How the Nazis slaughtered 16,000 people by guillotine: Found in a Munich cellar, the death machine that reveals a forgotten horror We associate the guillotine with the brutality of the French ...

The machine was initially tested on sheep, calves, and human corpses. Finally, Roederer reached an agreement with a German harpsichord maker, Tobias Schmidt, to manufacture the guillotine.

And the machine that brought about Louis’ death would ultimately become just as iconic as the revolution’s act of mob violence. The guillotine’s story in France had begun just a few years prior.

But it’s also a comment on France’s sometimes bloody past, as the guillotine makes clear. The 14-foot-tall machine (last used to execute murderer Hamida Dhandoubi, in 1977) is installed near a ...