The invention of the guillotine made decapitation more “humane” and gave equality of punishment to all classes. It also made decapitation “easier” and faster, facilitating the mass executions of the Reign of Terror.
The guillotine was invented to make execution
In October, 1789, the National Assembly
In 1791, the National Assembly passed a law stating that all who received the death penalty would be beheaded. Following this decree, Antoine Louis, a renowned surgeon and secretary of the Academie de Chirurgie et de Medecine de sa Majeste (His Majesty’s Academy of Surgery and Medicine)
The mechanical workings of the guillotine are described in this 1793 etching that represents Louis XVI as a martyr declaring, “I forgive my enemies; I die innocent!!!”
Tobias Schmidt,
The device was tested again at Bicetre, using three corpses of well-built men, who had died from accidents or short illnesses, to be certain that the blade severed the head quickly and completely. This device, which was now ready for use in the execution of those condemned to death, could be described in the following manner: It was composed of two upright planks of wood that measured fourteen feet and were connected at the top by a wooden crossbeam. The oblique blade, which was weighted and operated by pulleys, traveled down through greased grooves in the sides of the uprights when it was released. The device was placed on a platform with a stair of twenty-four steps.
In March of 1792, King Louis XVI had signed the law adopting the machine. On April 25, 1792, Jacques Nicolas Pelletier,
It is ironic that an invention that was the result of a humanitarian’s strong desire to alleviate suffering and eventually to eliminate the death penalty should be the instrument of so many deaths and come to inspire fear and trepidation. Such, however, was the fate of the guillotine. The Reign of Terror
This period witnessed the guillotining of approximately twenty thousand French citizens, including nobility, clergy, and commoners. The guillotine deprived the nation of many of its best thinkers and scientists, such as the chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.
The guillotine quickly acquired a symbolic import throughout Europe. This 1798 cartoon portrays the British pro-French politician George Tierney as an executioner, standing before a guillotine dripping with blood and gore.
The thought and philosophy of the Enlightenment brought about the invention of the guillotine. It was a physical representation of the period’s efforts to improve the life of the individual. Montesquieu, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, and their fellow philosophes (philosophers) believed that humans had the ability to improve the conditions of their lives by the use of reason. To achieve this end, they spoke out against superstition, brutality, violence, and prejudice, including that prejudice that privileged one class over another. They believed in the perfectibility of humans and the right of the individual to dignity and respect. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a humanitarian as well as a physician and politician, applied these principles to his medical and political activities. Thus, he proposed the device named after him to minimize human suffering, to eliminate privilege before the law, and to maintain the dignity of the condemned. The quick severing of a head lessened the horror of execution as it replaced long torturous methods of breaking and rending the victim’s body.
Guillotin believed that establishing mechanical decapitation as the only means of execution would lead eventually to abolishment of the death penalty. It is ironic that the French Revolution would turn the invention into a diabolical and bloody symbol of death. The revolutionaries unable to maintain control over the political change that they had put into motion fell into a violent frenzy of killing. Either the Enlightenment’s beloved reason had left them or they had abandoned it, for they were no longer thinking, just acting brutally, violently, and without respect for human dignity.
The guillotine played an important role in execution from its invention until the last years of the twentieth century. It was adopted by several countries, including Belgium, Switzerland, and Greece. In Nazi Germany, it was used for at least as many executions as during the French Revolution. In 1939, a French law was passed requiring that executions not be done in public. Thus, Guillotin’s hope that execution should be private, and not a public spectacle, finally became a reality. The last execution in France actually took place in 1977.
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Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Edited by L. G. Mitchell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Treats the mismanagement of change during the Revolution, which turned into violence and terror. -
Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Good, comprehensive presentation. -
Hardman, John. The French Revolution Sourcebook. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. English translations of original French documents pertaining to the Revolution (1785-1795). -
Hershaw, Alister. A History of the Guillotine. London: John Calder, 1958. The best, most-detailed book on the guillotine. -
Popkin, Richard, ed. The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Chapter 6 provides an overall view of Enlightenment philosophy, its origins, and its results. -
Sutton, Geoffrey V. Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995. Examines the popularization of science, the use of demonstration lectures, and the century’s interest in inventions.
Early Enlightenment in France
Fall of the Bastille
Execution of Louis XVI
Fall of Robespierre
Georges Danton; Denis Diderot; Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier; Louis XVI; Marie-Antoinette; Montesquieu; Robespierre; Voltaire.