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La Guillotine et les Executeurs des Arrets Criminels Pendant La Revolution
Author's name is a pseudonym for Louis Leon Theodore Gosselin.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1893
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 10, 2019
Really 3.5. Objectively 4 stars, but there's a creepiness factor I just can not get past. Surprisingly, a detailed, balanced and incredibly well researched book about the administration of capital punishment/executions in France from 1650-1900. A creepy subject to be sure, but I was sucked into reading it after finding a very old copy on a book stall that detailed, for example, the actual administrative and financial costs associated with the Jacobin Terror and a detailed description of how banal and mundane the mass murders became after only a few weeks. The Girondists for example, went to die singing a song of defiance and hardly anybody took notice. Executions at night were a public disaster because no-one could see and the torches were too dim. It's odd to read about the banality of killing-yet chillingly instructive- livres and francs spent for sand, baskets, cart rentals, blade sharpening, clothing etc.. The problems of paying for actual executions after the currency was inflated. The problems of scheduling. The placement of the machine itself was done so as to make the spectacles widely viewable-and thereby to instill terror in the civil populace.......Royalists who insisted on kissing the machine that killed King Louis before they themselves died (the machine itself ended up in French Guyana apparently).
Executions and the administration of Capital Punishment perfectly mirror the growth and structure of the modern administrative state! It is eery, but true. Even the guillotine itself was designed and implemented as a " humane" way of death-by a surgeon, who claimed it ended life instantly and painlessly. Thus it was seen as a marvel of new science. It perfectly represents both the excesses of the Revolution and the floundering attempts of the intellectual Enlightenment. Did Charlotte Cordey feel the slap after her head was cut off? (No wonder Balzac wrote as he did).
French Executioners, notably the famous Sanson family of Paris were celebrities, but rather poor ones. One young Sanson, an apprentice executioner, fell off the scaffold and died whilst holding up an aristocrats' head. The semi-hereditary Executioners of France were appointed by Departments, intermarried, were viewed with loathing and horror by the general populace and saw themselves as mere functional, professional bureaucrats-for eight generations. Those who were corrupt or inadequate were often beaten, sometimes to death, by the mob, when they caused unnecessary suffering of the condemned.
I found the book best summed up by its penultimate paragraph:
"As I write the last words of this book I feel that, if the reader has had the courage to persevere to the end, he must more than once, as he turned the pages, have been filled with disgust and weariness. Among the many things that he will doubtless think reprehensible -the first that he will criticize is the subject; and indeed I was not unaffected myself by that point of view while I persisted in unearthing, from the many dossiers of the State Archives, documents that have hitherto been neglected by historians, and forced myself to dive into the dark depths of a horrible subject. But, when all is said, these things have a place in history. 'You see Gilbert' says the jailer in Mary Tudor, 'the man who knows the most about the history of these days is the jailor of the Tower of London". May we not say the same of the Executioner?"
p.s. Since writing this review I have come across Sakamotos’ “ Innocent”, a novel ( and film?) of literary merit inspired by this very book, with a Sanson as the tragic-hero.
Executions and the administration of Capital Punishment perfectly mirror the growth and structure of the modern administrative state! It is eery, but true. Even the guillotine itself was designed and implemented as a " humane" way of death-by a surgeon, who claimed it ended life instantly and painlessly. Thus it was seen as a marvel of new science. It perfectly represents both the excesses of the Revolution and the floundering attempts of the intellectual Enlightenment. Did Charlotte Cordey feel the slap after her head was cut off? (No wonder Balzac wrote as he did).
French Executioners, notably the famous Sanson family of Paris were celebrities, but rather poor ones. One young Sanson, an apprentice executioner, fell off the scaffold and died whilst holding up an aristocrats' head. The semi-hereditary Executioners of France were appointed by Departments, intermarried, were viewed with loathing and horror by the general populace and saw themselves as mere functional, professional bureaucrats-for eight generations. Those who were corrupt or inadequate were often beaten, sometimes to death, by the mob, when they caused unnecessary suffering of the condemned.
I found the book best summed up by its penultimate paragraph:
"As I write the last words of this book I feel that, if the reader has had the courage to persevere to the end, he must more than once, as he turned the pages, have been filled with disgust and weariness. Among the many things that he will doubtless think reprehensible -the first that he will criticize is the subject; and indeed I was not unaffected myself by that point of view while I persisted in unearthing, from the many dossiers of the State Archives, documents that have hitherto been neglected by historians, and forced myself to dive into the dark depths of a horrible subject. But, when all is said, these things have a place in history. 'You see Gilbert' says the jailer in Mary Tudor, 'the man who knows the most about the history of these days is the jailor of the Tower of London". May we not say the same of the Executioner?"
p.s. Since writing this review I have come across Sakamotos’ “ Innocent”, a novel ( and film?) of literary merit inspired by this very book, with a Sanson as the tragic-hero.
June 22, 2023
À lire comme un document d'époque autant que comme un essai historique (l'étude et la méthode sont quand même extrêmement datées). Cela dit, Lenotre a un style très plaisant et souvent TRÈS salé qui fait que ça se lit tout seul, même sur un sujet aussi hardcore. Quelques anecdotes et sources très intéressantes pour l'inspiration future.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews