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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.
A. H. Rowan
1840
The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin
[1793]
I
Never can I forget the mournful appearance of the funereal processions to the place of execution. The march was opened by a detachment of mounted gendarmes—the carts followed. They were the same carts as those that are used in Paris for carrying wood; four boards were placed across them for seats, and on each board sat two, and sometimes three victims. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and the constant jolting of the carts made them nod their heads up and down, to the great amusement of the spectators. On the front of the cart stood Samson, the executioner, or one of his sons or assistants. Gendarmes on foot marched by the side. Then followed a hackney-coach, in which was the Rapporteur and his clerk, whose duty it was to witness the execution, and then return to Fouquier-Tinville, the Accusateur Public, to report the execution to what they called the law.
The process of execution was also a sad and heart-rending spectacle. In the middle of the Place de la Révolution was erected a guillotine, in front of a colossal statue of Liberty, represented seated on a rock, a Phrygian cap on her head, a spear in her hand, and the other reposing in a shield.
On one side of the scaffold were drawn out a sufficient number of carts, with large baskets painted red, to receive the heads and bodies of the victims. Those bearing the condemned moved on slowly to the foot of the guillotine; the culprits were led out in turn, and, if necessary, supported by two of the executioner’s valets, but their assistance was rarely required.
Most of these unfortunates ascended the scaffold with a determined step—many of them looked up firmly on the menacing instrument of death, beholding for the last time the rays of the glorious sun, beaming on the polished axe. I have seen some young men actually dance a few steps before they went up to be strapped to the perpendicular plane, which was then tilted to a horizontal plane in a moment, and ran on the grooves until the neck was secured and dosed in by a moving board, when the head passed through what was called, in derision, la lunette republicaine [the republican toilet-seat]. The weighty knife was then dropped with a heavy fall; and, with incredible dexterity and rapidity, two executioners tossed the body into the basket, while another threw the head after it.
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Chicago: Archibald Hamilton Rowan, "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—I," Autobiography, ed. A. H. Rowan 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 November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=77IID25W664G7QB.
MLA: Rowan, Archibald Hamilton. "The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—I." Autobiography, edited by A. H. Rowan, 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. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=77IID25W664G7QB.
Harvard: Rowan, AH, 'The Vengeance of Dr. Guillotin—I' in Autobiography, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=77IID25W664G7QB.
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