In Focus - Discover France: Experience the Best of France - page 707

descending into anarchy. France desperately needed someone to re-establish or-
der, give it new direction and rebuild its shattered sense of self. From amidst the
smoke and thunder, a dashing (if diminutive) young Corsican general stepped from
the shadows.
Off with His Head
Prior to the Revolution, public executions in France depended on rank: the nobility were
generally beheaded with a sword or axe (with predictably messy consequences), while
commoners were usually hanged (particularly nasty prisoners were also drawn and
quartered, which involved being eviscerated while still alive and then pulled to pieces by
four oxen).
In an effort to provide a more civilised end for the condemned, in the early 1790s a
group of French physicians, scientists and engineers set about designing a clinical new
execution machine involving a razor-sharp weighted blade, guaranteed to behead people
with a minimum of fuss or mess. Named after one of its inventors, the anatomy professor
Ignace Guillotin, the machine was first used on 25 April 1792, when the highwayman Nic-
olas Jacques Pelletie went down in history as the first man to lose his head to the guillot-
ine.
During the Reign of Terror, at least 17,000 met their death beneath the machine's
plunging blade. By the time the last was given the chop in 1977 (behind closed doors -
the last public execution was in 1939), the contraption could slice off a head in 2/100 of a
second.
The Napoleonic Era
Napoléon's military prowess quickly turned him into a powerful political force. In
1804 he was crowned emperor at Notre Dame Cathedral, and subsequently led the
French armies to conquer much of Europe. His ill-fated campaign to invade Russia
ended in disaster, however; in 1812, his armies were stopped outside Moscow and
decimated by the brutal Russian winter. Two years later, Allied armies entered Paris
and exiled Napoléon to Elba.
But that wasn't the last of the little general. In 1815 Napoléon escaped, re-enter-
ing Paris on 20 May. His glorious 'Hundred Days' ended with defeat by the English
at the Battle of Waterloo. He was exiled again, this time to St Helena in the South