An incident from the French revolution. – Based on a PBS interview with a scholar on French history.
– Can a single wasted life still count for good? from the sketchpad of Harlan Norem
During the French revolution, at the peak of the public executions, crowds of peasants gathered each day in Paris and other cities to witness and be entertained by the fall of the guillotine blade on the necks of the French aristocracy and the elite – male and female, old and young, guilty and guilty merely because of their friendship. A French physician, Joseph Guillotin, invented the guillotine, ‘to make executions quick, painless and merciful’.
In the 1790s, daily a group of condemned citizens, standing in a creaking wooden ox cart, was brought to the site of execution. One after another, thousands of victims of the travesty of a hasty ‘trial’, the pronouncement ‘guilty’, silently mounted the scaffold steps. Lords and ladies, members of the ruling class, the clergy, the educated and wealthy were condemned. Their king, Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette in January 1793, believed they too should be noble and dignified even at their final moment. When they laid their necks on the block, the stock was locked in place and the drums rolled, the crowd became hushed, watching with fascination as the huge, sharp iron blade was released to drop and slice the head from its victim. The head fell into the basket, and the bloody, lifeless body dropped, barely twitching. In a gesture of gloating, the executioner lifted the gory head by the hair, and held it high to show the satisfied mob, which then cheered and laughed at the demise of another ‘enemy of the state’
An incident. On this particular day, one of the condemned was a strikingly beautiful young woman in her mid 20s, dressed as if for a grand ball. She watched those ahead of her walk solemnly up the steps and quietly accept their fate, and heard the raucous celebration of the pitiless mob. When the soldiers indicated to the last victim in the cart that it was her turn, she pulled back. Two soldiers dragged her up the scaffold screaming, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I want to live!” As two then three soldiers grappled with her, she fought like a tiger against their attempts to put her head on the block. She was using her elegant gown to keep the soldiers from grasping her. Trying to subdue her, the embarrassed and angry soldiers tore and shredded her dress and literally ripped off her clothes, until she was fighting them stark naked, still clawing and screaming, “I want to live! I don’t want to die!” So intent on the struggle for her life, she was inured to being naked before the gawking public. The crowd was more than merely ‘entertained’. They were now looking on in silent admiration at the remarkable spirit and the dazzling beauty of this nude young lady, described as ‘pure beauty of face and flawless of body’. A few angry calls to stop were heard from the crowd, but the execution squad had no authority to do other than carry out the sentence. Three soldiers, bleeding from her scratches, finally overpowered their ‘tiger’, forced her head onto the block and locked the stock in place. Then they retreated down the steps. Her graceful hands beat vainly on the wooden block holding her. The mob was watching truly in horror, as the drums could not drown out her screams. “I want to live! I don’t wa…” The blade dropped, cutting her off in mid scream. When the executioner held her bloody head high by its blond tresses, the rabble remained silent!
For the first time there was a sense of grief and shame among the quiet crowd. One by one they pushed through the crowd and left. Soldiers lifted the naked and beautiful-but-headless body and piled it on the waiting wagon of bloody corpses. There were tears among the usually rejoicing mob. A murmur spread among the somber spectators, “She didn’t deserve that… She was no ‘enemy’… She should not have died… She was too beautiful… What a waste… She was so young… She was innocent… Even we know that… They should have let her go free… Haven’t we had enough?”
The courts continued to grind out their deadly sentences. One of the elite, the eminent scientist Antoine Lavoisier, was caught up among the condemned. He was curious how long a severed head could remain conscious. He asked a friend to witness his death at close range and count the number of times he could still blink. The friend counted seventeen. But from the day the young beauty died so heroically, the crowds with a different spirit grew steadily smaller and quieter. In time their reaction turned against the revolution. Finally the revolutionary leader, Robespierre himself, at age 46, heard the judgment he had pronounced so many times, and walked with dignity to the guillotine in 1794.
How many tens of thousands lives were wasted on that ‘state altar’ – blamed for the failures of the French nation? Those victims were used by the courts as scapegoats for a corrupt and cruel political system. That unknown female could hardly have guessed that her fight for her life against brutal and overwhelming odds, with her youth, her transparent innocence, her naked beauty, all exposed to the gawking public, with her fierce spirit to live, would change a mob and start a murmur that joined the political struggle – that changed the history of her nation. This narrative account can be a tribute to her unsung death. My point. That tragic passion opened my eyes to yet another perspective on Jesus’ own naked death on the cross (ignored by Paul). It was not that God desired or ‘required’ her death. It was the people’s and the state’s refusal to recognize and acknowledge their own failures and sins. It was the Old Testament story of putting the blame on an innocent scapegoat, who was then required by their law to be put to death to mollify the consciences of the truly guilty. The theological parallels and overtones are obvious and poignant. The New Testament account depends too much on Paul’s one-dimensional interpretation of Christ’s death, and is not the whole story.
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