|
|
Autobiography
Contents:
Show Summary
Hide Summary
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]
VI
[The Times, London, August 19, 1794]
We have never witnessed a crowd equal to that which attended the execution of Robespierre and the others. Women, children, old men, the whole town was present, and it is impossible to express the joy which was pictured
on every countenance. All the streets through which the conspirators passed resounded with the following exclamations:
"Oh, the scoundrels! Long live the Republic! Long live the Convention!"
All eyes were especially fixed on Maximilian Robespierre, Couthon, and Henriot, who were covered with blood from the wounds they had given themselves before they were taken. Forsaken by the patriots, Henriot tried to break his head against a wall, and then concealed himself in a common sewer, out of which he was taken after the most desperate resistance.
The heads of the Robespierre, Hen-riot, Dumas, and some others were held up and thrown to the people, who, the whole way from the Palace of Justice to the scaffold, testified their abhorrence and detestation.
The execution of Robespierre has not made much impression here.
Contents:
Chicago:
A Correspondent of The London Times, "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—VI," 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 13, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=SH86S3KVG3HV1HT.
MLA:
A Correspondent of The London Times. "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—VI." 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. 13 Jul. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=SH86S3KVG3HV1HT.
Harvard:
A Correspondent of The London Times, 'The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—VI' 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 13 July 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=SH86S3KVG3HV1HT.
|