Editing Decapitation (section)

=== Guillotine ===
[[File:Heads on pikes.jpg|left|thumb|Aristocratic heads on pikes – a cartoon from the [[French Revolution]]]]

Early versions of the guillotine included the [[Halifax Gibbet]], which was used in [[Halifax, West Yorkshire|Halifax]], England, from 1286 until the 17th century, and the "[[Maiden (beheading)|Maiden]]", employed in [[Edinburgh]] from the 16th through the 18th centuries.

The modern form of the [[guillotine]] was invented shortly before the [[French Revolution]] with the aim of creating a quick and painless method of execution requiring little skill on the part of the operator. Decapitation by guillotine became a common mechanically assisted form of [[capital punishment|execution]].

The French observed a strict code of etiquette surrounding such executions. For example, a man named Legros, one of the assistants at the execution of [[Charlotte Corday]], was imprisoned for three months and dismissed for slapping the face of the victim after the blade had fallen in order to see whether any flicker of life remained.<ref>[[François Mignet|Mignet, François]], ''History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814'', (1824).</ref> The guillotine was used in France during the French Revolution and remained the normal judicial method in both peacetime and wartime into the 1970s, although the [[firing squad]] was used in certain cases. France abolished the death penalty in 1981.

The guillotine was also used in [[Algeria]] before the [[France|French]] relinquished control of it, as shown in [[Gillo Pontecorvo]]'s film ''[[The Battle of Algiers (film)|The Battle of Algiers]]''.