Oh What A Time... - #77 Citizens by Simon Schama (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed from yesterday!We’ve got a different episode format for you this week; a book review of the 1989 classic chronicle of the French Revolution: Citizens by Simon Schama. We’ll be focussing on; the storming of the Bastille, the flight to Varennes of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and the fearsome guillotine. Elsewhere this week we’re trying to figure out why piano teachers are, by and large, quite mean folk. If you’ve got something to contribute, why not ping us over an email to: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to part two. We are reviewing Simon Sharma's Citizens, Which is a chronicle of the French Revolution if you missed part one was of course the storming of the Bastille We now fast-forwarding to 1791 and talk about King Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette I would say most of my knowledge of Marie Antoinette comes from the song killer Queen by Queen. Is that the same for you? I just think of Let Them Eat Cake. Yeah, I would say all my knowledge is really condensed into one sentence. It's hugely pastry

based. Or bakery based, I suppose. You know, she never said it. Did she not? No. Who said that then? Paul Hollywood. Paul Hollywood. It comes up again and again that people just hate her.

Like the rumours like rippling through Paris, like she is just so, she puts up with a lot. I actually feel sorry for Marion Tournette. Oh, okay. That's interesting. And you know what? There's one thing to say about, I haven't really spoken to anyone about the French Revolution. I've only read this book. So it'd be interesting to see what other people think.

But I think I've ended up feeling like, yeah, I felt just a bit sorry. She has to put up with a lot. And King Louis XVI is actually, I wouldn't describe him as like a decadent autocratic king. He gets the mickey tech guy out of him a lot for the fact he's quite overweight, which when people are starving, not a great look. And I don't think that look particularly helps him. Yeah. Yes. King Louis XVI I would actually say is quite nice. He does a few things that are actually like heartbreakingly cute. And we'll talk about some of those now So it's June 1791. Okay, so we left you at the storming of the Bastille 1789 So now so we've had the National Assembly has abolished feudal privileges

You've now got the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the citizen. So we've enshrined liberty equality fraternity In 1789 we mentioned Hungary in part one. In October 1789, women march to Versailles, angry at the high price of bread. Again, people are starving, these women are demanding bread. But the royal family at this point are living in Versailles. So one of the demands that the women make on their march to Versailles is that the royal family come back to Paris. Like we don't want you out here eating all the bread, we want to keep an eye on you, effectively. Okay, interesting. So they make them come back to Paris. This is the start of things really ramping up for

the royal family. Another thing that happens in 1790 is the assembly passed the law to like nationalize church lands and subordinate the Catholic Church to the state. So they basically start flogging off a lot of the churches and they start taking away anything that the church has a value is being flogged in order to raise money to the state effectively. So now the King, King Louis XVI, he's kind of going along with the reforms, but the suspicion is by a lot of people that he privately hates it and is working against the reforms. And now in the assembly, and this will become important, is that you're getting increasing political polarization. You've got the gérard Girondins who are like the moderates.

I would describe the Girondins as a bit like New Labour. They are like, they're kind of centrist dads. And then you've got the Jacobins who are basically like, they're hardcore left, like they're Soviet left. I'd say Tony Ben would be like the right wing of the Jacobins. And the temperature in Paris is getting higher and higher and the royal family now are essentially trapped in Paris and they're under house arrest effectively. They can't get out, the mobs, the disrespect they're facing all the time is clear that

they're in danger. And as I was reading this story, I was thinking, you've got to leg it. Surely you've got to try and leg it. And that is exactly what they do. They attempt to escape from Paris. I'd say this is one of the most amazing things in history I've ever read. Like when I was reading this, I was like, I cannot believe they're about to do this. If you think of the sort of ferment of the time, people in Paris, they would be thinking that they were about to reimagine and remodel society.

Yeah, that's exactly what they were trying to do. They literally start again. They thought they were like, let's scrap everything. We're all clever blokes and clever ladies. Let's come together. Let's figure it out. That's what it was. Let's start again. Like punk music. We didn't even know what came before. Year zero. Yeah, start afresh. That zero. Yeah. Start afresh. That's exactly that. It's weird. They literally think we can just start again.

We'll create a perfect society. Also, from the Royal Family's point of view, that's such a hard tide of change to sort of battle against, isn't it really? People's worldview is completely shifting and they feel that they are kind of a catalyst in this themselves. They can really be part of this change. How do you start to slow that down? What can you really do?

Yeah. How can you justify your position? One thing I felt when I was reading this is like, what do you do with the monarchy? If you keep them around, but you don't make them king anymore, that's a risk because then you could be the monarchy could come back or you try and bring them in, make like a constitutional monarchy. But is that the perfect way of doing it? Or you exile them, but then they become a threat to the revolution because they could

be out there with a foreign army coming back to take power. Or you murder them. And again, none of these are good options. And so they don't know what to do. The royal family at this point, so you've got King Louis XVI, you've got Marie Antoinette, you've got the Dauphin, Louis Charles is the heir to the throne, he's about six years old. And then Marie-Therese Charlotte, known as Madame Royale, she's the oldest child, she's about 12. And then the king's younger sister, Madame Elizabeth. So that's the core kind of royal family. They're going to try and escape Paris, right? What would your tactics be? Because I was reading this thinking, I know what I would do. What would you do?

Mason- It's got to be year of star, isn't it? You can be in London in, was it, two hours, 20 minutes? Mason- Less than that, yeah. Dead of night, go out in disguise. Will- Tick. Mason- You know, so I would be, I don't know, I'd be dressed as a servant of some sort, I think. Will- You could maybe make use of the Seine. That might be an option. I'd maybe go small boat on the Seine, quietly in the dead of night, and off I go. That's what I do. I'm

away from the streets. People can't see my face. It's got a wide river. I'm in the middle of it. That's what I'm doing. Little boat, bit of bread in there. Off I go. Happy days. Yeah. The thing is, I think, when I was reading this, I was like, well, you've got to go to Dead of Night. You've got to go in disguise. But I think you've got to break off. You can't go all in one big car. You've got to be stealthy. You've got to separate off. Create a scenario where no one would assume you are the king or the queen. Like, don't go with your kids. Don't go together. Have you seen the cartoon Aladdin? Because that is, that's what Jasmine does, isn't

she? She goes off on her own. Yeah. The Jasmine approach. Why don't you do that? It's worth pointing out that Marie Antoinette's brother is Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor. So he's also like the Archduke of Austria. He's an interesting guy himself because he like abolished the death penalty. He was against it. Under his rule, the first nation in modern history got rid of the death penalty and torture. Way before everyone else. Yeah, way before everyone. Like clever, I'd tell you, good guy. I'm going to say it. So they're trying to get out of France. Now the guy in charge is a guy called Axel Fersen.

He's the one who's been put in charge of these plans He's of the Swedish regiment of the French army and what they're gonna try to do is leg it to the Austrian Netherlands 200 miles away and there is basically two days two days by carriage Okay So this is what Furson's recommends. Furson had sensibly urged a light fast coach for the journey with the king and queen traveling separately to divert suspicion but the queen insisted on a capacious burlain that would carry the whole family one which would only travel at about seven miles an hour. Remarkable. I just read that and I was like you can't.

Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. What are you doing traveling all together just in a slow seven miles an hour. So this is what they actually did? So this is what they did. They get a carriage, right? It's massive.

How fast is seven mile an hour? Is that like a person running, isn't it? Oh yeah. I mean a 10 minute mile is not fast. Yeah. You're keeping a lot of traffic for two days. Also the carriage is big. It's black and green and it's got huge yellow wheels.

Oh my gosh. The other thing, I said earlier that there was a few cute things the king does. So they get in there, they break out in the middle of the night. The Marianne twin aunt nearly gets spotted by Lafayette. She hides in the shadows. Oh my gosh. It's the proper thriller. She escapes, they start heading out and as Sharma writes, they were beginning to feel

free. This is what the king says, once my bum is in the saddle again, I'll be a new man. You can just get a sense like, oh, he's stretching his legs. He thinks we're going to make it. An even more obvious sign of his return to form was the obsessive way he plotted the journey on a specially prepared map. He's like, he's doing his own little set up in the back of this car.

Isn't that cute? He's following it on Google Maps. Such a little, such a dad thing to do. But of course you could probably guess this is going to end in a heartbreak, right? So they break a wheel and then that slows them down. They were slow anyway, they left late. They were just falling more and more behind schedule. And the plan is they're going to meet up with the military

escort. But in an astonishing scene, they get spotted by a local postmaster who has seen the Queen before and has seen the King before. You would regret putting your face on all those stamps, wouldn't you? Exactly. On every stamp he's delivered for the last decade. Hang on. Would you mind turning side on? It is you. I've seen you.

Wow. The king, he does this stuff as well where like when they're stopping to change horses and stuff like that, he's chatting with the locals. You know, like you can really get a sense that he knows he's getting away with it. And it's just like, oh, I love a little bit of Banneria, they don't know who I am. Like, what is he doing? That is remarkably stupid. Another moment where you could get away with this. It's so stupid. But this is the most stupid thing he does, which I just found absolutely amazing, right? So they get found, they get hauled back to Paris, the postmaster dobs them in. But even worse than all this, right? Before Louis XVI escaped with his family, he left a letter behind, basically slagging everyone off. Oh my god. It reminded me of like, if you ever quit a job or something and left a really mean

like resignation letter, or just tried to put two fingers up to an old employer, having left. This is what Sharma says about the note he left behind. He rehearsed the history of physical intimidation during 1789, which made it evident that all his professions of devotion to the people of Paris had only been made under duress and the need to safeguard the lives of his family. He complained that the 25 millions granted to him on the civil list was not enough to sustain the honour of France, and that the accommodations at the Tuileries in October 1789 were far from what the royal household had the right to expect or they had been accustomed to.

He asked if Frenchmen, if they really wished that the anarchy and despotism of the clubs were to replace a monarchical government under which France has prospered for 1400 years. He basically left a terrible letter behind that was found. It's like in Bond films when the bad guy explains everything he's done to Bond, thinking he's going to kill Bond and then Bond escapes. Yeah. I mean, that kind of seals his fate. That's the flight to Varan.

After that, when it was clear he was trying to escape and when he slagged everyone off, that for me is the point of no return with the French monarchy and he could have saved himself. How do you retract that? What do you do? I probably do some writing on a page, but change my handwriting and claim it's not me. No, I always write in the bubble letters, the big bubble letters. That's how I write.

What can you do? I'm just really sarcastic. If you're in a monarchy somewhere listening to this and you are about to escape, just don't leave a letter behind. Just don't burn your bridges. Oh my god. It's astonishing, isn't it? There is nothing like the regret you have after making a bad decision. A bad costly decision. Sending a text and you're like, I shouldn't have sent a text. But also a bad decision that's probably going to cost you your life. You'd be like, you stupid tosser, why did I write that? The yellow wheels and the letter, it's been a day of bad decisions.

And chatting to everyone we went past on the way as well out of the wind. That was a mistake. Put in my face and all those stamps. Yeah, another mistake. Really destroyed my anonymity. Yeah. Saying things like, oh, I'd love to meet the king one day, I bet he's a really great guy to people we drove past,

thinking that was distracting from the fact I am the king. No, no, no, he's more handsome than you think when you actually meet him, plus sir. Absolutely. Okay, are you ready for the final part of this review of Simon Sharma, Citizens? Absolutely. This is great. Fascinating. I've decided to end on the guillotine because it's such a symbol of the French Revolution, it's such a symbol of all the violence. I forgot about the guillotine, but I would say this is right up there. We talk about irrational fears from history that we have. And you know, the one that comes up a lot is conscription and maybe sharks.

But the guillotine, I remember as a kid, was a huge fear that I've kind of forgotten about. Yeah. As a sort of posh person killing machine. Yeah. I thought that might be way more of a thing than it fortunately turned out to be. I used to think a lot about how long the head would stay alive in the basket. That was a thing. Crane, you're in for a treat. Because I thought that's what listeners would want to hear

about. Well, I'm writing a Welsh language stand-up show recorded at the Gmarthin Lyric Theatre on the 23rd of November, if you want to come along. 6pm and 8pm. And I've got a little bit of material about the guillotine. Really? Have you? I have. Yeah, yeah, coincidentally. So I googled it the other day. Do you want to hear something absolutely crazy? I bet you it's the fact I'm about to tell you. Oh, go on then. When, what year was the last person guillotined in France? It is absolutely bonkers. I know this. Shall I try and guess? Yes. Well, I'm hoping it's

not 20th century. It is insane. I'm guessing your reaction suggests it is 20th century. So I mean, it has to be before World War II, doesn't it? I'll give you a clue. It was the same year that Star Wars came out. What? When was that? The 70s?

1977 was the year the last person was guillotined in France. M. That's only three years before I was born. A. It's insane. What? I need to know about that very briefly. What was the situation? M. There was a murderer and he was killed by guillotine. He was the last person to be lawfully executed by beheading anywhere in the Western world. And yeah, they used the guillotine. Will Barron This is the thing, I think, that helps me understand why the guillotine was being used in 1977. The guillotine came about because it was seen as a less brutal, more modern method of execution. Medieval execution was

tied up in royal tyranny, the people felt. People getting broken on the wheel, absolutely disgusting screams and horrible scenes, people boiled alive, all that kind of lark. The idea was that if you were to create a machine that offered a kinder, more modern, more intelligent, kind death, that was the idea behind the guillotine. I don't know if you know this, but it was invented by Joseph Ignace Guillotine. But the guillotine himself was actually against capital punishment. He campaigned to stop it. He thought it was like, it was brutal, feudal, et cetera. But when he realized he couldn't get capital punishment abolished, he was like,

well, I'll find a better way to do it. I'll find a better way to kill people, effectively. Wow. And so this got me out, when you're reading about the sheer amount of people that are guillotined in the French Revolution is just incredible. Between June 1793 and July 1794, 17,000 people are guillotined, including the King and Queen, all over France. Okay, that's more people than live in my hometown. I'm thrilled when Swansea City have many people turning up to tortures. I turn to my mate and go, oh, when the attendance is announced, if it's 17,000 plus, I go, oh, alright, big game. Well now you can turn to your friend, Alison, and go, do you know this exact number of people

was guillotined in France between, you can talk whatever the date, what were the dates Chris? 1793 to July 1794. You can chuck that out. There you are. Let's have a new football chat. Next time you're at a football game and there's 17,000 people there, just look around and go at the height of the terror, this is how many people were guillotined. And then yell out, you don't know how lucky you are.

You have no idea how lucky you are. Wow. You speculated on something earlier, Crane, about when you're getting your head chopped off, do you survive for a few minutes? And this is a question that has bothered me. I wouldn't have thought a few minutes. I would have said, I'd always wondered if there was 10 seconds where you got to say a final comment to the person who'd done it to you. Or at least you were thinking, oh, that's really annoying. So there's one story I've just got to read you because it's bothered me ever since. So I'll start in November 1795, there's a letter in the the Monterre and it suggests that it

provides some evidence and hearsay that victims of the guillotine survived for several minutes after. Guillotine himself read this and was absolutely shocked by what he was reading. And throughout his life, he hated that this machine he played a role in inventing had his name. He hated the Guillotine. Imagine that. The username is so synonymous with the method of execution and he hates it. Which part of the body was it the head that remained alive or did the body stand up and start walking home in its 4 minutes of its journey at fit collapse and realise it didn't have a head? It's like juggling.

Where'd they go and pick the kids up from school? But that can't be true. It can't be that your head remains alive for a few minutes. That can't be, surely. Okay. Hang with me. Okay. So to tell this story, I have to start by Explaining what's happening at the height of the terrorists

So the reason there's so many people getting killed in in Paris between 1793 and 1794 all over the country In fact, you get these Jacobins takeover. I would describe those the bad guys They kind of like the Soviets and the thing the Jacobins trying to do is throughout these last few years Just violence is increasing and what they trying to do is essentially restore order through fear. It's called the Reign of Terror, but they're like, we're just going to rule so militantly and use the guillotine so forcefully that we will just cut down any opposition to our rule. Wow. Okay. And they're getting more and more radical. And the one story that stuck with me begins

with one of the leading Jacobins is Jean-Paul Marat. You might have heard of him. Super radical this guy. He's published loads of his views across pamphlets, placards, newspapers, lots of evidence that he was at least in some part responsible for many of the massacres that happened in the French Revolution. The things he's saying and doing as a politician is just ramping up the violence. We get to June 1793 and the Jacobins have taken over and they start targeting their political enemies who was basically everyone who's not as extreme as them, but it starts with the Jiridids and they start guillotining the enemies. Sharma writes when the Jacobins start turning on their political enemies that revolutionary

democracy would be guillotined in the name of revolutionary government. So they're using the guillotine to just eliminate their enemies. July 1793, and this is just such an odd scene. This Jean-Paul Marat, he is housebound with a skin ailment. And another thing is that everyone seems to have bad skin in the French Revolution. The Comte de Mirabeau, another famous figure of the French Revolution, had smallpox as a child. He had a really disfigured face. The skin is not great everywhere you look, but Marat's is especially bad. It's the pre-biactol age, isn't it? There's no clearacyl.

There's nothing. So Marat has got this really bad skin condition, okay? And this is how Sharma describes it. Never particularly healthy, Marat had lately developed a crippling dermatological disorder, which on periodic eruption would turn his skin into a roasting mess of scaly flakes and sores. The only relief for this arthritic psoriasis was to lie in a cool bath. When the attacks came on him, Murat would retire to his tiled bathroom and continue his work on a small table improvised from

an upturned wooden box that stood by the side of his shoe shaped tub. So this guy, Murat, is just sat in a, in this bath tub that's shaped like a shoe. And madly, it still exists, this bath tub. But the bathtub is famous because while he's in the bathtub, a lady called Charlotte Corday, she's the Gerardin, new Labour sympathiser. She decides she's going to kill him because he's responsible for this ramping up political violence, like all these people getting guillotined. She gets access to him in the bathtub by claiming she's got evidence

of a Gérard D'Arc plot in Cannes. Okay. And now back to Simon Sharma. This is the scene where Charlotte Corday visits Marat in the bar. She found him soaking with the habitual wet cloth tied about his bro, an arm slung over the side of the tub. For 15 minutes they talked about the situation in Kahn with Simone in attendance. Then Marat asked Simone to fetch some more kaolin solution for the water to demonstrate her impeccable Jacobinism. Charlotte, in response to his requested name, the plotters recited a comprehensive list. Good, replied Marat, in a few days I will have them all guillotined. Her chair, Charlotte says, was directly by the side of the bath.

All she had to do was to rise, lean over the man, pull the knife out from the top of her dress and lunge down hard and quickly. There was time but for one strike. Beneath the clavicle on the right side, Murat shouted, Amoie ma chérie ami, before sinking back into the water. As Simone Everard ran into the room crying, My God, he has been assassinated. A jet of blood gushed from the wound where the carotid artery had been opened. Wow. Malharous, what have you done?

Was all she could say to the murderess. Wow. Bloody hell. So, Marat has been stabbed. This is a chain of events now that is like beginning as we ramp up towards the end of the French Revolution. It's actually an incredible, really famous, I would say, artwork. If you heard of the death of Marat, I bet you've seen this picture.

No. say artwork. If you heard of the death of Morat, I bet you've seen this picture. I would say it is probably the iconic, one of the iconic images of the French revolution is Jean Paul Morat lying dead in the bathtub painted by Jacques Louis David. And I'm just going to send it to you now. Take a look at this. Oh yes. I've seen that. Yeah. Oh yes. This is the scene. Now here's something I've never heard. Yeah. Oh, yes. This is the scene. Now, here's something I've never heard discussed. That scene of Murat in the bathtub looks amazing, doesn't it? It's like, it's so evocative. Can I send you the picture of what the bathtub actually

looked like? This is the actual bathtub Murat was killed in. It really is shaped like a shoe, isn't it? It's a copper shoe. That's a weird death, being murdered in a bath shaped like a shoe, isn't it? That's a very strange combination of things. That famous image of Murat lying dead in the bathtub wouldn't look as good if he actually replicated what the copper shoe looked like. It looks like a sort of novelty bath. You bring out a Christmas because it looks like a sort of... Yeah, kind of bath shoes getting on a hen door or something.

Yeah. Wow. What a way to go. It's an odd part. But this sets in motion this chain of events that again, I just find this is one of the maddest things about the French Revolution. So Charlotte Corday, she stabbed Marat, she knows this is a death sentence. They're guillotining everyone. They're going to guillotine her for that. Four days after that she murders Marat, like so many others before her and after her She's in the tumbril, the little kind of car on the way to the scaffold and to the machine They call it the machine as well as well as the guillotine, which is I find so cold and creepy

So she remains calm as she's guillotined, but here's a bit that Sharma doesn't mention. This is the alarming bit She's guillotined, her head falls into the basket and a man called Le Gros lifts her head to the ground and then he slaps her on the cheek and witnesses report that she had a look of unequivocal indignation come across her face as she was slapped. She looks at him. Some even say she blushed at the slap. So they've cut her head off, she held it up, slapped her and she's given him a dirty look.

Has there been a Netflix series or something about the French Revolution? No, but there should be, right? But also, it would be in 18, wouldn't it? It's the most violent story. I don't believe she gave him a funny look once her decapitated head had been slapped. Do you? Yeah, there's lots of these reports. First of all, if you're slapping a decapitated head, what's happening is it's spinning,

isn't it? On the hair. Like, it's not just giving you a funny look. It's just naturally by it's… because it's a thing not tethered to anything anymore. It's just spinning. It's actually like the Addams Family. It feels to me that's the public informing the story with something that they… you're dead immediately. If your head comes off, you're done immediately. I'm sure of it. There has to be a scientific explanation for this. Here's what there's no arguing about, which is that Le Gros did slap her. You can argue about whether she reacted to it, but the executioner and operator of the guillotine is a famous

executioner. He's an episode on his own, Charles Henri Sanson. He had to basically excuse, why is this guy slapping the lady who's just been guillotined. Le Gros, he said like, Gros is just a bloke contracted to repair his guillotine. He's not my assistant. So Sanson was on record as saying that. Le Gros in turn was in prison for three months for the slap. Wow. It was people found it so outrageous that he went to prison for three months for the slap. So there's no doubt the slap happened, but people say she reacted with indignity when it was just ahead. Good grief. So we're at the kind

of end of the French Revolution now. I want to end on this actually, because I would say the Jacobins are the bad guys, I think, in my take of the French Revolution. And there's so many, we talked about 17,000 people, so many people guillotined in the story. Corday as we just heard, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI. I would say the vast majority of these people who went to their death somewhat innocently, I would say, most of the time. They went dignity, they didn't go kicking and screaming. But do you know which group of people did go to the machine kicking and screaming?

The Jacobins themselves, the ones who were responsible for most of the murdering at the guillotine. So Maximilien Robespierre, who is the de facto leader of the Jacobins, but by the time the people have had enough of the terror and the bloodletting of the guillotine, they go for Robespierre. He had the fall of Robespierre is another huge moment in the French Revolution. So Maximilien Robespierre, who's kind of like the de facto leader of the Jacobins, they capture him. And in the melee to capture him, he is injured. He injures his jaw. And there's lots of rumors. Some

say he was attempting to take his own life. Others that he was shot as they were kind of storming the building to capture him and his crew. Either way, everyone agrees that when he's in the tumbrel on the way to the guillotine, his jaw is heavily kind of taped up with bandages, etc. I'll end on this. This is right near the end of Simon Sharma's Citizens. And this is where all the Jacobins basically are about to meet their maker on the guillotine. It says, the next morning, Parisians awoke to discover that the guillotine had been moved back to the Place de la Révolution.

After summary identification by the tribunal, 17 of the Robespierreists were guillotined. 83 members of the commune and the Marie followed in the next two days, making it clear that the victorious party for the moment concurred with Couton's claim that clemency is parasite. The end of the architects of the Grand Terror was particularly gruesome, like some mad exorcism of horror. The crippled Couton was strapped to the plank in appalling pain, his bent limbs smashed from his fall. Sandus went to his death every bit the Roman stoic in which role he had evidently cast himself. Robespierre had spent the night helpless on the table of the Committee of Public Safety, where he had presided in icy discipline so many times.

The fastidious prophet of virtue was thrust onto the plank by Sanson, blood smeared over his coat and blotching his nanking britches to give the blade of the guillotine an unobstructed fall. The executioner tore away the paper bandage that had been holding his jaw together. Animal screams of pain escaped, silenced only by the falling blade." Wow. And that is where Sharma kind of ends the French Revolution. But it's a Netflix series, you're right Ellis.

It's astonishing. God, I knew it was gruesome. I didn't know it was that gruesome. It's so gruesome. Wow. And I'm about to have dinner as well. That is the last thing I need to hear. Wow, thank you.

I'm going to have to read the book now. Yeah, it's a great book. Thank you to Simon Sharma for writing it for us in this episode of Our What A Time. Well we'll be back with you next week. Thank you very much for downloading this episode of Oh What A Time. And by the way, we love your input on this show, so if you have any suggestions for topics, anything you would like us to cover, do let us know at hello at owhatatime.com because we love reading your suggestions.

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