This podcast is a real grower. I especially enjoy how you guys bring life to the minor characters in the story as they experience the events that unfold around them.
I was surprised that Tom pushed aside Dominic's point that whereas traditional executions emphasized the individuality of the condemned, the guillotine, by its mechanistic efficiency, had the effect of erasing that individuality. Designed to be humane, the guillotine dehumanized, making it easier to kill without guilt.
Police Commissioner Charles Dreyfus used to have a miniature guillotine on his desk to cut his cigars. On one occasion, he was so upset and distracted by the antics of Inspector Clouseau, he managed to cut his own finger off.
Lol, oh no. Mixing Clouseau with reality again. I don't even want to admit how many years I spent thinking that the famous Dreyfuss Affair in French politics had something to do with the Pink Panther.
Excellent episode, very good point on the executioners. You might want to try, for fun, the “Commissaire Le Floch” mysteries, you will love the courtly French being used. Samson appears regularly in a sort of Coroner’s help capacity.
Jean-Francois Parot, their author, was a diplomat with a deep rounding in history. His Sanson, after the horrible end of Damiens, resolved to study anatomy so he could bring his charges to quicker and more humane ends. He had plenty of bodies to study--and so ended up with an unrivalled knowledge of violent death--or so the novels say.
The History of the executioner dynasty is wild! I never would have imagined that was a thing that happened. It adds so much context to the executions in history, from Joan of arc, through The Terror, to (apparently) two weeks before the Star wars premiere
Friends thank you for all the time reading you've put in to be able to present this great series. I'm here like an addict scratching for each episode. 😂😂
Great episode - I wonder if Sanson removed Robespierre's bandage before the execution to reminisce about the good old days when he could torture people. PS Mass executions do not necessarily require a guillotine, there are traces of mass executions from the Neolithic era - and during the French Revolution, Fouche and Collot shot at convicts with grapeshot, and Carrier drowned people in Nantes. When Robespierre found out about these atrocities, he immediately recalled them from their missions and they feared the guillotine, which is why they were the ringleaders of the 9 Thermidor."
Great fact! I love when you google this, they admit that it was an early guillotine, but still insist it was france that invented it at a later date. Do your own research and don't rely on google and AI's
You say there'd never been anything like it before regarding the production line of slaughter. Maybe not in the French context, but it seems to me that in terms of that public spectacle there had perhaps been a premonition a hemisphere away. The line of victims waiting in increasing terror for their their turn on the public platform, mounting the steps slippery with blood of those who have gone before, receiving their end and then the corpse discarded from the death pedestal and the next poor sod brought on. It's all a bit Tenochtitlan isn't it!
Giacomo Casanova was installed in one of the balconies overlooking the Place de Greve on the day of Damien's execution. Reading his account (Vol. III, Chapter 1 of the Memoirs), it becomes clear that these public executions played the role that wedding receptions do in the life of a blithe young bachelor today.
Rudolph Höß, the commandant of Auschwitz, had a similar epiphany regarding mass executions. He had hated the effect on his men that came after executing people by firing squad. I can’t remember his exact words; but after discovering cyanide was quick and efficient, he said something like “it makes it far-easier to sleep at night.”
Oh no....The Spoon....The Spoon! 😂 Brilliant episode as usual. Terrible topic but presented so well I think I need to buy yet another book recommended here. I'm completely addicted to these podcasts - thank you!
Interesting point regarding the last public execution in Paris using the Guillotine in 1939. Watching from an apartment window across the street from the "event" was the 17 year old Christopher Lee of Dracula , Hammer films fame.
We had a guest speaker at Oxford University in the Middle Eastern Department that worked for an Oil Company. He spoke how he visited Baghdad in the 1950’s only to see burlap bags covering poles around the Presidential Palace. He thought they were protecting shrubs only to be told because of his presence they were covering up human heads that were placed on the pikes!😮
Two (apocryphal?) euphemisms of the time: "the national razor'' "to shake the hot hand" And the witness of Marie Antoinette's execution who claimed he was so close he could hear "the whisper of the axe".
I'll let you guys in on a little secret. Women are human beings. I KNOW! Shocking. And women, like all human beings, can behave badly. And it's not misogyny to point it out. Many women (not all, calm down) find human misery entertaining. From the decades of soap operas to the true crime documentaries on Lifetime. Many women I've loved in my life love stories, fictional and factual, of the worst day in a person's life. I don't understand it at all. I don't even think they do. But it's a fact.
You first point out that women are human beings too (shock horror) then proceed to say you don’t understand it & THEY don’t either 😂 why not ask why humans can be fascinated by horror?! Do you know why men can be?
@@eskylent7962 Human beings come with a myriad of negative urges that we must deal with or contain to coexist and live happy prosperous lives. Watching someone's life be taken from them with horrid fascination, and for some glee, would be one of those. Maybe you disagree?
My question is probably skewed by Madam Defarge and the other lady tricoteuses knitting as they watched the guillotine in action in Tale of Two Cities.
Here in Vietnam the French had a portable guillotine that was like a box trailer pulled by a truck and would travel around to provincial prisons. The idear was to set up before lunch and then decide whether to dispatch before lunch or after eating and drinking.
There is a movie of the last public execution in France on TH-cam. It is a very quick procedure - over in a few seconds! In early 1900s an early movie maker applied to be given a spot near the execution platform to film it. However, his request was denied, so he concealed the camera and filmed it from a less favourable angle. The scandel, when the film was shown, was such that future executions were done behind closed days. Of course these sensibilities went by the board on 1944/45.
The Scottish Maiden 1564 & also The Gibbet used in Halifax in England ...not sure of the exact date the Gibbet was used , but the Maiden in Edinburgh used in the 16 th century .
I once knew a man who constructed a life-size guillotine as an art project. Had trouble adjusting the blade. Had to add lead weight to get it to decapitate a melon.
Quite possibly it was another of your podcasts that I learned that beheading was an aristocratic punishment in the middle ages so the guillotine was a case of levelling up. Hanging, at least without a Pierrepoint to make sure you were properly weighted, was much worse. Friends and relatives would hang onto the feet of hanged men to shorten the agony.
The last line of 'The Marseillaise' is pretty strong: 'Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.'- 'Let their [aristocrats] foul blood drench our furrows.'
Mais non, le sang impur n'est pas celui des aristocrates mais celui du peuple non noble ... Les sillons sont abreuvés par le sang impur du peuple qui se sacrifie ...
34:50 - 35:20 ... uh, your French accent sounds precisely like the French taunting knight in the castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Lol "your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries".
We may feel relieved, as the “empathic” heirs to the French Revolution, now that Justitia has finally lost her blindfold, and has welded fast the pivot of her scales, that Justitia only wields a nerf sword. We will see as Justitia accustoms herself to her newfound, and long suspected Godhood, and the exalted company she keeps, she will rapidly lose patience with this sword, and insist on a long, razor sharp and single edged sword instead.
I remember watching the film about Albert Pierpoint, the UK's hangman in the 20th century. He was played by Timothy Spall who gave a menacing portrayal. I can't get my head around why any decent human being wants to do this.
My only problem is that you say GILL-O-teen and i have always heard it as GEEyo-teen. Now I am not sure of that's just an American/Brit pronunciation situation or if it's bc i learned French.
The guillotine was used as a celebratory symbol by the city of Paris at the Olympics this summer, with people clapping and laughing at a headless woman and a bloody guillotine. Tells you something about the future of Woke culture, no?
Great Halloween Show! 💀😁 please do a show or two on 'Arthur Laffer' #thelaffercurve and Reaganomics.. m.th-cam.com/play/PLa2mOZh4Px93pff4br4y5uZLbKV4jQ5SW.html
The fellow called Blokhin was just one of Stalin’s executioners. He is credited with personally ushering tens of thousands into the afterlife. He bragged of being the sole executive in the disappearance of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war.
Nothing that was said or done or written by the French during the French revolution was of any value. it was a catalogue of horrors during which the French achieved nothing and learned nothing.
@@Happyheretic2308 Nothing wrong with progressivism, it has given us the 5 day working week, universal education, universal suffrage, regulations against environmental harm, religious freedom .. I'll never understand the yearning of some conservatives to go back to living in the Dark Ages
! You guys are lucky you aren't in France in the 19th century, for it is certain you both would be introduced to the guillotine for your tortured French accents. It is amusing how Tom, in particular, seems quite proud of his pronunciation, while in almost every instance he sounds like a strangled cat. For your edification, the correct pronunciation of the device, and the man after whom it was named, is "gee-yo-teen" NOT "Gill-o-tin." It is intellectual laziness not to learn the correct pronunciation of key terms, given how much research goes into every other aspect of your podcasts. So English!
Whilst I agree with the use of cartoonish accents in speech quotations I don't understand your criticism on 'guillotine' pronounciations. The inventor is Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (without an -e) and would not be pronounced "een", surely?. The device in English is pronounced "gilloteen' the same way that the capital of France is pronounced Paris not Paree.
This podcast is a real grower. I especially enjoy how you guys bring life to the minor characters in the story as they experience the events that unfold around them.
Nerd alert
agree. I listen to a lot of history podcasts and these two seem to be the best. Natural, knowledgeable and entertaining. I like them
French Revolution has been the best thing you’ve done on this podcast
oooo, the Luther mini series it pretty breathtaking
Titanic is pretty epic
UTFT!
I was surprised that Tom pushed aside Dominic's point that whereas traditional executions emphasized the individuality of the condemned, the guillotine, by its mechanistic efficiency, had the effect of erasing that individuality. Designed to be humane, the guillotine dehumanized, making it easier to kill without guilt.
Police Commissioner Charles Dreyfus used to have a miniature guillotine on his desk to cut his cigars. On one occasion, he was so upset and distracted by the antics of Inspector Clouseau, he managed to cut his own finger off.
It was his pinky, and it was a clue for the inspector.
Lol, oh no. Mixing Clouseau with reality again. I don't even want to admit how many years I spent thinking that the famous Dreyfuss Affair in French politics had something to do with the Pink Panther.
@@mule-do6tc it was kind of obvious huh.
A true historical event, no doubt.
@@mule-do6tc Well for years I thought Clouseau had foiled the Jackal’s attempt to assassinate DeGaulle.
Absolutely fascinating topic, presented brilliantly! Thank you!
Excellent episode, very good point on the executioners. You might want to try, for fun, the “Commissaire Le Floch” mysteries, you will love the courtly French being used. Samson appears regularly in a sort of Coroner’s help capacity.
Jean-Francois Parot, their author, was a diplomat with a deep rounding in history. His Sanson, after the horrible end of Damiens, resolved to study anatomy so he could bring his charges to quicker and more humane ends. He had plenty of bodies to study--and so ended up with an unrivalled knowledge of violent death--or so the novels say.
The History of the executioner dynasty is wild! I never would have imagined that was a thing that happened. It adds so much context to the executions in history, from Joan of arc, through The Terror, to (apparently) two weeks before the Star wars premiere
At 44:16 "Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was definitely ahead of the curve" 😂
Friends thank you for all the time reading you've put in to be able to present this great series. I'm here like an addict scratching for each episode. 😂😂
Great episode - I wonder if Sanson removed Robespierre's bandage before the execution to reminisce about the good old days when he could torture people.
PS Mass executions do not necessarily require a guillotine, there are traces of mass executions from the Neolithic era - and during the French Revolution, Fouche and Collot shot at convicts with grapeshot, and Carrier drowned people in Nantes. When Robespierre found out about these atrocities, he immediately recalled them from their missions and they feared the guillotine, which is why they were the ringleaders of the 9 Thermidor."
Brilliantly presented.
Thank you !
Dan carlin goes into great detail on the execution of the assassin of Louis 15th, in his prefontainment episode..very grim
Fantastic episode! Loving this series.
The "maiden" had been "guillotining" the head off aristocrats in Edinburgh long before this and be seen in the national museum of Scotland
Figures. The Scots invented the modern world. LOL
Great fact!
I love when you google this, they admit that it was an early guillotine, but still insist it was france that invented it at a later date. Do your own research and don't rely on google and AI's
You say there'd never been anything like it before regarding the production line of slaughter. Maybe not in the French context, but it seems to me that in terms of that public spectacle there had perhaps been a premonition a hemisphere away.
The line of victims waiting in increasing terror for their their turn on the public platform, mounting the steps slippery with blood of those who have gone before, receiving their end and then the corpse discarded from the death pedestal and the next poor sod brought on. It's all a bit Tenochtitlan isn't it!
A bit
Very
Great content and a great format. I learned a lot from this.
'Cackling Orc-Faced women...' 😂
Cutting edge technology for the time being
We see what you did there
They were indeed ahead of their time.
A cutting remark
In hindsight, listening to this just after a hearty lunch wasn’t the best idea! Fascinating and gruesome.
Great episode. Given your several references in this series, it’d be great if you could do the restoration and the Glorious Revolution 1688.
Giacomo Casanova was installed in one of the balconies overlooking the Place de Greve on the day of Damien's execution. Reading his account (Vol. III, Chapter 1 of the Memoirs), it becomes clear that these public executions played the role that wedding receptions do in the life of a blithe young bachelor today.
Rudolph Höß, the commandant of Auschwitz, had a similar epiphany regarding mass executions.
He had hated the effect on his men that came after executing people by firing squad.
I can’t remember his exact words; but after discovering cyanide was quick and efficient, he said something like “it makes it far-easier to sleep at night.”
Would saying "A la lanterne!" with Keir Starmer in the vacinity get you broken on the wheel?
38:35 A nice nod to Blackadder 3 there.
Oh no....The Spoon....The Spoon! 😂 Brilliant episode as usual. Terrible topic but presented so well I think I need to buy yet another book recommended here. I'm completely addicted to these podcasts - thank you!
The women with knitting needles reminds me of a scene in the Scarlett Pimpernel TV movie with Anthony Andrews which is a great film
I hope you follow this up with the Bourbon Restoration!
Because in the same era the British were effectively strangling people. How very English.
Interesting point regarding the last public execution in Paris using the Guillotine in 1939. Watching from an apartment window across the street from the "event" was the 17 year old Christopher Lee of Dracula , Hammer films fame.
We had a guest speaker at Oxford University in the Middle Eastern Department that worked for an Oil Company. He spoke how he visited Baghdad in the 1950’s only to see burlap bags covering poles around the Presidential Palace. He thought they were protecting shrubs only to be told because of his presence they were covering up human heads that were placed on the pikes!😮
Two (apocryphal?) euphemisms of the time: "the national razor'' "to shake the hot hand" And the witness of Marie Antoinette's execution who claimed he was so close he could hear "the whisper of the axe".
Probably time to do a full episode on the Reign of Terror, since the US is about to have one.
Ugh. I stood on the Place de Greve last year and thought how pretty it looked.
I'll let you guys in on a little secret. Women are human beings. I KNOW! Shocking. And women, like all human beings, can behave badly. And it's not misogyny to point it out. Many women (not all, calm down) find human misery entertaining. From the decades of soap operas to the true crime documentaries on Lifetime. Many women I've loved in my life love stories, fictional and factual, of the worst day in a person's life. I don't understand it at all. I don't even think they do. But it's a fact.
You first point out that women are human beings too (shock horror) then proceed to say you don’t understand it & THEY don’t either 😂 why not ask why humans can be fascinated by horror?! Do you know why men can be?
@@eskylent7962 Human beings come with a myriad of negative urges that we must deal with or contain to coexist and live happy prosperous lives. Watching someone's life be taken from them with horrid fascination, and for some glee, would be one of those. Maybe you disagree?
@@thanksfernuthin so why would it be any different for women? It sounded like it was a mystery to you why women would be fascinated too.
My question is probably skewed by Madam Defarge and the other lady tricoteuses knitting as they watched the guillotine in action in Tale of Two Cities.
Well, she did attend one 😮 31:12
Tom, the guillotine is all very fascinating and all that but is that a dinosaur fossil you have on your shelf there? 🤔😁
Here in Vietnam the French had a portable guillotine that was like a box trailer pulled by a truck and would travel around to provincial prisons. The idear was to set up before lunch and then decide whether to dispatch before lunch or after eating and drinking.
crazy it was used in the 20th C
There is a movie of the last public execution in France on TH-cam. It is a very quick procedure - over in a few seconds!
In early 1900s an early movie maker applied to be given a spot near the execution platform to film it. However, his request was denied, so he concealed the camera and filmed it from a less favourable angle.
The scandel, when the film was shown, was such that future executions were done behind closed days.
Of course these sensibilities went by the board on 1944/45.
The guillotine machine (it was not called that of course!) was actually invented by the Scottish hundreds of years before the French Revolution.
Is this true? I’ve never heard this.
@@jameseverett8206 It's in Wikipedia but I've read it in other sources as well - the Scots had a killing machine like the guillotine!
@@kaloarepo288 sigh ... Wikipedia is not a trusted source.
@@Happyheretic2308 It can be a starting point but must be checked against other sources!
The Scottish Maiden 1564 & also The Gibbet used in Halifax in England ...not sure of the exact date the Gibbet was used , but the Maiden in Edinburgh used in the 16 th century .
I once knew a man who constructed a life-size guillotine as an art project. Had trouble adjusting the blade. Had to add lead weight to get it to decapitate a melon.
Christopher Lee witnessed the last public guillotining.
Ironically he played Sanson in the 1989 two-parter "The French Revolution" which you can find on this platform...
Having read Innocent the mention Sanson got me excited
Marie Antoinette did in fact, go to an execution. Just the one.
💀
Slightly uncomfortable listening to Dominic chuckle through description of the drawn out execution of of Louis 15th’s attempted assassin.
The boys are having a jolly old time 😂
A company called Aurora used to do a splendid working plastic model of the guillotine.
Nice to know. Full size?
Quite possibly it was another of your podcasts that I learned that beheading was an aristocratic punishment in the middle ages so the guillotine was a case of levelling up. Hanging, at least without a Pierrepoint to make sure you were properly weighted, was much worse. Friends and relatives would hang onto the feet of hanged men to shorten the agony.
The last line of 'The Marseillaise' is pretty strong:
'Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.'-
'Let their [aristocrats] foul blood drench our furrows.'
Mais non, le sang impur n'est pas celui des aristocrates mais celui du peuple non noble ... Les sillons sont abreuvés par le sang impur du peuple qui se sacrifie ...
Im relieved that you didn't try the accent, Dominic.
it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes...
There's one on display in Vietnam. The French of course left it behind.
34:50 - 35:20 ... uh, your French accent sounds precisely like the French taunting knight in the castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Lol "your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries".
"Of course I'm French! Why do you think I have zis outrageous accent?"
Sir Christopher Lee witnessed the last public execution carried out by guillotine.
And played Sanson in the 1989 TV film about the revolution.
In 1939, at the age of 17. Fine introduction to the war years.
We may feel relieved, as the “empathic” heirs to the French Revolution, now that Justitia has finally lost her blindfold, and has welded fast the pivot of her scales, that Justitia only wields a nerf sword. We will see as Justitia accustoms herself to her newfound, and long suspected Godhood, and the exalted company she keeps, she will rapidly lose patience with this sword, and insist on a long, razor sharp and single edged sword instead.
The cognitive dissonance of the text/guillotine and Dominic's face on the thumbnail is just wonderful.
I remember watching the film about Albert Pierpoint, the UK's hangman in the 20th century. He was played by Timothy Spall who gave a menacing portrayal. I can't get my head around why any decent human being wants to do this.
Did I hear correctly, that Marie Antoinette was a fan and supporter of the classic public executions? If so, how and where is this known and recorded?
We need to bring it back
Riveting stuff!
You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet, and you can't do that until the egg is removed from the chicken.
"In just a few seconds, another sliced loaf"
More of a shovel than a spoon really
Les tricoteuse...when I first heard of these hags my blood froze!
Tomas Carlyle wasn't English. He was born in Dumfries-shire
At 43:58 Tom Holland is probably referring to La guillotine permanente th-cam.com/video/XU5Rhcx5ZNs/w-d-xo.html
Thanks.
My only problem is that you say GILL-O-teen and i have always heard it as GEEyo-teen. Now I am not sure of that's just an American/Brit pronunciation situation or if it's bc i learned French.
The guillotine was used as a celebratory symbol by the city of Paris at the Olympics this summer, with people clapping and laughing at a headless woman and a bloody guillotine. Tells you something about the future of Woke culture, no?
You guys need to make yourselves relevant to today!
No, its not terrifying, it was .
Today we have far more stuff to be terrified of
Great Halloween Show! 💀😁 please do a show or two on 'Arthur Laffer' #thelaffercurve and Reaganomics.. m.th-cam.com/play/PLa2mOZh4Px93pff4br4y5uZLbKV4jQ5SW.html
Women watch 80% of all Netflix serial killer and torture films. The Guillotine was the Netflix of the 1790's.
The guillotine was only used once in Sweden.
Can you trace what happened then to what is going on today.
A game of two halves ...?
Women, Can't Live with Them
Can't Live Without Them.
God Help Us All
A tour de force haha
Spoon or no spoon....✅ back ground source info big dipper star system.
The more l learn about it, the more I hate the Revolution.
I agree. 💯 It was very ugly, gruesome, and frightening.
Mr Guillotine was fond of quangoes. Good to know.
How horrible to be the man (Charles-Henri Sanson) who personally executed two thousand human beings.
Makes you wonder if there was a record length scarf or jumper made
The fellow called Blokhin was just one of Stalin’s executioners. He is credited with personally ushering tens of thousands into the afterlife. He bragged of being the sole executive in the disappearance of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war.
Probably worse to be one of the 2000
I doubt it was horrible for him. He probably didn't lose any sleep because of that.
The death penalty is just and good and should not be viewed with horror
Nothing that was said or done or written by the French during the French revolution was of any value. it was a catalogue of horrors during which the French achieved nothing and learned nothing.
I love this show but the french accent has to stop, dear god stop
Nawn, we adorons ze accents Francis, hon he hon hehon.
The word “progressive” conjures up nothing but revulsion and dread. It is not something to aspire to.
ok boomer
@ wrong group, pet.
@@Happyheretic2308
Nothing wrong with progressivism, it has given us the 5 day working week, universal education, universal suffrage, regulations against environmental harm, religious freedom .. I'll never understand the yearning of some conservatives to go back to living in the Dark Ages
!
You guys are lucky you aren't in France in the 19th century, for it is certain you both would be introduced to the guillotine for your tortured French accents. It is amusing how Tom, in particular, seems quite proud of his pronunciation, while in almost every instance he sounds like a strangled cat. For your edification, the correct pronunciation of the device, and the man after whom it was named, is "gee-yo-teen" NOT "Gill-o-tin." It is intellectual laziness not to learn the correct pronunciation of key terms, given how much research goes into every other aspect of your podcasts.
So English!
Whilst I agree with the use of cartoonish accents in speech quotations I don't understand your criticism on 'guillotine' pronounciations. The inventor is Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (without an -e) and would not be pronounced "een", surely?. The device in English is pronounced "gilloteen' the same way that the capital of France is pronounced Paris not Paree.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_(guillotine)