The guillotine was first introduced as a humane, efficient, and above all modern form of execution in April 1792; during the radical phase of the Republic, it would become the symbol of the Terror. This engraving suggests the guillotine is providing…
In a woodcut that appeared in Révolutions de Paris, the guillotine is used before a crowd of soldiers and patriotic onlookers, to execute nine "émigrés" who had tried to fell France and thus demonstrated themselves to be traitors.
The Terror, which many justified then as now as an unfortunate necessity, raised enormous anxieties. A hostile cartoon equates the Revolution with severed heads.
This engraving focuses on expurgating the clergy, this time with vomiting as the intended method. Here, the cleric spits up the unfair advantages enjoyed in the old regime.
The image points out the destruction of the nobility, depicting the arrival in Hell of a "marquis" and several other "aristocrats," described in the legend as "conspirators" and "traitors."
Yet another image from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. These panels reveal similar occurrences at the police prisons of the Chatelet and the Bic*tre, where altogether an estimated 800 were…
This image, also reproduced from the newspaper R*volutions de Paris, shows crowds massacring refractory clergy and prisoners. The panels depict the former convent of the Carmelites (where 163 were killed) and the prison known as the Force, which had…
In one of the most widely reported incidents of the September massacres, a "jury" of twelve "commissioners" was formed spontaneously in the Saint–Germain Abbey to judge the refractory clergy held there as prisoners. After an interrogation and threats…
These images, all engraved and widely circulated years after the event, show four different moments of the arrest. Each successive image renders the scene increasingly dramatic. The first, a woodcut executed shortly after the event, shows the postman…
