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 31 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