The last public execution in France took place in 1939. How was the spectacle of the guillotine removed from the curiosity of the crowd ? This question fuels a work as dense as it is fascinating, which observes in detail the history of executions under the Third Republic and which opens numerous theoretical debates.
Witness to the execution of Émile Henry in 1894, Georges Clemenceau did not hide the physical discomfort he felt at the time: “ The horror of the vile tragedy then invaded me and gripped me. Relaxed nerves no longer react. I feel within me the inexpressible disgust of this administrative killing carried out without conviction by decent civil servants. “.
We must be grateful to Emmanuel Taïeb for having unearthed this story and for having taken it seriously, thus opening up a new way of understanding the question. Other historians have in fact studied the history of the death penalty and its abolition, analyzing the ideas and speeches of all, without however dwelling on the most concrete aspects. Omission repaired, for the Ancien Régime, by the work of Pascal Bastien, attentive to the forms and echoes of the ritual of execution. It is in this same perspective that the work of Emmanuel Taïeb fits, who offers a material and sensitive reading of the application of the death penalty under the Third Republic.
From Troppmann to Weidmann
Coming from a political science thesis, the work dwells at great length on the imposed references of such research. Michel Foucault first, whose work on “ birth of the prison ” and the technologies of power are obviously determining: the progressive confinement of the guillotine in opaque places in fact responds to a logic of rationalization of punishment which is opposed to “ the brilliance of torture “. Norbert Elias, then, whose “ process of civilization » offers another reading grid: by hiding the guillotine, the State takes note of the lowering of the threshold of sensitivity to violence which characterizes modern societies. Alongside Elias, we must add a third tutelary reference in the person of Alain Corbin and his history of sensibilities whose main methodological principles are adopted here.
The discussion of these interpretive frameworks constitutes the very and perhaps too apparent foundation of a book whose only fault is to indulge in theoretical vertigo fortunately counterbalanced by a remarkable documentary apparatus perfectly highlighted (synthetic tables, carefully commented illustrations , etc.). If Emmanuel Taïeb takes advantage of regulatory sources and execution reports recorded in the clemency appeal files, he builds a large part of his work on testimonies and on the press. Media discourse indeed constitutes the reflection and driving force of the publicization process which is at the heart of the study. Representations thus constitute the essential vector of a comprehensive story, attentive to the complex play of the different actors in the execution.
The story begins on January 18, 1870, with the highly spectacular execution of one of the first major media assassins, Jean-Baptiste Troppmann. It ended in 1939, 566 capital executions later, a week after the disorders which accompanied the execution of Eugène Weidmann, photographed and even filmed in a noxious atmosphere. By a discreet decree-law, the Daladier government locked the guillotine in the prison space. The Weidmann affair may have precipitated the decision-making, but we must look elsewhere for the cause of the renunciation of advertising which was already well underway.
Emmanuel Taïeb shows how the time of executions gradually shifted from afternoon to dawn, in order to reduce the potential audience and prevent overly explicit shots. He similarly explains how the scaffold moved from the city center to the outskirts. If it was still considered useful, in the 1870s, to raise the guillotine in the capitals of the cantons concerned by the crimes committed, this staging intended to reassure brave people and impress consciences fell into disuse as soon as the end of the century. For practical reasons (according to Foucault’s logic) as well as for the sake of modesty (this time following Elias’ model), the execution now almost systematically takes place in the immediate vicinity of the prison.
The secrecy of the guillotine in 1939 therefore constitutes the culmination of a slow and conflicting process, the roots of which Emmanuel Taïeb seeks to grasp. He obviously studies the political dimension, which is however hardly conclusive. Certainly, the Senate played a pioneering role, although ineffective, by carrying out several projects intended to limit or prohibit the publicity of capital executions. Reactivated several times from the 1890s, the fight failed in particular because of the determined opposition of the “ retentionists “, supporters of the death penalty, who do not want to give ground and who develop a martial argument playing on virile courage and the myth of “ beautiful death “. It is not necessary to follow all of Emmanuel Taïeb’s hypotheses on this complex terrain to retain the essential: since there is no consensus on this theme, any initiative constitutes taking a risk which must be carefully guarded against. legislators.
The end of a show
The crisis of the ritual of public execution can be explained rather by the evolution of sensitivities. It is difficult to measure it rigorously, and Emmanuel Taïeb’s analysis does not completely escape the usual defects of an approach which overvalues the words of experts and the discourse of elites without unraveling the mystery of popular emotions. There remains no doubt about the overall movement: the relationship with death is changing in a French society which keeps corpses away and which ceases to make the morgue a place for walks. The spectacle of the guillotine still attracts the curious: up to 40,000 spectators in Montpellier in 1892, a few hundred or a few thousand most often. But the public’s confusion increasingly outweighs the satisfaction of seeing justice done, and the incidents which disrupt the smooth running of the executions become more and more unbearable.
The press accompanies this movement by reducing the space given to the execution story. Reporting at the foot of the scaffold remains a genre in its own right, but it becomes ossified during the first XXe century: in the interwar period, 84 % of executions are recounted in less than one column… By emphasizing this “ exhaustion of the story » which the image vainly attempts to renew, Emmanuel Taïeb shows how the guillotine has become a cumbersome heroine, but above all he explains the ambiguous game of journalists who seek to establish themselves as official and dispassionate witnesses to the judicial process. Soberly recounting the facts, criticizing in passing the unhealthy voyeurism of the crowd, is a way for the press to assert itself as “ the eye of the people “.
It is also a way of responding to transformations in the relationship to information: “ We no longer go to the execution because the desire to be a spectator is fading “. Where the scaffold embodied power in all its splendor, the guillotine of the 1930s became a device unsuited to the evolution of sensitivities and ceremonies of information. Not only is it no longer necessary, but it is even counterproductive: the guillotine is therefore locked in the prison courtyard. It cuts up the condemned more discreetly, thus making it possible to maintain the death penalty for almost half a century.