VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION

The Guillotine by Numbers

ACCORDING TO SURVIVING city records, 2,918 people were guillotined in Paris between 14 July 1789 and 21 October 1796. Of those, 2,518 were men and 370 women (with 30 victims of unspecified gender).

By age

Under 18: 22

18–20: 45

20–25: 336

25–50: 1,669

50–60: 528

60–70: 206

70–80: 103

Over 80: 9

By profession and status

Aristocrats (who were not politicians, soldiers or members of the clergy): 381

Members of the Assemblée nationale: 39

Members of the Convention: 45

Members of the Paris Commune (city council): 73

Magistrates and ex-politicians: 245

Bishops and archbishops: 6

Other clergy: 319

High-ranking royal civil servants: 25

Members of the professions (bankers, doctors, lawyers, solicitors, etc.): 479

Merchants and shopkeepers: 275

Craftsmen: 391

Soldiers: 365

Writers: 25

Artists: 16

Servants, gardeners, coachmen, etc.: 129

Peasants: 105

Outside Paris, about 14,000 people were guillotined (around 3,500 of them in the west of France during the rebellion there). The approximate social breakdown was:

Workers: about 30%

Bourgeois: about 25%

Peasants: below 25%

Aristocrats: about 10%

Clergy: below 10%

Other causes of death

Estimates as to the numbers who died during the Revolution for other unnatural and/or unnecessary reasons vary hugely. Predictably, republican sources play them down, royalist sources bump them up. It is generally thought that the French people who died of poverty, firing squads, mass drownings, lynchings, cannon fire or in civil-war battles between 1789 and 1796 probably numbered almost 300,000.