French Revolution: Execution of Marie Antoinette

[SaiGirl]

Executions on the guillotine during the French Revolution were conducted in public.
The trials were also very public.
In the case of the royals, they were convicted of high treason, plotting the mass murder of French people and bankrupting the national treasury.

I do not think that the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were fake. Subsequent exhumation of the corpses are convincing.

[rachel]

I have no definite view on who did or didn't die by Guillotine...what I can say, the concept of "death masks" existed as early as 3 September 1658, the date Oliver Cromwell is recorded to have died and his death mask was taken.

If we look forward more practically, travel could take days on horse, a tiring endeavour in itself, and according to the historic record, say, Oliver Cromwell is apparently at just about every major battle of the English Civil War. Then after his death, we have this presented for posterity and are told it is his death mask.



I think he was likely very much alive when that was cast, and maybe before photos, this is what they used to know what certain people looked like.

Logically, we know types of life mask must have existed long before this, because if you are going to fashion a bespoke piece of armour out of steel, you need an exact representation of the person to fit it on. And you can't use the real person because of the nature of how the metal must be worked to get it to fit perfectly. So likely, all the "death masks" history tells us about, are actually "life masks", and in part, used for deceptive purposes, then called death masks as a cover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_armor

Early plate in Italy, and elsewhere in the 13th to 15th centuries were made of iron. Iron armor could be carburized or case hardened to give a surface of harder steel. Plate armor became cheaper than mail by the 15th century as it required much less labor and labor had become much more expensive after the Black Death, though it did require larger furnaces to produce larger blooms. Mail continued to be used to protect those joints which could not be adequately protected by plate, such as the armpit, crook of the elbow and groin. Another advantage of plate was that a lance rest could be fitted to the breast plate.

Signature Maratha helmet with curved back

The small skull cap evolved into a bigger true helmet, the bascinet, as it was lengthened downward to protect the back of the neck and the sides of the head. Additionally, several new forms of fully enclosed helmets were introduced in the late 14th century to replace the great helm, such as the sallet and barbute and later the armet and close helm.

Probably the most recognized style of armor in the world became the plate armor associated with the knights of the European Late Middle Ages, but continuing to the early 17th-century Age of Enlightenment in all European countries.

By about 1400, the full harness of plate armor had been developed in armories of Lombardy Heavy cavalry dominated the battlefield for centuries in part because of their armor.

In the early 15th century, small "hand cannon" first began to be used, in the Hussite Wars, in combination with Wagenburg tactics, allowing infantry to defeat armored knights on the battlefield. At the same time crossbows were made more powerful to pierce armor, and the development of the Swiss Pike square formation also created substantial problems for heavy cavalry. Rather than dooming the use of body armor, the threat of small firearms intensified the use and further refinement of plate armor. There was a 150-year period in which better and more metallurgically advanced steel armor was being used, precisely because of the danger posed by the gun. Hence, guns and cavalry in plate armor were "threat and remedy" together on the battlefield for almost 400 years. By the 15th-century, Italian armor plates were almost always made of steel. In Southern Germany armorers began to harden their steel armor only in the late 15th century. They would continue to harden their steel for the next century because they quenched and tempered their product which allowed for the fire-gilding to be combined with tempering.

Italian Armor, ca. 1500–1510 and later; helmet, ca. 1480

The quality of the metal used in armor deteriorated as armies became bigger and armor was made thicker, necessitating breeding of larger cavalry horses. If during the 14th and 15th centuries armor seldom weighed more than 15 kg (33 lb), then by the late 16th century it weighed 25 kg (55 lb). The increasing weight and thickness of late 16th-century armor therefore gave substantial resistance.

From Wiki, the French Revolution is dated 5 May 1789 – 9 November 1799 (10 years, 6 months, and 4 days), ushering in Napoleon Bonaparte and Atheism...later planned to be transformed into Mohammedanism in Europe, taking Napoleon's words as a hint of the true direction of travel. How's that going?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended and effective political power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety. About 16,000 people were executed in a Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Republic was replaced in 1795 by the Directory. Four years later in 1799, the Consulate seized power in a military coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is generally seen as marking the end of the Revolutionary period.

The thing with the Guillotine, it looks like a magician's stage trick the way it is set up. I'm sure they could have designed the height specifically to hide what was happening at stage level as the victim was being prepared. Probably some sort of ceremonial distraction while the body was being tied to the board to give an opportunity for a switch. And kind of confirming this, the king who introduced the method of execution, and apparently enhanced it, executed by the very same device......Jackanory...tell a story.

The Execution of Louis XVI, January 21, 1793

From the perspective of a trick, there is room for a trap door to be built into the stage, where the intended victim could be hidden with a preprepared change of clothes, meanwhile a replacement dummy dressed in the execution outfit could be switched out and used instead.

trapdoor.gif (5.46 MiB) Viewed 796 times

Further evidence on this side of the scales, latex appeared in France in 1736, that would give the people at the top ample time to put two and two together and come up with the idea, "we can fake realistic heads...I wonder...we just need to create a manor of execution where we can swop out a real person for a dummy apparently in plain view of the audience".

And with regards to France...

French mathematician and explorer, Charles Marie de la Condamine sent a package of rubber from his expedition to Quito to the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris in 1736. He called it ‘latex’ to echo its milky appearance and in 1755 presented a scientific paper on the substance written by botanist François Fresneau.

The French Revolution was 5 May 1789 – 9 November 1799. Look at those dates, I wonder if those heads rolling were real or did they bounce?

Added to this, latex was "milky" in appearance...and what, are we told, the court of Louis XVI took to wearing? ....Only powdered wigs and white makeup. Hmm...

Louis XVI, King of France by Antoine Francois Callet

The thing with the Guillotine, it is a real method of execution...so even if you'd built a system of escape into its design, you've still got to trust the people walking you up the stairs to your fake execution, that they are actually going to use the said trap door that has been installed for you to escape, and not double-cross you last minute.

So, like I say, I can draw no definite conclusion, other than the Banker always wins.

[rachel]

SLIDING DOORS - Dimensioni parallele

[PotatoFieldsForever]

It's a fake head but they make it move

[napoleon]

im gonna agree stage magic from the french ,who led the world in magic and illusion and did til ww1,and im led to belive still have a say in what leaves american soil for space(bermuda triangle)

i just started this series first episode ,i wonder what was the price of freedom for the unsuspecting aristocracy,the ones that instigated im sure were hustled away ,but there has to be evidence of a reported death and the same person living on in other parts of the world ,anyway waffle over ,

this makes me shift in my seat watching ,good posts

[PotatoFieldsForever]

It's a fake head but they make it move

I was wrong there is an opening below the neck, I suppose it was really him then. Here, we know it's fake but if the magic trick is performed during an alleged public execution, it wouldn't give the same vibe. Especially, if you add blood to the scene (even pig blood).

[SaiGirl]

So many movies (even a TV miniseries) have been made about Napoleon Bonaparte.
And I have watched many of them.
On my dusty basement bookshelf, sit five biographies of him (and his battles).

And a least a dozen books on the “Great Revolution” that fully consecrated the arrival of Modernity, the triumph of Progress and canonization of the (Western) Age of Enlightenment.
Since it was that revolution which gave birth to a Bonaparte, fulfilling the historical demands and necessities of the era, as personified and embodied by his personality and accomplishments from an early age.
My first recommendation on basic reading about Napoleon, would be Plekhanov’s “The Role of the Individual in History”.
There the author perfectly places the man and the legend in a comprehensive and coherent historical (material) CONTEXT. So that we see Bonaparte as the inevitable product of those precise historical circumstances

On the other hand. ……

Ridley Scott as a film maker, delivers just about his worst collossally bad version of “Napoleon”.

What a professional tragedy for Ridley Scott, at the summit of his career, to have been ruined by such a lousy screenplay, such terrible miscasting; and a virtually mumbling recitation of his lines by superstar Joaquin Phoenix, who basically gives us another whining, grimacing "Joker"
Notwithstanding the unlimited budget for makeup, costumes, camera work, stunts and special effects.
This one will go down as a mockery; and a “cult classic: for its cheesey dialogue and cartoonish rewrite of the documented “history”.

Some sample reviews of Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon”, starring Joaquin Phoenix as “the mumbling legend” follow below ...




Could it have been been "saved"?
Could it have been “fixed” before its release ?
Not likely.



Here’s some of the worst news about this movie:

[attachment=1]Ridley Scott.jpg[/attachment]

[SaiGirl]

More ruthless dissection of Ridley Scott’s fiasco.
Butchering history through the movies.




One great thing about the Internet and social media, is how many of these I see available on youtube.
The negative reviews of this movie are through the roof.
Before the Internet, we could never have had this many reviews.
It’s a different world now for movies and TV.
They can’t fake official canonical "history" as easily as they used to.

[SaiGirl]

Destined to become a cult classic in the history of "greatest hits" biopic mediocrity.

This picture says it all.

[rachel]

I wonder if it's part of the plot?

I haven't got the time and inclination to make anything more than an observation, but coming from watching computer reviews, something that used to be in my professional scope, since about 2020, I have seriously noticed, the reviews offered on search for something like an Apple product, they are all...scripted is not the right word...but definitely the reviewers work to a press pack telling them what to include in their review. One clear one, a listed feature of the M1 Macbook was it regaining its startup chimes. FFS...would anyone seriously even bother mentioning it? And yet every so-called independent reviewer I have watched has something nice to say about it. Not one, 'The people at Apple are clearly taking the piss there to include that as a "feature"'. What's more, my favourite reviewer seriously slowed down in 2019, and stopped producing content altogether in 2021. Going by a cryptic comment on one of his last videos, he decided to walk away from what the review system had become.

Personally, I cannot see movie reviewers being any different. If all the top search hits are saying the same thing, then they have been universally briefed to pan the film. Scott's "Get a life" comment feeds into this, because he's not even attempting to defend the film. I would suggest that this is Capitalism's new advertising model, people on youtube moaning about how crap a film or series is. It's too universal not to be a purposely designed tool...Like Mark Hamill criticising his character's Star Wars: Last Jedi appearance in every interview he did when the film was released.


The other 70+ times Mark Hamill subtly bashed last jedi/disney



Guess what, he changed his mind...

Mark Hamill Says He Regrets Publicly Criticizing 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'



It might be genuine, but I can't help thinking he got the okay to pan the film in the first instance so he had something interesting to say. He's an actor after all, promotional interviews are part of the job. We'll have to see if there is a renaissance when it comes to the Ridley Scott Napoleon film in the next few years...you know, statements like 'it wasn't as rubbish as I originally reviewed...let's look at the film again...'.