alt Hacker NewsMost guillotined were commoners [0] - not the wealthy nor the intelligentsia.
> Or fix inheritance. And by fix I mean tax as hell
If France can't fix it [1] after politically powerful billionaires stymied it [2], neither can the US
[0] - https://theconversation.com/the-french-revolution-executed-r...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/10/31/french-l...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
Replies
vdupras • last Saturday at 6:12 PM
The statistics cited in the article you cite talks about the Nobility/Clergy/Other classification. There is no wealth-related statistic. It's entirely possible that a good fraction of the "Others" category were wealthy bourgeois.
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> Most guillotined were commoners [0] - not the wealthy nor the intelligentsia.
The guillotine for everyone was itself an egalitarian idea (I am not saying it really was progress, because the death penalty in itself is atrocious, but...) The status quo before was that the nobles were decapitated with a sword or axe (quick and usually painless death), whilst the commoners were hanged (usually long and very painful). In that light, a quick and painless death for everyone was better.