Editing Guillotine (section)

=== Introduction in France ===
[[File:Anonymous - Portrait de Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), médecin et homme politique. - P1052 - Musée Carnavalet (cropped).jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin]] after whom the guillotine was named]]
On 10 October 1789, physician [[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin]] proposed to the [[National Assembly (French Revolution)|National Assembly]] that [[capital punishment]] should always take the form of decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism".<ref>R. F. Opie (2003) ''Guillotine'', Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd, p. 22, {{ISBN|0750930349}}.</ref>

Sensing the growing discontent, [[Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI]] banned the use of the [[breaking wheel]].<ref name="MM">{{cite video| people = Executive Producer Don Cambou | title = Modern Marvels: Death Devices | publisher=A&E Television Networks |date =2001}}</ref> In 1791, as the [[French Revolution]] progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class, consistent with the idea that the purpose of [[capital punishment]] was simply to end life rather than to inflict unnecessary pain.<ref name="MM" />

A committee formed under [[Antoine Louis]], physician to the King and Secretary to the Academy of Surgery.<ref name="MM" /> Guillotin was also on the committee. The group was influenced by beheading devices used elsewhere in Europe, such as the Italian Mannaia (or Mannaja, which had been used since Roman times{{Citation needed|date=September 2022}}), the [[Maiden (beheading)|Scottish Maiden]], and the [[Halifax Gibbet]] (3.5&nbsp;kg).<ref name="SaturdayMag">
{{Cite journal
| last = Parker
| first = John William
| date = 26 July 1834
| title = The Halifax Gibbet-Law |journal=[[The Saturday Magazine (magazine)|The Saturday Magazine]]
| page = 32
| issue = 132
}}
</ref> While many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, a number of them also used a crescent blade to behead and a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim's neck.<ref name="MM" />

Laquiante, an officer of the [[Strasbourg]] criminal court,<ref name="Croker1857">{{cite book |last=Croker |first=John Wilson |title=Essays on the early period of the French Revolution |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_fQZoAAAAMAAJ |access-date=21 October 2010 |year=1857 |publisher=J. Murray |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_fQZoAAAAMAAJ/page/n519 549]}}</ref> designed a beheading machine and employed Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer and [[harpsichord]] maker, to construct a prototype.<ref>Edmond-Jean Guérin, [http://www.histoirepassion.eu/spip.php?article1360 "1738–1814 – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin : biographie historique d'une figure saintaise"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720164546/http://www.histoirepassion.eu/spip.php?article1360|date=20 July 2011}}, ''Histoire P@ssion'' website, accessed 2009-06-27, citing M. Georges de Labruyère in ''le Matin'', 22 Aug. 1907</ref> Antoine Louis is also credited with the design of the prototype. France's official executioner, [[Charles-Henri Sanson]], claimed in his memoirs that King Louis XVI, an amateur locksmith, recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to cut through all necks; the neck of the king, who himself died by guillotine years later, was offered up discreetly as an example.<ref>Memoirs of the Sansons, from private notes and documents, 1688–1847 / edited by Henry Sanson. pp 260–261. {{cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft_djvu.txt |title=Memoirs of the Sansons, from private notes and documents, 1688–1847 / Edited by Henry Sanson |year=1876 |access-date=2014-05-09 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20140511015142/https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft/memoirsofsansons00sansuoft_djvu.txt |archive-date=11 May 2014 |df=dmy-all }} accessed 28 April 2016</ref> The first execution by guillotine was performed on a highwayman, [[Nicolas Jacques Pelletier]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.crimemuseum.org/library/execution/guillotine.html|title=Crime Library|publisher=National Museum of Crime & Punishment|access-date=13 June 2009|quote=[I]n 1792, Nicholas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be put to death with a guillotine.|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090201092331/http://www.crimemuseum.org/library/execution/guillotine.html|archive-date=1 February 2009|df=dmy-all}}</ref> on 25 April 1792<ref>{{cite book|title=Chase's Calendar of Events 2007|isbn=978-0-07-146818-3|url=https://archive.org/details/chasescalendarof00edit|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=McGraw-Hill|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/chasescalendarof00edit/page/291 291]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Ruth|last=Scurr|title=Fatal Purity|isbn=978-0-8050-8261-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yLxpgYt4dJcC&pg=PA222|year=2007|publisher=H. Holt|location=New York|pages=222–223}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Jeffery|last=Abbott|title=What a Way to Go|isbn=978-0-312-36656-8|url=https://archive.org/details/whatwaytogo00geof|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=St. Martin's Griffin|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/whatwaytogo00geof/page/144 144]}}</ref> in front of what is now Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. All citizens condemned to die were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to the [[Place du Carrousel]].

The machine was judged successful because it was considered a humane form of execution in contrast with more cruel methods used in the pre-revolutionary ''[[Ancien Régime]]''. In France, before the invention of the guillotine, members of the [[nobility]] were beheaded with a sword or an axe, which often took two or more blows to kill the condemned. The condemned or their families would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to achieve a quick and relatively painless death. Commoners were usually hanged, which could take many minutes. 

In the early phase of the [[French Revolution]], before the guillotine's adoption, the slogan ''[[À la lanterne]]'' ({{lit|To the lamp post!}}) symbolized popular justice in revolutionary France. The revolutionary radicals hanged officials and aristocrats from street lanterns and also employed more gruesome methods of execution, such as [[Breaking wheel|the wheel]] or [[Death by burning|burning at the stake]].

Having only one method of civil execution for all regardless of class was also seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was then the only civil [[capital punishment in France|legal execution method in France]] until abolition of the death penalty in 1981,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20051020135642/http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/abolition-peine-mort/code-penal-dalloz.shtml Pre-1981 penal code, article 12]: "Any person sentenced to death shall be beheaded."</ref> apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, or for the death sentences passed by military courts,<ref>Pre-1971 Code de Justice Militaire, article 336: "Les justiciables des juridictions des forces armées condamnés à la peine capitale sont fusillés dans un lieu désigné par l'autorité militaire."</ref> which entailed [[execution by firing squad]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20051020135642/http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/abolition-peine-mort/code-penal-dalloz.shtml Pre-1981 penal code, article 13]: "By exception to article 12, when the death penalty is handed for crimes against the safety of the State, execution shall take place by firing squad.".</ref>