Madame Guillotine and the head of Peter Kürten.

Recently, a good friend of mine posed an interesting question. To what extent has the guillotine symbolised France and French history? I had never considered the point before but it is certainly worth pondering. As a symbol and method of capital punishment, the story of the guillotine is a contender for one of the most macabre chapters in world history.

The relationship between France and the guillotine has been largely ambivalent. The device has undeniably come to represent the French Revolution, the era in which it was introduced. As a symbol the guillotine carries connotations of mindless terror and brutality that knows no bounds. This is particularly ironic as the man who proposed and designed it, Dr. Joseph Guillotin, was one of many Enlightenment thinkers who argued in favour of humane, classless methods of execution. Of these, Voltaire was perhaps the most eloquent when he wrote 'ingenious punishments, in which the human mind seems to have exhausted itself in order to make death terrible, seem rather the inventions of tyranny than of justice.' Classless the guillotine was, thousands felt the cold kiss of Madame Guillotine on the nape of their neck, from common peasantry to King Louis himself. The period from September 5^th, 1793 to July 27^th, 1794 became known to posterity as la Terreur (The Reign of Terror) and it was between these dates that the guillotine was to claim as many as forty-thousand lives. George Orwell, in his critique of Charles Dickens (1939), notes that 'to this day, to the average Englishman, the French Revolution means no more than a pyramid of severed heads.' Orwell argues that the description of the guillotine in Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities 'create in his mind a special, sinister vision which he has succeeded in passing on to generations of readers.' Doubtless authors such as Dickens played some role in fostering the guillotine's grim legend but its role in European history has not been limited to the upheavals of Revolutionary France.

The guillotine was subsequently adopted by many countries such as Belgium, Sweden, Greece and Germany. It continued to be used steadily but not until the hideous period of Nazi rule did the guillotine see as much action as it had done in the last years of the eighteenth century. Whilst the workings of the device itself had drawn little criticism in the light of the crueler actions it had replaced, the guillotine was still seen as the epitome of reactionary inhumanity by some. During the Paris Commune of 1871, a socialist uprising in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, a guillotine was destroyed by the people, no doubt in repudiation of the past and as declaration of the new order. Freidrich Engels wrote that 'the guillotine was brought out by the 137^th battalion of the National guard, and publicly burnt, amid great popular rejoicing.' No more evident was the symbolic link between French Republican identity and the guillotine than Paris in 1871. The Commune was eventually ruthlessly suppressed and the guillotine remained. 

The twilight years of the guillotine are often the facts of this bleak saga that surprise people the most. The last public execution in France was that of Eugen Weidmann on June 17^th 1939. The final head was to fall on September 10^th 1977 when Hamida Djandoubi was executed in Marseilles by Marcel Chevalier, France's last executioner. Chevalier's son Eric was present at the execution so that he may one day carry on the family tradition. France eventually did away with the death penalty in 1981 and with it beheading. The days of Madame Guillotine were finally over.

As a footnote to this story I would like to recount the strange tale of Peter Kürten's head. Peter Kürten was a German serial killer dubbed the 'The Vampire of Düsseldorf'. Charged with nine murders and seven attempted murders, he was found guilty and beheaded in Cologne on July 2^nd, 1931. Scientists, desperate to discover a manifest cause of his psychopathic behaviour, dissected Kürten's head but to no avail. It was mummified and placed in storage. Quite what happened to this preserved oddity in the following decades is immensely difficult to ascertain. Whether it was looted by some eccentric U.S. soldier at the end of World War Two, sold on the lucrative underground markets that deal in such commodities or both, the head ended up in the United States. There it may be seen today. It is located in 'Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum', Wisconsin. Amongst a fake mermaid and mummified two-headed pig, Peter Kürten's head is suspended in a small fridge and slowly rotates to the amusement of the many visitors. A troubling end for a troubled man. 

'Let impure blood water our furrows': The Battle of Frenchman's Field, 1797.

In the corner of an unremarkable Welsh field in Pembrokeshire are buried the bodies of two French soldiers. The reasons why they came to rest in foreign soil, their graves weathered by farming and the passage of time, may be found in one of the most curious footnotes of Welsh history. This is the little known story of Britain's last invasion and the skirmish that was Britain's only land engagement of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

By February 1797, Great Britain and Austria alone remained defiant in the face of Revolutionary France. King Louis XVI had gone to the guillotine five years previously and much of Europe had compromised with or allied to the Republican regime. Whilst farm-carts on the continent were piled high with decaying corpses, inhabitants of the small coastal town of Fishguard in West Wales were about to have Liberté, égalité, fraternité forced upon them at the point of the bayonet. They weren't about to submit willingly.

The French invasion had been the brainchild of General Lazare Hoche. His plan was simple, a force of 1,400 troops under Irish-American Colonel William Tate was to land in Wales and march on Bristol, fermenting insurrection as they went. The ultimate goal was to topple King George III and his government amidst a popular British uprising. Rebellion in Ireland had been planned and Hoche had banked on anti-English sentiment and a deep rooted Celtic nationalism to aid Tate in his venture. He was to be thoroughly disappointed. Pembrokeshire was, and remains, a largely conservative area with a certain degree of deference to the monarchy. Whatever nationalist feeling may have been prevalent in Wales was to remain largely academic as the people of Fishguard and the surrounding area were not prepared to be manhandled by the French. Tate's forces landed near Fishguard at Carregwastad Head on 22^nd February, 1797. His force was a mixed bag. Six-hundred of his men were later described by an eyewitness as 'men of the finest military bearing', grenadiers and volunteers under Irish officers Captain Morris and Lieutenant St. Leger. The remainder of the troops, some eight-hundred, were little more than a rabble. Royalist prisoners of war and criminals pressed into service. Some were still wearing their leg irons when subsequently captured by the British! Once ashore, most of these jailbirds ignored the orders of their officers and set about indulging in rapine and looting. A Portuguese merchant ship had recently been wrecked off the coast and wine collected by the local populace was seized by the mob of ill-disciplined troops and many became blind drunk. Only St. Leger and the grenadiers maintained any sort of order (Captain Morris had injured himself disembarking and handed command over to his subordinate). On the 23^rd St. Leger and his men were ordered to take the strategic outcrops of Garnwnda and Garngowil. They did so and it was to be in view of this position later that same day a heated skirmish would take place, the only such encounter of the whole shambolic affair.  

A reconnaissance party of three British sailors and a local volunteer stumbled upon four half-drunk French soldiers in a field behind Bwlch Y Rhos Farm. The inexperienced French fired a ragged volley of musketry. The British returned the compliment. Both sides missed. A second French volley was also ineffective. The sailors and the volunteer pushed on and fired at the reloading rabble, shooting one Frenchman dead and mortally wounding another. As the remaining invaders attempted to drag the casualties away, Lieutenant St. Leger and his grenadiers advanced to provide covering fire for their comrades from behind the hedges lining the field. The British, however, held their ground and gave fire. One of St. Leger's men fell dead. After a short while, both sides withdrew. It had been a resounding victory for the British patrol. They had killed two invaders and mortally wounded another.

Frenchman's Field. The hedges at left are allegedly from where St. Leger's men provided
covering fire. At centre are the stones where the two dead soldiers are believed to have
been buried. 

In the meantime, the locals had fought back with venom against the French who had set about pillaging their homes. The six-foot tall cobbler, Jemima Nicholas, took a pitchfork and rounded up twelve Frenchmen before marching them into custody. She remained a local legend and died at the age of 77. There were further casualties as farmers clashed with republican troops in the farms around Fishguard. Eventually, local volunteers and yeomanry cavalry under Lord Cawdor occupied the town itself and bluffed the vulnerable Tate into an unconditional surrender. At 2pm on February 24^th, the French could be seen marching down the road from Pencaer to Goodwick beach, flags flying but no drums. The French surrendered and after piling arms they were held prisoner on Fishguard Square inside the Church and Town Hall. The officers all signed the surrender document in the Royal Oak Inn in the presence of the British. Local legend has it that several hundred Welsh women on their way to observe the invasion, wearing their red shawls and black round hats were mistaken for regular British infantry, striking terror into many of the drunken, disorganised French.

The bodies of the two dead invaders were left out on the field for days after Tate's surrender, stripped for souvenirs by locals. They were eventually buried in the corner of the land on which they had died. All that marked their grave was one large stone. The field behind Bwlch Y Rhos Farm is known as Parc Yr Ffrancwr (Frenchman’s Field) to this day. With Tate's surrender ended the last invasion of Britain. The skirmish at Parc Yr Ffrancwr was a tiny engagement, but it is one of great significance as the only occasion on which French troops fought on the British mainland during the entire Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Perhaps it is pertinent to end with a line from Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' (1975). During Barry's first taste of battle the narrator comments thoughtfully: 'though this encounter is not recorded in any history books, it was memorable enough for those who took part'. Undoubtedly, the men who fought and died in Frenchman's Field would concur. 

(I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my old comrade Chris John for his help in preparing this piece. He knows these events and the fields in which they transpired like the back of his hand. The photograph is (c) Chris John.)

By way of introduction.

Thank you for reading this blog. Whether you're an old ally reading with interest, someone who has accidentally stumbled upon this whilst seeking electronic resources to plagiarise for your A level coursework or have merely come to sneer. (I sometimes sneer at people so can only assume that my uncharitable nature may be visited upon me in the fulness of time.) Many years ago I saw a broadsheet cartoon satirising the notion of blogging. It was undeniably damning. A bespectacled internet lurker sat at his computer furiously punching away on his keyboard in some potentially lethal, caffeine-fuelled outburst of electronic ecstasy. Smeared across the monitor was simply written 'ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!!!'. It was a brilliant lampoon and had an accurate point to make. Much of what is written on the internet is preposterously self-obsessed. I am confident millions people around the globe enjoy reading bourgeois, loafing, false social-prophets pontificating about how cold their latte was after pilates on Tuesday evening. I'm not one of those people, unfortunately. Although I bear them little ill will. Thus, with a hefty dose of self awareness and piety, that is what this blog will not be. This blog is not going to be about me but about other people. Interesting people, evil people, good people, brave people, cowardly people, unremarkable people, Welsh people. People who, for better or for worse, made the world interesting. Every week I shall pen a short piece on the bizarre, twisted, obscure, compelling, and neglected areas of history. The sole purpose of this endeavour is to make your day that little bit more interesting. Please enjoy it as such.