The French Revolution executed royals and nobles, yes – but most people killed were commoners

• For a lot of people, mention of the French Revolution conjures up images of wealthy nobles being led to the guillotine.
• In fact, most people executed during the French Revolution – and particularly in its perceived bloodiest era, the nine-month “Reign of Terror” between autumn 1793 and summer 1794 – were commoners.
• […] more carters than princes were executed, more day labourers than dukes and marquises, three or four times as many servants than parliamentarians.

The ‘national razor’

• The guillotine was first put to use on April 15 1792 when a common thief called Pelletier was executed.
• Initially seen as an instrument of equality, however, the guillotine soon acquired a grim reputation for its list of famous victims.
• Scientist Antoine Lavoisier, pre-romantic poet André Chénier, feminist Olympe de Gouges and legendary lovers Camille and Lucie Desmoulins were among its victims.

The guillotine wasn’t the only method

• Historians estimate around 20,000 men and women were summarily killed – either shot, stabbed or drowned – during the Terror across France.
• They also estimate that in just under five days, 1,500 people died at the hands of Parisian mobs during the 1792 September massacres.
• The vast majority of these people killed were ordinary French men and women, not members of the elite.

Why was so much blood shed during the Reign of Terror?

• France fought at its borders against a coalition led by Europe’s monarchs to nip the revolution in the bud before it could threaten their thrones.
• Meanwhile, civil war ravaged the west and south of France, conspiracy rumours circulated across the country, and political infighting intensified in Paris between opposing factions.

How the focus came to be on beheaded nobility

• This is largely influenced by the fate of Queen Marie-Antoinette and its many depictions in pop culture.
• British counter-revolutionary propaganda in the 1790s and 1800s also helped popularise the idea that aristocrats were martyrs and the main victims of revolution executioners.

A broader legacy

Beyond the guillotine and the Reign of Terror, the legacies of the revolution run far deeper. The revolution abolished entrenched privileges based on birth, imposed equality before the law and opened the door to emerging forms of democratic involvement for everyday citizens. The Revolution ushered in a time of reforms in France, across Europe and indeed across the world.