John Wilson Croker

“ The first political victims were MM. Dangremont, La Porte, and Durosoi. Their fate is scarcely mentioned by the most communicative of the historians, and, by the rest, not at all; and yet we must think that the first feats of this tiger-tribunal,- the first steps in this ocean of blood, are matters not merely of deep tragic interest, but of some historical importance. This is not an occasion in which we can pretend to supply such deficiencies; all we can do is to indicate them, and to notice incidentally the loose and slovenly way in which the events of the Revolution are generally recorded. ”

“ We hardly know a stronger instance of the characteristic perversity with which the Revolution, in all its transactions, contrived to transmute the abstract feelings of mercy and benevolence into practical absurdity, mischief, and cruelty.
But all this cruel foolery made no difference in the mode of execution; and indeed it was not yet decided that the punishment of death, in any shape, should be maintained in the new constitution. ”

“ Experience and reason alike prove that the mode of beheading hitherto practised exposes the patient to a more frightful punishment than the mere deprivation of life, which is all the law directs. To obey strictly the law, the execution should be performed in a single moment and at one blow. All experience proves how difficult it is to accomplish this. ”

“ In fact, who could bear the sight of so bloody an execution without feeling and showing some such weakness?
"In the other kind of execution it is easy to conceal those weaknesses from the public, because, in order to complete the operation, there is no necessity that the patient should continue firm and without fear; but in this, if the criminal falters, the execution must fail also.
"How can the executioner have the necessary power over a man who will not or cannot keep himself in a convenient posture? ”

“ After the accession of Louis Philippe, for whom the Guillotine must have been an object of the most painful contemplation, sentences of death were also very rare, and certainly never executed where there was any possible room for mercy. The executions, too, when forced upon him, took place at early hours and in remote and uncertain places; and every humane art was used to cover the operations of the fatal instrument with a modest veil, not only from motives of general decency and humanity, but also, no doubt, from national pride and personal sensibility. ”

“ It might be naturally expected that this sympathy would have exerted itself in trying to procure a pardon, or at least some commutation of punishment, for these young men, whose crime was really nothing compared with those of which Paris was the daily and hourly scene; but no! There seems, on the contrary, to have been a pretty general desire that they should suffer the full sentence of the law, in order that the National Assembly and the good people of Paris might have a practical opportunity of carrying out the new principle that the "crime does not disgrace the family." ”

“ Can we imagine any greater cruelty than the making a show of the grief of these unhappy people, and thus forcing them to celebrate, as it were,—in the incongruous novelties of gold lace and military promotion, and public exhibitions,—the violent death of their nearest and dearest relations? ”

“ It is to be considered that, when there shall be several criminals to execute at the same time, the terror that such an execution presents, by the immensity of blood which it produces and which is scattered all about, will carry fright and weakness into the most intrepid hearts of those whose turn is to come. Such weaknesses would present an invincible obstacle to the execution. The patient being no longer able to support himself, the execution, if persisted in, will become a struggle and a massacre. ”

“ We have here to observe that Sanson, the chief executioner, and his two brothers, had been themselves sent to prison after the 10th of August, on the monstrous hypothesis that, "if the Court had succeeded on that day, the Sansons were to have hanged the patriots." Their real offence was that they had somehow offended the patriot Gorsas, the newspaper editor before-mentioned, whose Jacobinical violence, in a few days after, procured his election into the Convention—a woful elevation, as we shall see presently! ”

“ It seems almost too ludicrous for belief, but it is strictly true, that, amongst the privileges of the old Noblesse of France which the "Philosophes" taught the people to complain of, was the mode of being put to death—why should a noble be only beheaded when a commoner would be hanged? ”

“ Still, however, this was a mere vote without any immediate legal effect till the whole constitution should be ratified: nor, be it observed, was anything said—either in the discussions or in the decrees—about a machine; and indeed it seems certain, from documents which we shall quote presently, that it was not yet decided that a machine should be employed at all, and that, on the contrary, the use of the sword (not even the axe and block) was still uppermost in men's minds. ”

“ We had long searched through the Moniteur and the other leading journals of the time—through the reports of the proceedings of the legislative assemblies—through the Bulletin des Tribunaux—the Bulletin des Loix, and in short wherever we thought the information most likely to be found, as to when and where this formidable engine made its first appearance, by what law it was sanctioned, and who were the earliest of that innumerable series of victims that perished by it. ”

“ The body of the criminal is laid on its stomach between two posts connected at top by a cross beam, whence a convex hatchet is made to fall suddenly on the patient by the removal of a peg. The back of the hatchet should be strong and heavy enough to perform the object like the weight with which piles are driven. The force, of course, will be in proportion to the height from which it may fall.
"It is easy to construct such an instrument, of which the effect would be certain, and the decapitation will be performed in an instant according to the letter and the spirit of the new law. ”

“ At this moment the elections for the Convention were about to take place, and it was determined by the Jacobin candidates—Danton, Robespierre, and Co.—to strike a blow of such terror as should put all opposition to flight, and ensure the return of their own list for the city and neighbourhood of Paris, and indeed for the rest of France—but Paris was the first object. ”

“ Paris.—They made yesterday the first trial of the little Louison, and cut off a head. One Pelletier—not him [20] of the Actes des Apôtres—was the subject of the melancholy experiment. I never in my life could bear to see a man hanged; but I own I feel a still greater aversion to this species of execution. The preparations make one shudder, and increase the moral suffering ”

“ In order that the execution may be performed according to the intention of law [simple privation of life] , it is necessary that, even without any obstacle on the part of the criminal, the executioner himself should be very expert, and the criminal very firm, without which one could never get through an execution by the sword without the certainty of dangerous accidents. ”

“ It seems unaccountable that the introduction of so very remarkable a change in the mode of execution should not have been a subject of general curiosity and discussion, but is it not still more strange that persons calling themselves historians—whose attention might have been excited, not merely by the novelty of the machine, but by the moral and legal questions which led to the invention, and by the terrible, the gigantic consequences which followed its adoption—take little or no notice of it? ”

“ The chairman of the committee, who warmly advocated their views and his own for the abolition, was Le Pelletier de St. Fargeau, an ex-president of the Parliament of Paris, where he had been a leading frondeur: at the outset of the States-General he seemed inclined to the Royalist party, but, either from terror or a desire of popularity, soon became a Jacobin. [9] This strenuous advocate for the abolition of the punishment of death in any case voted for the murder of the King, and was himself on the same day assassinated by one Pâris, an ex-Garde du Corps, in a café of the Palais Royal ”

“ It will either prove the spectators to be monsters if they are able to bear such a spectacle; or the executioner, terrified himself, will be exposed to the fury of the people, whose very humanity may exasperate them, however cruelly and unjustly, against the executioner.
"I must solicit from the National Assembly an immediate decision; for a case at the moment presses for execution, which, however, is suspended by the humanity of the judges and the fright [l'effroi] of the executioner." ”

“ But, after all, it was neither Guillotin nor Louis who constructed (invention is out of the question) the instrument which was actually adopted: for while all these proceedings were going on in Paris, the same difficulties as to the execution of malefactors had occurred in the departmental tribunals, and an officer of the criminal court at Strasburgh, named Laquiante, had made a design of a machine à décapiter, and employed one Schmidt, a forte-piano maker, to execute it. ”

“ It was some time, though we do not know exactly the day, between the executions of Charlotte Corday and the Queen, that a huge plaster statue of Liberty—grotesque by its disproportion, and hideous from its distortion—was erected on the pedestal of the overthrown statue of Louis XV., in front of which the new scaffold stood. In a print of the execution of Mdlle. de Corday there is no statue on the pedestal ”

“ The National Assembly seems to have been reluctant to renew the discussion on Guillotin's propositions, but a case which arose about the middle of January, 1790, proves that, although Guillotin and his machine found little favour in the Assembly, the proposition which he and M. de Clermont had advocated, of removing from a criminal's family any share in his disgrace—false in principle, and impossible in fact—had made, as such plausibilities generally do when the public mind is excited, a great popular impression. ”

“ One of the terrified attendants was about to endeavour to save the princess by apprizing the assassins that she was not the Queen, when, with equal magnanimity and presence of mind, Madame Elizabeth,—desiring that if any one should be sacrificed it might be herself,—stopped him by whispering, "Oh no, don't undeceive them" Neither Greek nor Roman story have any superior instance of self-devotion. ”

“ Small circumstances mix themselves with great results. On the 9th of October, 1789, the National Assembly, in consequence of the tragic exodus of the Court from Versailles, resolved to transfer itself to Paris, and Dr. Guillotin, being one of the representatives of that city, thought it expedient to prepare for himself a good reception from his constituents, and on that very day he gave notice of, and on the next—the 10th—produced, the following series of propositions:—
"I. Crimes of the same kind shall be punished by the same kind of punishment, whatever be the rank of the criminal. ”

“ At length, however, on the 24th of January, 1792, a person of the name of Nicholas Jacques Pelletier was condemned to death by the criminal tribunal of Paris, for robbery and murder. This event (decapitation being now the only legal punishment) brought the question of the precise mode of death to a practical crisis. ”

“ The representation of the Département is to the same effect, and, making no allusion whatever to mechanism, implies that death was to be by the sword:—
"3rd March, 1792. "The executioner represents to us that he fears he cannot fulfil the intentions of the law, which is, that the criminal shall suffer nothing beyond the simple privation of life. The executioner fears that from want of experience he may make decollation a frightful torture, and we entertain the same apprehensions." ”

“ If satire had been devising how to ridicule these philosophical legislators, it could scarcely have hit on anything better than an attempt to class Actors and Executioners in the same category, and to extirpate such prejudices by statute law. ”

“ We know not how this by-battle ended—the last letter on the subject is dated the 6th of August, 1792—but then came the 10th of August, and in the anarchy which ensued all questions of right or property— even those connected with the triumphant Guillotine herself—were confounded and lost. In all these transactions there is no mention of, nor allusion to, Guillotin; and as we have before said, the instrument was, at its first actual appearance, called the Louison—but this name had no success; indeed M. Louis made no pretence to the invention, and he was soon forgotten ”

“ It will be easy to make experiments dead bodies, or even on a living sheep. We should then see whether it might not be necessary to fix the neck of the patient in a semicircle, which should confine the neck just where it joins the hinder bone of the skull; the extremities of this semicircle might be fastened by bolts to the solid parts of the scaffold. ”

“ It is therefore indispensable that, in order to fulfil the humane intentions of the National Assembly, some means should be found to avoid delays and assure certainty, by fixing the patient so that the success of the operation shall not be doubtful. ”