Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The principle of equality in the eye of the law, which came beneath the consideration of the Assembly in 1789, naturally included the equality of criminal punishment; which ought to vary according to the offence, but not according to the social rank of the offender. On the 10th of October in the year mentioned Dr. Guillotin moved in the Assembly, where he sat as one of the representatives for Paris, that the executioner should be rendered an impartial functionary, putting all his victims to death in the same fashion and by means of some mechanical apparatus. When he had put this motion he went on to propose the idea of a machine, rapid in action, which would diminish the sufferings of capital offenders. His motion was carried unanimously; but the suggestion as to the machine was reserved for future discussion. It was during this debate that Dr. Guillotin, vehemently advocating the instrument of death which hitherto existed only in his own mind, exclaimed, in an unguarded moment: “With my machine I will cut your head off in a twinkling, and without your suffering a twinge.” There was a general roar of laughter. But the hilarity of the Assembly seems tragic enough when we remember how many of those who laughed were destined to perish by that insatiable weapon which as yet had neither name nor form.

As a matter of fact, the worthy doctor, a man already at this time famed for his philanthropy, did not invent, but only suggested, the guillotine. By the expression, “my machine,” he simply meant such a machine as the authorities, if they profited by his vague idea, would cause to be constructed. He had proposed nothing more than the principle of decapitation, whilst indicating in general terms the various instruments anciently employed for the purpose in different countries. Nevertheless, the whole nation was soon laughing at him, his exclamation being made the text of endless pleasantries. People were intensely amused at this notion of cutting off one’s head in a twinkling from philanthropy. The instrument was christened long before it had been invented, and with the name of the unhappy doctor. A clever song was dashed off at the time, telling how a certain M. Guillotin, doctor and politician, woke up one fine morning and discovered that the custom of hanging was unpatriotic; how he immediately hit upon a method of punishment which, without rope or stake, would be so effective as to {328} throw the executioner out of employment; and how the machine which the doctor indicated could bear no fitter name than the guillotine.

It was this song, perhaps, which really fixed the name of the deadly weapon. So far, however, the Assembly, as we have seen, had come to no decision on the subject, having simply decreed the principle of equality in criminal punishments. The question of the mode of execution was entrusted for discussion to a special committee. On the 21st of September, 1791, after lengthy debate, the Assembly adopted the new penal code, of which one clause provided that every criminal sentenced to death should have his head cut off. The method of decapitation now remained to be decided. Hitherto the instrument employed had been the sword or the axe. This ghastly operation had been performed on a block, and clumsiness or emotion on the part of the executioner had sometimes caused the victim indescribably horrible tortures. Instances had occurred in which the criminal’s head had not been severed from his body till the sixth or seventh stroke.

This question greatly preoccupied the Assembly. Ministers openly expressed the horror with which decapitation by the sword inspired them; and the executioner himself published, in reference to the disadvantages of this method, a number of observations tinged with similar abhorrence. At length the Committee of Legislation called upon the celebrated surgeon Louis to draw up a report on the subject, indicating the fittest methods for cutting off a person’s head rapidly and according to the principles of science.

The witty Sophie Arnould, meeting once, as she walked through a wood, some physician of her acquaintance, with a gun under his arm, inquired of him: “Do you not find your prescriptions sufficient?” and it seems droll enough that, whilst the mission of doctors is, theoretically at least, to preserve life, a surgeon should have been selected by the Assembly to prescribe the fastest method of taking it. Yet, after all, the selection was prompted by humanity; for the infliction of death is a sufficiently sad necessity of State without the addition of needless torture. Dr. Louis in any case drew up his report, and presented it to the Assembly on the 20th of March, 1792. He set forth, in the first place, that cutting instruments are in reality nothing but saws of a more or less fine description, having very little effect when they strike perpendicularly, and that it was consequently necessary in executions to apply them in an oblique and gliding fashion. Adopting, {329} therefore, the idea propounded by Guillotin—whom he did not even name in the report—he maintained that decapitation, in order to be surely effected, must be the direct act, not of a man, but of a machine, the adoption of which he now recommended. He mentioned a machine then employed in England which was, in fact, a rude sort of guillotine, and suggested several improvements in connection with it. Nor, indeed, was the notion of such an instrument by any means new. Some very old German prints exist representing executions performed in a similar fashion. The Italians employed in the sixteenth century, for the beheading of noble criminals, a machine called the mannaja, consisting of two upright posts, between which was fixed a sliding knife or cleaver, of great weight, designed to descend with enormous force and velocity on the neck of the prisoner leaning over a block below.

Dr. Louis did not content himself with preparing this report. He hired a German mechanician, named Schmidt, to construct at his directions a machine which, after a succession of improvements, was definitely adopted. The first experiments were made at Bicêtre, on animals—which reminds one inevitably of Mr. W. S. Gilbert’s executioner, who resolved first to practise on inferior beasts, and then to work his way up through the whole of animate creation until he was artist enough to behead a king. Schmidt, by the way, charged the State 824 livres (francs) for constructing those earliest machines, undertaking, moreover, to superintend their installation in the various departments.

Originally the new instrument was sometimes called the Louisette, after the name of its actual creator. But guillotine was already the common title, and it soon became universal, as well as technical and official. Dr. Guillotin seems never to have protested against this appellation, though it is probable that during the troubles which were so close at hand he would fain have divested himself of the infamy which enshrouded him. As to Dr. Louis, he was fortunate enough not to witness a single political execution, for he died on the 20th of May, 1792.

The guillotine took its first human life on the 25th of April, 1792. The subject was a highwayman named Nicolas-Jacques-Pelletier. The Chronique de Paris said next day of this execution:—“The novelty of the execution had considerably enlarged that crowd of people whom a barbarous pity is wont to draw to these sad spectacles. The new machine has been justly preferred to the old methods of execution. It does not stain any man’s hand with the murder of his fellow, and the promptitude with which it strikes the criminal is in the spirit of law, which may often be severe, but ought never to be cruel.”

The first political execution took place on the night of 21st August, 1792, at ten o’clock, to the flare of torches. The victim was Louis David Collenot d’Agremont, put to death for having been seen amongst the enemies of the people on the eventful day of the 10th August. This execution marked the commencement of an era of relentless and bloody feuds; but it was not until the establishment of the revolutionary tribunal, on 7th April, 1793, that the guillotine began to ply its deadly blade in such fearful earnest. From that moment to the 28th July the total number of persons executed was 2,625.