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cover of episode 505. The French Revolution: The Shadow of the Guillotine (Part 3)

505. The French Revolution: The Shadow of the Guillotine (Part 3)

2024/10/20
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The Rest Is History

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The episode delves into the unholy status of executioners under the Ancien Régime, their menacing presence in society, and the reforms brought by the Revolution.
  • Executioners were outcasts and feared, performing essential but morally tainted roles.
  • They wore distinctive clothing and had peculiar privileges, such as using a tin-plated spoon to take goods from marketplaces.
  • The Revolution reformed their role, normalizing their civic status and making them state functionaries.

Shownotes Transcript

During the "Ancien Regime", royal executioners held an unholy status, and would strike up fear in the crowds as they walked the streets of Paris. But with the Revolution, the role of executioners in society was reformed, and whilst they lost some of their privileges, they were ushered into to a new, universalist France. And as the Revolution brought forward more and more enemies of the state, executioners were faced with more victims than the axe could handle. This, combined with an ever growing debate around the humanity and dignity of executions, would lead to the invention of a killing machine still used by the French state more than 150 years later…

Join Tom and Dominic in the third part of our second season of the French Revolution, as they look at gruesome methods of execution under the French monarchy, the changing role of executioners, how the Guillotine came to loom so large over the fate of so many…


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Producer: Theo Young-Smith

Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis + Becki Hills

Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor

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