![]() As with many modern-day products, the testing began with animals. Antoine Louis designed the prototype, which was originally nicknamed the “Louison” or “Louisette.” Decapitation machines dated back to ancient times, but the contraption unveiled at the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris in April 1792 was cutting-edge in more ways than one. “The mechanism falls like lightning the head flies off the blood spurts the man no longer exists,” Guillotin told his colleagues. The solution was found in another of Guillotin’s ideas: a beheading machine that ensured a rapid and merciful death. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed the idea for the beheading machine that became known as the guillotine. “Swords have very often broken in the performance of such executions, and the Paris executioner possesses only two,” he wrote. A fourth-generation executioner for whom capital punishment was the family business, Sanson warned the National Assembly that beheading by sword was an inexact science that would require dozens of skilled executioners, scores of fresh swords and a means of securing felons to guarantee quick cuts. In 1791 the National Assembly made decapitation the only legal form of capital punishment in France, but the state executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, knew this presented practical problems. Guillotin beseeched his fellow lawmakers to follow their egalitarian principles and adopt a more humanitarian and equitable system of capital punishment whereby all criminals, irrespective of class, would be beheaded. The Parisian deputy and anatomy professor argued that it was unfair for common criminals in France to be executed by tortuous methods such as hanging, burning at the stake and breaking on the wheel while aristocratic felons had the privilege of quick decapitations, particularly if they tipped their executioners to ensure swift sword chops. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin rose before the National Assembly in 1789 to lobby for equality in a most unlikely area: capital punishment. ![]() Send us feedback about these examples.As the spirit of liberté, égalité and fraternité swirled through Paris in the early days of the French Revolution, Dr. ![]() These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'guillotine.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 1 Sep. ![]() 2023 The initial answers provide no shortage of grim amusement, especially when a young Pinochet witnesses the French Revolution and proceeds to learn all the wrong lessons from it (though not before licking the blade of Marie Antoinette’s guillotine). Rachel Corbett, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2023 With a potential billion-dollar guillotine hanging over its neck, the house of Wildenstein is in unprecedented peril. 2023 One of the sites of a guillotine during the French Revolution was now a fan zone, with four vast screens provided to watch France take on mighty New Zealand, three-time Cup winners. Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2023 Duly horrified by the French Revolution, though not too horrified to lick the blood from Marie Antoinette’s guillotine, the young man soon stages his untimely demise. 2023 As the final seconds ticked, Danis attempted to put Paul into a guillotine chokehold. Jeremy Redmon, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Oct. 2023 Certain wandered between rows of mannequins fettered with leg irons, claustrophobic dungeon cells and a towering guillotine. 2023 During the worst violence of the French Revolution, Joséphine was arbitrarily arrested and condemned, and lived with the constant threat of death by guillotine any day. Recent Examples on the Web European History 101 highlights flash by: Marie Antoinette at the guillotine, the Reign of Terror, the siege at Toulon, the excursion into Egypt, the battle of Austerlitz, plus sub-Tolstoy War and Peace nuggets.
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