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Guillotine. A guillotine ( / ˈɡɪlətiːn, - loʊ -/ GHIH-lə-teen, -loh-) is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the ...
Proposing a painless method for executions, inspiring the guillotine. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin ( French: [ʒozɛf iɲas ɡijɔtɛ̃]; 28 May 1738 – 26 March 1814) was a French physician, politician, and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out executions in France, as a less painful method of execution than ...
Guillotine usage then spread to other countries such as Germany (where it had been used since before the revolution), Italy, Sweden (used in a single execution), the Netherlands and French colonies in Africa, Canada, French Guiana and French Indochina. Although other governments employed the device, France has executed more people by guillotine ...
The execution by guillotine was performed by Charles-Henri Sanson, then High Executioner of the French First Republic and previously royal executioner under Louis. Often viewed as a turning point in both French and European history, the execution inspired various reactions around the world.
Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (19 August 1743 – 8 December 1793) was the last maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XV of France. She was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason—particularly being suspected of assisting émigrés to flee from the Revolution. She is also known as “ Mademoiselle ...
Charlotte Marie Jacqueline Gaultier de Mesnival. Signature. Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont (27 July 1768 – 17 July 1793), known simply as Charlotte Corday ( French: [kɔʁdɛ] ), was a figure of the French Revolution who assassinated revolutionary and Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on 13 July 1793. Born in Normandy to a minor ...
The national emblem of France depicts a fasces, representing justice. Fasces, like many other symbols of the French Revolution, are Roman in origin. Fasces are a bundle of birch rods containing a sacrificial axe. In Roman times, the fasces symbolized the power of magistrates, representing union and accord with the Roman Republic.
Marie Antoinette ( / ˌæntwəˈnɛt, ˌɒ̃t -/; [ 1] French: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt] ⓘ; Maria Antonia Josefa Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen consort of France prior to the French Revolution as the wife of King Louis XVI. Born Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria, she was the penultimate child and youngest ...