In the past, there were certain ways to punish people that can scare the daylights out of today’s so-called civilized man
The lady was furious at the treachery of revolutionary leaders. With the storming of the prison-fortress of Bastille on July 14, 1789, the French Revolution had started in a thunderous manner, kindling fervent hopes in the bosoms of all the unprivileged classes and sections of society — aptly called the Third Estate — that consequent upon the overthrown of the despotic Ancien Regime all ancient prejudices and injustices would also be swept away, to usher in the golden era of equal opportunity.
Time had certainly come for the deprived and humiliated female half of the population, now bubbling with enthusiasm, to get their rights and become full citizens in an egalitarian order. And they were not far wrong in entertaining such expectations, because most of the revolutionary stalwarts — Count Mirabeau, Camille Desmoulins, Jean Marat and General Lafayette of American fame — were all well-known liberal and enlightened personalities.
And soon enough they had cause for further jubilation. A republican charter — Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens — was passed by the National Assembly on August 26, 1789, under the auspices of the Supreme Being (revised title for god), proclaiming the new gospel of human equality. It listed ‘man’s natural, inalienable and sacred rights’, and the first words of the declaration solemnly affirmed that ‘men are born and remain free and equal in rights’. ‘Rights of man’ automatically covers the ‘rights of woman’, Mme Gouges and Mme Roland, female activists, and millions others must have giggled with satisfaction, but it did not take long to shock them into the grim reality. Woman (femme) did not qualify as man (homme). Did they not belong to the human race? They did, but only as the passive, dim-witted and frail constituent of the species.
Even as feminist heroines were seething with rage over the continuing misery of the womenfolk and planning a new attack, a kind-hearted member of the National Assembly was busy doing something to serve the cause of Egalite in an unbelievably unique way. ‘Let them have equality in death, if not in life,’ he must have soliloquized, ‘and let the condemned criminals, each one of them — rich or poor, noble or common male or female — die as painlessly as possible.’ So the good doctor, for he was a physician, introduced, in April 1792, a wonderful death machine, initially called Louisette after the name of its inventor, Antoin Louis, but later christened La Guillotine in an eponymous homage to its proponent, Dr Josephe-Ignace Guillotin, who had urged the revolutionary law makers to adopt this humanitarian execution machine, to the exclusion of all other methods of carrying out the death penalty. ‘Action of this invention is so fast,’ claimed he ‘that the criminal would sooner be dead than he could begin to feel pain.’
This dreadfully marvellous contraption, a chilling symbol of the revolutionary terror, consisted of two upright posts surmounted by a crossbeam and grooved so as to accelerate a sharp, oblique knife, made heavy at the back to ensure a forceful fall. The condemned man was strapped to the bascule, a sort of shelf, which was manipulated down and forward so that the man’s neck rested right under the knife. A banana stem, as thick as a human neck, was normally used to make sure that it was in perfect working order. The blade fell with an incredible speed and with a great bang. From the time the man was attached to the bascule to the time his head snapped loose only a few seconds had elapsed. As a head rolled into the basket, death count was hoarsely announced by the storied old woman who paused in her knitting for only a moment. Executioner took the head by the ears and exhibited it to the supervising officials and the howling spectators as ‘proof positive’ of the victim’s death, and shouted the pronouncement: Au nom du peuple francais justice est faite.
Then he replaced the head in the basket. Head and trunk were later sewen together, but at the height of the Jacobin terror, when tumbrils upon overflowing tumbrils were bringing condemned royalist families and political opponents to Place de la Revolution (now Place de la Concorde), it was considered a real task to match the right body with the right head, and not cause a great deal of confusion on the Day of Resurrection.
So, the common people of France owed a debt of gratitude to the conscientious doctor for enabling them to rub shoulders with the aristocracy in the death row, and die almost painlessly.
Death by handing, flogging, garrotting, drawing-and-quartering and burning on the stake were the main methods of taking the life of a lowly criminal. The victim had to undergo agonies of pain before the eyes of a thrilled and terrified crowd. A fell spectacle indeed — holy terror providing holy entertainment and holy warning to the unholy hoi polloi. ‘Rotating on the Wheel’ was another method of torturing a criminal to death, and was much favoured by the Inquisition.
Prisoner was hoisted to the top of the pillory and firmly bound to a big wheel. The flogger came with an hourglass that he placed in a corner. His whip was made of leather thongs, studded with sharp splinters of metal. As the wheel started to revolve, offering a full view to every member of the crowd, including women and children, lashes began to rain down upon the bare back and shoulders of the shrieking wretch, drawing blood and sprinkling the spectators with droplets. The torturer went on like a maniac until an official pointed to the hourglass. Punishment time was up, The horribly gashed prisoner was already dead or about to die.
Garrotting was another pet method of torture and death. Victim’s neck was fitted into an iron collar, which was slowly tightened until asphyxiation occurred. Another way of garrotting was the use of a length of wire with wooden handles at either end. In both cases the executioner could prolong the condemned man’s agony for hours unless bribed by the victim’s friends.
Drawing-and-quartering, high sounding but exceptionally cruel, required the victim to be dragged (drawn) all the way to the execution platform, tied to a gibbet for public viewing, disembowelled, and made to look at his own burning entrails. His dead body was finally hacked into four parts (quartering).
Burning at the stake was the usual punishment for witches and sorceresses, who were in cahoots with the Prince of Darkness. In the middle ages hapless women were frequently denounced as witches, in much the same way as today in our part of the world such females are regularly condemned as karis. The Inquisitors tied the unclean woman to a stake and let her be consumed by raging flames, providing another savage entertainment and a grim lesson to the crowd. Centuries ago, English generals, outwitted and humbled by the young Maid of Orleans, had, with the help of subservient aristocracy and a venal clergy, exacted their revenue by getting Joan of Arc declared a sorceress, because she cut her hair and dressed like a man, and then burned at the stake.
History was now clamouring for a new Joan of Arc, a new female martyr for a glorious cause. So, there appeared another simple woman, a mature widow but not less inspired and resolute than the brave young virgin of yore.
Not accepting the exclusion of women from the National Assembly, Olympe de Gouges, a struggling writer, presented her own Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizens. And Robespierre, the heartless dictator, turned out to be as mean as Bishop Cauchon of the 15th century. Gouges, a butcher’s daughter, was slaughtered by the butcher of terror, who sent her to the guillotine.
The little French lady, unrecognized and unsung by the Pakistani women who, thanks to the British Raj, got their voting rights without a painful suffragette struggle, has remained a lodestar, a glorious source of inspiration for the champions of female rights in Europe and America, and her marvellous manifesto was at once a bold start and the beckoning goal. Such heroic souls never decay in the charnel of history. n
The lady was furious at the treachery of revolutionary leaders. With the storming of the prison-fortress of Bastille on July 14, 1789, the French Revolution had started in a thunderous manner, kindling fervent hopes in the bosoms of all the unprivileged classes and sections of society — aptly called the Third Estate — that consequent upon the overthrown of the despotic Ancien Regime all ancient prejudices and injustices would also be swept away, to usher in the golden era of equal opportunity.
