Born of a revolution History of the French guillotine

The use of the death machine, called the guillotine, was proposed by the physician and member of the National Assembly, Joseph Guillotin, back in 1791. However, this mechanism was not the invention of Dr. Guillotin, it is known that a similar tool was used before in Scotland and Ireland, where it was called the Scottish Maiden. Since the first execution, in almost 200 years of use, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people who were executed with this terrible device. We invite you to learn a little more about this killing machine and Once again rejoice in the fact that we live in the modern world.

Creation of the guillotine

The creation of the guillotine is attributed to the end of 1789, and it is associated with the name of Joseph Guillotin. Being an opponent of the death penalty, which was impossible to abolish in those days, Guillotin advocated the use of more humane methods of execution. He helped develop a device for rapid decapitation (decapitation), in contrast to the earlier swords and axes, which was called the "guillotine".

In the future, Guillotin made a lot of efforts so that his name was not associated with this murder weapon, but nothing came of it. His family even had to change their last name.

Lack of blood

The first person to be executed by guillotine was Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, who was sentenced to death for robbery and murder. On the morning of April 25, 1792, a huge crowd of curious Parisians gathered to look at this spectacle. Pelletier mounted the scaffold, painted blood-red, a sharp blade fell on his neck, his head flew off into a wicker basket. The bloody sawdust was raked up.

Everything happened so quickly that the audience, thirsty for blood, were disappointed. Some even began to shout: “Return the wooden gallows!”. But, despite their protests, guillotines soon appeared in all cities. The guillotine made it possible to actually turn human deaths into a real pipeline. So, one of the executioners, Charles-Henri Sanson, executed 300 men and women in three days, as well as 12 victims in just 13 minutes.

Experiments

Devices for decapitation were known even before the French Revolution, but during this period they were significantly improved, and the guillotine appeared. Previously, its accuracy and effectiveness was tested on live sheep and calves, as well as on human corpses. In parallel, in these experiments, medical scientists studied the influence of the brain on various functions of the body.

Vietnam

In 1955, South Vietnam seceded from North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam was established, with Ngo Dinh Diem as its first president. Fearing conspirators seeking a coup, he passed Law 10/59, which allowed anyone suspected of having communist ties to be imprisoned without trial.

There, after horrendous torture, a death sentence was eventually pronounced. However, in order to fall victim to Ngo Dinh Diem, it was not necessary to go to prison. The ruler traveled around the villages with a mobile guillotine and executed all those suspected of disloyalty. Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were executed and their heads hung everywhere.

Profitable Nazi venture

The rebirth of the guillotine took place during the period of Nazism in Germany, when Hitler personally ordered the production of a large number of them. The executioners became quite rich people. One of the most famous executioners of Nazi Germany, Johan Reichgart, was able to buy a villa in a wealthy suburb of Munich with the money he earned.

The Nazis even managed to get additional profit from the families of decapitated victims. Each family was billed for each day the accused was kept in prison, and an additional bill for the execution of the sentence. Guillotines were used for almost nine years, and 16,500 people were executed during this time.

Life after execution...

Do the eyes of the executed man see anything in those seconds when his head, cut off from the body, flies into the basket? Does he still have the ability to think? It is quite possible, since the brain itself is not injured, for some time it continues to perform its functions. And only when its supply of oxygen stops, loss of consciousness and death occurs.

This is supported by the testimony of eyewitnesses and experiments on animals. So, King Charles I of England and Queen Anne Boleyn, after cutting off their heads, moved their lips, as if they were trying to say something. And the doctor Boryo notes in his notes that, twice addressing the executed criminal Henri Longueville by name, 25-30 seconds after the execution, he noticed that he opened his eyes and looked at him.

Guillotine in North America

IN North America the guillotine was used only once on the island of St. Pierre for the execution of a fisherman who killed his drinking companion while drinking. Although the guillotine was never used there again, legislators often advocated its return, some citing the fact that the use of the guillotine would make organ donation more accessible.

And although proposals for the use of the guillotine were rejected, the death penalty was widely used. From 1735 to 1924, more than 500 death sentences were carried out in the state of Georgia. At first it was hanging, later replaced by an electric chair. In one of the state prisons, a kind of “record” was set - it took only 81 minutes to execute six men in the electric chair.

Family traditions

The executioner profession was despised in France, they were shunned by society, and merchants often refused to serve them. They had to live with their families outside the city. Because of the damaged reputation, there were difficulties with marriages, so the executioners and members of their families were legally allowed to marry their own cousins.

The most famous executioner in history was Charles-Henri Sanson, who began to carry out death sentences at the age of 15, and his most famous victim was King Louis XVI in 1793. Later family tradition continued by his son Henri, who beheaded the king's wife, Marie Antoinette. His other son, Gabriel, also decided to follow in his father's footsteps. However, after the first beheading, Gabriel slipped on the bloody scaffold, fell from it and died.

Eugene Weidman

Eugene Weidman was sentenced to death in 1937 for a series of murders in Paris. On June 17, 1939, a guillotine was prepared for him outside the prison, curious spectators gathered. The bloodthirsty crowd could not be calmed down for a long time, because of this, the execution even had to be postponed. And after the beheading, people with handkerchiefs rushed to the bloody scaffold to take the handkerchiefs with Weidmann's blood home as souvenirs.

After that, the authorities in the person of French President Albert Lebrun banned public executions, believing that they rather arouse disgusting base instincts in people than serve as a deterrent for criminals. Thus, Eugene Weidman became the last person in France to be publicly beheaded.

Suicide

Despite the falling popularity of the guillotine, it continued to be used by those who decided to commit suicide. In 2003, 36-year-old Boyd Taylor from England spent several weeks constructing a guillotine in his bedroom that was supposed to turn on at night while he was sleeping. The headless body of the son was discovered by his father, who was awakened by a noise similar to the sound of a chimney falling from the roof.

In 2007, the body of a man was discovered in Michigan, who died in the forest from a mechanism he built. But the most terrible was the death of David Moore. In 2006, Moore built a guillotine from metal tubing and a saw blade. However, the device initially did not work, Moore was only seriously injured. He had to make his way to the bedroom, where he had 10 Molotov cocktails stashed away. Moore blew them up, but they didn't work as planned either.

If you are not sure that you want to see this execution, then it is better not to read further.
People are usually proud when their name remains for centuries, being a kind of pass to history. But this is not the case - at the end of his life, this man tried to appeal to the authorities of Napoleonic France with a request to rename the device, which was given his name. But it didn't work out...

Namesake of the guillotine

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His name was Joseph Ignace Guillotin, and exactly 221 years ago, on April 25, 1792, the first execution was carried out on the Place Greve in Paris using the mechanism named after him. He, of course, did not invent it - they tried to use similar devices earlier in Scotland, and in Great Britain, in Italy, Switzerland, etc. And Guillotin was only a lobbyist for the idea of ​​​​a mechanism improved by Dr. Antoine Louis and the German mechanic Thomas Schmidt for carrying out the death penalty by cutting off the head.
At that time in France there was no equality of all before the death penalty, and depending on the crime and social status, there were several types of it. Regicides and paricides were executed by quartering. Murderers and thieves were hanged. Those guilty of aggravated murder and robbery were wheeled. Heretics, arsonists and sodomites were sent to the stake. The counterfeiters were dipped into boiling oil. A noble privilege there was an execution by cutting off the head with an ax or a sword.

The two main types of French guillotine. Left: model 1792, right: model 1872 of the Berger system

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Dr. Guillotin believed that if the death penalty could not be avoided (and he was her opponent), then the execution should be the same for everyone and as less painful as possible. Speaking to the National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament) on October 10, 1789, during a debate on the death penalty, he argued: “With my machine, you can cut off a head in the blink of an eye, and the condemned will not even feel it.”
And then added: “He will have time to feel only cool breath on his neck”. The last poetic comparison then caused a slight laugh in the hall, but during the Great French Revolution, a significant part of the deputies gathered there will no longer be laughing - they will be able to find out on their own necks whether these words are true.
And the Parisians did not like its first use - they were disappointed with the brevity of the show. But a year after that, the Age of Terror began in France, and the speed of execution on the guillotine began to bathe in the frequency of its use and the loudness of the names of those executed.

Public execution by guillotine in 1897

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In Runet, from article to article, the bike is duplicated that the medieval ritual words were announced to those sentenced to the guillotine on the last morning: “Be of good cheer…. (followed by name)! The hour of redemption has come!” All this is bullshit - in fact, everything happened more casually, much simpler and was completely regulated by the prison instructions.
Preparations for the execution began at 2.30. the last preparations and the executioner's check of the serviceability of the guillotine, for which an hour was allotted. Everything else happened within half an hour.
At 3.30. the director of the prison, the judge, the prefect of police, the lawyer of the convict, the clerk, the priest and the guards entered the cell of the convict, who did not know about the impending execution. The director of the prison woke up the prisoner and announced: “Your pardon has been denied. Get up. Prepare for death."
The prisoner was given time to get dressed, wash himself and take care of natural needs. Then the director of the prison asked him: Would you like to say something? Mr. Judge is here to hear you." Then it was suggested: “If you want to be alone with the priest, then we will go out for a few minutes”.
After that, the prisoner's hair was cut at the back of his head and changed into white shirt no stand-up collar. And they provided the opportunity to write a last letter to their family (or anyone), offering a glass of rum or a glass of wine, and a cigarette.

Non-public execution by guillotine in 1905

After that, at 4.00, the condemned man, supported under the arms by two escorts, in shackles and handcuffs shackled from behind, walked with small steps to the place of execution (the instruction prescribed that the path from the cell to the guillotine should be as straight and short as possible). In case of cold weather, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders.
The French legend (and the French also have their own tales) says that the priest walked in front of the procession and waved a crucifix in front of the condemned person so that he would not see the guillotine until the last moment.
At the place of execution of the convict, the executioner with an assistant was already waiting, the guards laid the condemned man on a sunbed and fixed his head. The executioner released the lock, the horizontal knife fell, and the head flew off into the basket.
The decapitated body was quickly shoved into a deep box with sawdust, where the head was then moved. If the body was claimed by the family for burial, then it was transferred to the coffin and handed over to relatives. If not, it was transferred to the forensic laboratory.
The execution itself took place very quickly, and very creepy in its routine. I repeat: if you are not sure that you want to see it, then it is better not to look.

These are amateur film footage taken at 04:50 on June 17, 1939, from the window of an apartment building adjacent to the St. Pierre prison in Versailles. The footage captured the last public execution in France by guillotine. Headless - Eugène Weidmann, serial killer of six people.
It took place with a delay of 45 minutes - according to conversations, in order to get daylight, and photographers were able to capture it better. A few hours later, Paris-Soir came out with a whole page of photographs from the place of execution. There was a big scandal, and President Albert Lebrun banned the public execution of the death penalty in France - from then until its abolition, it was carried out in the courtyard of the prison.

After Guillotin's death in 1814, his family had already officially petitioned the government to rename the guillotine, and when they refused, they changed their surname. Which one is unknown (French law requires secrecy in such cases).
Guillotin himself died of a carbuncle on his left shoulder, but the rumor that he was executed on the mechanism he invented is not without foundation - during the Great French Revolution, in 1793, in Lyon, his namesake was executed on the guillotine.
And Victor Hugo would later write about him and Columbus: “There are unfortunate people: one cannot attach his name to his discovery, the other cannot erase his name from his invention”…

Each century has its own concept of philanthropy. At the end of the 18th century, from the most humane considerations, guillotine. Cheap and fast - this is how the popularity of this "death machine" can be characterized.

The guillotine is named after the French doctor Joseph Guillotin, although he was only indirectly involved in the creation of this killing instrument. The doctor himself was an opponent of the death penalty, but he recognized that no revolution could do without it. In turn, Joseph Guillotin, being a member of the newly-minted Constitutional Assembly in revolutionary times, expressed the opinion that it would be nice to invent a tool that would equalize the conditions of execution for all classes.

At the end of the 18th century, as soon as people were not executed: the nobility chopped off their heads, common people were subjected to wheeling, hanging, and quartering. In some places, burning at the stake was still practiced. The most "humane" was considered the execution by cutting off the head. But even here it was not all simple, because only master executioners could cut off the head the first time.

The very same mechanism of the guillotine was developed by the French surgeon Antoine Louis and the German mechanic Tobias Schmift. A heavy slanting knife fell along guides from a height of 2-3 meters. The body of the condemned was fixed on a special bench. The executioner pressed the lever and the knife cut off the head of the victim.

The first public execution by guillotine took place on April 25, 1792. The crowd of onlookers was very disappointed that the spectacle quickly ended. But during the revolution, the guillotine became an indispensable and speedy means of reprisal against those objectionable to the new regime. Under the knife of the guillotine were the King of France Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the revolutionaries Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins.

Relatives of Dr. Joseph Guillotin made every effort to have the authorities change the name for the death machine, but to no avail. Then all the relatives of Guillotin changed their surname.

After the “revolutionary terror”, the guillotine lost its popularity for several decades. In the second half of the 19th century, the mechanism with an oblique knife "came into fashion" again.

The last public execution by guillotine took place in France on June 17, 1939. She was captured on camera. But excessive crowd unrest forced the authorities to abandon public executions altogether.

In Nazi Germany under Hitler, more than 40,000 members of the Resistance went under the knife of the guillotine. Even after the Second World War, the death mechanism was used in the FRG until 1949, and in the GDR until 1966. The last execution by guillotine took place in 1977 in France.
After the abolition of the death penalty, hundreds of executioners were left without work. will allow us to see something different in this profession from the point of view of our ancestors.

Over its almost two hundred years of history, the guillotine has decapitated tens of thousands of people, ranging from criminals and revolutionaries to aristocrats, kings and even queens. It's not just a disgustingly efficient killing machine: the Sainte Guillotine served as a symbol of the French Revolution and cast a shameful shadow over the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Some amazing facts about this instrument of death, once popularly called the "national razor" of France.

The history of the guillotine goes back to the Middle Ages

The name "guillotine" appears in the 1790s during the French Revolution, but by that time such execution tools had already been used for more than one century. A decapitation device called a "bar" was used in Germany and Flanders in the Middle Ages. The British had a so-called sliding ax, known as the "Halifax gallows", on which heads were chopped off in ancient times. The French guillotine evolved from two pre-existing tools: the "mannaia" from Renaissance Italy and the infamous "Scottish Maiden" that claimed the lives of over 120 people between the 16th and 18th centuries. There are also facts confirming the possibility of using primitive guillotines in France long before the start of the revolution.

In fact, the guillotine was invented as the most humane method of execution.

The invention of the French guillotine dates back to 1789, when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the government a more humane method of execution. Although he was personally opposed to the death penalty, Guillotin argued that beheading with lightning speed fast car will be less painful than chopping off the head with a sword or an axe. He later oversaw the development of the first prototype, an imposing machine designed by the French doctor Antoine Louis and built by the German inventor of the harpsichord, Tobias Schmidt. The first victim was executed on this machine in April 1792, the weapon quickly became known as the "guillotine", more to the dismay than to the credit of the man believed to be its inventor. Guillotin tried in every possible way to remove his name from this weapon during the guillotine hysteria in the 1790s, and in the early 19th century, his family unsuccessfully tried to petition the government to rename the death machine.

Execution on the guillotine became a mass spectacle for the people

During the reign of terror in the mid-1890s, hundreds of "enemies of the French Revolution" met death under the guillotine's blade. At first, some members of the public complained that the car was too fast, but soon such executions turned into real entertainment. People came in groups to Revolution Square to watch the machine do its terrible job. The guillotine was celebrated in numerous songs, jokes and poems. Spectators could buy souvenirs, read a program that listed the names of the victims, and even have a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant called Cabaret at the Guillotine. Some went to executions every day, especially the "Knitters" - a group of female fanatics who sat in the front rows right in front of the scaffold and knitted on knitting needles between executions. Such a terrible theatrical atmosphere extended to the convicts. Many made sarcastic or cheeky remarks. last words before dying, some even danced their last steps along the steps of the scaffold. Admiration for the guillotine subsided towards the end of the 18th century, but public executions in France continued until 1939.

Popular toy for children

Children often went to executions and some of them even played at home with their own miniature models of the guillotine. Exact copy a guillotine about half a meter high was a popular toy in France at that time. Such toys were fully functional, and children used them to cut off the heads of dolls or even small rodents. However, they were eventually banned in some cities as having a bad effect on children. Small guillotines also found a place on the dining tables of the upper classes, they were used to cut bread and vegetables.

Guillotine executioners were national celebrities

With the growing popularity of the guillotine, the reputation of the executioners also grew; during the French Revolution, they received great fame. Executioners were evaluated by their ability to quickly and accurately organize a large number of executions. Such work often became a family affair. From 1792 to 1847, the famed Sanson family served as state executioners for generations, bringing a blade to the necks of thousands of victims, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of the main executioners went to the Deibler family, father and son. They held this position from 1879 to 1939. People often praised the names of the Sansons and Deiblers on the streets, and the way they dressed on the scaffold dictated the fashion in the country. The underworld also admired executioners. According to some reports, gangsters and other bandits even stuffed tattoos with gloomy slogans like: "My head will go to Deibler."

Scientists conducted terrifying experiments on the heads of convicts

From the very beginning of the use of execution in the form of decapitation, scientists were interested in whether the consciousness of a severed head remains. The debate on the subject reached new heights in 1793, when the executioner's assistant struck the victim's severed head in the face, and onlookers claimed that the face was flushed with anger. Doctors later asked the condemned to try to blink or open one eye after the execution of the sentence to prove that they could still move. Some shouted the name of the executed person or burned their faces with a candle flame or ammonia to see the reaction. In 1880, a doctor named Dessie de Lignère even tried pumping blood into the severed head of a child killer to see if the head could come back to life and talk. The horrific experiments were stopped in the 20th century, but studies on rats still show that brain activity can continue for about four seconds after decapitation.

The guillotine was used for executions in Nazi Germany

The guillotine is mostly associated with the French Revolution, but it claimed just as many lives in Germany during the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler made the guillotine the state method of execution in the 1930s and ordered 20 machines to be installed in German cities. According to Nazi records, some 16,500 people were executed by guillotine, many of them resistance fighters and political dissidents.

The last time the guillotine was used was in the 1970s.

The guillotine remained the state method of execution in France almost until the end of the 20th century. Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi became the last person to meet his death under the "national razor" in 1977. However, the 189-year reign of the death machine officially ended only in September 1981, when the death penalty was abolished in France.

And finally:

Do you know that in France at the end of the 18th century, young aristocrats held the so-called "balls of victims" - original dances, which could only be attended by those who had lost one of their family members under the guillotine's blade. The invitees put on a red ribbon around their neck, symbolizing the mark from the blade, and performed a dance during which the head suddenly tilted down, simulating decapitation. Such crazy parties have become popular to the point that some even invent beheaded relatives to get into it.

museum sample, modern photo, Berger design. To the right of the guillotine is Fernand Meissonier, one of the last executioners to carry out executions in Algiers.

Guillotine

Guillotine. Having existed for two centuries, it was abolished in 1981. Photo "Sigma".

"Holy guillotine", "path to repentance", "people's razor", "patriotic truncation", "transom", "widow", "Capetian tie", later "window", "machine", "machine" - that's just some of the nicknames that people have dubbed the guillotine. Such a variety of names was explained both by the popularity of the guillotine and the fear that it inspired.

The French head-cutting machine was invented by two doctors: Dr. Guillotin and Dr. Louis, a humanist and scientist.

The first put forward the idea of ​​universal equality before death, which can be realized with the help of an improved knife, and the second materialized this idea. Each of them deserved the right to give their name to this first achievement of industrial technology in the field of killing.

Last public execution in June 1939. Eugene Weidmann guillotined at Versailles. Photo. Police archive. D.R.

At first, the car was called "Louison", "Louisette" and even "Mirabel" - in honor of Mirabeau, who supported this project, but in the end the name "guillotine" stuck behind it, although Dr. Guillotin always objected to such excessive gratitude. According to numerous testimonies, "he was extremely saddened by this." Disappointed in his "invention", Guillotin left his political career and actively involved in the restoration of the Medical Academy, then, miraculously avoiding the "embrace of his goddaughter", opened an office.

Multiple digits

Between 1792 and 1795:

- According to some reports, from 13,800 to 18,613 guillotinings were carried out by court order. 2,794 fall on Paris during the Jacobin dictatorship. In addition, some 25,000 beheadings were carried out by a simple administrative decision. In total, from 38,000 to 43,000 guillotine executions took place during the period of the revolution.

Including:

- former aristocrats: 1,278 people, of which 750 are women.

- wives of farmers and artisans: 1467.

- nuns: 350.

- priests: 1135.

- commoners of different classes: 13,665.

- children: 41.

Between 1796 and 1810:

There are no reliable statistics. Some sources give an average of 419 sentences per year between 1803 and 1809, of which 120 were deaths. In total, about 540 guillotined.

From 1811 to 1825: 4,520.

From 1826 to 1850: 1029.

From 1851 to 1900: 642.

From 1901 to 1950: 457.

From 1950 to 1977: 65.

- Total: 6,713 guillotinings over 165 years from 1811 to 1977. The large number of executions in the period 1811-1825 is explained by the fact that there were no "extenuating circumstances" at that time. Introduced in 1832, they saved the head of almost every second convict. Since 1950, the decline of the death penalty begins.

From 1792 to 1977:

- There will be 45,000-49,000 beheadings in France, excluding the period 1796-1810.

From 1968 to 1977:

- 9,231 people were found guilty of crimes punishable by guillotining.

- 163 death sentences demanded by the prosecutor's office.

- 38 death sentences were handed down.

- 23 were not subject to appeal, 15 were appealed through the Court of Cassation.

- In 7 cases the sentence was carried out.

Annual average:

- 850 possible death sentences, 15 - at the request of the prosecutor's office, 4 sentences; 1 performance in two years. According to revolutionary statistics:

- 2% of those guillotined were of noble birth.

- from 8 to 18% - political opponents.

- from 80 to 90% - raznochintsy, murderers, swindlers.

From 1950 to 1977:

- According to a sociological study by J-M. Besset, in which 82 guillotinings were considered:

- average age convicts - 32 years.

- every second guillotined was under 30 years old, 15% - aged 20 to 24 years.

- 20% - single or divorced.

- 70% - workers.

- 5% - artisans, merchants, employees.

- more than 40% were born abroad.

From 1846 to 1893:

- Guillotined 46 women.

From 1941 to 1949:

- 18 women were executed by guillotine, 9 - in the period 1944-1949. for contact with the enemy. One of them, named Marie-Louise Giraud, was executed in 1943 for helping to perform abortions. Since 1949, all women sentenced to death have received pardons.

- The last woman to be executed was Germaine Godefroy.

She was guillotined in 1949.

- The last woman convicted was Emma Marie-Claire.

She was pardoned in 1973.

Robespierre guillotined the executioner, decapitating all the French. Revolutionary engraving. Private count

Torture, hanging, wheeling, quartering, beheading with a sword were the legacy of despotic, obscurantist eras, against such a background, the guillotine for many became the embodiment of "new ideas" in the field of justice based on humanistic principles. In practice, she was a "daughter of the Enlightenment", a philosophical creation that established a new type of legal relationship between people.

On the other hand, the sinister tool marked the transition from ancient, "homegrown" methods to mechanical ones. The guillotine foreshadowed the beginning of an era of "industrial" death and "new inventions of a new justice", which would later lead to the invention of gas chambers and the electric chair, also due to synthesis social sciences, technology and medicine.

Jean-Michel Besset writes: “Man-made disappears, in in a certain sense the inspired component of the work of the executioners, and with it something human is lost ... The guillotine is no longer controlled by a person, it is not the mind that moves his hand - a mechanism operates; the executioner turns into a mechanic of the judicial machine ... "

With the advent of the guillotine, killing becomes a clear, simple and quick process that has nothing to do with the grandfather's methods of execution, which required certain knowledge and skill from the performers, and they were people who were not without moral and physical weaknesses and even dishonesty.

General laughter!

So, in the name of promoting the principles of equality, humanism and progress, the issue of a decapitation machine designed to change the very aesthetics of death was raised in the National Assembly.

On October 9, 1789, as part of the debate on criminal law, Joseph Ignacy Guillotin, physician, lecturer in anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine and a newly elected Parisian deputy, took the floor of the National Assembly.

Among his colleagues, he had a reputation as an honest scholar and philanthropist, and he was even appointed a member of a commission charged with shedding light on "witchcraft, magic wands and Mesmer's animal magnetism. When Guillotin put forward the idea that the same offense should be punished in the same way, regardless of the rank, rank and merit of the perpetrator, he was listened to with respect.

Many deputies have already expressed similar considerations: the inequality and cruelty of punishments for criminal offenses outraged the public.

Two months later, on December 1, 1789, Guillotin again delivered an impassioned speech in defense of equality before death, for the same execution for all.

"In all cases where the law provides for the death penalty for the accused, the essence of the punishment must be the same, regardless of the nature of the crime."

It was then that Guillotin mentioned the instrument of killing, which would later perpetuate his name in history.

The technical concept and mechanical principles of the device have not yet been worked out, but from a theoretical point of view, Dr. Guillotin has already come up with everything.

He described to his colleagues the possibilities of a future machine that would cut heads so simply and quickly that the convict would hardly even feel “a slight breath on the back of his head.”

Guillotin ended his speech with a phrase that became famous: “My machine, gentlemen, will cut off your head in the blink of an eye, and you won’t feel anything ... The knife falls with lightning speed, the head flies off, blood splatters, the person is no more! ..”

Most of the deputies were puzzled.

There were rumors that the Parisian deputy was outraged different kinds executions provided for at that time by the code, because the cries of the condemned long years horrified his mother and she had a premature birth. In January 1791, Dr. Guillotin again tried to win colleagues over to his side.

The "question of the car" was not discussed, but the idea of ​​"an execution equal for all", the refusal to brand the families of the convicted and the abolition of the confiscation of property were adopted, which was a huge step forward.

Four months later, at the end of May 1791, there were three days of debate in the Assembly on matters of criminal law.

During the preparation of the draft of the new criminal code, questions of the procedure of punishment, including the death penalty, were finally raised.

Proponents of the use of the death penalty and abolitionists clashed in furious disputes. The arguments of both sides would be debated for another two hundred years.

The former believed that the death penalty, by its clarity, prevents the recurrence of crimes, the latter called it legalized murder, emphasizing the irreversibility of a miscarriage of justice.

One of the most ardent supporters of the abolition of the death penalty was Robespierre. Several theses put forward by him during the discussion went down in history: “A person must be sacred to a person ... I come here to beg not the gods, but the legislators, who should be the instrument and interpreters of the eternal laws inscribed by the Divine in the hearts of people, I came to beg them to cross out from the French code bloody laws prescribing murder, equally rejected by their morality and the new constitution. I want to prove to them that, firstly, the death penalty is inherently unjust, and, secondly, that it does not deter crimes, but, on the contrary, multiplies crimes much more than it prevents them.

Paradoxically, the guillotine functioned non-stop throughout the forty days of Robespierre's dictatorship, symbolizing the apogee of the legal use of the death penalty in France. Only between June 10 and July 27, 1794, one thousand three hundred and seventy-three heads fell from their shoulders, "like tiles torn off by the wind," as Fouquier-Tainville says. It was the time of the Great Terror. In total, in France, according to reliable sources, between thirty and forty thousand people were executed by the verdicts of the revolutionary courts.

Let's go back to 1791. There were more deputies who supported the abolition of the death penalty, but the political situation was critical, there was talk of "internal enemies", and the majority yielded to the minority.

On June 1, 1791, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly to retain the death penalty in the territory of the Republic. Debates immediately began, lasting several months, this time about the method of execution. All deputies were of the opinion that the execution should be as minimally painful as possible and as quickly as possible. But how exactly should they be executed? Disputes were reduced mainly to a comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of hanging and beheading. Speaker Amber suggested that the convict be tied to a post and strangled with a collar, but the majority voted for beheading. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, this is a quick execution, but the main thing was that commoners were traditionally executed by hanging, while beheading was the privilege of persons of noble birth.

Characteristics of the guillotine

"Daughter of Dr. Louis".

- Height of uprights: 4.5 m.

- Distance between uprights: 37 cm.

- Folding board height: 85 cm.

- Knife weight: 7 kg.

- Cargo weight: 30 kg.

- Weight of the bolts fixing the knife on the load: 3 kg.

- Total weight of decapitation mechanism: 40 kg.

- Knife drop height: 2.25 m.

- Average neck thickness: 13 cm.

- Execution time: ± 0.04 seconds.

- Time to cut the neck of the convict: 0.02 seconds.

- Knife speed: ± 23.4 km/h.

- Total weight of the machine: 580 kg.

This machine must consist of the following parts:

Two parallel oak studs, six inches thick and ten feet high, are mounted on a frame a foot apart, joined at the top by a crossbar, and braced at the sides and back. On the inside of the racks there are longitudinal grooves of square section, an inch deep, along which the side ledges of the knife slide. In the upper part of each of the racks, under the crossbar, there are copper rollers.

A hardened knife crafted by a skilled metal craftsman cuts thanks to the beveled blade shape. The cutting surface of the blade is eight inches long and six inches high.

On top, the blade is the same thickness as that of an axe. In this part there are holes for iron hoops, by means of which a weight of thirty pounds or more is fastened. In addition, on the upper surface, a foot across, on both sides there are square inch-wide protrusions that fit into the grooves of the posts.

A strong long rope passed through the ring holds the knife under the top bar.

The block of wood on which the neck of the executioner is placed is eight inches high and four inches thick.

The base of the block, one foot wide, corresponds to the distance between the uprights. With the help of removable pins, the base is attached to the uprights on both sides. On top of the chopping block there is a recess for the sharp edge of the beveled knife. At this level, the side grooves of the racks end. A notch should be made in the center to correctly position the neck of the executed.

So that a person during the execution could not raise his head, above the back of the head, where the hairline ends, it must be fixed with an iron hoop in the shape of a horseshoe. At the ends of the hoop there are holes for bolting to the base of the upper part of the chopping block.

The executed person is placed on his stomach, his neck is placed in the hole in the chopping block. When all preparations are completed, the performer simultaneously releases both ends of the rope holding the knife, and, falling from above, it separates the head from the body due to its own weight and acceleration in the blink of an eye!

Any defects in the above parts can easily be identified even by the most inexperienced designer.

Signed: Louis. Scientific Secretary of the Surgical Society.

So the choice of representatives of the people was partly an egalitarian revenge. Since the death penalty remains, “to hell with the rope! Long live the abolition of privileges and noble decapitation for all!

From now on, the concepts of varying degrees of suffering and shame will not be applicable to the death penalty.

Sword or axe?

Ratified on September 25, amended on October 6, 1791, the new penal code read:

“All those sentenced to death will be beheaded,” specifying that “the death penalty is a simple deprivation of life and it is forbidden to torture the convicted person.”

All criminal courts in France were given the right to pass death sentences, but the manner in which the sentence was carried out was not determined by law. How to cut off the head? Saber? With a sword? With an ax?

Due to lack of clarity, executions were suspended for some time, and the government took up the issue.

Many were concerned by the fact that the "old-fashioned" decapitation often turned into a terrifying sight, which contradicted the requirements of the new law - the killing of a simple, painless and excluding preliminary torture. However, given the possible awkwardness of the executioner and the complexity of the execution procedure itself, the torment of the convict seemed inevitable.

Most of all, the state executioner Sanson was worried. He sent a memorandum to the Minister of Justice, Adrien Duport, in which he argued that the lack of experience could lead to the most unfortunate consequences. Having presented a lot of arguments against beheading with a sword, he, in particular, stated:

“How can one endure such a bloody execution without trembling? With other types of execution, it is easy to hide weakness from the public, for there is no need for the condemned to remain firm and fearless. But in this case, if the convict grumbles, the execution will fail. How to force a person who cannot or will not want to hold on? ...

Profession: guillotine

"The chief executor of sentences in criminal cases," as the executioner should be called, worked on a semi-legal basis. His duties were not regulated. He was not a civil servant, but was employed.

In France, as elsewhere, this shop existed on the basis of castes. Positions were distributed among their own according to a complex system of intra-shop unions, including marriage unions, which led to the formation of entire dynasties.

If there was no heir, the most experienced assistant to the retired executioner was appointed to the vacant seat. Since the work of the executioner was paid by the piece, officially his salary was not listed anywhere. Fighting for the abolition of the death penalty, deputy Pierre Bass tried to achieve the abolition of the corresponding appropriations from the budget of the Ministry of Justice, which amounted to 185,000 francs a year.

According to the "Historian of the Executioners" Jacques Delarue, on July 1, 1979 main performer received 40,833 francs a year net after paying 3,650.14 francs to the Social Security Fund, plus benefits of about 2,100 francs. First class assistants received 2111.70 francs per month. Salaries were subject to income tax.

The notorious "basket premium" of 6,000 francs for each "head", according to Jacques Delarue, was pure fiction. Thus, the main performer earned less than the secretary, and his assistants - less than the janitor. Not enough for a man who had the legal right to kill his own kind. In addition, his work was fraught with risk.

Neck cutting machine

Based on humanitarian considerations, I have the honor to warn about all the incidents that may occur in the event of execution by the sword ...

It is necessary that, guided by philanthropy, the deputies find a way to immobilize the convicted person so that the execution of the sentence cannot be called into question, so as not to delay the punishment and thereby strengthen its inevitability.

So we will fulfill the will of the legislator and avoid unrest in society.”

Photographer

One of the executioner's assistants, who performed a particularly important duty, is undeservedly forgotten. In thieves' jargon, he was called a "photographer." Often, it was thanks to him that executions did not turn into massacres. He made sure that the convict kept straight, did not pull his head into his shoulders, so that his head lay exactly on the line of the fall of the knife. He stood in front of the guillotine and, if necessary, pulled the convict by the hair (or ears, if he was bald) for a "final alignment." "Freeze!" The search for the right angle, or rather, the right position, earned him the nickname Photographer.

As Marcel Chevalier says in an interview about the time when he worked as an assistant executioner: “Photography is a really dangerous profession! Yes, putting a person down is dangerous. Release Obrecht the blade too quickly, and my hands would be cut off!

The Minister of Justice reported the fears of the Parisian executioner and his own anxieties to the directorate of the Paris department, who in turn informed the National Assembly.

Responding to a request from Duport, who recommended "to decide as soon as possible on the method of execution that would meet the principles of the new law," the deputies decided that "enlightened mankind should improve the art of killing as soon as possible." And they asked the Surgical Society to make a report on the topic.

The scientific secretary of the eminent institution, Dr. Louis, personally took up the study of this urgent problem. Dr. Louis was the most famous physician of his time and had great experience in forensic and legal matters.

In two weeks, he summarized his observations and presented the conclusion to the deputies.

Recalling that his report is based on clinical observations and takes into account the requirements of law, science, justice and humanistic considerations, the scientist confirmed that the fears are not unfounded. Dr. Louis gave the example of M. de Lolly's execution. “He was on his knees, blindfolded. The executioner hit him on the back of the head. The first blow failed to cut off the head. The body, unimpeded in its fall, fell forward, and it took three or four more blows with the sword to bring the matter to an end. Spectators watched with horror this, so to speak, felling.

Dr. Louis offered to support Dr. Guillotin and build a neck-cutting machine. “Given the structure of the neck, in the center of which there is a spine consisting of several vertebrae, and the joints of these are almost impossible to identify, a quick and accurate separation of the head from the body cannot be ensured by the performer (executioner), whose dexterity depends on many reasons. For reliability, the procedure must be carried out by mechanical means, with a deliberately calculated force and accuracy of impact.

Humanity Calendar

In France, before the revolution, a decree of 1670 was in force, which provided for 115 possible cases of the death penalty. The nobleman was beheaded, the robber with high road they wheeled on the city square, the regicide was quartered, the counterfeiter was boiled alive in boiling water, the heretic was burned, the commoner convicted of theft was hanged. As a result, before the revolution, an average of 300 performances per year were recorded.

1791. The new code reduces the number of crimes punishable by death from 115 to 32. A court of people's assessors was established, the method of the death penalty - guillotining - was unified. The right to pardon has been abolished.

1792. The first execution on the guillotine of a certain Jacques-Nicolas Peletier.

1793. Appointment of an executioner in every department of the Republic.

1802. Restoration of the right to pardon as the prerogative of the first person of the state. At this moment - the First Consul.

1810 The new criminal code increases the number of offenses punishable by the death penalty from 32 to 39. Introduction of an additional punishment in the form of cutting off the hand for parricide before beheading. Aiding and attempted murder fall under the death penalty, in fact, 78 types of crimes are brought under the guillotine.

1830 The revision of the criminal code leads to a reduction in the number of crimes punishable by death from 39 to 36.

1832. Jurors are allowed to consider extenuating circumstances. The abolition of certain types of torture, including the iron collar and cutting off the hand. The revision of the criminal code reduces the number of crimes punishable by death to 25.

1845 The number of crimes punishable by capital punishment reaches 26. The introduction of the death penalty for organizing railway accidents that caused human casualties.

1848 The death penalty for political crimes was abolished, the number of “death” articles was reduced to 15.

1853 In the Second Empire, 16 articles are punishable by death.

1870 The guillotine is no longer installed on the scaffold. For the entire territory of the state there remains one executioner with five assistants and one more for Corsica and Algeria.

1939 Public beheading cancelled. The public is no longer allowed to attend executions. According to Article 16, the procedure is now allowed:

- chairman of the jury;

- an official appointed by the Attorney General;

- local court judge;

- secretary of the court;

- defenders of the convict;

- priest;

- director of the correctional institution;

- the police commissioner and, at the request of the Attorney General, if necessary, members of the public security forces;

- the prison doctor or any other doctor appointed by the Attorney General.

It is worth noting that the executioner and assistants do not appear on the list.

1950 Introduced the death penalty for armed robbery. For the first time in over a hundred years, for attempting property, not human life.

1951 The press is forbidden to report on executions, it is ordered to be limited to protocols.

1959 Fifth Republic. The new code, directly following from the edition of 1810, contains 50 articles, according to which the death sentence is pronounced.

1977 September 10 at Beaumet Prison (Marseille) in last time used the guillotine to execute Jandoubi Hamid, a 28-year-old bachelor with no fixed occupation who was guilty of murder.

1981 September 18 The National Assembly votes for the abolition of the death penalty with 369 votes in favor, 113 against, 5 abstentions. On September 30, the Senate passes the law without amendments: 161 votes in favor, 126 against. In the interval between these dates, the Upper Rhine Assize Court passed the final death sentence on a certain Jean Michel M... who is on the wanted list.

The taste of blood

After the beheading of Louis XVI, his body was taken to the Madeleine cemetery. The horse harnessed to Sanson's cart stumbled, and the basket containing the head and body of the sovereign overturned on the highway. Passers-by rushed - some with a handkerchief, some with a tie, some with a piece of paper - to collect the blood of the martyr. Some tasted it, it seemed to them that it was "damn salty." One even filled a pair of thimbles with crimson clay. After the execution in Toulouse of Henry II, Duke of Montmorency, the soldiers drank his blood in order to adopt "valor, strength and generosity."

Dr. Louis also recalled that the idea of ​​a decapitation machine was not new, primitive examples existed for a long time, in particular, in some German principalities, in England and Italy. In fact, the French did not invent the car, but rediscovered it.

In addition, the speaker made several clarifications regarding the "knife", the main part of the future machine. He proposed to improve the horizontal knife of the previous "head cutters" with a significant innovation - a 45-degree beveled edge - in order to achieve greater efficiency.

“It is common knowledge,” he writes, “that cutting tools with a perpendicular impact are practically ineffective. Under the microscope, you can see that the blade is just a more or less thin saw. It is necessary that it slide over the body, which should be cut. We will be able to achieve instant decapitation with an ax or a knife, the blade of which is not a straight line, but an oblique one, like that of an old reed, - then, when striking, its force acts perpendicularly only in the center, and the blade freely penetrates into the object it is separating, exerting an oblique effect on the sides, which guarantees the achievement of the goal ...

It is not difficult to build a machine that will not fail. The beheading will be carried out instantly, in accordance with the spirit and letter of the new law. Tests can be carried out on corpses or a live ram.

The doctor ended his report with technical considerations: "Let's see if there is a need to fix the head of the executed at the base of the skull with a collar, the ends of which can be fastened with dowels under the scaffold."

The deputies of the Legislative Assembly - as it became known from October 1, were amazed by what they heard and, perhaps, were ashamed to publicly discuss the project of the death machine. But the scientific approach made a strong impression on them, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief: the solution to the problem had been found. Dr. Louie's report has been published. On March 20, 1792, a decree was ratified stating that "all those sentenced to death will be beheaded in the manner adopted for service as a result of consultation with the scientific secretary of the Surgical Society." As a result, the deputies authorized the executive branch to allocate the funds necessary to create the machine.

Not once in the two centuries until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 was the guillotine mentioned in the French penal code. Guillotinage has always been designated by the wording - "a method adopted as a result of consultations with the scientific secretary of the Surgical Society."

As soon as the idea of ​​a “shortening machine” was legalized, it remained to bring it to life in the shortest possible time. It was decided to appoint a member of the bureau of the Parisian municipality, Pierre Louis Rederer, who distinguished himself in the discussion of financial and judicial laws, to be responsible for the manufacture of the prototype.

Roederer began by consulting with the author of the idea, Dr. Guillotin, but quickly recognized him as a theorist and turned to the practitioner - Dr. Louis, the only one who was able to translate the idea into reality. He brought the doctor together with Gidon, a carpenter who worked for the government. Accustomed to the construction of scaffolds, he fell into a deep and understandable confusion. Dr. Louis wrote a detailed description of the device, detailing the project as much as possible. This description became the most detailed document on the guillotine in history, confirming the fact that Dr. Louis was its real inventor.

Based on the terms of reference, Gidon prepared an estimate of work in a day and on March 31, 1792 handed it to Dr. Louis, who handed it over to Rederer. The estimate was 5,660 livres, a huge sum for those times.

Gidon said that the production of a prototype would cost that much money, and if "the cost of the first machine looks excessive, then subsequent devices will cost much less, given that the experience of creating the first sample will remove all difficulties and doubts." He assured that the machine would last at least half a century. Perhaps Gidon asked so much to get rid of the order. An ancient unbreakable tradition forbade the carpenter's brotherhood to make instruments of execution.

Be that as it may, the government, represented by the Minister of Public Taxation Clavier, rejected Gidon's estimate, and Roederer asked Louis to find " good master with reasonable pretensions.

Such was the German Tobias Schmidt, a harpsichord master from Strasbourg, who occasionally gave concerts. Schmidt, who considered himself a man of art, wrote to the doctor after the publication of his report and offered his services, assuring him that he would be honored to build a "beheading machine" that could bring happiness to mankind.

1932 Execution. Two baskets: one for the body, the second for the head. Photo. Private count

Preparation for execution. Photo. Private Col.

Dr. Louie contacted Schmidt, who was already actively developing the topic, designing his own version of the machine. Louis asked him to leave "personal research" and calculate the proposed project.

Less than a week later, Tobias Schmidt presented an estimate of 960 livres, almost six times less than Gidon's. Clavier bargained for appearances, and the amount was 812 livres.

Schmidt showed ardent zeal and made the car in a week. The only thing he changed about Dr. Louie's design was the height of the racks on which the knife slid: fourteen feet instead of ten. Gidon, in his estimate, increased it to eighteen feet.

A knife with a 45° beveled blade, made by another craftsman, instead of sixty weighed forty kilograms, including the load.

1909 Execution of Beruillet in Balance (Drom department).

You could start testing. First on sheep, then on corpses. On April 19, 1792, according to some sources - in the Salpêtrière, according to others - in Bicêtre, the guillotine was assembled in the presence of people participating in the project, among whom were members of the government, doctors Louis and Guillotin, Charles-Henri Sanson and hospital staff.

The car met all expectations. The heads separated from the body in the blink of an eye.

After such convincing results, nothing prevented the speedy entry of the "wonderful machine" into official service.

On April 25, 1792, it was installed in the Place Greve to put to death a certain Jacques-Nicolas Peletier, convicted of robbery with violence, who thus acquired the dubious fame of the discoverer of the guillotine. The execution of Peletier marked the beginning of the incessant movement of the knife. Soon on the guillotine thousands of heads will be cut off from the shoulders. For two centuries, from 1792 to 1981, in addition to thirty-five to forty thousand executed during the years of the Jacobin dictatorship, about eight to ten thousand heads will be cut off on the guillotine.

In accordance with the adopted law in France, henceforth everyone had to be executed equally, and delegated representatives of the Republic traveled around the country with a guillotine in a van. The condemned had to wait, and each court demanded its own guillotine.

A decree of June 13, 1793 determined their number at the rate of one per department, a total of eighty-three cars. Thus, a new serious market appeared.

As the first builder of the guillotine, Tobias Schmidt claimed and received the exclusive right to manufacture it. However, in the harpsichord workshops of the master, despite the reorganization and hiring of additional workers, it was impossible to fulfill orders of a semi-industrial nature. Soon there were complaints about the production of Schmidt. The quality of the machines supplied by him did not quite meet the technical requirements, and the obvious shortcomings of several devices pushed competitors to offer their services.

A certain Noel Claren nearly took over the market by offering to build the perfect guillotine for five hundred livres, including painting it red.

Roederer asked officials from various departments to inspect Schmidt's machines and provide him with a detailed report on their merits and defects.

Kings of the guillotine

After the adoption of a law declaring that one executioner remained in the country, who would be employed full-time, seven performers were replaced in France:

Jean-Francois Heidenreich (1871-1872). He was said to be too sensitive for his service. He participated in over 820 executions.

Nicolas Roche (1872–1879). Introduced the wearing of a top hat during executions.

Louis Debler (1879–1899). Son of the executioner Joseph Debler. Received the nickname Lame. Executed at least 259 convicts. In particular, he "beheaded" Ravacole Caserio, the assassin of President Sadi Carnot.

Anatole Debler (1899–1939). Son of Louis Debler. Replaced the cylinder with a bowler. He claimed to spend less time cutting off a head than pronouncing the word "guillotine" in syllables. 450 convicts owe him death, one of them - Landru.

Henri Defurneau (1939-1951). The brother-in-law of the previous executioner married his niece, who was the daughter of the executioner's assistant. From the bowler hat he moved on to a gray felt hat. To him we owe the last public execution in France - at Versailles in 1939. During the war, he still "exercised" in the Sante prison on the heads of patriots. At the end of the war, he was still in his position, in particular, he beheaded Dr. Petio, convicted of 21 murders.

André Obrecht (1951–1976) Nephew of the previous executioner. He was selected from 150 applicants after a vacancy announcement was printed in the Journal of Office. He worked as an assistant executioner from 1922, at the time of his appointment he took part in 362 executions. Then he "truncated" another 51 heads, including Emile Buisson - "public enemy number 1", and Christian Ranucci.

Marcel Chevalier (1976–1981). Husband of the previous executioner's niece and Obrecht's assistant since 1958. As the chief executioner, he carried out only two beheadings, one of them was the last in France (the execution of Hamid Janbudi, September 10, 1977).

Johann Baptiste Reichart (1933–1945). Some did not like Reyhart, but he became the real king of the guillotine. By nationality, Reichart was not French, but German. Johann Baptiste Reichart, a loyal servant of Nazi justice, was the last in a dynasty of executioners that had existed since the 18th century.

He carried out 3,010 executions, of which 2,948 were by guillotine. After the war, Reichart went into the service of the Allies. It was he who was entrusted with the preparation of the hanging of Nazi criminals convicted at the Nuremberg trials. He gave several refresher lessons to Sergeant Wood, the American executioner who carried out executions. After these executions, he retired and lived near Munich, devoting himself to breeding dogs.

Preparations for the execution of Vashe. Engraving by Dete. Private count

The document, signed by the architect Giraud, said that the "Schmidt machine" was well conceived, but not brought to perfection.

The shortcomings were explained by haste, and the master was recommended to make some improvements: “The grooves and planks are made of wood, while the first should be made of copper, and the second of iron ... The hooks to which the rope with the load is tied are fastened with nails with a round cap instead of reliable screws with nuts ... "

It was also advised to attach the footboard to the guillotine, and fasten the brackets higher to ensure greater stability of the entire apparatus.

Finally, it was pointed out the need to supply each machine with two sets of weights and knives, "in order to have a replacement in case of a possible breakdown."

The report ended with the sentence: "If you pay the master five hundred livres for the car, with the condition that he make all these changes and supply all the necessary accessories, he will no doubt take up the job." Tobias Schmidt retained the guillotine market, missing out on an order for nine machines for Belgium (then French territory), built by a certain Yvert, a carpenter from Douai.

Tobias made the required changes, including installing copper grooves to improve blade glide and introducing a semi-mechanical drop system.

Tobias Schmidt made a fortune in the production of death machines, but, having fallen in love with the dancer Chamroy, a protégé of Eugene Beauharnais, he went bankrupt.

The modified guillotine completely satisfied the demand for three quarters of a century, but philanthropists, inventors and entrepreneurs of all stripes did not stop trying to deprive Schmidt of a monopoly.

During the period of the Jacobin dictatorship, one of them suggested that the Committee of Public Safety build machines for four and even nine knives in order to speed up the process. In 1794, in Bordeaux, the carpenter Burguet, on the orders of the chairman of the Extraordinary Military Tribunal, made a four-knife guillotine, but it was never used.

The second, with nine blades, was made by the mechanic Guillot. Tests carried out in Bicêtre did not give positive results.

Guillotines with one knife really could not cope with the number of executions. Mass executions and drownings became commonplace. In 1794, Turrot even ordered executions with bayonets in the name of saving ammunition.

Later there were proposals to make guillotines in one piece to avoid the assembly of beams. Or machines on wheels to eliminate the complicated process of mounting and dismounting.

After the execution of Charlotte Corday, the question arose of the possible preservation of consciousness after decapitation, and a Munich professor proposed a machine for "truly humane" executions that would meet the highest aspirations of morality.

Franz von Paula Ruithuizen was a famous chemist, zoologist and anthropologist.

After conducting numerous tests on animals, he proposed to build a guillotine with an additional knife that would separate the cerebral hemispheres. “You can also provide,” he writes, “an additional knife to cut through the spine, spinal cord, or, in the most extreme case, the aorta, in order to cause rapid blood loss.”

Although the respected scientist took on the costs of manufacturing a prototype, his contemporaries were not interested in his proposal.

Schmidt's miraculous guillotine lasted "on the throne" until 1870, when the Minister of Justice, Adolphe Cremier, ordered two portable machines to speed up the transition from life to death. In addition, he ordered to remove the guillotine from the pedestal and install it directly on the ground. A wave of indignation arose: "We must not die like pigs!" - unanimously indignant journalists, defending human dignity.

It is these portable machines, "paid for and ordered by the infamous overthrown government", that the Communards will burn in April 1871 on the Place Voltaire, "as a slave instrument of monarchical domination, in the name of purification and the triumph of a new freedom." They didn’t have time to burn the “head-cutting machine” “how it was reborn from the ashes”: at the beginning of 1872, the Minister of Justice ordered new ones.

Rogue suicide bomber. Cover of Petit Magazine. 1932 Private. count

To revive the guillotine was entrusted to the cabinetmaker and assistant executioner Leon Berger.

Taking over starting point burned machines, Leon Berger made significant changes to the design of the guillotine, which has since been recognized as perfect and has subsequently undergone only minor modifications.

The Berger machine was distinguished, in particular, by the presence of springs at the bottom of the uprights. They were intended to cushion the knife at the point of impact. Then the springs were replaced with rubber rollers, which provided less return, damping the speed of the fall of the load moving along the grooves. So the "voice" of the guillotine has changed. But the main change in the "series 1872" concerned the mechanism for launching the knife. Its locking and unlocking now depended on a metal spike in the shape of an arrowhead, located at the top between the pads of the mechanical device. The pads were opened using a lever (which was later replaced with a regular button), releasing the indicated spike, and with it the knife with the load.

Delivery of a guillotine in a German prison. 1931 Private. count

Finally, they improved the sliding of all this mass by installing rollers at the ends of the load moving along the troughs of the racks.

Henceforth, the racks were placed on beams located directly on the ground. A willow basket trimmed with zinc and oilcloth was placed next to the machine. First, the head was placed in the basket, and then the body of the executed. Despite technological innovations and a significant "improvement in performance" in cutting off heads, the guillotine caused some unrest in the minds of the "bureaucrats".

Under the old regime, there were one hundred and sixty executioners in the country, who were assisted by three hundred to four hundred assistants.

After a decree issued in June 1793, each department was assigned a guillotine and an executioner, the number of officially registered performers, thus reaching eighty-three.

For the profession, this was the beginning of a decline that would only get worse.

When the fever of revolutionary times subsided and in 1810 the criminal code was adopted, the law was softened.

With the introduction in 1832 of "extenuating circumstances" and the abolition of the death penalty for certain types of crimes, the number of executions decreased, and the work of the executioners became much less. The law of 1832 dealt a fatal blow to the estate. It provided for a gradual reduction in the number of executioners by half due to the abolition of the posts of those who stopped working due to illness or death.

The decree of 1849 determined that from now on, in each department that has a court of appeal, there will be only one chief executioner.

So the number of executioners dropped to thirty-four. The decree of November 1870 “finished off” the class, according to which all the main executioners and their assistants, after the ratification of this decree in each administrative unit of the state, were released from work. Henceforth, justice had to be content with the services of one chief - Parisian - executioner, who had five assistants. They were authorized to carry out executions throughout the Republic, carrying a guillotine on a train. At the time of the abolition of the death penalty in French Republic there were three guillotines, two of them were kept in the Sante prison in Paris, one for executions in Paris, the second for the provinces. The third guillotine was located on the territory of one of the overseas colonies, in the hands of the local crazy people.

Considering the advantages and virtues that were recognized for the guillotine at the time of its invention and a century and a half later, it is surprising that it has not conquered the whole world.

For unclear reasons, it was used only in France and its overseas possessions. In Belgium, it began to be used in 1796, when part of the country was annexed. For some time the guillotine existed in the French territories in Northern Italy and in the German Principalities of the Rhine. Another guillotine in the middle of the XIX century was in Greece. Only Nazi Germany widely used this method of execution, with the difference that their guillotines did not have a folding board. It is worth noting that the Anglo-Saxon countries were the most active against the guillotine. The British believed that beheading was the prerogative of "high-born" heads, but nevertheless they began to consider the problem.

After examining the issue, the Royal Commission (1949-1953) stated: "We are confident that the mutilations received on the guillotine will shock the public opinion of our country."

Thirty-three beheadings an hour

Nevertheless, the commission recognized that the "correct execution of punishment" must meet three criteria: "be humane, efficient and decent", and the guillotine "is easy to operate and efficient."

In reality, the French method, washed with the blood of the noble class, was contrary to national chauvinism and persistent anti-French sentiments.

But was this decapitation machine as powerful as it was supposed to be?

Installation of the apparatus does not take much time, and guillotining looks quite a merciful method, because it happens quickly.

At the moment the knife falls on the back of the convict's head, the speed is equal to the square root of the double acceleration constant multiplied by the height of the fall. If it is known that the drop height of the load is 2.25 m, the knife itself weighs 7 kg, the load is 30 kg, the total weight of the fixing bolts is 3 kg, which in total gives 40 kg with little friction, it turns out that the knife falls on the back of the convict's head at a speed of 6.5 m / s. In other words - 23.4 km / h. As a result, provided that the resistance is considered to be negligible, the time to cut the middle neck with a diameter of 13 cm is two hundredths of a second. From starting the knife to stopping it, that is, cutting off the head, it takes less than half a second.

Exclusive rights of the guillotined

According to the decree, a number of measures were applied to the executed on the guillotine:

- Separate chamber.

- Round the clock surveillance.

- Handcuffs outside the cell.

- Special shape.

- Exemption from work.

- Extra power and unlimited gear.

- The sentence can be carried out only after the denial of pardon.

- The convict can be sure that he will not be executed on Sunday, July 14 or during a religious holiday.

- If a convicted woman declares her pregnancy, she may be guillotined only after the pregnancy has been cleared.

- Over the past thirty years, the death sentence was carried out on average after 6 months.

- A ban on guillotining of convicts under 18 and over 70 at the time of the crime.

From the book of Che-Ka. Materials on the activities of emergency commissions author Chernov Viktor Mikhailovich

Dry guillotine Arrests of socialists by the Bolshevik government began from the very first months after its victory. They took on a massive character before the demonstration in honor of the opening of the Constituent Assembly on January 3, 1918, when in Moscow, for example, 63

From the book of Che-Ka. Materials on the activity of extraordinary commissions. author Socialist Revolutionary Party Central Bureau

Dry guillotine. The arrests of socialists by the Bolshevik government began from the very first months after its victory. They took on a massive character before the demonstration in honor of the opening of the Constituent Assembly on January 3, 1918, when in Moscow, for example, they were arrested on the same day

From the book Wolf's Milk author Gubin Andrey Terent'evich

GUILLOTINA OF MIKHEY ESAULOV Arrived at the healing waters of your village to restore health famous warrior Civil War commander Ivan Mitrofanovich Zolotarev, who has long lived near Moscow itself. We met him with an orchestra of brass music, flowers, a spontaneous rally - a joke

From the book Zhivly Sword or Etude about Happiness. The Life and Death of Citizen Saint-Just [Part III] author Shumilov Valery Albertovich

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE EVENGER OF THE PEOPLE, OR THE GUILLOTINE, PUT ON THE FLOW ON July 7, 1794. Revolution Square On this day, the toilet of the convicts was tightened. There were too many of them, and Charles Henriot Sanson got bored of walking in the Conciergerie waiting room along the long lattice,