gros was sentenced to three months in prison for his breach of scaffold etiquette.

Fascination and intrigue have surrounded this French icon since its introduction. Rather than be appalled, the French have embraced their infamous death machine, referring to it as “The National Razor,” “The Widow,” “Madame Guillotine” and “Saint Guillotine.”

This killing device has had different formal names. It was first called “Louison” or “Louisette” after the original designer Antoine Louis. The press at the time preferred “Guillotine” as it had a nicer ring to it. I’m sure the victims appreciated that.

Contrary to popular belief, this decapitation machine associated with the French Revolution had a history that went back to at least 1066. The most famous example, the Halifax Gibbet, was a monolithic structure created from two 15-foot high uprights capped by a horizontal beam. The blade was an ax head attached to the bottom of a 4½ foot wooden block that slid up and down via grooves in the uprights. The entire device was mounted on a large, square, four- foot high platform.

Executions took place in the marketplace on Saturdays. Wonder who could eat after watching those spectacles.

The guillotine was first reserved for the wealthy because of its relatively humane nature. Besides, it never got tired, unlike human executioners who often made a mess by missing the victim altogether, or required several chops before the job was done. This last practice was so gruesome to family members that they sometimes paid the executioner to sharpen the blade, thus encouraging a quicker and relatively painless death.

That had to be better than earlier forms of execution where victims were lined up in front of open graves and shredded by grape shot from cannons. Or worse, where the victim was attached to 4 horses, each going in a different direction. The horses were whipped into a gallop, literally tearing the victim to pieces.

The Guillotine takes its name from Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (no “e” on the end), a French doctor and member of the Revolutionary National Assembly, on whose suggestion it was introduced. Antoine Louis developed the concept put forth by Guillotin and it was from his design that the first guillotine (as it is known today) was built.

Louis introduced other improvements including the angled blade and the lunette, the 2-part collar that held the victim’s head in place.

The executioner with the most beheadings? Probably Charles-Henri Sanson, executioner in Paris during the Revolution. He executed King Louis XVI as well as 2917 others.

Historians connect many last words to this device. “Monsieur, I beg your pardon,” uttered by Marie Antoinette after she stepped on the executioner’s foot. Uttered by Jean Sylvane Bailly after being heckled by a spectator for trembling, “Only from the cold, my friend.” And this last, “I’d rather be fishing,” attributed to anonymous.

Famous (infamous?) people as well as commoners succumbed to the guillotine. Maximilien de Robespierre, revolutionary tyrant and one of the most powerful men in government during France’s reign of terror, and one who sent many to their deaths, was guillotined in 1794. Marie Antoinette a year before along with King Louis XVI.

The first official victim was Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, executed on the 25th of April, 1792.

Executions were made public to act as a deterrent to crime. They were a popular entertainment that attracted large crowds. Vendors sold programs listing those scheduled to die. Regulars appeared day after day, vying for the best seats. Parents even brought their children. Wild cheering often occurred after a beheading.

Witnesses claimed to have observed severed heads that responded to the sound of their name or to a pin prick. Other heads supposedly mouthed words, even talked afterwards. More dramatic accounts included murderers who tried to speak (“I told you I was innocent?”) and rivals who bit each other while their heads lay in a bag.

In 1956, anatomists and other scientists experimented on severed heads. The current medical consensus is that life does survive after beheading, up to 13 seconds depending on the victim’s build and health. Apparently the act of removing a head is not what kills the brain. Rather, it’s the lack of oxygen and other chemicals in the blood stream. Eyes move and blink.

After the Revolution, “victim’s balls” became fashionable. Only relatives of the executed could attend. Guests dressed with their hair up and their necks exposed, mimicking the condemned.

Other countries participated in guillotining. In Nazi Germany, for example, beheading by guillotine was the usual method of dealing with convicted criminals. The Nazis reportedly killed 40,000 people in Austria and Germany this way.

Everyone seems to be fascinated with any subject that deals with the macabre. The guillotine is no exception.

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It%26#39;s useful to remember that the last public execution was carried out in 1939, and that the sentenced inmate was executed on December 10, 1977 - the last in Western Europe, for that matter.

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*the last sentenced inmate.

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Also useful to remind that the death penalty has been abolished since 1981 in France.

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The other reason the guillotine was preferred during the Revolution was that executions became a production function.

The custom of the doomed giving the executioner a coin derived from this early practice of paying so that the the death by ax would be swift. Fatigue wasn%26#39;t the only reason the man with the ax was sometimes not accurate. The custom long survived the need, but one never knew for sure...

Marie Antoinette was executed ten months after Louis XVI.

There%26#39;s a brass plaque on the ground where the primary guillotine stood, now alongside the obelisk in the center of the Place de la Concorde.

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At a butcher shop in the Belleville area, I did see a decapitated pigs head for sale.

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