David Piendak

Approaches to the French Revolution

Professor N.W. Collins

Technology and Power:

The Social and Political Meanings of Revolutionary Machines

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 The effects of technology, though increasingly pervasive in our daily lives, are often

erased from our social and political consciousness. Similarly, it is all too easy to ignore the

infinite ways science and technologies have shaped society, politics, and culture throughout

history. In a discipline that values human agency, the social and historical effects of technology

are frequently granted perfunctory analysis. More recently, however, academics and historians of

European history have begun to analyze the historical and social processes linking science and

the French Revolution, a logical extension of the well-established relationship between

Enlightenment ideology and Revolutionary thought. Historian Ken Alder has written an

exceptional history of French engineering and its connection to the Revolution, while other

historians have explored the meanings of scientific culture on pre-industrial and industrializing

Europe.1 Yet these histories often lack substantial consideration of the transformative power of

material technology on the lives of common citizens.

Even in pre-industrial France, science and technology played a considerable role in

constructing the lives of French citizens and defining the relationship of the individual to the

state. The Third Estate was not immune to the spread of scientific thought before the French

Revolution; advancement in technology affected the lives of laborers in profound ways.

Similarly, the availability of material technology was a deciding factor during Revolutionary

battles. Women’s access to weapons and arms granted revolutionary women new symbolic, as

well as physical and political power, and began the transition of women into citoyennes.

Likewise, the guillotine, a machine now synonymous with the French Revolution, remodeled the

relationship between citizen and state. As the epitome of rational justice, it became a powerful

1
Alder, Ken. Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997) and Jacob, Margaret C. The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

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and terrifying culture symbol that enabled the French people to partake in what was arguably the

most radical act of the Revolution: regicide.

These technologies were not new to France in 1789; rather, they took on additional social

and political weight during a period of collective upheaval. To imply causal relationships

between material technology and the events of the Revolution is to grant superficial and cursory

analysis to the complex social, political, and economic realities facing France during this period.

Instead, I hope to illuminate a few of the ways material technology, specifically “machines of

death”, can affect social change. As a somewhat similar historical endeavor, intellectual history

offers essential contextualization to historical events, but often focuses on small, elite groups

who had access to the forefront of scientific and philosophical thought. I am more interested in

effects of these technologies on the common citizen. Nevertheless, it is helpful to explore the

context of technology and revolution in France, and begin as so many histories of this period do,

with the Enlightenment.

What was the state of science in France prior to the Revolution? Recent histories have

established that pre-industrial France was a state with deep ties to the sciences.2 Indeed, virtually

every class had a stake in technological advancement. Many historians trace the spread of

popular knowledge of new science and mechanics to the abbé Nollet (1700-1770). Nollet

traveled Europe performing simple experiments in physics and electricity for upper class

audiences who were amazed by his scientific performances.3 Yet while Nollet’s courses were

somewhat theatrical, he grounded his lectures in the practical applications of new science.4 As a

“popularizer” of the sciences, the abbé Nollet fostered a growing interest among the elite in

2
Baker, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth
Century. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 154-156.
3
Jacob, Margaret C. The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 204.
4
Jacob, 200-201.

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mechanization and pre-industrial engineering, an interest that eased the rise of a scientific and

engineering class in France

As Nollet’s scientific lectures on physics, chemistry, and mechanics enthralled the French

elite, the ancien regime began to make formal ties to government-sponsored scientific

institutions.5 History often privileges the French Revolution as the mother of the modern nation-

state, but in the years leading up to the revolution, the ancien regime employed scientists in

many different industries: from munitions and agricultural to social sciences such as prison

construction and epidemic control.6 France was a state on the cusp of scientific modernity.

The development of close ties between scientists and the monarchy cannot be explained

as simply an arrangement of mutual benefit. A social shift was necessary for the French people

to accept scientific change in their lives. The Age of Enlightenment not only espoused scientific

rationality, it offered a new philosophic rationality to the people of France, one that offered a

model of human perfectibility through the development of science.

The Encyclopedia of Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert is one of the greatest products

of French Enlightenment ideology. An immense work published in the decades before the

Revolution, the Encyclopédie discussed new philosophies and arts such as rationalism and

mechanics. In addition to statements encouraging the study of mechanical systems, the

Encyclopedia was filled with sketches of machines in an attempt to familiarize the audience with

recent advancements in mechanical technology. In the “Preliminary Discourse to the

Encyclopedia”, D’Alembert writes an exposé on the major philosophies documented by the

Encyclopedia, and specifically encourages readers to accept the mechanical arts alongside the

liberal, or “intellectual” arts. Comparing the watchmaker to the scholar, D’Alembert asks, “Why

5
Jacob, 202.
6
Baker, 156.

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do we not esteem those to whom we owe the fusee [sic], the escapement, and the repeating

works [of watches] as much as we esteem those who have successively worked on perfecting

algebra?”7 The Encyclopedia actively sought to change the mindset of contemporary French

citizens in matters of mechanics and technology.

Through the Encyclopedia, D’Alembert and Diderot emerged as among the most

important proponents of the study of mechanics, and their work predicted the centrality of

mechanics to the future of France. Like many enlightened thinkers, their ideology was rooted in

the idea of human perfectibility. Scientists and philosophers believed that the application of

rational thought in new technologies could lead citizens and the state to self-improvement and

perhaps even perfection. By the 1770s and 1780s, the ancien regime was deeply entrenched in

science and resembled to many the model of “enlightened absolutism”.8 Academies of science

such as the Paris Académie des Sciences were institutionalized as vital appendages of the

absolutist state, and both civil and mechanical engineers were elevated to an enviable position

within society.9 While the new, rational, organization-state most clearly involved the French

elite, many new technologies held important consequences for the working classes as well, and

some threatened to transform the daily lives of workers in drastic ways.

One of the greatest advancements in pre-revolutionary military technology was the

development of interchangeable parts manufacturing, an achievement of French inventor Honoré

Blanc. This new system of gun manufacture represented the height of enlightened rationality and

specifically employed enlightenment principles in the production of firearms. Blanc’s “Mémoire

Important sur la Fabrication des Armes de Guerre”, presented to the National Assembly in 1790,

details how a system of state-run manufacturing plants could attain the rational ideal of uniform

7
Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Excerpt from Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot.
8
Jacob, 202.
9
Baker, 156.

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production.10 While the military applications of such technology were certainly unparalleled, the

creation a semi-industrial system of production held powerful implications for the French

working and artisanal classes, whose modes of production would be disrupted by the system.

Interchangeable parts ultimately meant interchangeable labor. The manufacturing plant

proposed by Blanc relied on a force of unskilled laborers, threatening the existing system of

artisan production. A new managerial order attempted to standardize measurements of individual

output, and in doing so placed considerable limits on the freedom of the individual worker. An

interchangeable system of manufacture allowed a new technocracy increased control over the

labor process, a change analogous to the transition from task-based production to clock-time in

early modern manufacturing.11 A division of labor invariably transforms the lives of laborers, as

new standards are applied to the work process, divisions between labor time and leisure time are

heightened, and new managerial classes emerge. While the early interchangeable parts system

failed due to high sunk costs, it is representative of how the lives of many working class French

were increasingly affected by the application of enlightenment ideals in labor-related

technologies.

Access to technology during the Revolution was not a new phenomenon. Enlightenment

works such as Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia introduced the French public to the

benefits of a mechanical society. The ancien regime was actively involved in creating a scientific

state, and sanctioned numerous applications of new science throughout France. Developments in

the production process threatened to transform the social lives of laborers like never before.

During the Revolution, however, technology attained a new level of influence. Access to arms

10
Alder, Ken: “Innovation and Amnesia: Engineering Rationality and the Fate of Interchangeable Parts
Manufacturing in France.” Technology and Culture 38, no. 2 (1997): 273-311.

11
Alder, 283.

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could shift the course of the Revolution, and during the most radical portions of the revolution,

technology would come to symbolize more than just scientific change.

As the third estate mobilized against the ancien regime, material technologies became an

empowering force and political tool. The fall of the Bastille on July 14th 1789 was the first

moment where technology, in the form of gunpowder, took on immense symbolic meaning. As

French citizens began to riot against the conservative order, their access to firearms would often

determine the outcome of their actions. With the fall of the Bastille, French citizens, and

specifically women, were quick to seize both the real and symbolic power of firearms. Where

their numbers were not enough, firearms offered women additional strength. In a society where

women were still second-class citizens, access to firearms meant access to social and political

power.

The Battle Cries of Women

Numerous documents and sources describe the relationship between violence and

technology in the women’s riots of October 5th and 6th, 1789. In response to an economic crisis

resulting in the shortage of grain and sky-high bread prices, the women of Paris mobilized in

protest against the King. They took their grievances first to City Hall, and then to National

Assembly, an event that resulted in the King’s forced relocation to Paris. The radical actions of

average working women propelled the Revolution forward.

Stanislas Maillard, a National Guardsman and supporter of the women’s march testified

to a police court the events of October 5th and 6th. His account portrays how exactly important

firearms and munitions were to both sides of the conflict. He describes on the 5th of October, a

day when City Hall was not in session, he found that “the rooms were filled with women who

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were trying to break in all the doors of the rooms in the City Hall”12. This scene worried

Maillard. While the women were largely unarmed at this point, their protestations were violent.

Maillard was ordered by his superior to deliver “three hundred cartridges for the volunteers” in

order to suppress the uprising.13 Immediately, it was clear to the National Guard that they had

better arm themselves; the Bastille had taught the French a lesson on the power of violent mobs.

Upon his return to City Hall, Maillard remarked that the building was impossible to enter,

and “occupied by a large crowd of women who refused to let any men come in among them and

kept repeating that the city council was composed of aristocrats”.14 This key quote implies that

the women at City Hall were not, in fact, taking part in random acts of violence, but a form of

political protest. While bread was scarce, printed news was available to a large portion of the

population, and even working women had new modes of access to national politics. The women

of Paris were discontent with the current state of affairs, and like any legitimate protest, they

aired their grievances before City Hall. Their violence was a means to an end.

Accounts such as that of Maillard often professed shock at the rhetoric employed by the

women of October 5. These were women clearly stepping out of the social boundaries allotted

them, and this was profoundly worrisome to the men who witnessed such events. According to

Maillard’s account, the rancorous women repeated, “…the men were not strong enough to be

revenged on their enemies and that they (the women) would do better.”15 These were women

deeply engaged with the ideals of the Revolution, and growing tired of their subordinated

position within the politics of the nation.

12
Stanislaus Maillard, Stanislaus Maillard Describes the Women’s March to Versaille, October 5, 1789”.
13
ibid.
14
ibid.
15
ibid.

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 A contingent of armed men entered City Hall offering their support, and found and

distributed arms among themselves and the women. This distribution of weapons and firearms is

a decisive turning point in the account. Now armed, the women had the power to force their

complaints upon Versailles and the National Assembly. Even a few firearms could transform a

group from a violent mob into a viable threat to state. According to Maillard, women were sent

out into the districts in order to recruit others, and a large assembly began to form at the place

d’Armes, “whence he [Maillard] saw detachments of women coming up from every direction,

armed with broomsticks, lances, pitchforks, swords, pistols, and muskets. As they had no

ammunition, they wanted to compel him to go with a detachment of them to the arsenal and fetch

powder”. 16

Clearly the French women were not armed with the most modern military technology;

indeed, they armed themselves with anything available to them. However, their greatest strength

came from firearms, and the symbolic power these guns granted them. Prepared to kill, the

women sought gunpowder, but even sans ammunition, the sheer sight of a crowd of armed

women held incredible persuasive power. These pistols and muskets, lacking the ability to fire,

became purely political weapons in the hands of the people.

The women continued their march to Versailles, and convinced Maillard to lead them.

Maillard recounts that at one point, he “… told them that the two cannons that they had with

them must be removed from the head of their procession; that although they had no ammunition,

they might be suspected of evil intentions…They consented to do as he wished; consequently,

the cannons were placed behind them”.17 The cannons were a rallying point for Revolutionary

women, a representation of the fact that as a united group, they were the equals of any men, even

16
Stanislaus Maillard, Stanislaus Maillard Describes the Women’s March to Versaille, October 5, 1789”.
17
ibid.

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the King’s guards. Maillard, aware of the danger of parading cannons (though lacking the ability

to fire) through the streets, wisely convinced the women to conceal them towards the end of the

procession, allowing them inconspicuous access to the grounds of Versailles and their target, the

National Assembly.

A nobleman within the Palace, the Marquis de Ferrières, gives another of the events of

October 5th and 6th, but from within the walls of Versailles. The Marquis begins describes the

events of the following day, when fighting broke out between the crowd of women and the

King’s guards. Ferrières denounces the siege of the palace by the angry women and national

guardsmen and sympathizes with Marie-Antoinette, who found herself the target of the women’s

fury. As the crowd forcefully entered the palace, Ferrières recalls that the “conspirators” cried,

“We are going to cut off her head, tear out her heart, fry her liver and that won’t be the end of

it.”18 While Ferrières may have exaggerated the battle cries of a crowd he saw as “intoxicated”

with fury, it is not difficult to understand why the women chose Marie-Antoinette, a woman who

lived in the height of opulence, as the receptacle of their anger.

The Marquis was horrified by the violence that occurred at Versailles. He writes, “The

parade ground and the courtyards offered a still more hideous picture of popular fury. Troops of

women and men armed with pikes and guns were everywhere hunting the men of the

bodyguard.”19 Equally armed, the women were as terrifyingly powerful as the men, and Ferrières

does not distinguish between their individual actions of “popular fury”. The violence perpetrated

by the crowd was thus in a bizarre sense democratic; both men and women had access to

weapons (though limited), and both sexes killed those who stood in the way of the Revolution.

18
Memoirs of the Marquis de Ferrière, Paris, 1821.
19
ibid.

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 When the King acquiesced to the demands of the women and agreed to relocate himself

and his family to Paris, an immense celebration ensued. Ferrières writes that women were

“sitting astride on the guns, [and] preceded and followed the King’s coach. Every musket was

wreathed in oak leaves in token of the victory and there was a continual discharge of musketry”.

The somewhat sexualized image of the women sitting atop the guns reflects the Marquis’ distaste

for women acting outside of their gender’s social norms. As the parade returned to Paris, men

and women ate and drank in celebration, while weapons were decorated with wreaths and poplar

branches. Clearly the victorious crowd associated their access to firearms as an important part of

their success.

Other accounts reacted with similar horror to the sight of armed French women. A young

officer of the French Guards referred to the women as “harpies”, “rabble”, and “creatures”,

viewing them as inhuman and far from the ideal of womanhood.20 Similarly, in a letter by Louis

XVI’s sister, we find reference to the crowd as “ruffians” in shocked description of the

decapitation and wounding of the King’s Guards by the women. 21 The social spheres that

separated upper class women from men were not as rigid among the French peasantry; the

riotous women were terrifying to the conservative sensibilities of the nobility and upper classes.

Many accounts characterized these women as bestial in their anger, and were quick to dismiss

the movement of working class women as uncivilized.

Yet a movement involving thousands of women cannot be explained as an anomaly

within French society. The battles of these women were rooted in a new form of female politics,

and their successes inspired some, like Olympe de Gouges, to fight for full citizenship rights.

Women’s organizations began to engage with the problem of female citizenship rights. Historian

20
Memoirs of General Thiébault. Paris, 1898.
21
Letters of Madame Elisabeth of France, sister of Louis XVI, published by Feuillet de Conches.

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Dominique Godineau’s extensive research of these groups reveals that clubs for women were

founded in the early years of the Revolution, 1789 to 1791. While initially concerned with

philanthropic pursuits, many of these clubs began to question the existing social structure of

France, and used the early women’s uprisings as evidence of their social and political equality.22

While very few first hand accounts of women’s club meetings have survived, Pierre

Roussel, a social scientist, describes the minutes of a meeting of the Session of the Society of

Women in his memoirs. While Roussel’s account is deeply misogynistic and ridicules women for

their self-fashioning as warriors and citizens, it offers insight into the types of speeches given at

women’s club meetings, and how women’s actions within revolutionary revolts were

transformed into social rhetoric that represents a proto-feminist movement within Revolution-era

France.

In one of the speeches transcribed by Roussel, a woman identified as Sister Monic

compares the women of France to the female warriors of antiquity, such as the Amazons, “whose

existence has been cast into doubt because of people’s jealousy of women”.23 The speaker calls

the audience’s attention to the “citoyennes” of Lille, “who, at this moment, are braving the rage

of assailants and, while laughing, are defusing the bombs being cast into the city.” She continues:

At the Storming of the Bastille, women familiar only with fireworks exposed
themselves to cannon and musket fire on the ramparts to bring ammunition to
the assailants. It was a battalion of women, commanded by the brave Reine
Audu, who went to seek the despot at Versailles and led him triumphantly back
to Paris, after having battled the arms of the gardes-de-corps and made them put
them down. 24
The image of the female soldier and grenadier was meant to empower the women in attendance

of this meeting, much like the way popular images of female laborers (such as “Rosy the

Riveter”) inspired American women during WWII. The victory of the women over Louis, the

22
Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and their French Revolution. translated by Katherine Streip.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 103.
23
Pierre Roussel, “Account of a Session of the Society of Revolutionary Women.”
24
ibid.

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“tyrant” and his gardes-de-corps, i.e., bodyguards, is a particularly potent moment of memory for

these women.

Roussel’s account, though meant to deride women’s movements, offers fascinating

insight into the ways the Revolutionary actions of armed women were being transformed into a

distinct political rhetoric. Armed women, aware of their physical power, were entering into a

masculine sphere, i.e., the battlefield, and other women used these accounts to propose

widespread social change.

Sister Monic makes a cognitive link between women in battle and women in politics. She

states simply, “If women are suited for combat, they are no less suited for government.”

Similarly, when Olympe de Gouges takes the stage, she argues that historically, women have

reigned over numerous societies, and that “the greatest fault of our sex has been to submit to this

unsuitable custom which puts man in the ascendancy”.25 De Gouges goes further than Sister

Monic, who argues that women should have access to politics, and argues that women have the

ability and strength to rule.

Roussel’s account must be read with caution; he wrote considerably on how amusing and

absurd he found this meeting of women, and criticizes them for their political aspirations. Yet his

transcription of the speeches by women’s club leaders illustrates a moment that some view as the

birth of women’s rights movements. Godineau argues that the mobilization of women through

armed crowd violence was an integral part of the transformation of women from “passive” to

“active” citizens.26 By arming themselves and seeking political action, the women of France

actively began to redefine the definition of the citoyen. The Constitution of 1791 distinguished

between passive and active citizenship: active citizens paid taxes, voted, and had the right to bear

25
Pierre Roussel, “Account of a Session of the Society of Revolutionary Women.”
26
Godineau, 107.

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arms; passive citizens did not. Women, though accepted as part of civil society, were defined as

neither passive nor active, and the issue of women’s rights as citizens was never directly

mentioned in the Constitution. 27 Women who gathered in republican clubs began to deconstruct

and critique their social position.

The protests of armed French women marked a shift in the definition of French

citizenship, and served as inspiration for countless other women across the nation. In 1792,

French women began to petition the government for additional rights, and as Godineau points

out, “The right to bear arms was at the heart of their demands.”28 Both men and women

understood well the link between arms technology and political power: men wanted to bar

women from the political process by unarming them, women demanded political rights by

arming themselves. The progression from armed resistance to political organization was rapid.

As women realized that, armed, they were the physical equals of men, they began to ask why

they had been allotted an unequal position within society.

The firearm was the epitome of enlightened rationalism; it killed indiscriminately and

impersonally. It served as a societal equalizer, and allowed women, an entire sex that had been

ritually and politically subordinated to men, to fight alongside men as equals. Thus, it is no

surprise that the accounts of armed women gained powerful political significance. Women’s

clubs across France channeled the revolutionary actions of these women and began to demand

political equality that matched their newfound physical might.

The Rational Decapitation of the King

While history has often overlooked the mass effects of firearms on a marginalized group

such as women, the other great killing machine of the Revolution, the guillotine, has received

27
Godineau, 100.
28
Godineau, 108.

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considerable attention in study and in popular culture. This machine, and its macabre history, has

become synonymous with the Revolution. Its symbolic ubiquity should not be dismissed; the

history of the revolutionary guillotine reveals how technology has the power to shape and alter

entire societies, and how machines can transform the relationship between citizens and state.

Like many European monarchs, the Bourbon rulers were masters of symbolism.

Authority was centered in the person of the king, the absolute source of state power. The French

people measured political and social power via proximity, social and real, to the monarch.29

From the royal insignia down to the architecture of Versailles, French monarchs understood the

importance of communicating their sovereignty to the French people. On the other hand, the

Revolution began as a movement lacking in this symbolic tradition, and these symbols had to be

created in order to counter the power of the Monarchy. Soon, this period was deeply tied to

symbolism. The national cockade, the Marseillaise, and the image of Marianne were a few of the

symbolic garments, songs, and images that came to represent the Revolution.

The symbolic presence of the ancien regime was strong even when the actual monarchs

were not, and so the French Revolution necessitated a severance from the Bourbons’ powerful

grasp on the people. Luckily, enlightened rationalism and a proposal by Joseph Ignace Guillotin

on December 1st, 1789 resulted in a machine of immense symbolic and destructive power: a

machine that that would come to represent the Revolution in all its various stages.

Joseph Guillotin’s speech to the Constituent Assembly in 1789 was intended to reform

the penal codes into a more modern and enlightened system of punishment. While most of

Guillotin’s proposal has been lost, historians have recreated six articles of the document and

salvaged a partial understanding of Guillotin’s original plans. The articles proposed a system of

29
Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 54-55.

15
execution that would maintain the dignity of the condemned and of his family. Decapitation via

machine was Guillotin’s solution to the problem of capital punishment.30 Himself a product of

the enlightenment, Guillotin would have been opposed to the death penalty, but decapitation

represented a more humanitarian and rational form of punishment, one that would represent

France’s modernity.

Guillotin neither invented the machine that would later bear his name, nor was he alone

in proposing its adoption as the official method of capital punishment: the Legislative Committee

consulted a physician named Dr. Antoine Louis in regard to the new penal code.31 Louis

responded with his “Avis motive sur le Mode de Décollation”, a document that describes the

benefits of the decapitation machine over older forms of punishment.

In the document, Louis writes, “Experience and reason both show that the method

previously used to cut off the head of a criminal expose him to a death much worse than the

simple privation of life which is the formal requirement of the law, and which, in order to be

achieved, requires execution be the instantaneous effect of single blow.” Louis, like other

enlightened physicians, was driven by ideals of rationalism in modeling a machine that killed

quickly and efficiently. The idea that every human being, even a criminal, contains within them a

level of human dignity that should not be compromised was indeed very new.

Louis continues to describe old methods of punishment, including a failed execution by

“hacking”; an event “witnessed with horror” by those in attendance32. Other countries such as

Germany and Denmark, Louis argues, had already instituted the use of execution machines.

Reflecting on the execution process, Louis writes, “If the procedure is to be infallible, it must

30
Arasse, Daniel. The Guillotine and the Terror. translated by Christopher Miller. (London: Allen Lane, The
Penguin Press, 1987), 11.
31
Arasse, 21,
32
Dr. Antoine Louis, Avis Motivé sur le mode de decollation.

16
needs be carried out by invariable machine means, whose force and effects we can establish”33.

Louis believed that even simple state procedures like executions could be perfected, but only

through the implementation of new technologies. If France were to represent a rational European

nation, it needed to realize enlightened ideology in all aspects of the state, including executions.

The guillotine, named for the man who first proposed its application, (much to his

chagrin), bore many meanings throughout its lifetime. Intended as a representation of French

humanism and rationality, it liberated the French people of the monarchy, and later transformed

into an instrument of the Terror. Its many meanings may explain the pervasiveness of popular

images and etches of the guillotine, before and after Revolution.

Illustrated above are facsimiles of an engraving (left) and an image (right) that represent the

different ways the guillotine was perceived through the lens of popular culture. The engraving of

“An Ordinary Guillotine”34, on the right most likely originated during the early Revolution. A

33
Dr. Antoine Louis, Avis Motivé sur le mode de decollation.
34
“An Ordinary Guillotine” Museum of the French Revolution, 88.171.

17
caption below states that the guillotine provided “good support for liberty”. The illustration

presents the machine through the use of clean lines and geometric shapes. While it portrays an

“ordinary” guillotine, it is also an image of rational perfection. This guillotine represents a

material technology that pushed the Revolution forward, an achievement of the marriage of

science and revolution.

The antirevolutionary print on the right originated in England, circa 1819. Entitled, “The

Radical’s Arms (No God! No Religion! No King! No Constitution!)”35, this image represents the

guillotine as a chaotic and practically demonic device, a part of a radical coat of arms that

promotes destruction and anti-conservative values. The positioning of the figures subverts the

traditional coat of arms, and the figures of the sans-culottes on either side of the guillotine

resemble bloodthirsty ghouls, eager to destroy the monarchical states. This image is

characteristic of a conservative British response to the Revolution, but also a growing fear

among European monarchies of the threat of revolution. A powerful historical memory began to

form around this important machine and its legacy, a memory that would last into modernity.

The use of the guillotine in public became a form of spectacle that transformed the social

sensibilities of the French people. Public executions were certainly not unique to the Revolution,

but the guillotine was not just another form of death-circus: it represented revolutionary and

enlightenment-sanctioned justice. The machine, like the firearm, exemplified a new form of

highly impersonal death: the guillotine inflicted a killing blow without the active involvement of

an executioner. The blood of the condemned never touched the executioner’s hands, and death

became the function of the state entire.

35
“The Radical’s Arms. (No God! No Religion!! No King! No Constitution!!)” Museum of the French Revolution,
93.12.

18
 On January 21, 1793, the former King of France, referred to in civilian form as Louis

Capet, was executed by guillotine in an immense public spectacle. A doctor by the name of

Philippe Pinel attended the execution and recorded his reaction to this emblematic moment of the

revolution. Pinel refers to the execution as a shocking, “dreadful experience”, and regrets being

obliged to attend the event, yet his account provides insight into the relationship between crowd

and king, and how this event transformed the French people.36

Pinel begins with Louis’ arrival at the guillotine, and describes a brief moment when the

uncertain relationship between ex-monarch and French public was tested. A drum roll was

sounded, but “the drumbeats were hushed for a moment by a gesture from Louis himself.” The

dethroned man attempted to address the crowd, but “at a signal from the General of the National

Guard, they [drumbeats] recommenced with such force that Louis’s voice was drowned …”37

This bizarre moment, one that Pinel found worthy of recording in his letter, illustrates the still

tenuous relationship between a former monarch and his people. Clearly, the person of the king

held some remaining persuasive power, as the drummers first responded to Louis’s request. But

when a contradicting order was issued from the General, a representative of the new and

sovereign state, the drummers played again, overriding their former King’s demand.

In describing the immediate aftermath of the beheading, Pinel writes:

As soon as the execution had taken place, the expression of many spectators
changed and, from having worn an air of somber consternation, they shifted to
another mood and fell to crying, ‘Vive la Nation!’ At least one can say this of
the cavalry who witnessed the execution and who waved their helmets on the
point of their sabers.38
Adding to the sense of spectacle, Pinel describes men and women who approached the bloodied

scaffold, in order to “dip the end of their handkerchief or a piece of paper in it, to have a

reminder of this memorable event.” Pinel claims that the crowd reacted with a range of emotions

36
Pinel, Letters of Philippe Pinel. Paris, 1859.
37
ibid.
38
ibid.

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to the death of their king, but exuberance seemed to predominate.39 Adding to the theater of the

event, citizens attempted to preserve some of Louis’ blood, a morbid souvenir of the death of

their monarch. The death of the King was the birth of the nation, his blood the baptismal water.

Historian Daniel Arasse has written extensively the death of the King, a moment he calls

the “consecration” of the guillotine. He writes, “That Louis XVI should be decapitated by a

machine was, first and foremost, a very powerful example, and a definitive negation of the

exceptional status of royalty.40 Why was this moment exceptional, when many others had been

executed by the guillotine and suffered the same fate? Arasse argues that the execution of the

King of France represented a “transfer of sovereignty”41, a liminal moment in the history of the

French people. The use of a machine to execute the King represented the triumph of the

scientific state over the ancien regime. The symbolic meaning of decapitation should not be

overlooked: just as Louis was beheaded, so the people of France lost their state’s traditional

head. The crowd clamoring for a drop of royal blood illustrates the sway that kingly divine right

still held over society, but for the first time in nearly one thousand years, France was without a

monarch.

The technologies of this period were more than mere props to a larger social and political

drama, and merit further analysis. While inanimate objects such as the weapons and guillotines

of revolution had no true political voice and could not instigate real social change on their own,

through the course of the revolution they became intrinsically tied to human agency. The

guillotine did not depose the King; it was an important symbol and tool for a process begun by

human initiative. Similarly, women did not rally around the firearm, per se, but as a symbol of

physical and political power, it allowed French women to mount a viable challenge to the state.

39
Pinel, Letters of Philippe Pinel. Paris, 1859.
40
Arasse, 53-54.
41
Arasse, 60.

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Studying the relationship between society and its technology is a fascinating and rewarding

endeavor. Analysis of the primary documents of this period reveals the centrality of this

relationship. Even the French language was transformed to accommodate this new technological

social order: how else to explain the existence of a verb—guillotiner (to put to death by

guillotine)—that simply does not exist in the English language?

As evidenced in the wealth of journals and newspapers published during this period,

French citizens were acutely aware of the magnitude of the revolution from its very inception.

Suddenly, everyday objects and events were allotted powerful new political and symbolic

meaning. A remarkable number of French citizens actively engaged the revolution, on one side

or another, and their actions shaped history in profound ways. Women, acting collectively, took

up arms against their government, and in doing so, ignited a movement for equality under the

law. Whether they sympathized with the revolution or the royalists, people all over France were

forced to reconstruct their relationship to the state, most clearly evidenced through the execution

of the King. Enlightened rationalism offered an ideological backbone to many of these actions,

but guns and guillotines—revolutionary killing machines—thrust the revolution forward.

Reflecting on a simpler technological era and the multitude of meanings granted even elementary

mechanical devices, perhaps we can begin to deconstruct the manifold ways technology has

shaped human history, and continues to shape our social and political identities today.

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 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Excerpt from Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of

Diderot trans. Richard Hooker. (Source: <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/
world_civ_reader_2/dalembert.html> [4 December 2007].)

Pierre Roussel, “Account of a Session of the Society of Revolutionary Women.”

Pierre Joseph Alexis Roussel, Le Chateau des Tuileries, 2 vols. (Paris: Legouge, 1802, vol. 2, pp.
34-46. (Source: Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, edited and translated by Darline Gay
Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson. Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1980. 166-171.)

Pinel, Letters of Philippe Pinel. Paris, 1859

(Source: Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, The French Revolution, translated by Richard
Graves, (New York, Capricorn Books, 1960), 201-203.)

Memoirs of General Thiébault. Paris, 1898.

(Source: Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, The French Revolution, translated by Richard
Graves, (New York, Capricorn Books, 1960), 57-60.)

Memoirs of the Marquis de Ferrière, Paris, 1821.

(Source: Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, The French Revolution, translated by Richard
Graves, (New York, Capricorn Books, 1960), 61-66.)

Letters of Madame Elisabeth of France, sister of Louis XVI, published by Feuillet de

Conches. (Source: Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, The French Revolution, translated by
Richard Graves, (New York, Capricorn Books, 1960), 67-70.)

Stanislaus Maillard, Stanislaus Maillard Describes the Women’s March to Versaille,

October 5, 1789”. Stanislas Maillard’s testimony to the Chatelet Commission, in Procédure
criminelle instruite au Chatelet de Paris, 2 Vols. (Paris, 1790), vol. I, pp. 117-32, reprinted from
George Rudé, ed., The Eighteenth Century (New York, 1965), pp. 198-205. (Source: Women in
Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, edited and translated by Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson
Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980. 36-42.)

Dr. Antoine Louis, Avis Motivé sur le mode de decollation, Ludovic Pichon, Code de la
guillotine, Paris, 1910. (Source Arasse, Daniel. The Guillotine and the Terror. translated by
Christopher Miller. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1987, 186-187.)

Images:
1.) “An Ordinary Guillotine”
Museum of the French Revolution, 88.171. (Source: <http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/searchfr.
php?function=find&keyword=guillotine&sourceImage=1&Find=Find#> [18 November 2007]

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2.) “The Radical’s Arms. (No God! No Religion!! No King! No Constitution!!)”
Museum of the French Revolution, 93.12. (Source: <http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/searchfr.
php?function=find&keyword=guillotine&sourceImage=1&Find=Find#> [18 Novbember 2007]

Secondary Sources

Articles:

Alder, Ken: “Innovation and Amnesia: Engineering Rationality and the Fate of Interchangeable
Parts Manufacturing in France.” Technology and Culture 38, no. 2 (1997): 273-311.

Books:

Alder, Ken. Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Arasse, Daniel. The Guillotine and the Terror. translated by Christopher Miller. London: Allen
Lane, The Penguin Press, 1987.

Baker, Keith Michael. Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in
the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and their French Revolution. translated by
Katherine Streip. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984.

Jacob, Margaret C. The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1988.

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