Author: Sasha
This article is Sasha's original and will not be reprinted by any media
223 years ago, Robespierre was sent to the guillotine and died in his own French Revolution. Now it is not convenient not to talk about the French Revolution, Sacha will talk about the guillotine.
In ancient Europe, as in China, there were many death penalties. France, the most powerful country on the European continent and the so-called violent state, naturally could not have been without the death penalty.
The French death penalty is interesting and very different from China.
In China, hanging is a more benevolent criminal law, and in Chinese view, there is no blood and a whole corpse.
Cao Cao ordered Lü Bu to be hanged, which was an act of leniency.
France is the opposite.
The French hangings were inflicted on notorious robbers, thieves, villains, and the like, all of whom were low-level civilians. In principle, after hanging a person, he will not be immediately put down, but will need to be shown to the public for a period of time.
In the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo", the Count of Monte Cristo tried to commit suicide after being imprisoned for many years, but instead of choosing to hang himself, who was easy to die, he chose to starve to death slowly, because hanging was a humiliating method of death.
Then there's the decapitation. In China, beheading is a public death sentence and is more insulting.
For example, when Cixi killed Sushun, only Sushun was beheaded and shown to the public, and the others were poisoned.
In France, beheading was a lenient criminal law that applied to people of status, especially the nobility.
Why? Professional executioners are decapitated cleanly, severed with a knife, and the man dies immediately
Here Sasha disgusts everyone, do you know how long a person can be guaranteed consciousness after being beheaded?
Only 30 seconds.
A doctor once did an experiment, and after being beheaded he insisted on blinking his eyes. When the executioner counted to 30 seconds, the doctor's head stopped blinking.
That is to say, the pain lasts for up to 30 seconds, which is obviously more benevolent.
However, the premise is that the executioner has experience. If you encounter a rookie or a temporary dysfunction, then the prisoner is miserable.
The French executioner was a special profession, well-paid but of low status, often hereditary.
There is a story about a college student in Paris who falls in love with a beautiful girl, and the two steal the forbidden fruit. As a result, the next day a big man stormed the college student's house and forced him to marry a girl and inherit his job, or kill him. This big man was the girl's father, the famous executioner in Paris. Why the coercion? Because the executioner's daughter is inherently difficult to marry, it is naturally more difficult to marry if she loses her virginity. Eventually the college student became another executioner.
Even for professional executioners, beheadings can be a mistake.
During beheadings, there are often several or even dozens of knives in a row. For example, when the famous slut Queen Mary I of Scotland was executed, the executioner slashed 3 times in a row.
When a French baron was beheaded for treason, the soldiers who temporarily acted as executioners cut more than thirty knives in a row, and their heads were not cut off. Several of the noble ladies who watched the death penalty fainted in fright, and the French Emperor Louis XIV once considered reforming the death penalty.
Before the French Revolution, Louis XVI, the cowardly and tolerant King of France, was determined to improve the beheading.
At the suggestion of a pro-abolitionist physician, Joseph Inhas Guiottan (a member of the Constituent Assembly), Louis XVI himself took part in the design, culminating in the invention of the mechanized guillotine in 1791.
After experiments with animals and dead bodies, the guillotine worked well, and Louis XVI himself was deeply satisfied.
It should be known that Louis XVI was the king of locksmiths and was originally very interested in machinery.
The guillotine was designed by the German craftsman Dopias Schmidt, and Louis XVI himself participated in the improvement.
The original knife was rectangular at the level of the ground, and the decapitation effect was not very good. At the suggestion of Louis XVI, it was eventually changed to a trapezoid.
The guillotine was equipped with wooden strips to secure the prisoner's head. The blade drops by more than two meters, ensuring that the prisoner's neck can be cut off quickly.
That same year, the French Parliament passed beheading as the only legal method of execution.
The guillotine was definitely a benevolent gesture at the time. A sharp blade weighing 40 kilograms is cut off, and the human head will definitely fall to the ground. It will not appear to be slashed dozens of times in a row, and it is better to die than to commit a crime.
In 1792, a robber who had committed murder was taken to the guillotine and executed. Before dying, the robber even praised the king so that he could die such a painless death.
What Louis did not expect was that the guillotine greatly improved the execution effect of the death penalty, causing more people to die.
Originally, an executioner could execute up to two or three people a day. Now a few ordinary soldiers can easily execute dozens of people a day.
With the outbreak of the French Revolution, the guillotine began to get busy.
In just 3 years, by 1794 at least 60,000 people had died on the guillotine, including robespierre, the protagonist of this article.
Ironically, Louis XVI died on a guillotine of his own design.
The essence of the French Revolution was the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy, and the people were only exploited by the bourgeoisie.
At that time the bourgeoisie was flourishing and getting stronger, but state power was still in the hands of aristocrats who had little power and ability.
In order to maintain its power, the bourgeoisie is bound to fight with the feudal aristocracy and seize state power. The cowardly king Louis XVI is just a hapless egg caught in the middle, and no one will buy his account.
Whether it is Robespierre or later Napoleon, it is natural that they do not represent the interests of the common people. The reason why they do not distinguish between good and bad, and hope to kill the nobles, is not for the sake of the common people.
However, objectively speaking, the common people have improved their status through revolution, but the price paid is not small.
The feudal aristocracy accounted for only one-tenth of the total number of deaths, and the most dead were still the common people who were affected by the pond fish.
The beheading of Louis XVI has little practical significance (his brother has fled to Belgium ready to succeed to the throne) and is more of a symbol.
Louis XVI was put on a guillotine of his own design, and eventually died a humane death. Legend has it that the vote to execute the king was 361 votes to 360, and the vote in favor of the death penalty was only 1 more. And this key vote came from Louis XVI's cousin, the Duke of Orléans who joined the revolutionary camp (nicknamed Louis equal, voluntarily gave up his aristocratic status)!
Interestingly, the Duke of Orléans was also sent to the guillotine for his son Louis Philip to join the Orlidian army.
Before he died, the last words of Louis XVI were: I am sinless, but I forgive you, and I hope that God will forgive me. I hope that my blood can benefit France.
It doesn't matter what is right or wrong, what matters is that the guillotine survived until 1977, when it was abolished by the French government.