Part 3 (2/2)
Medieval Halifax made its fortune from the cloth trade. Large quant.i.ties of expensive cloth were left outside the mills to dry on frames. Theft was a serious problem and the town's merchants needed an efficient deterrent.
This, and a similar, later, Scottish device called the Maiden, may well have inspired the French to borrow the idea and come up with their own name.
Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin was a humane, mild-mannered doctor who disliked public executions. In 1789, he put to the National a.s.sembly an ambitious plan to reform the French penal system and make it more humane. He proposed a standardised mechanical method of execution which didn't discriminate against the poor (who were messily hanged), as opposed to the rich (who were relatively cleanly beheaded).
Most of the proposals were rejected out of hand, but the notion of an efficient killing engine stuck. Guillotin's recommendation was picked up and refined by Dr Antoine Louis, the Secretary of the Academy of Surgeons. It was he, not Guillotin, who produced the first working device with its characteristic diagonal blade in 1792. It was even called, briefly, a Louison Louison or or Louisette, Louisette, after its sponsor. after its sponsor.
But somehow, Guillotin's name became attached to it and, despite the best efforts of his family, there it has stubbornly remained. Contrary to popular folklore, Guillotin was not killed by his eponymous machine; he died in 1814 from an infected carbuncle on his shoulder.
The guillotine became the first 'democratic' method of execution and was adopted throughout France. In its first ten years, historians estimate 15,000 people were decapitated. Only n.a.z.i Germany has used it to execute more, with an estimated 40,000 criminals being guillotined between 1938 and 1945.
The last French person to be guillotined was a Tunisian immigrant called Hamida Djandoubi, for the rape and murder of a young girl in 1977. The death penalty was finally abolished in France in 1981.
It is impossible to test accurately how long a severed head remains conscious, if at all. The best estimate is between five and thirteen seconds.
JOHN SESSIONS It was maintained by contemporary witnesses that a lot of the heads were quite sentient. It was maintained by contemporary witnesses that a lot of the heads were quite sentient.
STEPHEN Yeah. They twitched. Yeah. They twitched.
ALAN They're going, 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' They're going, 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!'
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Where was 'La Ma.r.s.eillaise' written?
The French National anthem was not written in (or about) Ma.r.s.eilles but in Strasbourg (which is half German). Far from being inspired by the Revolution, the words were written by a Royalist who (though he himself was French) dedicated it to a German and lifted the music from an Italian. It was originally called 'Battle Hymn for the Army of the Rhine' (the longest river in Germany).
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La Ma.r.s.eillaise was commissioned as a marching song to inspire the French army. Claude Rouget de Lisle (17601836) was an amateur composer and artillery officer. At a lavish banquet thrown to mark France's declaration of war on Austria in April 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg asked de Lisle: 'Monsieur, write for us a song that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland.' After drinking a little too much champagne, de Lisle returned to his quarters, where he fell asleep at his harpsichord, to wake (he claimed) with both the words and music of La Ma.r.s.eillaise fully formed.
The music, at least, was certainly fully formed. The tune had been written eight years earlier. Its composer was the Italian virtuoso violinist, Giovanni Battista Viotti (17551824), another staunch Royalist, who worked as court musician to Marie Antoinette.
Whether the tune was deliberately stolen or unconsciously borrowed, de Lisle dedicated it to the Bavarian-born Count Nikolaus Graf von Luckner, the commander of the French Army on the Rhine and yet another Royalist. Both Luckner and de Lisle were arrested shortly afterwards during the Terror. Luckner was guillotined, but de Lisle, despite having written several anti-Revolutionary songs, was released. (He was, after all, the revered author of La Ma.r.s.eillaise.) He later published his memoirs (which no one bought) and died penniless in 1836.
The song, however, was a big hit and would inspire the French troops to their first great victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Valmy five months later.
The rousing sentiments were easily appropriated to the Revolutionary cause, and hand-written copies of the song pa.s.sed rapidly through the army. Particularly popular among volunteers from Ma.r.s.eilles, they carried their copies to Paris, where they sang it on their arrival at the Tuileries Palace on 10 August. A legend was born. On Bastille Day, 1795, 'The Ma.r.s.eilles Song' was adopted as the Republic's national anthem.
Perhaps because of its dodgy provenance, Napoleon always disliked it and had it banned. In fact, it was banned and unbanned several times, with the official version only being written into the const.i.tution almost a century after it had been written, in 1887 Hector Berlioz produced the definitive orchestral version in 1830 and in 1882 Tchaikovsky used it as a theme in his 1812 Overture (though this was an anachronism: it was banned in the year 1812).
How many prisoners were freed by the storming of the Bastille?
Seven.
In France, 14 July, Bastille Day, is a national holiday and a glorious national symbol, equivalent to 4 July in the USA.
From the rousing paintings of the scene, you might think hundreds of proud revolutionaries flooded into the streets waving tricolours. In fact, only just over half a dozen people were being held at the time of the siege.
The Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789. Shortly afterwards ghoulish engravings of prisoners languis.h.i.+ng in chains next to skeletons went on sale in the streets of Paris, forming the popular impression of the conditions there ever since.
The thirteenth-century fortress had been a jail for centuries; by the time of Louis XVI it mainly housed people arrested on the orders of the king or his ministers for offences like conspiracy and subversion. Distinguished former inmates included Voltaire, who wrote Oedipus Oedipus there in 1718. there in 1718.
The seven prisoners in residence that day were: four forgers, the Comte de Solanges (inside for 'a s.e.xual misdemeanour') and two lunatics (one of whom was an English or Irish man named Major Whyte who sported a waist-length beard and thought he was Julius Caesar).
One hundred lives were lost in the attack, including that of the governor, whose head was carried through Paris on a pike.
The prison guard were a contingent of invalides invalides soldiers invalided out of regular service and conditions were fairly comfortable for most inmates, with relaxed visiting hours and furnished lodgings. soldiers invalided out of regular service and conditions were fairly comfortable for most inmates, with relaxed visiting hours and furnished lodgings.
The painter Jean Fragonard's sketch of visiting day in 1785 shows fas.h.i.+onable ladies promenading around the courtyard with the prisoners, who were given a generous spending allowance, plenty of tobacco and alcohol, and were allowed to keep pets.
Jean Francois Marmontel, an inmate from 1759 to 1760, wrote: 'The wine was not excellent, but was pa.s.sable. No dessert: it was necessary to be deprived of something. On the whole I found that one dined very well in prison.'
Louis XVI's diary for the day of the storming of the Bastille reads 'Rien'.
He was referring to the bag in that day's hunt.
ALAN It was stormed on July 12. It was stormed on July 12.
STEPHEN The 14th, but close. Two days out. The 14th, but close. Two days out.
ALAN You say two days out, but I'd have stormed it two days early; I'd have been on my own. You say two days out, but I'd have stormed it two days early; I'd have been on my own.
Who said, 'Let them eat cake'?
Wrong again. It wasn't her.
You probably remember the history lesson as if it were yesterday. It's 1789 and the French Revolution is under way. The poor of Paris are rioting because they have no bread and the Queen, Marie Antoinette callously indifferent, trying to be funny or just plain stupid comes up with the fatuous suggestion that they eat cake instead.
The first problem is that it wasn't cake, it was brioche (the original French is Qu'ils mangent de la brioche Qu'ils mangent de la brioche). According to Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford Companion to Food, 'Eighteenth-century brioche was only lightly enriched (by modest quant.i.ties of b.u.t.ter and eggs) and not very far removed from a good white loaf of bread.' So, the remark might have been an attempt at kindness: 'If they want bread, give them some of the good stuff.' 'Eighteenth-century brioche was only lightly enriched (by modest quant.i.ties of b.u.t.ter and eggs) and not very far removed from a good white loaf of bread.' So, the remark might have been an attempt at kindness: 'If they want bread, give them some of the good stuff.'
Except Marie Antoinette didn't say it. The line had been in use in print as an ill.u.s.tration of aristocratic decadence since at least 1760. Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed he'd first heard it as early as 1740.
Lady Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette's most recent biographer, attributes the remark to the Queen Marie-Therese, wife of Louis XIV, 'The Sun King', but there is a host of other grand eighteenth-century ladies who might have said it. It's also entirely possible it was made up for propaganda purposes.
There is another story that suggests Marie Antoinette introduced croissants to France from her native Vienna. This seems highly unlikely, as the earliest French reference to a croissant isn't until 1853.
Interestingly, wandering Austrian pastry chefs did introduce the flaky pastry to Denmark at about this time, the eponymous 'Danish' pastries being known there as wienerbrd wienerbrd ('Vienna bread'). ('Vienna bread').
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