What the rulers in Central Europe did in the 17th-18th centuries to curb their subordinates is incomprehensible to the mind. Let us recall only one description that came to us from the great Gogol, who loved Ukraine - his cradle, and his people. Here is one of the episodes of the story "Taras Bulba" - the case, recall, took place in Warsaw …
“Ostap endured the torment like a giant, with unimaginable firmness, and when they began to interrupt the bones on his arms and legs, so that their terrible grunt could be heard among the dead crowd by distant spectators, when the ladies turned their eyes away, nothing like a groan escaped from his mouth. His face did not flinch. Taras stood in the crowd with his head downcast …
Burn, cut, choke
Such or almost such spectacles were brought up by the people and other leaders at that time: the death penalty was the usual punishment for those guilty of a wide range of crimes, from murder to petty theft. However, the method of execution varied significantly and depended on the social status of the offender. Noble gentlemen and ladies were honored to be decapitated, following the traditions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed that there was no more noble way to die.
The townsfolk, on the other hand, were not provided with such a luxury as a quick death. The Spaniards used the so-called garrotta, which mechanically tightened the noose around their neck, and those accused of heresy and witchcraft were burned at the stake. To do this, they were put in a barrel lined with wood and a twig, after which they were set on fire. The most common punishments for thieves in Europe were wheeling, hanging and quartering. Quartering was invented as early as 1241 for the execution of William Maurice on charges of piracy, later, it was applied to male criminals to punish high treason or theft on a huge scale. Women were never subjected to this execution, as she demanded the nakedness of the body, which was considered immodest, even after death. The men were tied to a cruciform stance, which the horses dragged behind them to the place of execution. On the scaffold sacrificestrangled, but at the last moment the rope was loosened so that the unfortunate man was alive during the cutting off of the genitals. The stomach was opened and gutted, throwing the internal organs into the fire. At the end of the execution, the body was cut into four pieces. Although most of the criminals who were burned at the stake were preliminarily suffocated, the picture of human flesh being devoured by the fire sent the crowd shivering. Parts of the quartered bodies were specially boiled and hung out on the city gates for the edification of everyone who dared to repeat such crimes. However, despite the seeming support of the crowd, greedy to a bloody spectacle, the rulers of Europe began to think about the manifestations of barbarism that accompanied executions.throwing internal organs into the fire. At the end of the execution, the body was cut into four pieces. Although most of the criminals who were burned at the stake were preliminarily suffocated, the picture of human flesh being devoured by the fire sent the crowd shivering. Parts of the quartered bodies were specially boiled and hung out on the city gates for the edification of everyone who dared to repeat such crimes. However, despite the seeming support of the crowd, greedy to a bloody spectacle, the rulers of Europe began to think about the manifestations of barbarism that accompanied executions.throwing internal organs into the fire. At the end of the execution, the body was cut into four pieces. Although most of the criminals who were burned at the stake were preliminarily suffocated, the picture of human flesh being devoured by the fire sent the crowd shivering. Parts of the quartered bodies were specially boiled and hung out on the city gates for the edification of everyone who dared to repeat such crimes. However, despite the seeming support of the crowd, greedy to a bloody spectacle, the rulers of Europe began to think about the manifestations of barbarism that accompanied executions.who dares to repeat such crimes. However, despite the seeming support of the crowd, greedy to a bloody spectacle, the rulers of Europe began to think about the manifestations of barbarism that accompanied executions.who dares to repeat such crimes. However, despite the seeming support of the crowd, greedy to a bloody spectacle, the rulers of Europe began to think about the manifestations of barbarism that accompanied executions.
Executioner's Tips
In the enlightened kingdom of France, each class was entitled to its own type of execution: rogue - a rope, nobles - a sword. The Great Revolution abolished all these few privileges and made everyone - democratically - equal in death. A law was passed: since 1790, the execution for all citizens has become the same - cutting off heads on a guillotine.
The inventor of the guillotine was a kind man. As a member of the French National Assembly, Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin made humane proposals: the dishonor of the convicted person should not extend to his family, and the death penalty can be considered as cutting off the head without various torture and quartering. He constantly thought about how to help a person avoid the torture of death, and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to replace the ax with a "good machine."
Guillotin turned to a competent person - the executioner Sanson, who gave the doctor expert advice. Guillotin was surprised to learn that two executions in a row cannot be carried out with the same weapon. It is not always possible to cut off the head of a condemned person immediately, and the sword must be constantly sharpened. The executioner also complained to the deputy about the convicts who often faint, resist, cry and beg for mercy. Because of this, it turns out not an execution, but an ordinary murder, the hereditary back-case master lamented.
According to a memo from Dr. Antoine Louis, who headed the death penalty commission and who was the secretary of the French Academy of Surgery, German engineer Tobias Schmidt built a machine to cut off the head. The main part of the guillotine for chopping off the head is a heavy (40-100 kg) oblique knife (slang name - "lamb"), freely moving along vertical guides. The knife was raised to a height of 2-3 meters with a rope, where it was held by a latch. The head of the guillotined person was placed in a special recess at the base of the mechanism and secured on top with a wooden board with a recess for the neck, after which the latch holding the knife was opened with a lever mechanism, and it fell at high speed onto the victim's neck.
The entire installation was located on a platform twenty-four steps long. They tried the guillotine in April 1792 on the robber Nicola Pelletier: it turned out great! By the way, initially the car was called Luisette, after the aforementioned doctor Antoine Louis, but the name of the guillotine soon became established.
The people, however, remained dissatisfied as always - the guillotine turned out to be less spectacular compared to traditional executions. But the leaders of revolutionary France highly appreciated the brainchild of the deputy doctor Guillotine, calling it the punishing sword of the republic and looking at the first execution with pleasure.
At all times it was tight with spectacles in the world!
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Meat grinder and democracy
In the days of bloody terror, Guillotin looked with horror at the smooth operation of his machine, and the patriarch of executioners Sanson, who was familiar to us, who easily executed King Louis on it, complained endlessly of fatigue: “The Tribunal was ruled by public prosecutor Fouquier Tenville. He was dry, impassive and accepted only one punishment - death.
I realized: I have an unprecedented job. And he was right. A Republic snapped by terror will send more people to the next world than all my executioner ancestors put together.
I prepared well. The old guillotine was removed, a new one was put in, where I made some improvements so that more executions could be carried out. On January 21, 1793, King Louis XVI was executed here.
The convenient (a stone's throw from Revolution Square) cemetery near the Madeleine Church, where the victims of the guillotine were taken and where the decapitated king lay, was overcrowded. We were already thinking about a new cemetery …
Although such devices were tried to be used before in Great Britain, Italy and Switzerland, but it was the device created in France - with an oblique knife - that became the standard instrument of the death penalty. As the number of executions increased, the machine - popularly known as the "widow" - improved technically. New versions included an improved 45-degree blade, small indentations in the wood board and metal bands to hold the head, and a blood collection tray.
A bright page in the history of guillotining and judicial practice in general is the history of the investigation and execution of the sentence against Queen Marie Antoinette, accused … of espionage for Austria. When one of the judges asked why she didn’t answer the charges, Marie Antoinette said in an agitated voice: “If I don’t answer, it’s only because nature itself refuses to answer such heinous accusations against the mother. I urge everyone who can come here. " A murmur rolled through the hall, and the court hearing was interrupted. And soon forty-one witnesses testified. In the end, the queen was accused of maintaining ties with states hostile to France, helping the enemy win and betraying the country's interests. And here we are looking for the origins of the Great Terror in the USSR in the 30s:a century and a half later, the NKVD had something to rely on in history in search of "Japanese and British spies" and other stories for their accusations and sentences.
The next day, October 16 at 4 o'clock in the morning, the unanimously adopted death sentence was read out. After reading the verdict, the same executioner cut the queen's hair baldly and put shackles on her hands, which were taken behind her back. Marie-Antoinette in a white piquant shirt, with a black ribbon on her wrists, with a white muslin scarf thrown over her shoulders, and with a cap covering her head, in purple shoes, got into the executioner's cart.
At 12.15 pm, the queen was beheaded in what is now Place de la Concorde.
Sentence to yourself
Or take Maximilian Robespierre, who was executed in 1794 in the same square and by the same executioner. His statements are still alive and well: "Society is obliged to provide all its members with a livelihood, either by providing them with work, or by providing livelihoods for those who are unable to work." However, many did not like him, at least for his emphasis on helping the proletarians. Seeing the vacillation and confusion in his entourage, Robespierre came to almost Lenin's conclusion: "… terror is needed, which is fast, harsh and unyielding justice", but it was too late.
Robespierre was arrested and taken to prison, and the next day his head was beheaded.
The guillotine was not canceled by the subsequent formation due to its extreme convenience. The execution was carried out for a long time only in public: in the verdict about the convict it was said that his head would be cut off in a public place in the name of the French people. Medieval rituals were also observed: so, on the last morning, the convict was announced: “Take courage (the surname follows)! The hour of redemption has come!”, After which they asked if he would like a cigarette or a glass of rum.
The story of Victor Hugo "The Last Day of the Condemned to Death" contains the diary of a prisoner who, according to the law, is to be guillotined. In the preface to the story, added to the next edition, Hugo is a fierce opponent of the death penalty by the guillotine and calls for its replacement with life imprisonment. Hanging, quartering, burning disappeared - the turn came for the guillotine, Hugo believed.
Since the 1870s, the Berger guillotine has been used in France. It is collapsible for transportation to the place of execution, the scaffold is no longer used. The execution itself took a matter of seconds, the decapitated body instantly collided with the executioner's henchmen into a prepared deep box. After the First World War, they were executed on the boulevards, where a large, elegant crowd always gathered with pleasure. On June 17, 1939, at 4 hours 50 minutes in Versailles on the boulevard, the head of the German Eugen Weidmann, the killer of seven people, was beheaded. This was the last public execution in France: due to obscene crowd excitement and scandals with the press, it was ordered to continue to arrange executions on the territory of the prison.
The last execution by beheading with a guillotine was carried out in Marseille, during the reign of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, on September 10, 1977. The executed Arab's name was Hamida Dzhandubi. This was the last death penalty in Western Europe.
Outside France
In Germany, the guillotine was used from the 18th-20th centuries and was the standard form of the death penalty until its abolition in 1949. Unlike the French models, the German guillotine was much lower and had a winch for lifting a heavy knife.
In Nazi Germany, guillotines were used against criminals. An estimated 40,000 people were beheaded in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. Until 1966, decapitation was used in the GDR; then he was replaced by firing squad - not because the leaders of the USSR ordered it, but because the only guillotine was out of order.
In Rome, which was part of the Papal States, the guillotine became a recognized instrument of execution in 1819. Executions took place, paradoxically, in the People's Square, Piazza del Popolo and at the Castel Sant'Angelo. Unlike the French models, the Roman guillotine had not a trapezoidal, but a straight blade and an angular "vice" that clamped the body of the convict. The last execution with a guillotine took place on July 9, 1870, then during the unification of Italy the guillotine was canceled. Most of the executions through guillotine were carried out by the long-lived Roman executioner with the "automobile" surname Bugatti, who retired in 1865. Those who drive a "Bugatti" today may not even realize that one of the most expensive automobile brands in the world is associated with the guillotine …
In Rome, there is a monument to the Carbonari Angelo Targini and Leonid Montanari, guillotined on November 23, 1825 in Piazza del Popolo. The original inscription on the monument directly accused the Vatican: "by order of the Pope, without evidence and without judicial protection." So repressive methods against their citizens are the lot not only of the Stalinist USSR, but also of the enlightened capitals of Europe. In 1909, the government "in agreement with the Vatican" plastered the accusatory words with plaster, but soon, during the renovation of the building, they spoke again.
Conclusion
In the 18th century, during the Enlightenment, such humanists as Voltaire and Diderot were not quite far from the idea of abolishing the death penalty; no, they simply called for more humane methods of death penalty. Having got acquainted with the history of the lethal adaptation, we discovered another unknown page of the most ancient civilization on Earth - European civilization. Not the most life-affirming page, let's face it …
Today the guillotine is not only a museum piece. In modern production, the guillotine or guillotine knife is a common, no longer frightening to many, name for mechanisms used to chop cables, cut metal sheets, paper and other operations associated with chopping motion. Here is a somewhat mundane, but rational end to this story with a device that went from a liquidator of kings and queens to circumcision in some houses of the tips of Havana cigars.
Reference. Notable guillotined personalities
France: Louis XVI - Paris, France, 1793; Marie Antoinette (37 years old); Georges Jacques Danton; Maximilian Robespierre, Paris, 1794 (36 years old); Louis Antoine Saint-Just (26 years old) - there and then.
Germany: Lubbe, Marinus van der - guillotined for setting fire to the German Reichstag in January 1934; Fucik, Julius - guillotined in Berlin Ploetzensee prison on September 8, 1943; Obolenskaya, Vera Apollonovna - guillotined in the same place on August 4, 1944; Jalil, Musa Mustafovich and his associates were guillotined for participation in an underground organization on August 25, 1944; Klyachkovsky, Stanislav guillotined on charges of attempting to assassinate the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler on May 10, 1940, ibid.
Source: “Interesting newspaper. Mysteries of Civilization №6