On the eve of Halloween, what could be more fitting than a virtual visit to a cemetery and some creepy TRUE stories about its "inhabitants"?
As most people know, the French invented la Guillotine as a way of making executions more "humane"; it was put it into official practice in 1792, and they made regular use of it over the centuries. In fact, it was still being used for capital punishment in France until the last beheading in 1977 (the death penalty was not abolished in France, however, until 1981). No period was perhaps more prolific than during "the Terror" in the early years of the French Revolution.
The Terror lasted from June 1793 until July 1794. The young democracy in France could not withstand the insanity that followed the initial overthrow of the monarchy, newly established democratic rules of law were cast aside and large scale public beheadings began as a means of "saving" the Revolution's cause. Of course, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were the most famous casualties of the Terror. Robespierre took power in the government, and a Tribunal sentenced thousands to death by guillotine for little or no reason, and what's more the beheadings were not limited to the nobility. It is estimated that as many as 40,000 people lost their heads and their lives at the guillotine during the Terror.
Most of these were executed at what is now Place de la Concorde, but another guillotine was set up at Place du Trone near Place de la Nation in what is now the 12th arrondissement of Paris. In a six-week period in June-July 1794, about 55 people a day were killed there, with their bodies (and severed heads) thrown into mass graves at the Picpus Cemetery. The sister and mother of General Lafayette's wife were among those beheaded and tossed into the mass graves; his wife requested that when she died, she be buried at Picpus to be near her family, and Lafayette is buried there alongside his wife, an American flag flying over his grave at Lafayette's own request.
Among those executed were 16 Carmelite nuns and over 180 other women, as well over 1100 men from all walks of life; 1,306 in total. The nobles were in the minority in this group, most of whom were men and women "of the people" as described on a plaque in the cemetery. In the chapel, there are two walls covered with stone inscriptions of the names and professions of all the victims.
In what can only be called poetic justice, Robespierre was kicked out of his job in an upheaval at the Convention and then executed without trial by the guillotine on July 27, 1794, thus ending the Reign of Terror at last. However, Robespierre himself was not guillotined at Picpus nor buried in the cemetery there; he was placed in a cemetery at what is now the Place de Goubeaux and later his bones were accidentally moved to the Paris Catacombs with so many others.
The cemetery at Picpus was later purchased in secret by a noblewoman in 1797, whose brother was buried in the mass graves. In 1803 more family members bought up the rest of the adjoining land and it was turned into a small private cemetery where some noble families still bury their dead today.
Address: 35 rue de Picpus, 75012 Paris. Admission: 3 euros and you get a small flyer in the language of your choice with the history on one side and a map on the other.
A very deep well as you enter the courtyard at Picpus:
A rather violent garden angel, attacking an imp of Satan:
One wall with the names of the 1,306 inscribed (there is a another on the opposite wall):
If you look more closely you'll see that people from all walks of life were executed here, from nobles, soldiers and policeman to poets, domestics, priests, farmers and porcelain painters, all sentenced to the guillotine without trial and probably without evidence of their "crimes" against the State:
The body count, broken down by male/female and categories:
The mass gravesites:
Family tomb of a noblewoman from the mid-1800s; a woman with a lot of titles! Clearly, not all the nobles were wiped out by the Terror:
On the same tomb, some very pretty ironwork in the form of a cross on a door:
And the oddest thing of all, something I don't think I have ever seen in any French cemetery -- an old wooden cross as a grave marker, the writing that was once painted on now faded and peeled beyond recognition:
Like something you'd find in an old rural cemetery in the U.S. rather than where I spotted it, surrounded by the usual French above-ground tombs. Is there someone actually buried here beneath this cross? Who knows?
