During the period of the French Revolution, which lasted between 1789 and 1799, France resorted to the adoption of the guillotine as the main method of execution, thus putting an end to the previous methods of execution that were limited mainly to hanging and amputation of limbs. In addition to King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, the blade of the guillotine extended to reach the heads of the most prominent theoreticians and engineers of the French Revolution, such as Georges Danton, Camille Demoulin, Maximilian Robespierre, Hebart and Jacques-Pierre Bresseau.
In addition, the guillotine officially entered service in 1792, and the French Nicolas Jacques Pelletier represented the first person executed in France in this way.
Murder and theft
During this period, Nicolas Jacques Pelletier was accused of stabbing a man to death on October 14, 1791, and plundering an amount equivalent to 800 pounds on Bourbon-Villeneuve, in the French capital, Paris. As soon as he committed his crime, Pelletier was arrested by the security forces to appear before the judiciary on charges of theft using violence on the public road and threatening the security of citizens.
Executioner Sanson avatar
During the following days, Judge Jacob Augustin Moreau issued a death sentence once morest Pelletier, which was upheld by the French Court of Appeal and the Judiciary on December 24, 1791. In his cell, Pelletier was surprised when he heard the news that the French authorities were preparing to execute him using a new and unexpected method. preceded by the country’s history.
Parisians angry
In addition, the guillotine emerged thanks to the efforts of doctors Joseph-Ignace Guillotin and Antoine Louis, who called for the adoption of a new execution device to speed up the death of those on death row and reduce their suffering. Meanwhile, the guillotine was presented to the French King Louis XVI, at the Tuileries Palace, who liked the idea and made some modifications to its blade to be able to cut off the head of the death row if it fell.
On 25 April 1792, the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson supervised the first execution by guillotine on the strike ground in the presence of a large crowd.
At regarding three thirty in the evening, the blade of the guillotine fell on the neck of Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier and quickly separated his head from his body.
In front of this sight, the French, accustomed to executions that sometimes lasted for hours amid the suffering of the death row compared to Pelletier’s swift death, resented and booed, demanding a return to traditional methods of execution and the abolition of the guillotine. The next day, the hymn “Give me back my wooden gallows… Give me back my gallows” sang among the Parisians who sang it on the streets of the capital.
