[408] In former times it had been customary to inflict capital punishment by decapitating the victim with the sword. At the opening of the Revolution a certain Dr. Guillotin recommended a new device, which consisted of a heavy knife sliding downward between two uprights. This instrument, called after him, the guillotine, which is still used in France, was more speedy and certain in its action than the sword in the hands of the executioner.
[409] Reference, for the conduct of the terrorists and the executions at Paris, Nantes, and Lyons: Mathews, The French Revolution, Chapter XVII.
It should not be forgotten that very few of the people at Paris stood in any fear of the guillotine. The city during the Reign of Terror was not the gloomy place that we might imagine. Never did the inhabitants appear happier, never were the theaters and restaurants more crowded. The guillotine was making away with the enemies of liberty, so the women wore tiny guillotines as ornaments, and the children were given toy guillotines and amused themselves decapitating the figures of "aristocrats." See Stephens, French Revolution, Vol. II, pp. 343–361.
[410] The date of Robespierre's fall is generally known as the 9th Thermidor, the day and month of the republican calendar.
[411] There were about forty billions of francs in assignats in circulation at the opening of 1796. At that time it required nearly three hundred francs in paper money to procure one in specie.
[412] See above, pp. [326–327].
[413] Reference, Rose, Life of Napoleon, Vol. I, Chapter VIII.
[414] Reference, Rose, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, pp. 95, 96, 104–108, 114, 115.
[415] Reference, Rose, Life of Napoleon, Vol. I, pp. 144–148.
[416] Reference, Ibid., Chapter X.