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Autobiography
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Historical SummaryWHO has not at one time or another discussed with his friends the subject of "the easiest way to die?" This perennial problem was of great interest to the policy-makers of the French Revolution. There were going to be many executions, and some method had to be found to render death as swift and as painless as possible. Dr. Guillotin, a member of the Constituent Assembly, proposed on December 1, 1789, that "in all cases of capital punishment it shall be of the same kind—that is, decapitation—and it shall be executed by means of a machine," as he was convinced that this method was quicker and surer than an axe in the hands of an executioner. Similar contrivances had been used in several parts of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Assembly, convinced of its usefulness, submitted the scheme to the government carpenter, who demanded 5,000 francs for the work. A German named Schmidt offered to build it for a much smaller sum. Finally a bargain was struck at 824 francs, and Schmidt contracted to furnish eighty-three machines, one for each department of France. The decapitation machine, consisting of two upright posts between which a sharp knife rises and falls, was first tried on three corpses in the hospital at Bicêtre on April 18, 1792. It was pronounced satisfactory. Seven days later it was used publicly for the first time for the execution of the highwayman Pelletier. At first prisoners of the Revolution were sent to the machine in small batches, but eventually the number of executions reached a peak of several hundred a week. In the course of a few months during the Reign of Terror, Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, Madame du Barry, and the duke of Orléans, among many others, perished under the dreaded guillotine—in all some 2,500 persons were executed in Paris during that bloodbath and close to ten thousand in other parts of France. A controversy quickly arose among medical men as to the desirability of the guillotine as a mode of execution. One faction maintained heatedly that the machine worked too quickly and that sensation did not cease immediately after the head of the sufferer had been severed from the body. There was no way to prove or disprove this interesting conclusion. The first of these eyewitness accounts of the guillotine in action was written by an Irishman, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who escaped in 1794 from a British prison in Dublin and who lived in Paris as an honored rebel against the British government. The second is by J. G. Millingen, an observant young Englishman. The last four accounts were written by a correspondent of the London Times. They tell the stories of four key executions, those of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Mme. du Barry, and Maximilian Robespierre.
Key QuoteA London Times’ reporter sees Marie Antoinette, Madame du Barry, and Maximilian Robespierre go to their deaths.
The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin
[1793]
III
[The Times, London, January 26, 1793]
By an express which arrived yesterday morning from Messrs. Festor & Co. at Dover, we learn the following particulars of the King’s execution:
At six o’clock on Monday morning, the King went to take a farewell of the Queen and royal family. After staying with them some time, and taking a very affectionate farewell of them, the King descended from the Tower to the Temple, and entered the Mayor’s carriage, with his confessor and two members of the Municipality, and passed slowly along the boulevards which led from the Temple to the place of execution. All women were prevented from appearing in the streets, and all persons from being seen in their windows. A strong guard cleared the procession.
The greatest tranquillity prevailed in every street through which the procession passed. At about half past nine the procession arrived at the place of execution, which was the Place de Louis XV between the pedestal which formerly supported the statue of his grandfather and the promenade of the Elysian Fields. Louis mounted the scaffold with composure, and that modest intrepidity peculiar to oppressed innocence, the trumpets sounding and drums beating during the whole time. He made a sign of wishing to harangue the multitude, when the drums ceased, and Louis spoke these few words:
"I die innocent; I pardon my enemies; I only sanctioned upon compulsion the Civil Constitution of the Clergy."1
He was proceeding, but the beat of the drums drowned his voice. His executioners then laid hold of him, and an instant after, his head was separated from his body. This was about a quarter past ten o’clock.
After the execution the people threw their hats up in the air, and cried out Vive la Nation! Some of them endeavored to seize the body, but it was removed by a strong guard to the Temple, and the lifeless remains of the King were exempted from those outrages which his Majesty had experienced during his life.
The King was attended on the scaffold by an Irish priest as his confessor, not choosing to be accompanied by one who had taken the National oath. He was dressed in a
brown great coat, white waist coat and black breeches, and his hair was powdered.
M. de Malsherbes announced to Louis the final sentence of death. "Ah!" exclaimed the monarch, "I shall then at length be delivered from cruel suspense."
Since the decree of death was issued, a general consternation has prevailed through Paris—the Sans Culottes are the only persons to rejoice. The honest citizens, immured within their habitations, could not express their heartfelt grief and mourned in private with their families the murder of their much-loved sovereign.
The last requests of the unfortunate Louis breathe the soul of magnanimity, and a mind enlightened with the finest of human virtue. He appears not to be that man which his enemies reported. His heart was sound his head was clear—and he would have reigned in glory, had he but possessed those faults which his assassins laid to his charge. His mind possessed the suggestions of wisdom; and even in his last moments, when the spirit of life was winged for another world, his lips gave utterance to them, and he spoke with firmness and resignation.
Thus has ended the life of Louis XVI, after a period of four years’ detention; during which he experienced from his subjects every species of ignominy and cruelty which a people could inflict upon the most sanguinary tyrant.
Long in the habit of supporting the virtues of this unhappy victim of savage Republicanism; and, steady in persevering to declare, that his highest ambition was the happiness of his people, we hold ourselves justified, from the universal indignation which has marked this last act of cruelty exercised against him, to pay our sorrowing tribute to his memory, and join with the millions in Europe, in supplicating the wrath of Heaven, and the vengeance of mankind, to extend to his unnatural murderers the most exemplary punishment.
1The Civil Constitution of the Clergy reduced the powers of the despoiled Church. The Roman Catholic Church was disestablished; its right of spiritual investiture was abolished; monasteries were dissolved; tithes were eliminated; and freedom of worship was established.
Contents:
Chicago:
A Correspondent of The London Times, "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—III," Autobiography in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed July 9, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=1LDF1NBHXEHWQYC.
MLA:
A Correspondent of The London Times. "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—III." Autobiography, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 9 Jul. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=1LDF1NBHXEHWQYC.
Harvard:
A Correspondent of The London Times, 'The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—III' in Autobiography. cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 9 July 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=1LDF1NBHXEHWQYC.
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