France Adopts the Guillotine
The guillotine, a device designed for execution by decapitation, was adopted in France in the late 18th century as a means to create a more humane method of capital punishment. Invented in the context of the French Revolution, the guillotine aimed to eliminate the brutal and varied methods of execution that were previously employed, which often depended on the condemned individual's social status. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a physician and advocate for humane treatment, proposed the device to ensure equality before the law and to reduce the suffering of those facing execution.
Legislation in 1791 made it the standard method of execution for death sentences in France, leading to its first use in 1792. The guillotine became emblematic of the Reign of Terror, a period characterized by mass executions, during which about twenty thousand individuals, including notable figures of the Revolution, met their end at its blade. Despite its original humanitarian intent, the guillotine ultimately became a symbol of fear and violence, reflecting the chaotic and tumultuous nature of the revolutionary period.
The device was used in France until capital punishment was abolished in 1981, and it has since gained notoriety across Europe and beyond, illustrating the complex interplay between ideals of justice and the realities of power during a transformative era. Although it was intended to promote dignity and minimize suffering, the guillotine’s legacy remains intertwined with themes of violence and political upheaval.
France Adopts the Guillotine
Date October, 1789-April 25, 1792
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.
Locale Paris, France
Key Figures
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), French physician, politician, and humanitarianAntoine Louis (1723-1792), French surgeon and secretary of the Academy of SurgeryCharles-Henri Sanson (1739-1806), French executionerLouis XVI (1754-1793), king of France, r. 1774-1792
Summary of Event
The guillotine was invented to make execution less painful and to provide one means of execution for all who received the death penalty, regardless of their social class or the crime they had committed. Methods of execution in France, as elsewhere at this time, were cruel and brutal, causing considerable physical suffering to the executed. They were also varied in regard to the type of crime being punished and to the social class of the condemned individual. Only the nobility and upper bourgeoisie had the privilege of being decapitated. The poor were usually hanged in the public square. For certain crimes, however, there were extremely painful methods of execution. Highwaymen were broken on the wheel, those who had committed regicide or crimes against the state were drawn and quartered, heretics were burned alive, and counterfeiters were boiled alive.
In October, 1789, the National Assembly began a debate on the penal code of France. In an effort to make executions more humane and to minimize the suffering of the condemned, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a noted physician and member of a small movement that sought the eventual elimination of the death penalty, proposed the use of a decapitation machine as a means of execution. Guillotin’s proposal consisted of six articles intended to minimize the suffering of the person condemned to death and to assure the same treatment to all individuals as well as protection of the family of the accused from persecution and stigma. He proposed that all offenses be punished by the same penalty, and that in the case of the death penalty, the means of execution should be decapitation by use of a machine, not by sword or axe. He also recommended that the body of the offender be given to the family at their request, that there should be no confiscation of property, that the family should not be censured or excluded from any public office or profession, and that anyone who reproached a family member for the crime should be publicly reprimanded.
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) was chosen to oversee the development and construction of a decapitation machine. This type of device was not a new idea. Louis was able to consult drawings of similar machines that had been used occasionally in England, Scotland, and Italy from the twelfth century. He designed a machine that rested upon a platform or scaffold.
Tobias Schmidt, a German harpsichord maker, was hired to do the actual construction of the machine with the assistance of Charles-Henri Sanson, chief executioner of France. The machine was first set up near Schmidt’s workshop in the Cour de Commerce and tried out on sheep and calves. It was then taken to the hospital at Bicetre, where it was tested on three human corpses. It was after this experiment with the machine that the blade was modified and rendered oblique. Schmidt is credited with suggesting the oblique blade.
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, a highwayman, was executed with the device, which was operated by Sanson. The machine was then moved to the Place de Carrousel, where political offenders were executed. It was subsequently moved to the Place de la Revolution (the present-day Place de La Concorde), where Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793. By this time, people were referring to the machine as the “louison” or “louisette.” (There is some controversy as to whether this name made reference to Antoine Louis or to Louis XVI.) Eventually, in spite of Guillotin’s protests, the machine became known as the guillotine. It also acquired other descriptive names among the populace, such as Madame la Guillotine, la Veuve (the Widow), and la Becane (the Machine).
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 began in September of 1793 with the rise to power of Robespierre and escalated into the Great Terror with the passage of the Law of 22 Prairial (June 21, 1794), which gave the Revolutionary Tribunal the right to condemn to death whomever they pleased. The Great Terror lasted until Robespierre’s fall from power in July of 1794.
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 chemistAntoine-Laurent Lavoisier. It also took the lives of many of the promulgators of the Revolution, including Georges Danton and Robespierre. Although Guillotin was arrested and imprisoned, his neck did not come under the machine’s blade. After Robespierre’s demise, Guillotin was released. He died in 1814. The guillotine continued to be used as the means of execution in France until 1981, when capital punishment was outlawed.
Significance
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.
Bibliography
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.