Best known for it’s use in France during the French Revolution and the Terror, the
guillotine was the brutal mechanism and execution machine that was used for efficiently carrying
out as many executions as possible.
It was the structure that took the head off the French King, but it was even being used
during the Second World War in Nazi Germany, with Hitler’s executioners taking the heads
off those he deemed to be a traitor.
The guillotine was created with the mindfulness of making capital punishment as reliable and
as painless as possible, and within seconds someone could be killed.
It would take seconds from the prisoner being passed to the executioner before they were
confirmed dead.
But what was the story behind the infamous structure, and is it true that someone could
be alive once the blade fell?
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Beheading machines had been used long before the French Revolution, one medieval scaffold
named the Halifax Gibbet was even used within England, with an axe blade placed on a dropping
structure that would take heads.
This was used as early as 1280, but after the execution of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell
the lord protector outlawed the use of the gibbet.
The Maiden was also used in Scotland for executions during the 1500s, and was a form of guillotine
too, but it was during the French revolution that it was used heavily.
Following it’s invention, it was actually called a Louisette, but was then named after
French physician, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who gave the idea of performing executions
in France in a more humane way.
Guillotin himself was against the death penalty, and he did not like the use of the breaking
wheel and other barbaric ways of execution, and he convinced Louis XVI to implement a
more humane way.
It wasn’t Guillotin who made the first structure, as it was Antoine Louis and a German engineer
Tobias Schmidt who built a prototype guillotine, but it was claimed that the King himself Louis
XVI suggested using a straight angled blade.
Ironically it would be this structure that would then take his life.
Guillotin took to the National Assembly in October 1789 saying that capital punishment
should always be done by decapitation in a simple and mechanic way, and then King Louis
XVI banned using the breaking wheel.
But within his country there was growing discontent and uproar against the monarchy, with huge
economic problems across France.
A committee was formed of French officials including Antoine Louis and Guillotine who
looked to other European countries to create a more humane device and a beheading structure.
It was said that the weapon should be used to take the heads of all condemned people
regardless of who they were, and what standing they were in society, and that the purpose
was to just end life, and not cause pain.
The prototype that was made looked how we would imagine a guillotine to look like, and
the first execution by guillotine occured with highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier
on the 25th April 1792 being beheaded.
This took place in front of the now city hall of Paris, and it was here where all condemned
citizens were to die until the scaffold was then later moved.
The Guillotine it was said was seen as a successful device, and it was considered much more humane.
Before executioners often using swords or axe took many swings to kill the condemned
leading to bloody scenes with people being hacked to death.
The family of the condemned even paid executioners more money to make sure that he had sharpened
his sword or axe sufficiently to take the head off the person in one swift blow.
Hanging was also seen as contentious, as it often took people minutes to die, but those
calling for revolution did also like to use more barbaric methods such as burning at the
stake too.
But by using the guillotine and standardising one method of civil execution, it represented
equality between all of the citizens of France which encapsulated the morals of the French
Revolution.
It was the device that took the head off the King of France, and those of any class.
If it was good enough for the king and his queen, it was seen as good enough for the
rest of France.
During the Reign of Terror, the Guillotine saw heavy use.
This too place following the first declaration of the Republic, and a number of public executions
took place in which anyone who opposed the revolution was killed.
Between June 1793 and July 1794, around 17000 were beheaded on the device, including the
King and the Queen.
Even the leaders of the revolution such as Maximilien Robespierre were executed on the
guillotine, and most of the executions were carried out at the place de la revolution
in Paris.
The guillotine was found in the corner of a square, and at times it was a form of public
entertainment.
Large crowds would gather to witness executions at the site, and people made money from this.
Entrepeneurs would sell programs containing the names of those to be killed, but to the
French people the guillotine was more than just an execution device.
For them it was a symbol of the revolution and in equality in death, and equality in
the eyes of the law.
Following the French Revolution, the guillotine was moved and repairs were made to the pairs
structure.
In the 1900s it was still used and the last public guillotining in France occured on the
17th June 1939.
Eugen Weidmann, a man convicted of murdering six people was beheaded at Versailles outside
a prison.
But at the time there was noted to have been poor behaviour by spectators, and also people
began to film and photograph the executions from above, and because of this the French
authorities banned public executions, saying guillotines must be used in private courtyards
in prisons.
Shockingly, it was still the official method of execution in France until the abolition
of the death penalty in 1981, and the final three guillotining took place in 1976 and
1977, carrying out its final beheadings of murderers.
The final execution was of Hamida Djandoubi.
But the guillotine was used around the world in many other countries.
Many European countries saw the guillotine and also had them built to take the lives
of criminals in their lands.
It was within Nazi Germnay that the device was used heavily to take the heads of those
people whom hitler deemed to have been traitors to his Third Reich.
The guillotine was used inside of Nazi Germany following Hitler’s seizure of power to 1945,
and its estimated that around 16,5000 prisoners were executed using the device.
Infact in 1944 to 1945, as the Second World War turned against the Germans, and Hitler’s
grip on the war loosened, its estimated that 10,000 people were killed on the guillotine
alone.
Famously Hans and Sophie Scholl, members of the White Rose resistance movement were executed
on the device, and Sophie it was said was the bravest person to go to her death on it.
After the end of the Second World War, the guillotine was last used in West Germany in
1949, and in East Germany it was used until 1966 by the Stasi who performed executions
using it in secret.
But ever since the guillotine was used, there has been controversy as to how humane the
device actually is, and how painless death is for those under the blade.
It was certainly seen as entertainment for crowds which itself is inhumane, but there
have also been accounts of those who have been beheaded showing signs of life for moments
after decapitation.
There has never been any true scientific evidence on this, but there were accounts of the condemned
eyes stirring and fixating on the crowd once their head had been cut off.
There were accounts of blinking of the heads, and of eyelids lifting and even lips moving.
But whether this was just told as a way of making an execution seem more exciting for
those telling the stories is disputed.
But the Guillotine took the heads of thousands of people in Europe since its creation.
It was used by many different countries and not just the French or Germans, and it’s
up to you whether you deem it to have been the most humane way of execution.
In opposition to this, the fact it is not used today probably disputes that isn’t
the case, but for many around the world it’s seen as a symbol of the French Revolution,
and of the valued of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that encompassed the revolution.
But for other’s its seen as an instrument of Hitler’s regime, that was used to quash
any resistance to him.
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