In a main square in France, thousands of soldiers, some on foot and others mounted on horseback have gathered to view a decapitation. Civilian on-lookers, supporting the French Revolution, have gathered to witness the public beheading of their, once, king - King Louis XIV. A guillotine stands high upon a pedestal for all to see. A pedestal on the right is empty and broken. Young boys and young woman can be seen sitting and climbing upon a rock, presumably to gain a clearer view. Executioners have already released the blade from 9 feet up, where it then came swiftly down and separated the kings head from his body in milliseconds. The executioner now circles the stand as he holds up the head to show it to the thousands who have gathered to see the fate of Frances' last ruling monarch, and to cheer on the 'new order'.
You may wonder how I see expertise in this sketch, and I trust I can demonstrate that for you in the next few paragraphs. You see, it is not the device that demonstrates expertise, but the individuals: Joseh-Ignace Guillotine, Antonie Louis, Charles- Henri Sanson, and the populace, who promote actions of the 'State' that show great promise as an example of expertise. Let me illustrate.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, born 28 May 1736, died 26 March 1814, for whom the name of the device has been given, did not invent the device we call the guillotine. In fact, Guillotine was a doctor who later regretted that his name was bound to this device. Guillotine was opposed to the death penalty, or capital punishment, in France, but at the same time, knowing he was unlikely to change the common opinion, he wanted capital punishment to be carried out humanely, and equitably, among the masses: that is; he wanted a method whereby...
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...ual whom has a similar goal. In this manner a tsunami of individuals can create a revolutionary change that may last for years, decades, centuries, or millennia; this does not show the expertise of an individual, this demonstrates the expertise of humanity to cooperate, assimilate, accept, and take small steps - all the way to the moon, and beyond. We are experts, but, sadly, we may not be aware of the consequences of our success.
Works Cited
http://blog.catherinedelors.com/21st-of-january-1793-death-of-louis-xvi-on-the-guillotine/ http://www.crimelibrary.com/blog/article/the-gruesome-history-of-the-guillotine/index.html http://www.guillotine.dk/pages/history.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Ignace_Guillotin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Henri_Sanson http://www.history.com/news/the-guillotines-first-cut
One can either be innocent or guilty. Likewise, one can choose to either condemn or empathize with the accused. These binaries prove amply important throughout Sherman Alexie's 1996 poem entitled "Capital Punishment," in which a prison cook recounts the day of an inmate's execution. Throughout the poem, the speaker parenthetically inserts on five separate occasions the phrase "I am not a witness," but near the conclusion of the poem, he contradicts his previous denials, proclaiming, "I am a witness." Readers of the poem may at first be puzzled by the speaker's repeated denial that he is a witness followed by his eventual declaration that he is, in fact, a witness; however, further examination reveals that the speaker, by progressing from condemnation
Aside from giving the guillotine a purpose, the Reign of Terror stands as a necessity in the story of French independence. It might not have been the proudest of times, but the Reign began on a strong premise: holding together a new government by purging the bad apples for the betterment of the whole cart. While the Reign of Terror developed into an overly excessive bloodshed, it was justified by the war stricken circumstances and necessity for the support of the ongoing revolution. Despite the extreme heights the Reign of Terror reached, it was necessary to maintain the fragile presence of the government and preserve the new liberty a majority of the population had been denied before. In a 1793 letter from Vendée —a major counterrevolutionary hub— local government was fending off on-going riots and rebellion while being invaded from the north by Prussia.
In conclusion, the guillotine was a more enlightened way to execute someone than what people used to do. What they did to execute people before the guillotine was horrendous and inhumane. Hanging people and stoning people isn’t one of the kindest ways to execute a person. The guillotine went along with the enlightened way of thinking, and made executions less painful. The guillotine was one of the best execution devices ever created for its way of killing
The Guillotine brought equality in death to the French Revolution. Sometimes people of higher classes would receive quick deaths whereas people of the lower classes would receive slow, torturous deaths. People of many classes were being killed and the Guillotine allowed everyone to receive equal punishments rather than being tortured. The tribunals were self-selected revolutionaries that dictated who was guilty and who needed to be executed. There were 44,000 of these councils. During the tribunals, most people were prosecuted bases on suspicions and no hard evidence. The Guillotine was also depicted on pins which were worn by supporters of the French Revolution. The Guillotine was a very significant tool and a minimum of 440,000 were executed via the Guillotine. In my analysis, the Guillotine added to the motto of the French Revolution “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.” The Guillotine made death equal and assured liberty and
Dr. Manette is imprisoned in the French Bastille for eighteen years by the cruel French government and unknown to him those many years of pain and suffering serve as a great sacrifice in the eyes of the Revolutionists. He is recalled to life from the time he served when he meets Lu...
...reason and theft and falsely for sexual abuse against her own son. After the two day trial, an all-male jury found Marie Antoinette guilty on all charges. Marie Antoinette was sent to the guillotine on October 16, 1793. In the moments before her execution, when the priest who was present told her to have courage, Marie Antoinette responded, "Courage? The moment when my ills are going to end is not the moment when courage is going to fail me."
A guillotine is a decapitation device that quickly chops off it’s victims head in the blink of an eye. According to document F, About 16,000 people were believed to have died at the hands of it. No matter how small or petty a crime was, people would have been executed for it. Even Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, the leaders of France before the Revolution, were decapitated by one, as was the leader of the Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre. Another method to weed out the counter revolutionaries was a network of spies that watched out for anyone who spoke out against the government, “A careless word of criticism spoken against the government could put one in prison or worse” (Document E). The punishment for a crime as small as ththis was more often than not
...force of permanent revolution. This revolution requires becoming aware of how much we desire stability, how easily we internalize the domination of others, and how much we believe that we lack the power to act on our own. “You cannot take what you have not been given, and you must not give yourself, You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere (Le Guin 301). Humanity is capable of great harm, even when the larger society doesn't teach harm. With great effort, desire, and positive social models humanity is capable of a cooperative and wholly beneficial social structure, it only takes some revolution.
Later on that day, a delegation was invited into the prison by the Governor of the Bastille, Bernard de Launay. DeLaunay then invited the delegation to lunch with him. When they did not return the mob became angry, fearing that they had been detained. A second delegation was sent forth. These soon came out again with the message that the Governor had adamantly refused to surrender. The delegates also had the information that the cannon were unloaded. This piece of news was all that the mob needed to urge them on. "...But the fury of the crowd continued to increase and their blind wrath did not spare de Launay's escort...Exhausted by his efforts to defend his prisoner...he had to seperate from M. de Launay...Hardly had he sat down when, looking after the procession, he saw the head of M. de Launay stuck on the point of a pike...The people, fearing that their victim might be snatched away from them, hastened to cut his throat on the steps of the Hotel de Ville..."
It is the firm belief and position here that committing such a crime as murder is punishable by death. Americans should take a position for anyone on death row, to be executed sooner rather than later.
Unfortunately, he died before experiencing Haiti’s separation from France in 1804. However, along the way of success of both revolutions, a toll occurred on the numerous lives lost. The Reign of Terror in France was created as a way to protect the republic from its internal enemies, but instead 16,000 people were guillotined. Many documents were shown to be describing the execution of the Reign of Terror to be gruesome and wrongful such that J.G. Milligen stated, “The process of execution was also a sad and heartrending spectacle”, in The Revolutionary Tribunal. Milligen continued to describe the vivid scene of the execution, but this was only one event and many others have died in the fall of the Bastille and the attack on the royal palace.
...st powerful symbols of the French Revolution and killed an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people during the Reign of Terror. (Doc F) The guillotine was a sharp, angled blade that killed quickly the most deadly and feared method of invoking fear during the revolution. (Doc F) These methods; however, became too extreme and the deaths of the incident was not justified.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
The guillotine was first introduced during the French Revolution by a man named Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin. He is a physician who first was involved with the issues of medicine. On December 1, 1789 he became interested in the idea of capital punishment. He invented the guillotine. It was a contraption used for causing immediate and painless death. It included a falling blade, running between two upright boards of wood and later a basket. Therefore, one may believe that the design of the guillotine helped with executions.
When someone is legally convicted of a capital crime, it is possible for their punishment to be execution. The Death Penalty has been a controversial topic for many years. Some believe the act of punishing a criminal by execution is completely inhumane, while others believe it is a necessary practice needed to keep our society safe. In this annotated bibliography, there are six articles that each argue on whether or not the death penalty should be illegalized. Some authors argue that the death penalty should be illegal because it does not act as a deterrent, and it negatively effects the victim’s families. Other scholar’s state that the death penalty should stay legalized because there is an overcrowding in prisons and it saves innocent’s lives. Whether or not the death penalty should be