General laughter!
So, in the name of promoting the principles of equality, humanism and progress, the issue of a decapitation machine designed to change the very aesthetics of death was raised in the National Assembly.
On October 9, 1789, as part of the debate on criminal law, Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738 - 1814), physician, lecturer in anatomy at the medical faculty and newly elected Parisian deputy, took the floor of the National Assembly.
Among his colleagues, he enjoyed a reputation as an honest scholar and philanthropist, and he was even appointed a member of a commission charged with shedding light on "witchcraft, wands and Mesmer's animal magnetism." When Guillotin put forward the idea that the same offense should be punished in the same way, regardless of the rank, rank and merit of the perpetrator, he was listened to with respect.
Many deputies have already expressed similar considerations: the inequality and cruelty of punishments for criminal offenses outraged the public.
Two months later, on December 1, 1789, Guillotin again delivered an impassioned speech in defense of equality before death, for the same execution for all.
"In all cases where the law provides for the death penalty for the accused, the essence of the punishment must be the same, regardless of the nature of the crime."
It was then that Guillotin mentioned the instrument of killing, which would later perpetuate his name in history.
The technical concept and mechanical principles of the device have not yet been worked out, but from a theoretical point of view, Dr. Guillotin has already come up with everything.
He described to his colleagues the possibilities of a future machine that would cut heads so simply and quickly that the convict would hardly even feel “a slight breath on the back of his head.”
Guillotin ended his speech with a phrase that became famous: “My machine, gentlemen, will cut off your head in the blink of an eye, and you will not feel anything ... The knife falls with the speed of lightning, the head flies off, blood splashes, the person is no more! ..”
Most of the deputies were puzzled.
It was rumored that the Parisian deputy was outraged by the various types of execution provided for at that time by the code, because the screams of the condemned for many years horrified his mother and she had a premature birth. In January 1791, Dr. Guillotin again tried to win colleagues over to his side.
The "question of the car" was not discussed, but the idea of "an execution equal for all", the refusal to brand the families of the convicted and the abolition of the confiscation of property were adopted, which was a huge step forward.
Four months later, at the end of May 1791, there were three days of debate in the Assembly on matters of criminal law.
During the preparation of the draft of the new criminal code, questions of the procedure of punishment, including the death penalty, were finally raised.
Proponents of the use of the death penalty and abolitionists clashed in furious disputes. The arguments of both sides would be debated for another two hundred years.
The former believed that the death penalty, by its clarity, prevents the recurrence of crimes, the latter called it legalized murder, emphasizing the irreversibility of a miscarriage of justice.
One of the most ardent supporters of the abolition of the death penalty was Robespierre. Several theses put forward by him during the discussion went down in history: “A person must be sacred to a person [...] I come here to beg not the gods, but the legislators, who should be the instrument and interpreters of the eternal laws inscribed by the Divine in the hearts of people, I came to beg them to strike out from the French code the bloody laws prescribing murder, which are equally rejected by their morality and the new constitution. I want to prove to them that, firstly, the death penalty is by its very nature unjust, and, secondly, that it does not deter crimes, but, on the contrary, multiplies crimes much more than it prevents them” [Maximilian Robespierre. It's about abolishing the death penalty. Translation by L.K. Nikiforov.].
Paradoxically, the guillotine functioned non-stop throughout the forty days of Robespierre's dictatorship, symbolizing the apogee of the legal use of the death penalty in France. Only between June 10 and July 27, 1794, one thousand three hundred and seventy-three heads fell from their shoulders, "like tiles torn off by the wind," as Fouquier-Tainville says. It was the time of the Great Terror. In total, in France, according to reliable sources, between thirty and forty thousand people were executed by the verdicts of the revolutionary courts.
Let's go back to 1791. There were more deputies who supported the abolition of the death penalty, but the political situation was critical, there was talk of "internal enemies", and the majority yielded to the minority.
On June 1, 1791, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly to retain the death penalty in the territory of the Republic. Debates immediately began, lasting several months, this time about the method of execution. All deputies were of the opinion that the execution should be as minimally painful as possible and as quickly as possible. But how exactly should they be executed? Disputes were reduced mainly to a comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of hanging and beheading. Speaker Amber suggested that the convict be tied to a post and strangled with a collar, but the majority voted for beheading. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, this is a quick execution, but the main thing was that commoners were traditionally executed by hanging, while beheading was the privilege of persons of noble birth.
So the choice of representatives of the people was partly an egalitarian revenge. Since the death penalty remains, “to hell with the rope! Long live the abolition of privileges and noble decapitation for all!
From now on, the concepts of varying degrees of suffering and shame will not be applicable to the death penalty.
Exactly 75 years ago in France, on the street, with a confluence of curious people, the last execution on the guillotine took place - the execution of Eugene Weidmann, a famous serial killer.
As it turned out later, what was happening was filmed with a hidden camera, so today we still have the opportunity to watch the original video of the execution on the guillotine.
The last publicly executed earthling was born in German Frankfurt am Main in September 1908. Eugene Weidmann's father was an entrepreneur - he was quite successful in exporting. The future killer spent his childhood in his hometown, and went to school here. However, with the outbreak of World War I, he was sent to live with his grandparents. It so happened that at the same time Eugene began to engage in theft.
Growing up, he shied away from military service, which is why he first went to Paris, and then to Canada. In North America, Weidman had to spend a year behind bars - he was caught on a robbery; After the conclusion, he was deported to his homeland.
In Germany, Eugene continued to commit crimes (which would later lead him to a sad outcome - it was he who would become the person killed during the last public execution on the guillotine), this time he was given 5 years in prison for robbery. In a prison cell in Saarbrücken, he made new acquaintances - it was here that he found two accomplices in his future atrocities. They were Roger Millon and Jean Blanc.
After serving time, the trio decided to "cooperate". As a way of earning a livelihood, they chose to extort ransoms from wealthy French tourists they had kidnapped. The criminal company rented a villa near the capital of France in the picturesque town of Saint-Cloud - there they intended to hide the unfortunate victims.
But the first experience of abduction failed - the tourist they attacked put up strong resistance and was able to escape. But the second attempt was successful.
In the midst of the summer of 1937, Eugene Weidmann meets a dancer and ballet teacher from New York, Jean de Coven, who came to visit her aunt. They met at one of the exhibitions in Paris, where Weidman worked as a translator. Pretty, dressed in the latest fashion, Jean immediately came to the attention of a hardened criminal who called himself Siegfried.
During a romantic date at the villa, Weidman strangled the girl. Together with accomplices Millon and Blanc, the body of the murdered woman was buried in the garden of the villa, taking several hundred dollars and francs belonging to her.
Shortly thereafter, Aunt Jean received a letter from the gang demanding a $500 reward to spare her niece's life. The woman immediately contacted the police, but the search for the missing did not yield results. A few days later, the brother of the deceased dancer Henry arrived in France and filed an advertisement in which he offered a solid reward of 10 thousand francs for any information about the whereabouts of his sister. But that didn't work either.
Meanwhile, Weidman killed a man again. On September 1, 1937, he hires driver Joseph Coffey to take him to the French Riviera. On a forest road, the killer shot a man. This time, 2.5 thousand francs became his prey.
Weidman committed his next murder two days later. Together with Million, under the pretext of a job offer, he lured the nurse Jeanine Keller into the forest. In a hidden cave in Fontainebleau, Weidmann killed a woman by shooting her in the back of the head. The state of the criminals was replenished by 1,400 francs, they also took a diamond ring from their victim.
In mid-October of the same year, Eugene Weidmann and Roger Millon planned a meeting with the aspiring theater producer Roger Leblond, promising him to become sponsors of his author's show. The meeting for Leblond ended with a bullet in the back of the head, and the villains got hold of 5 thousand francs.
At the end of November 1937, the list of Weidmann's victims was replenished with a new name. His friend Fritz Frommer, whom Eugene met during his last imprisonment, was shot and robbed. The man was buried in the garden behind the villa.
Five days later, Weidman cracked down on Raymond Lesobre, a real estate agent who was showing Eugène, who posed as a very wealthy client, a luxurious villa in Saint-Claude. As a result, the killer got another 5 thousand francs.
This atrocity was the last for Weidman. Before the last execution on the guillotine (the video of which you can see below), there was not much time left.
The business card he left in Lesobra's office allowed law enforcement officers to get on his trail of blood.
One day, returning home, he saw policemen waiting for him at the door of the house. Veidman invited them to enter the house, opened the doors and politely let them in. Then he fired three shots at the employees of the national security department. Luckily, the injuries were not very serious, the police were able to twist and neutralize the killer.
When Weidman came to, he confessed to all his crimes. But the only murder he regretted was that of dancer Jean de Coven.
Soon, Weidman's accomplices were detained, and the bodies buried in the garden of the villa were also found.
The case of the Wedman gang was the most sensational since the criminal case of Henri Landru, nicknamed Bluebeard, which took place 18 years earlier.
Weidmann and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
On June 16, 1939, Albert Lebrun, President of France, commuted Million's execution to life imprisonment and rejected Weidmann's pardon.
There were a lot of people who wanted to see the execution of the bloody villain with their own eyes. In an effort to occupy the best places for viewing, the public has been gathering on the square since the evening. The noise of the huge crowd even reached Weidmann's cell. There were so many people that in order to install the guillotine, the forces of the national guard had to be called in to help.
Before the execution, Veidman staged a real theatrical performance - on the square in front of the crowd, indicatively, with hysteria, he prayed to God for forgiveness.
On June 17, 1939, the head of Eugene Weidmann was cut off by a guillotine, it happened in Versailles, on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison.
Probably the most famous of the women who died on the giltine was Queen Marie Antoinette. She was condemned to death during the French Revolution, nine months after the execution of King Louis XVI. The judgment was swift and decisive. The queen received the indictment on the night of October 14, and the next morning she was already standing before the judges. During the process, she was calm and only occasionally moved her fingers, as if playing a harpsichord. Two days of interrogations, court speeches, dirty questions and indignant answers - and now on October 16, 1793 at 4 o'clock in the morning, the judges pass the death sentence. Question to the convict: - Do you want to say something? Marie Antoinette shook her head. The execution of the sentence was not postponed.
Drums were beaten in all sections of Paris, troops began to gather - 30 thousand cavalrymen and infantrymen. Cannons were placed on bridges, in squares and all the way from the courthouse to Revolution Square. At ten o'clock in the morning, armed patrols began in Paris, and at eleven the cart with Marie Antoinette arrived at the place of execution. A huge crowd has already gathered here, waiting for free entertainment - the execution of the former first lady of France.
An impressive psychological portrait of Marie Antoinette at her death hour was painted by S. Zweig. Probably, much in his reasoning is conjecture, but how spectacular!
“The miserable cart, rattling, slowly moves along the pavement. Deliberately slowly, because everyone should enjoy a one-of-a-kind spectacle. Any pothole, any unevenness in the bad pavement is physically felt by the queen sitting on the board, but her pale face with red circles under her eyes is motionless. Concentrated Marie Antoinette looks ahead of her, showing neither fear nor suffering to the onlookers who closely surrounded her. She concentrates all the forces of her soul in order to maintain calm to the end, and in vain her worst enemies are watching her, trying to detect the slightest signs of despair or protest. confuses her: neither the fact that the women gathered at the Church of the Holy Spirit greet her with cries of mockery, nor the fact that the actor Grammon, in order to create the appropriate mood among the audience of this cruel dramatization, appears in the form of a national guard on horseback at the suicide cart and, brandishing a saber, he shouts: “Here she is, that vile Antoinette! Now it will be finished, my friends!"
Her face remains motionless, her eyes look ahead, it seems that she sees nothing and hears nothing. Because of her hands tied behind her, her body is tense, she looks straight ahead, and the variegation, noise, riot of the street is not perceived by her, she is all concentration, death slowly and inevitably takes possession of her. Tightly compressed lips do not tremble, the horror of the near end does not feverish the body; here she sits proud, despising all who are around her, the embodiment of will and self-control, and even Hébert in his leaflet "Papa Duchen" the next day will have to admit: "However, the whore remained bold and courageous until her death" ...
Suddenly there is movement in the crowd, the square immediately becomes quiet. And in this silence, wild cries are heard, rushing from the Rue Saint-Honoré; a detachment of cavalry appears, from around the corner of the last house a tragic cart drives out with a bound woman, once the former mistress of France; Behind her, with a rope in one hand and a hat in the other, stands Sanson, the executioner, full of pride and humbly obsequious at the same time.
There is dead silence on the vast square, only the heavy clatter of hooves is heard. And the creak of wheels. Tens of thousands, who have just chatted and laughed at ease, are shocked by the feeling of horror that seized them at the sight of a pale, bound woman who does not notice any of them. She knows: there is one last test left! Only five minutes of death, and then - immortality. The cart stops at the scaffold. Calmly, without outside help, with "a face even more stony than when leaving prison", rejecting any help, the queen climbs the wooden steps of the scaffold; climbs as easily and elatedly in his black satin high-heeled shoes on these last steps, as he once did on the marble stairs of Versailles. Another unseeing glance at the sky, above the hideous commotion surrounding her. Does she distinguish there, in the autumn fog, the Tuileries, in which she lived and suffered unbearably? Does she remember, at this last, at this very last minute, the day when the same crowds in squares like this one hailed her as heir to the throne? Unknown. No one can know the last thoughts of a dying person.
Its end. The executioners grab her from behind, a quick throw on the board, her head under the blade, the lightning of a knife falling with a whistle, a deaf blow - and Sanson, grabbing her bleeding head by the hair, raises it high above the square. And tens of thousands of people, who held their breath in horror a moment ago, now in unison, as if getting rid of the terrible witchcraft, burst into a jubilant cry.
The cry of the crowd was the same as at the execution of Louis XVI: "Long live the Republic!"
Towards the end of his life, a man who bore the “monstrous”, in his own opinion, name Guillotin, turned to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to change the name of the terrible execution device of the same name, but his request was rejected. The fact is that not even Guillotin was the author of the drawings, according to which the first working device was made in 1792. However, later on, the name of Guillotin somehow stuck to the "death machine" in some incomprehensible way and, despite all the efforts of his family, stubbornly holds on to this day.
The guillotine became the first "democratic" method of execution and quickly came into use throughout France. According to historians, in the first ten years, 15 thousand people were beheaded with its help.
Many may be surprised by the fact that the last public execution by guillotine took place in France in 1939, and the device continued to be used in non-public executions until 1977.
1.1939 - the last public execution by guillotine.
Here are the details of this execution...
Born in Germany in 1908, Eugène Weidmann began stealing from a young age and did not give up his criminal habits even as an adult. While serving a five-year sentence in prison for robbery, he met future partners in crime, Roger Millon and Jean Blanc. After their release, the three began working together, kidnapping and robbing tourists around Paris.
They robbed and murdered a young New York City dancer, a chauffeur, a nurse, a theater producer, an anti-Nazi activist, and a real estate agent.
The National Security Administration eventually got on Weidman's trail. One day, returning home, he found two police officers waiting for him at the door. Weidman fired a pistol at the officers, wounding them, but they still managed to knock the criminal to the ground and neutralize him with a hammer lying at the entrance.
2. June 17, 1938. Eugène Weidmann shows the police the cave in the forest of Fontainebleau in France where he killed the nurse Jeanine Keller.
As a result of the sensational trial, Weidman and Millon were sentenced to death, and Blanc was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
On June 16, 1939, French President Albert Lebrun rejected Weidmann's pardon and commuted Million's death sentence to life imprisonment.
On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidman met on the square near the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, where the guillotine and the whistle of the crowd were waiting for him.
6. June 17, 1939. A crowd gathers around the guillotine in anticipation of Weidmann's execution near the Saint-Pierre prison.
Among those wishing to watch the execution of the audience was the future famous British actor Christopher Lee, who at that time was 17 years old.
7. June 17, 1939. Weidman, on the way to the guillotine, passes by the box in which his body will be transported.
Weidmann was placed in the guillotine and the chief executioner of France, Jules Henri Defurno, immediately lowered the blade.
The crowd present at the execution was very unrestrained and noisy, many of the spectators broke through the cordon to soak handkerchiefs in Weidman's blood as souvenirs.
The scene was so horrifying that French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions altogether, arguing that instead of deterring crime, they help awaken people's base instincts.
The guillotine, originally invented as a quick and relatively humane method of killing, continued to be used in private executions until 1977, when Hamid Djandoubi was executed behind closed doors in Marseille. The death penalty in France was abolished in 1981.
9. Hamid Jandoubi before his execution 1977
Video from the film with the last execution of Hamidu Dzhandubi (video is working, despite the picture):
And a little more about Guillotin:
Joseph Ignace Guillotin was born on May 28, 1738 in the provincial town of Saintes, in the family of not the most successful lawyer. And, nevertheless, from a young age he absorbed a certain special sense of justice, transmitted to him by his father, who would not agree to defend the accused for any money if he was not sure of their innocence. Joseph Ignace allegedly persuaded his parent to give him up for education to the Jesuit fathers, intending to put on the cassock of a clergyman until the end of his days.
It is not known what averted the young Guillotin from this venerable mission, but at a certain time he, unexpectedly even for himself, turned out to be a student of medicine, first at Reims, and then at the University of Paris, which he graduated with outstanding results in 1768. Soon, his lectures on anatomy and physiology could not accommodate everyone: portraits and fragmentary memoirs depict the young doctor as a small, well-tailored man with elegant manners, possessing a rare gift of eloquence, in whose eyes a certain enthusiasm shone.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
Birthday: 05/28/1738
Birthplace: Sainte, France
Year of death: 1814
Citizenship: France
One can only wonder how radically the views of someone who once claimed to be a minister of the church have changed. Both Guillotin's lectures and his inner convictions revealed in him a complete materialist. The great doctors of the past, such as Paracelsus, Agrippa Nettesheim or father and son van Helmont, had not yet been forgotten, it was still difficult to get rid of the idea of the world as a living organism. However, the young scientist Guillotin already questioned Paracelsus' assertion that “nature, the cosmos and all its givens are one great whole, an organism where all things are consistent with each other and there is nothing dead. Life is not only movement, not only people and animals live, but also any material things. There is no death in nature - the extinction of any givenness, there is immersion in another womb, the dissolution of the first birth and the formation of a new nature.
All this, according to Guillotin, was pure idealism, incompatible with the fashionable, eager to dominate the new materialistic beliefs of the Enlightenment. He, as befitted the young naturalists of his time, incomparably more admired his acquaintances - Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, Lamerty. From his medical chair, Guillotin with a light heart repeated the new spell of the era: experience, experiment - experiment, experience. After all, a person is primarily a mechanism, it consists of screws and nuts, you just need to learn how to tighten them up - and everything will be in order. Actually, these thoughts belonged to Lamerty - in his work “Man-machine”, the great enlightener asserted ideas that are very recognizable even today that a person is nothing but a complexly organized matter. Those who think that thinking presupposes the existence of a disembodied soul are fools, idealists and charlatans. Who ever saw and touched this soul? The so-called "soul" ceases to exist immediately after the death of the body. And this is obvious, simple and clear.
Therefore, it is quite natural that the doctors of the Paris Medical Academy, to which Guillotin belonged, were so unanimously indignant when, in February 1778, the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, widely known for discovering the magnetic fluid and the first to use hypnosis for treatment, appeared in the capital. Mesmer, who developed the ideas of his teacher van Helmont, empirically discovered the mechanism of mental suggestion, however, he considered that a special liquid circulates in the healer's body - a "magnetic fluid", through which celestial bodies act on the patient. He was convinced that gifted healers could pass these fluids to other people and thus heal them.
... On October 10, 1789, the members of the Constituent Assembly made a lot of noise and did not want to leave the meeting. Monsieur Guillotin introduced the most important law concerning the death penalty in France. He stood before the legislators, solemn, inspired, and spoke and spoke. His main idea was that the death penalty should also be democratized. If until now in France the method of punishment depended on the nobility of origin - criminals from the common people were usually hanged, burned or quartered, and only the nobles were honored with beheading with a sword - now this ugly situation should be radically changed. Guillotin hesitated for a moment and glanced at his notes.
“In order to be convincing enough today, I spent a lot of time in conversations with Monsieur Charles Sanson ...
At the mention of this name, a mute silence instantly fell in the hall, as if everyone at the same time suddenly lost the power of speech. Charles Henri Sanson was the hereditary executioner of the city of Paris. The Sanson family held, so to speak, a monopoly on this occupation from 1688 to 1847. The position was passed on in the Sanson family from father to son, and if a girl was born, then her future husband was doomed to become an executioner (if, of course, there was one). However, this work was very, very highly paid and required absolutely exceptional skill, so the executioner began to teach his “art” to his son, as soon as he was fourteen.
Guillotin, in fact, often dropped by Monsieur Sanson's house on the Rue Château d'Eau, where they talked and often played music in a duet: Guillotin played the harpsichord quite well, and Sanson played the violin. During the conversations, Guillotin asked Sanson with interest about the difficulties of his work. I must say that Sanson rarely had a chance to share his worries and aspirations with a decent person, so he did not have to pull his tongue for a long time. So, Guillotin learned about the traditional methods of mercy of the people of this profession. When, for example, a condemned man is brought to the stake, the executioner usually sets up a hook with a sharp end to mix the straw, exactly opposite the heart of the victim - so that death overtakes him before the fire with painful slow relish begins to devour his body. As for wheeling, this torture of unprecedented cruelty, then Sanson admitted that the executioner, who always has poison in the form of tiny pills in the house, as a rule, finds the opportunity to quietly slip it on the unfortunate person in between tortures.
“So,” continued Guillotin in the ominous silence of the hall, “I propose not just to unify the method of capital punishment, because even such a privileged method of killing as decapitation with a sword also has its drawbacks. “It is possible to complete a case with a sword only if three most important conditions are observed: the serviceability of the instrument, the dexterity of the performer and the absolute calmness of the condemned,” Deputy Guillotin continued to quote Sanson, “in addition, the sword must be straightened and sharpened after each blow, otherwise the goal will be quickly achieved in public execution becomes problematic (there were cases that it was possible to cut off the head almost on the tenth attempt). If you have to execute several at once, then there is no time for sharpening, which means that stocks of “inventory” are needed - but this is not an option either, since the convicts, forced to watch the death of their predecessors, slipping in pools of blood, often lose their presence of mind and then the executioner henchmen have to work like butchers in a slaughterhouse ... "
- Enough about that! We've heard enough! - suddenly a voice shot up nervously, and the assembly suddenly became agitated - those present hissed, whistled, hissed.
“I have a cardinal solution to this terrible problem,” he called out over the noise.
And in a clear, clear voice, as in a lecture, he informed those present that he had developed a drawing of a mechanism that would allow him to instantly and painlessly separate the head from the body of the convict. He repeated - instantly and absolutely painlessly. And triumphantly shook some papers in the air.
At that historic meeting, it was decided to consider, investigate and clarify the project of the "miraculous" mechanism. In addition to Guillotin, three more people came to grips with them - the king's physician surgeon Antoine Louis, the German engineer Tobias Schmidt and the executioner Charles Henri Sanson.
... Thinking of benefiting humanity, Dr. Guillotin carefully studied those primitive mechanical structures that were used to take life ever before in other countries. As a model, he took an ancient device used, for example, in England from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 17th century - a chopping block and something like an ax on a rope ... Something similar existed in the Middle Ages in Italy and Germany. Well, and then - he went headlong into the development and improvement of his "brainchild".
Historical note: there is an opinion that the guillotine was NOT invented in France. Actually a guillotine from Halifax, Yorkshire. The "Gallows from Halifax" consisted of two five-meter wooden poles, between which there was an iron blade, which was fixed on a crossbar filled with lead. This blade was controlled with a rope and a collar. The original documents show that at least fifty-three people were executed with this device between 1286 and 1650. The medieval city of Halifax lived on the cloth trade. Huge cuts of expensive fabric were dried on wooden frames near the mills. At the same time, theft began to flourish in the city, which became a big problem for him and the merchants needed an effective deterrent. This and a device like it called "The Maiden" or "Scottish Maiden" may well have inspired the French to borrow the basic idea and give it their own name.
In the spring of 1792, Guillotin, accompanied by Antoine Louis and Charles Sanson, came to Louis at Versailles to discuss the finished draft of the execution mechanism. Despite the threat looming over the monarchy, the king continued to consider himself the head of the nation, and his approval was necessary. The Palace of Versailles was almost empty, noisy, and Louis XVI, usually surrounded by a noisy, lively retinue, looked ridiculously lonely and lost in it. Guillotin was visibly agitated. But the king made only one single melancholy, but striking remark: “Why the semicircular shape of the blade? - he asked. “Does everyone have the same neck?” After that, absent-mindedly sitting down at the table, he personally replaced the semicircular blade in the drawing with an oblique one (later Guillotin made the most important amendment: the blade should fall on the neck of the convict exactly at an angle of 45 degrees). Be that as it may, Louis accepted the invention.
And in April of the same 1792, Guillotin was already fussing on the Place de Greve, where the first device for decapitation was being installed. A huge crowd of onlookers gathered around.
- Look, what a beauty, this Madame Guillotine! - quipped some impudent.
Thus, from one evil tongue to another, the word "guillotine" was firmly established in Paris.
Historical note: The first proposals of Guillotin were revised by Dr. Antoine Louis, who served as a secretary at the Academy of Surgery, and it was from his drawings that the first guillotine was made in 1792, which was given the name “Louison” or “Louisette”. And among the people they began to affectionately call her “Louisette”.
Guillotin and Sanson made sure to test the invention first on animals, and then on corpses - and, I must say, it worked perfectly, like a clock, while requiring minimal human participation.
The Convention finally adopted the "Law on the Death Penalty and Methods of Executing It", and henceforth, for which Guillotin advocated, the death penalty ignored class differences, becoming one for all, namely, "Madame Guillotine".
The total weight of this machine was 579 kg, while the ax weighed more than 39.9 kg. The process of cutting off the head took a total of a hundredth of a second, which was the pride of the doctors - Guillotin and Antoine Louis: they had no doubt that the victims did not suffer. However, the "hereditary" executioner Sanson (in one private conversation) tried to dissuade Dr. Guillotin in his pleasant delusion, arguing that he knows for certain that after cutting off the head, the victim still continues to retain consciousness for several minutes and these terrible minutes are accompanied by an indescribable pain in the severed part of the neck.
- Where did you get this information? Guillotin wondered. This is absolutely contrary to science.
Sanson, deep down, was skeptical about the new science: in the depths of his family, who had seen a lot of things in his lifetime, all sorts of legends were kept - his father, grandfather and brothers more than once had to deal with witches, and with sorcerers, and with warlocks - they were all managed to tell the executioners before the execution. And so he allowed himself to question the humanity of advanced technology. But Guillotin looked at the executioner with regret and not without horror, thinking that, most likely, Sanson was worried that from now on he would be deprived of his job, since anyone could activate Guillotin's mechanism.
If you are not sure that you want to see this execution, then it is better not to read further.
People are usually proud when their name remains for centuries, being a kind of pass to history. But this is not the case - at the end of his life, this man tried to appeal to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to rename the device, which was given his name. But it didn't work out...
Namesake of the guillotine
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His name was Joseph Ignace Guillotin, and exactly 221 years ago, on April 25, 1792, the first execution was carried out on the Place Greve in Paris using the mechanism named after him. He, of course, did not invent it - they tried to use similar devices earlier in Scotland, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc. And Guillotin was only a lobbyist for the idea of a mechanism improved by Dr. Antoine Louis and the German mechanic Thomas Schmidt for carrying out the death penalty by cutting off the head.
At that time in France there was no equality of all before the death penalty, and depending on the crime and social status, there were several types of it. Regicides and paricides were executed by quartering. Murderers and thieves were hanged. Those guilty of aggravated murder and robbery were wheeled. Heretics, arsonists and sodomites were sent to the stake. The counterfeiters were dipped into boiling oil. A noble privilege was the execution by cutting off the head with an ax or a sword.
The two main types of French guillotine. Left: model 1792, right: model 1872 of the Berger system
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Dr. Guillotin believed that if the death penalty could not be avoided (and he was her opponent), then the execution should be the same for everyone and as less painful as possible. Speaking to the National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament) on October 10, 1789, during a debate on the death penalty, he argued: “With my machine, you can cut off a head in the blink of an eye, and the condemned will not even feel it.”
And then added: “He will have time to feel only cool breath on his neck”. The last poetic comparison then caused a slight laugh in the hall, but during the Great French Revolution, a significant part of the deputies gathered there will no longer be laughing - they will be able to find out on their own necks whether these words are true.
And the Parisians did not like its first use - they were disappointed with the brevity of the show. But a year after that, the Age of Terror began in France, and the speed of execution on the guillotine began to bathe in the frequency of its use and the loudness of the names of those executed.
Public execution by guillotine in 1897
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In Runet, from article to article, the bike is duplicated that the medieval ritual words were announced to those sentenced to the guillotine on the last morning: “Be of good cheer…. (followed by name)! The hour of redemption has come!” All this is bullshit - in fact, everything happened more casually, much simpler and was completely regulated by the prison instructions.
Preparations for the execution began at 2.30. the last preparations and the executioner's checking the serviceability of the guillotine, for which an hour was allotted. Everything else happened within half an hour.
At 3.30. the director of the prison, the judge, the prefect of police, the lawyer of the convict, the clerk, the priest and the guards entered the cell of the convict, who did not know about the impending execution. The director of the prison woke up the prisoner and announced: “Your pardon has been denied. Get up. Prepare for death."
The prisoner was given time to get dressed, wash himself and take care of natural needs. Then the director of the prison asked him: Would you like to say something? Mr. Judge is here to hear you." Then it was suggested: “If you want to be alone with the priest, then we will go out for a few minutes”.
After that, the prisoner had his hair cut at the back of his head and changed into a white shirt without a stand-up collar. And they provided the opportunity to write a last letter to their family (or anyone), offering a glass of rum or a glass of wine, and a cigarette.
Non-public execution by guillotine in 1905
After that, at 4.00, the condemned man, supported under the arms by two escorts, in shackles and handcuffs shackled from behind, walked with small steps to the place of execution (the instruction prescribed that the path from the cell to the guillotine should be as straight and short as possible). In case of cold weather, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders.
The French legend (and the French also have their own tales) says that the priest walked ahead of the procession and waved a crucifix in front of the face of the condemned so that he would not see the guillotine until the last moment.
At the place of execution of the convict, the executioner with an assistant was already waiting, the guards laid the condemned man on a sunbed and fixed his head. The executioner released the lock, the horizontal knife fell, and the head flew off into the basket.
The headless body was quickly shoved into a deep box with sawdust, where the head was then moved. If the body was claimed by the family for burial, then it was transferred to the coffin and handed over to relatives. If not, it was transferred to the forensic laboratory.
The execution itself took place very quickly, and very creepy in its routine. I repeat: if you are not sure that you want to see it, then it is better not to look.
These are amateur film footage taken at 04:50 on June 17, 1939, from the window of an apartment building adjacent to the St. Pierre prison in Versailles. The footage captured the last public execution in France by guillotine. Headless - Eugène Weidmann, serial killer of six people.
It took place with a delay of 45 minutes - according to conversations in order to get daylight, and photographers were able to capture it better. A few hours later, Paris-Soir came out with a whole page of photographs from the place of execution. There was a big scandal, and President Albert Lebrun banned the public execution of the death penalty in France - from then until its abolition, it was carried out in the courtyard of the prison.
After Guillotin's death in 1814, his family had already officially petitioned the government to rename the guillotine, and when they refused, they changed their last name. Which one is unknown (French law requires secrecy in such cases).
Guillotin himself died of a carbuncle on his left shoulder, but the rumor that he was executed on the mechanism he invented is not without foundation - during the French Revolution, in 1793, in Lyon, his namesake was executed on the guillotine.
And Victor Hugo would later write about him and Columbus: “There are unfortunate people: one cannot attach his name to his discovery, the other cannot erase his name from his invention”…
