April 25, 1798. Rœderer, Procureur Genéral, wrote a letter to Lafayette, telling him, that a public trial of the new instrument would take place, that day, in the Place de Grève, and would, doubtless, draw a great crowd, and begging him not to withdraw the gens d’armes, till the apparatus had been removed. In the Courrier Extraordinaire, of April 27, 1792, is the following notice—“They made yesterday (meaning the 25th) the first trial of the little Louison, and cut off a head, one Pelletier. I never in my life could bear to see a man hanged; but I own I feel a greater aversion to this species of execution. The preparations make me shudder, and increase the moral suffering. The people seemed to wish, that M. Sanson had his old gallows.”
After the Louison, or guillotine, had been in operation rather more than a year, the following interesting letter was sent, by the Procureur Genéral, Rœderer, to citizen Guideu. “13 May, 1793. I enclose, citizen, the copy of a letter from citizen Chaumette, solicitor to the commune of Paris, by which you will perceive, that complaints are made, that, after these public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in pools, upon the Place de Grève, that dogs came to drink it, and that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle, which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and blood. I request you therefore to take the earliest and most convenient opportunity, to remove from the eyes of men a sight so afflicting to humanity.”
Voltaire, who thought very gravely, before he delivered the sentiment to the world, has stated of his countrymen, that they were a mixture of the monkey and the tiger. Undoubtedly he knew. In the revolution of 1793, and in every other, that has occurred in France—those excepted which may have taken place, since the arrival of the last steamer—the tiger has had the upper hand. Prudhomme, the prince of pamphleteers, having published fifteen hundred, on political subjects, and author of the General History of the crimes, committed, during the revolution, writing of the execution of Louis XVI. remarks—“Some individuals steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood. A number of armed volunteers crowded also to dip in the blood of the despot their pikes, their bayonets, and their sabres. Several officers of the Marseillais battalion, and others, dipped the covers of letters in this impure blood, and carried them, on the points of their swords, at the head of their companies, exclaiming ‘this is the blood of a tyrant.’ One citizen got up to the guillotine itself, and plunging his whole arm into the blood of Capet, of which a great quantity remained; he took up handsful of the clotted gore, and sprinkled it over the crowd below, which pressed round the scaffold, each anxious to receive a drop on his forehead. ‘Friends,’ said this citizen in sprinkling them, ‘we were threatened, that the blood of Louis should be on our heads, and so you see it is.’” Rev. de Paris, No. 185, p. 205.
Upon the earnest request of the inhabitants of several streets, through which the gangs of criminals were carried, the guillotine was removed, June 8, 1794, from the Place de la Revolution to the Place St. Antoine, in front of the ruins of the Bastile; where it remained five days only, during which time, it took off ninety-six heads. The proximity of this terrible revolutionary plaything annoyed the shopkeepers. The purchasers of finery were too forcibly reminded of the uncertainty of life, and the brief occasion they might have, for all such things, especially for neckerchiefs and collars. Once again then, the guillotine, after five days’ labor, was removed; and took its station still farther off, at the Barrière du Trône. There it stood, from June 9 till the overthrow of Robespierre, July 27, 1794: and, during those forty-nine days, twelve hundred and seventy heads dropped into its voracious basket. July 28, it was returned to the Place de la Revolution.
Sanson, Charles Henry, the executioner of Louis XVI. had not a little bonhomie in his composition—his infernal profession seems not to have completely ossified his heart. He reminds me, not a little, of Sir Thomas Erpingham, who, George Colman, the younger, says, carried on his wars, in France, in a benevolent spirit, and went about, I suppose, like dear, old General Taylor, in Mexico, “pitying and killing.” On the day, when Robespierre fell, forty-nine victims were ascending the carts, to proceed to the guillotine, about three in the afternoon. Sanson, at the moment, met that incomparable bloodhound, the Accusateur Public, Fouquier de Tinville, going to dinner. Sanson suggested the propriety of delaying the execution, as a new order of things might cause the lives of the condemned to be spared. Fouquier briefly replied, “the law must take its course;” and went to dine—the forty-nine to die; and, shortly after, their fate was his.
The guillotine, viewed as an instrument of justice, in cases of execution, for capital offences, is certainly a most merciful contrivance, liable, undoubtedly, during a period of intense excitement, to be converted into a terrible toy.
During the reign of terror, matters of extreme insignificancy, brought men, women, and children to the guillotine. The record is, occasionally, awfully ridiculous. A few examples may suffice—Jean Julian, wagoner, sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment, took it into his head, on the way—s’avisa—to cry—Vive le Roi; executed September, 1792.—Jean Baptiste Henry sawed a tree of liberty; executed Sept. 6, 1793.—M. Baulny, ex-noble, assisted his son to emigrate; executed Jan. 31, 1794.—La veuve Marbeuf hoped the Austrians would come; executed Feb. 5, 1794.—Francis Bertrand, publican, sold sour wine; executed May 15, 1793.—Marie Angelique Plaisant, sempstress, exclaimed—“a fig for the nation;” executed July 19, 1794.
No. CLIII.
An interesting, physiological question arose, in 1796, whether death, by decollation, under the guillotine, were instantaneous or not. Men of science and talent, and among them Dr. Sue, and a number of German physicians, maintained, that, in the brain, after decapitation, there was a certain degree—un reste—of thought, and, in the nerves, a measure of sensibility. An opposite opinion seems to have prevailed. The controversy, which was extremely interesting, acquired additional interest and activity, from an incident, which occurred, on the scaffold, immediately after the execution of Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont—commonly known, under the imperishable name of Charlotte Corday. A brute, François Le Gros, one of the assistant executioners, held up the beautiful and bleeding head, and slapped the cheek with his hand. A blush was instantly visible to the spectators. In connection with the physiological question, to which I have referred, a careful inquiry was instituted, and it was proved, very satisfactorily, that the color—the blush—appeared on both cheeks, after the blow was given. Dr. Sue’s account of this matter runs thus—“The countenance of Charlotte Corday expressed the most unequivocal marks of indignation. Let us look back to the facts—the executioner held the head, suspended in one hand; the face was then pale, but had no sooner received the slap, which the sanguinary wretch inflicted, than both cheeks visibly reddened. Every spectator was struck, by the change of color, and with loud murmurs cried out for vengeance, on this cowardly and atrocious barbarity. It can not be said, that the redness was caused by the blow—for we all know, that no blows will recall anything like color to the cheeks of a corpse; besides this blow was given on one cheek, and the other equally reddened.” Sue; Opinion sur le supplice de la guillotine, p. 9.