The guillotine is an iconic and fearsome symbol of the French Revolution, immortalized in countless works of art, literature, and film. But the origins of this gruesome killing machine predate the revolution and its use extended well into the 20th century. Here is a detailed look at the history and cultural impact of "France‘s National Razor."
Predecessors to the Guillotine
Various guillotine-like apparatuses for beheading had been utilized throughout Europe for centuries prior to the French Revolution. The Italian mannaia, dating back to Roman times, consisted of an angled blade attached to a wooden frame which the condemned would place their neck under. Similarly, the Scottish Maiden, used from the 16th to 18th centuries, had an oblique blade that dropped from around 10 feet, efficiently severing the head. The Halifax Gibbet in England was a sliding axe decapitation device used since ancient times as well.
These machines differed from the typical executioner‘s axe or sword which required precision and could take multiple strokes to fully behead the victim. The angled blade designs aimed for a cleaner and quicker separation. The French guillotine would directly draw inspiration from these predecessors.
The Invention of the Guillotine in France
The guillotine gets its name from Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician and politician. As a member of the National Assembly during the early stages of the French Revolution in 1789, Guillotin originally opposed the death penalty. Recognizing it would not be abolished any time soon, he instead proposed standardizing executions to be carried out as painlessly as possible "by means of a machine."
At the time, commoners typically faced agonizing deaths by breaking wheel or being pulled apart by horses, while the wealthy could pay for the quicker method of decapitation by sword. Guillotin argued that all death penalties should be carried out in the same humane fashion, regardless of class. While his ultimate goal was to end capital punishment, he hoped this would be a first step.
After securing approval from Louis XVI to build a prototype, Guillotin collaborated with German engineer and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt to design the device in 1792. Schmidt is credited with the key innovation of an oblique blade rather than a straight, crescent, or circular one. This 45 degree angle, combined with the heavy weight, could achieve enough momentum to slice cleanly through the neck vertebrae and sever the head in a fraction of a second.
On April 25, 1792, highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine at the Place de Grève in Paris. The crowd was reportedly disappointed by the machine‘s speed and efficiency, as public executions had been a form of entertainment. But the guillotine quickly gained fame and even a nickname, the "national razor." Although Dr. Guillotin had advocated for it as a more humane method of execution, he deeply regretted that it bore his name.
The Guillotine as Public Spectacle During the Reign of Terror
Use of the guillotine peaked during a period called the Reign of Terror in the months following the 1793 execution of King Louis XVI (who was himself guillotined). A revolutionary tribunal was set up to purge anyone deemed a threat to the new Republic. An estimated 17,000 people labeled as "enemies of the revolution" were condemned to face the guillotine over the next two years. Most famously, Queen Marie Antoinette met the same fate as her husband in October 1793.
Although the guillotine was originally touted as a more humane and egalitarian form of execution, its use during the Reign of Terror turned it into a public spectacle and a tool of terror itself. As author Victor Hugo wrote in 1829:
"[The guillotine] was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. It blasted the old world, and cut off the head of the world which had been, and was the head of the world which was to be."
No longer seen as swift and painless, the guillotine became a twisted form of mass entertainment. Crowds would flock to the Place de la Révolution (now the Place de la Concorde) in Paris to watch the daily beheadings. Some spectators brought knitting to pass the time between executions or picnicked on the plaza. Parents even hoisted children on their shoulders for a better view. Souvenirs like miniature guillotines were hawked to tourists.
The towering machine with its blood-red frame and polished silver blade, permanently stained by its grim work, took on a cult-like status. People bowed down before it, honoring it as a bringer of justice and equality. At the height of the terror in June 1794, up to 40 public executions were carried out per day in Paris alone. The guillotine became such an entrenched cultural phenomenon that a miniature replica was made as a toy for children, who would decapitate dolls or small animals with it.
Famous Victims and Executioners
The most recognizable victims of the guillotine were the French monarchy: King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and Princess Élisabeth, the king‘s sister. But its blade did not discriminate. Among the others executed were revolutionary leaders like George Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, who had been architects of the Reign of Terror before falling out of favor themselves. In a morbid twist of irony, Robespierre tried to kill himself before his execution but only managed to shatter his jaw by shooting himself, prolonging his agony on the guillotine.
Other notable guillotine victims included feminist Olympe de Gouges, scientist Antoine Lavoisier, poet André Chénier, and Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV. Whether royals, revolutionaries, scholars, or commoners, the guillotine leveled them all the same. This was symbolically important to the revolutionaries, as articulated by the French journalist Camille Desmoulins:
"The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician‘s head is to believe that it suffices for a people to enter with force into a foreign country to make what it wills to be accepted there. No one loves armed missionaries; the first counsel given by nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies."
The celebrity of those wielding the guillotine rivaled that of their victims. The Sanson family presided over executions for generations, first with Charles Henri Sanson serving as the Royal Executioner from 1778 to 1795, followed by his son Henri. The elder Sanson, who had both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette‘s blood on his hands, was known as "Monsieur de Paris" and became a ghoulish star in his own right. So famous was his silhouette that "having one‘s neck trimmed by the national razor" became slang for execution. To mimic his style, men wore their hair cut short in the back.
Guillotine Use After the Revolution
Although the guillotine is most associated with the French Revolution, its use in France lasted well into the 20th century. According to the site Capital Punishment UK, 2,831 more people were guillotined between 1796 and 1871 in France. Public executions continued there up until 1939.
In a dark historical echo of the Reign of Terror, the Nazis embraced the guillotine after coming to power in the 1930s. Beheading by guillotine became the official civilian method of execution in Germany and a reported 16,500 people were decapitated between 1933 and 1945, including political dissidents like Sophie Scholl. 20 guillotines were placed across Germany, again turning executions into a public spectacle with townsfolk gathering to watch. The preferred method for German war criminals sentenced at the post-war Nuremberg Trials was death by hanging, seen as less barbaric than the guillotine.
The last public execution by guillotine was in France in 1939. After that, the guillotine continued to be used behind prison walls. Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi was the last person to meet "Madame la Guillotine" when he was executed in Marseilles on September 10, 1977, the final use of the guillotine in France and in the Western world. Not long after, on October 9, 1981, France abolished the death penalty entirely under the presidency of François Mitterrand.
One of the final French guillotines, known as the Bourg-en-Bresse Prison Guillotine, is on display along with its original blade at the Musée d‘art et d‘histoire de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. Other surviving guillotines can be found at museums in Marseilles, Versailles, and Paris. The Place de la Concorde in Paris, site of King Louis XVI‘s execution and the epicenter of the Reign of Terror, is marked by a memorial to the victims.
Legacy and Cultural Impact
The guillotine left an indelible mark not just on French history but on Western culture as a whole. It appears in works of art like Jacques-Louis David‘s famous 1793 painting The Death of Marat and remains a stock device and visual shorthand in cartoons, horror films, and even humor.
In English slang, "getting the chop" refers to being fired from a job, a metaphorical decapitation. The phrase "heads will roll" to indicate punishment or consequences also hearkens back to the guillotine.
Novels by Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and George Orwell have immortalized the guillotine and its victims in literature. The guillotine makes a memorable appearance in Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities with the oft-quoted lines: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." In the climactic scene, seamstress Madame Defarge meets justice at the hands of the guillotine, described by Dickens thusly:
"She was not unwilling to die. But she had no time to linger over death; the knife that ended her life had not yet fallen."
The towering machine with its gleaming blade and blood-soaked history continues to capture the dark side of our imaginations. The Reign of Terror remains a cautionary tale about the horrors that can be justified in the name of justice, revenge, or political expedience. The man most responsible for the guillotine‘s adoption, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, had infamously proclaimed to the National Assembly in 1789:
"Now, with my machine, I cut off your head in the twinkling of an eye, and you never feel it!"
His family was so ashamed to be associated with the device that they petitioned the French government to rename it. The government rejected their request, and Guillotin‘s name is forever tied to his death machine and the carnage it wrought, an ironic and morbid legacy for a man who had hoped to make capital punishment more humane.
