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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 and how the Guillotine came to loom so large over the fate of so many.

In this episode, Tom and Dominic explore the transformation of executions. 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…

00:00 Introduction
03:45 How the French see the guillotine
05:45 Guillotine as the symbol of the revolution
09:00 Violence’s role in the revolution
12:05 The role of the executioner in French society
19:50 Execution as a religious Christian ritual
23:00 The most notorious public execution in the Ancien Regime
33:50 The invention of the guillotine
41:53 Reforms to the death penalty during the French Revolution
52:49 The first execution with the guillotine
54:20 How the guillotine built up a mythology of being the symbol of the revolution
57:49 Summing up

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Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Video Editor: Jack Meek
Social Producer: Harry Balden
Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett
Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor