Throughout history, one of the most ruthless and brutal execution methods ever used was decapitation by axe or sword. Some of the most infamous victims of this execution included kings or queens, some condemned for their terrible treatments of their people, but others executed upon the will of their husbands. For example, King Henry VIII ordered two of his wives to lose their heads. But after death, their remains were given varying treatments, and some years later were exhumed, like King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France, and were given a proper burial. But some of the most famous executed heads in history still remain missing to this day. In this account, we look at where these are and their strange stories.
Anne Boleyn was born around 1501. The daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a diplomat, and Lady Elizabeth Howard, she was well educated, spending time in the courts of the Netherlands and France, where she developed the sophistication that later caught Henry VIII’s eye. When she returned to England, she became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife. Henry had already been married to Catherine for many years, but she had failed to give him a surviving male heir. Their only surviving child was Princess Mary. By the late 1520s, Henry was desperate for a son, both for the security of his dynasty and his personal pride.
Anne stood out at court. She was not the classic beauty of her age, but was considered attractive, witty, and intelligent. Henry became infatuated with her, but unlike many women who had given in to the king’s advances, Anne refused to become his mistress. She demanded marriage. This was no small request. For Henry to marry Anne, he had to divorce Catherine of Aragon, something the Catholic Church forbade. When the Pope refused to annul Henry’s marriage, Henry broke away from Rome, creating the Church of England with himself as its head. This was the English Reformation. In 1533, Henry married Anne, making her queen, and soon after she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth.
Anne Boleyn’s position depended on giving Henry a son. The king’s desire for a male heir had already driven him to break from Rome and risk political upheaval. Elizabeth’s birth in 1533 was a disappointment, though Anne promised more children would follow. Sadly, her subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriages, Henry’s eye began to wander, and Anne’s strong-willed personality began to cause tensions. She was outspoken, ambitious, and not afraid to challenge Henry. What once made her appealing now made her dangerous. At the same time, enemies at court, especially supporters of Catherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary, plotted against Anne. They saw her as the reason Henry had abandoned his long-standing queen and the Catholic Church. When Anne failed to produce a male heir, her enemies seized the opportunity to destroy her.
In the April of 1536, Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, moved against Anne. Cromwell had once been her ally, but by now the two were rivals for influence over the king. Cromwell arranged for Anne to be accused of adultery, incest, and treason. The charges were shocking, and Anne was accused of affairs with five men: Henry Norris, William Brereton, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton, and, most scandalously, her own brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford. Now, adultery was bad enough for a queen, but incest was almost unthinkable. Modern historians generally believe the charges were fabricated. The evidence was weak, with confessions likely extracted under pressure, and the dates of the alleged affairs were often impossible. But in Tudor England, a trial was often just a formality once the king had made up his mind.
Anne was arrested on May 2, 1536, while watching a tennis match at Greenwich Palace. She was taken by barge to the Tower of London, entering through the same gate where she had once been welcomed as queen. Now she arrived as a prisoner. Her trial was held in the tower on May 15, 1536. It was a grand affair, with peers of the realm sitting in judgment. Anne defended herself with courage and dignity, denying all charges, but it was hopeless. The jury, which included her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, found her guilty, and the verdict meant death. Her brother George was also condemned and executed. The other accused men were tried separately, found guilty, and executed on May 17, 1536.
Normally, a highborn woman condemned to death would have been burnt at the stake. Henry, however, granted Anne a mercy. She would be beheaded. Even more unusually, he ordered a skilled swordsman from Calais in France to carry out the execution, rather than using the traditional English axe. This was seen as a more precise and less painful death. Henry may have chosen it partly out of a lingering affection for Anne, or perhaps because he wanted her death to be swift and dignified, leaving less chance of a botched execution.
On the night before her execution, Anne prepared herself with remarkable composure. She prayed, took communion, and asked those around her to remember her kindly. She was reported to have said she was prepared to die, though she hoped for forgiveness in the next life.
The morning of May 19, 1536, was a bright and clear one, and at around 9:00 a.m., Anne was led out of her chambers to the tower scaffold, built on Tower Green. A small crowd gathered, not the great public audience of other executions, but a select group of nobles, courtiers, and officials. Anne wore a gray gown trimmed with fur, a crimson skirt, and a small headdress. She walked calmly to the scaffold, and her ladies wept behind her. On the scaffold, Anne delivered a short speech. She did not protest her innocence directly, as that could have been seen as treasonous against the king, but she spoke with grace. She praised Henry as a kind and merciful prince, asked the crowd to pray for her, and commended her soul to God.
After removing her outer garments and headdress, Anne knelt upright in the French style of execution, without a block. Her ladies covered her eyes with a blindfold. The French swordsman waited quietly, and suddenly struck. With one clean blow of his sword, Anne Boleyn’s life ended. She was around 35 years old. Her ladies gathered her body and head, wrapping them in cloth, and then placed them in an old arrow chest for burial.
Now, it was clear to anyone that a lot of preparation had gone into the execution and the formality of this, but little thought was actually given to the burial of Anne. The fact her body was placed, as was her head, inside a small box which previously held arrows shows that she was not allowed a proper coffin, or it was more probable that this had not been made for her. Kings and queens often have coffins made for them, even decades before their deaths, but the speed of Anne’s downfall prevented this. Of course, a proper coffin could have been sourced, but no one had thought of this. Her burial site was inside the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, the small church next to the execution scaffold, and her grave was very quickly dug, with her remains thrown inside. The church had been a place of burial also for local parishioners. But throughout the reign of Henry VIII and subsequent Tudor monarchs, the tower’s church became the place of burial for many high-ranking people who were executed inside the tower or on Tower Hill.
Now, the remains were left buried for some time, but during the reign of Queen Victoria, a lot of renovation work took place inside the chapel. And with this, the floor was replaced, and the remains of Anne Boleyn were allegedly discovered. Found at a depth of just two feet were the bones and skull of Anne Boleyn. Her remains had been heaped in a spot, with her grave being disturbed by that of a later burial. The queen’s royal physician, Dr. Frederic Mouat, arrived at the tower to examine the remains and confirm they were Anne’s. He wrote that they belonged to a female of between 25 and 30 years of age, of a delicate frame of body, and who had been of slender and perfect proportions. The forehead and lower jaw were small and especially well-formed. The vertebrae were particularly small, especially one joint, the atlas, which was that next to the skull, and that they bore witness to the queen’s little neck.
A later, more thorough examination concluded that the bones of the head indicate a well-formed, round skull with an intellectual forehead, straight orbital ridge, large eyes, oval face, and a rather square, full chin. The remains of the vertebrae and the bones of the lower limbs indicate a well-formed woman of middle height with a short and slender neck. The ribs show depth and roundness of chest. The hands and feet bones indicate delicate and well-shaped hands and feet with tapering fingers and a narrow foot.
With this, it is clear that the head of a woman who matched roughly the age of Anne, and who had lost her head through decapitation and execution by a sharp instrument such as a sword or axe, had been found. Of course, there was no DNA testing performed at the time, as this did not exist, and if this would take place today, it would confirm whether the remains belonged to Anne Boleyn or not. Her body was placed inside a small lead coffin and container, and this was marked with a plaque. Now, the head and bones were all placed inside there, and they were then re-buried inside the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula below the high altar, and they are in a very prominent spot. Her grave is marked today by a memorial plaque, and Yeoman Warders even spend time praying at Anne’s sight of burial. This is where her head and her other mortal remains were deposited. But of course, without DNA testing, we cannot be 100% sure that the remains discovered were of Anne Boleyn, despite some evidence pointing towards the fact they do belong to her.
The French Revolution began in 1789, and Versailles became a dangerous place for the royals. In October that year, a mob of Parisian women, angry over bread shortages, marched to Versailles and forced the royals to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The move placed them under the watchful eyes of the revolutionaries. The turning point came in June of 1791, when the royal family attempted to flee to the Austrian Netherlands. The flight to Varennes failed. They were recognized and brought back to Paris under armed guard. This shattered any remaining illusion the king and queen could coexist with the revolution. The monarchy was then suspended, and the royal family was imprisoned in the Temple tower. Four months later, France was declared a republic. Louis XVI was tried for treason and guillotined on the 21st of January, 1793, leaving Marie Antoinette widowed and politically irrelevant, but still dangerous to the republic as a potential rallying point for royalists.
In August of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety moved Marie Antoinette to the Conciergerie, a high-security prison often called the anti-chamber to the guillotine. Her cell was small, damp, and heavily guarded. She was kept under constant surveillance by gendarmes, with little privacy, and during this time she suffered further personal losses. Her son, Louis-Charles, styled Louis XVII by royalists, was taken from her and placed in the care of a revolutionary cobbler, Antoine Simon, who was tasked with re-educating him in revolutionary principles. Under duress, the child was made to accuse his mother of incest, a charge that would be used at her trial.
Marie Antoinette’s trial began on the 14th of October, 1793, before the revolutionary tribunal, presided over by judges Montané and Herman, with the public prosecutor, Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, leading the case against her. The indictment accused her of depleting the Treasury through reckless spending, engaging in espionage and communicating with Austria and other foreign powers, plotting with counter-revolutionaries to overthrow the republic, and the most inflammatory charge, incest with her son, based on the coerced statement from Louis-Charles.
When the incest charge was raised, Marie Antoinette refused to answer. Instead, turning to the women present, she said:
“If I have not answered, it is because nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge made to a mother. I appeal to all mothers present.”
Her words drew murmurs of sympathy, even from hostile onlookers. One female market seller in the gallery reportedly cried:
“I believe you, madam.”
Despite these moments, the trial was a foregone conclusion. Witnesses called against her included former servants and guards, many with grievances or revolutionary zeal. The jury deliberated for less than an hour before returning a verdict of guilty on all counts, and at 4:00 a.m. on the 16th of October, she was informed of her sentence: death by guillotine the same day.
Unlike Louis XVI, who had been taken to his execution in a closed carriage, Marie Antoinette was placed in an open tumbril cart, the same used for common criminals, as a deliberate humiliation. The cart rattled over the cobblestones, escorted by soldiers and flanked by drummers to drown out any sympathetic cries. Crowds thronged the streets to watch her final journey, shouting insults like “Down with the Austrian!” while others were silent, struck by the sight of the queen sitting upright, hands bound, staring straight ahead. The radical journalist Jacques Hébert wrote that she looked haughty and unrepentant, while the British spy Helena Maria Williams, in her letters, described her as majestic in the face of death.
Arriving at the scaffold, Marie Antoinette stepped from the cart and climbed the wooden steps. Executioner Henri Sanson later recalled that she accidentally stepped on his foot and immediately said:
“Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose. It was a moment of courtesy in the midst of revolution’s brutality.”
At 12:15 p.m., she was bound to the plank. The blade fell, and her head was held aloft by Sanson. The crowd roared approval. Some dipped handkerchiefs in her blood as keepsakes. The body and the head were placed in a plain coffin and taken to the Madeleine cemetery, where they were buried in an unmarked grave with quicklime.
After her execution, the head, as mentioned, had been displayed. It was shown to the crowd, most certainly. When her body was taken to the Madeleine Cemetery inside of a coffin, her head was placed in the cart. The burial saw the queen’s head actually be placed between her legs in an act of disgrace. This was done for high-profile burials of those who were executed on the guillotine. The application of quicklime in the grave was done to ensure her remains decayed and decomposed quickly. But this actually solidified on top of the coffin, leaving Marie’s remains relatively well preserved within the coffin. The head was relatively well preserved inside of the coffin and was discovered in 1815, when there was a call to exhume and give the body a decent burial, one fit for a queen.
The queen’s grave was found relatively easily, and a number of bones were discovered, and it was said that the head of the queen was relatively eerily intact, and also pieces of her white hair were also found on the skull. It was claimed that the skull was entire, and its position indicated incontestably that it had been severed from the body. They also found remains of clothing and particularly two elastic garters in good preservation. The whole were placed in a chest and locked up. The scene was so shocking that people actually fainted when the head of the queen was lifted from the grave.
After this, the remains were placed inside of a new chest and were to be moved to a different house, ready to be given a decent burial. This took place at the Basilica of St. Denis, and the funeral was large and royal. The bones of Marie Antoinette and her skull were placed inside of a vault in the royal crypt, along with the remains of other French rulers, and her husband was buried nearby in a vault too. Now, the head of Marie Antoinette that was exumed still remains inside of this grave today, and the tomb is marked by a marble slab that states her name and her date of birth and death. The vault, it’s believed, has never been opened since that day. So the head of Marie Antoinette today remains within the vault inside the Basilica of St. Denis. There have been some doubts over the years that the bones and remains discovered of her did not belong to her, but the fact stockings which were issued to her inside of prison before her execution were discovered shows that it most probably is the executed queen, Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette remains one of the most interesting figures in European history, and many consider her today to be a victim of the revolution, and say that she should not have been guillotined.
Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector following his defeat of the king’s royalist army, and he was seen as the leading figure behind the execution of King Charles I, in which the king was beheaded by axe following an extraordinary trial in London. But similarly to the king, Oliver Cromwell would also be executed by axe. However, it would be his remains which were also hacked to pieces by an axeman. In one of the most bizarre and sadistic scenes in English history, Oliver Cromwell’s remains were dug up and were paraded throughout the streets of London. King Charles II had ordered the execution of those men responsible for his father’s execution when he came onto the throne. And despite Cromwell dying in the meantime, he was not exempt from the regicides. But one part of Oliver Cromwell went on a crazy and bizarre journey throughout the centuries, and today it remains at rest in his former university. But as the centuries rolled on, his head was passed through a number of different people’s hands, including drunks, traveling showmen, and many more. But what is the story behind the bizarre and brutal tale of Cromwell’s head?
Following his posthumous execution, Cromwell was disgraced by the king and his royalist government. He was seen as a man who had willfully killed a man sent by God to rule England. But before the restoration of the monarchy, many revered him as a hero. When he died, Cromwell was given a huge funeral, one befitting a man who would be virtually reigning over England as a monarch. His funeral was even based on James I’s, but in opposition. His posthumous execution, which took place a few years later, showed that the new king would not tolerate any of the behaviors of the men who sentenced his father to death.
Cromwell’s posthumous execution was a savage sight. His body was exumed and dug up from Westminster Abbey, where it had been laid to rest, and it was then brought along with the bodies of two other high-profile regicides. It was placed on a sledge and was paraded many miles throughout the streets of London, before it was brought to Tyburn, the infamous place where the Tyburn tree, a huge gallows, stood, where thousands lost their lives throughout the centuries. Charles II was trying to punish those men responsible for his father’s execution. And at Tyburn, Cromwell’s body was then hanged in chains and displayed in front of the huge crowd. His decaying body was strung up and displayed for a number of hours before it was then handed over to an axeman. The executioner then hacked Cromwell’s head from his body, and his head was severed with eight blows from the axe, each one causing the crowd to gasp.
Cromwell’s head was then held up in front of the crowd and was proclaimed to be that of a traitor, before it was then placed above Westminster Hall on a twenty-foot metal spike. It has been claimed that Cromwell’s daughter managed to retrieve his body from a pit at Tyburn, and then she had it interred in a priory belonging to her husband. But Cromwell’s head remained above Westminster Hall for a number of years. The posthumous execution occurred on the 30th of January, 1661, but his head remained on the spike until the late 1680s, for over twenty years. But then it disappeared during a storm which battered London whilst James II was on the throne. It became dislodged and then fell onto the floor, and it was then picked up by a passerby.
The man who came across Cromwell’s fallen head was a guard of the exchequer’s office, and he concealed the head in a cloak and then stored it within the chimney of his house whilst people looked for it. There was a search arranged, and it was a key reminder of what happened to those who crossed the monarchy. Money was even offered for it to return safely. But in 1710, it was owned by Claudius Du Puy. He was a Swiss-French collector, and he had created a private museum, and his artifacts became one of the best attractions in London, with people flocking to his museum to see Cromwell’s head.
But then the head seemingly lost value and importance, and in the late eighteenth century, it passed through many different hands of lesser importance. It was owned by a failed comic actor and a drunk named Samuel Russell, who believed he was related to Cromwell down the line. Someone presumably sold the head to him inside of an alehouse or a public house, and Russell then tried to get as much money for it as possible to maximize his investment. He approached Sidney Sussex College to buy it, but then it was sold to a goldsmith and toymaker named James Cox. Cox offered one hundred pounds for Cromwell’s head, and Russell refused to part with it, but then at some point Cox was sold the head, and he would show it off at his parties, and then he sold it to the Hughes brothers.
Cromwell’s head fetched a fee of today around thirty thousand pounds, and the brothers started a display of prominent artifacts. They showed off the head and other Civil War artifacts, and the exhibition did not attract the attention that the brothers wanted. After this, it was offered for sale again and was bought by Josiah Henry Wilkinson. It stayed in his family for many decades, and it was even looked at for its historical authenticity. It was said that the head in 1845 had hair, flesh, and a beard, saying that as his head was embalmed, it must have belonged to a high-ranking person to have lasted this long.
Many more investigations were ordered by the Wilkinson family on the head of Cromwell to check if it was actually his, and it was said with certainty that it was the real deal. It passed through a number of Wilkinson men until Horace Wilkinson decided to give the head the respect that it deserved as a human remain. He spoke to Sidney Sussex College, Cromwell’s university, and it was arranged the skull would be buried and interred in a secret location within the building where Cromwell studied. It was hidden inside the anti-chapel of the building and was placed in an oak box where it had been kept for years. It was also placed in an airtight container to preserve it.
As the years passed, the head of Oliver Cromwell went on a crazy journey where it was owned by a huge number of people. It was shown in circus shows and in bizarre exhibitions, and passed around at parties across the country with pride and shock. His posthumous execution was one of the most shocking in English history. However, it marked the turning of times in England, with Charles II stamping his authority onto the country.
Maximilien Robespierre was born in 1758 in Arras in northern France. Trained as a lawyer, he developed a reputation for honesty and dedication to justice. When the French Revolution began in 1789, he was quickly elected to the Estates-General, and he emerged as a skilled speaker and a man of principle. He became known for defending the rights of the poor, opposing slavery, and demanding equality before the law. Unlike many revolutionaries, Robespierre lived modestly. He avoided the corruption and wealth that tempted others, and his personal integrity earned him the nickname “The Incorruptible.” His influence grew with the radical Jacobin Club, and as France descended into war, rebellion, and chaos, Robespierre presented himself as the guardian of revolutionary virtue.
By 1793, after the execution of King Louis XVI, Robespierre had become one of the leaders of the Committee of Public Safety, the body that effectively ruled France during the most violent phase of the revolution. The committee oversaw the war effort, internal security, and the economy, and it also unleashed the period that became known as the Reign of Terror.
The Reign of Terror, from 1793 to 1794, was a time of extraordinary violence. Revolutionary tribunals condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine. Some were aristocrats and royalists, but many were ordinary citizens accused of disloyalty, hoarding, or spreading counter-revolutionary ideas. The guillotine in Paris became a symbol of the revolution, and the blade fell daily. Robespierre justified these executions as necessary to save the republic. He argued that terror combined with virtue was the only way to defend liberty against traitors and enemies. His speeches often invoked lofty ideals, insisting that France was on a mission to create a new and just society.
But in practice, the terror bred fear and suspicion. Anyone could be accused, and few were safe. The guillotine claimed not only royalists but also revolutionary leaders themselves. Rivals of Robespierre, such as Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, were denounced and executed. This ruthless elimination of opponents made Robespierre both powerful and feared. But it also isolated him. By mid-1794, he seemed increasingly alone, standing above others as the arbiter of life and death.
One of Robespierre’s most controversial acts was his attempt to replace traditional religion with what he called the Cult of the Supreme Being. Robespierre, though opposed to atheism, believed the revolution needed a moral foundation rooted in civic virtue and belief in a higher power. In June of 1794, he staged a grand festival in Paris celebrating the Supreme Being. Robespierre himself led the procession, dressed in a bright blue coat, looking every inch the high priest of his new faith. Many of his colleagues saw this as arrogance, even madness, and it gave the impression that Robespierre was setting himself up as a moral dictator, controlling not just politics but the very soul of the French citizens. For men already weary of the terror, this was deeply unsettling.
By the summer of 1794, Robespierre’s position was precarious. The revolutionary tribunal continued its deadly work, but support for the terror was crumbling. The war against France’s external enemies was turning in France’s favor, making mass executions less justifiable. Ordinary citizens were exhausted by fear and shortages, and within the National Convention, deputies feared they might be next to fall under Robespierre’s accusations. Robespierre, however, did not back down, and on July 26, 1794 (8 Thermidor Year II in the revolutionary calendar), he delivered a long speech before the Convention. In it, he denounced corruption and hinted at new lists of traitors who deserved punishment, but crucially, he did not name them. This uncertainty terrified the deputies. Many suspected they were on his secret list. Instead of uniting the Convention, Robespierre’s speech convinced them that he had become a tyrant.
The next day, July 27, events moved quickly. Robespierre tried to speak again in the Convention, but his enemies shouted him down. The deputies, led by men such as Tallien and Billaud-Varenne, accused him of dictatorship. A vote was taken, and Robespierre, his brother Augustin, and close allies like Saint-Just were declared outlaws. When national guardsmen loyal to Robespierre tried to rally in Paris, confusion spread. For years, Robespierre had terrified his colleagues. But now that he was outlawed, supporting him seemed dangerous. The tide turned against him, and that evening, forces of the Convention stormed the Hôtel de Ville, where Robespierre and his supporters had gathered.
The capture of Robespierre was chaotic. During the raid, he was badly injured. Accounts differ on how. Some say he attempted suicide with a pistol but only managed to shatter his jaw, and others claim he was shot by soldiers. Whatever the truth, he was then unable to speak, and his jaw was bandaged in agony. His brother Augustin jumped from a window in despair, and he broke his legs. The man who had once stood as the voice of revolutionary virtue now appeared pitiful and broken. He was taken, along with his allies, to the cells where so many of their victims had waited before execution.
Then, on July 28, 1794, Robespierre and twenty-one of his closest allies were condemned without a trial. There was no need for a lengthy proceeding. As outlaws, they were considered guilty automatically. That afternoon, the tumbrils carried them through Paris to the guillotine at the Place de la Révolution. Crowds gathered to witness the downfall of the Incorruptible. Many had feared him, others hated him, and most were simply eager to see justice done. Unlike earlier executions, where the crowd had sometimes shown sympathy, the atmosphere was hostile.
It was said that most of the watchers fixed their gaze on the cart in which Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, and Hanriot were riding. These miserable creatures were all mutilated and covered with blood. They looked like a band of brigands that the gendarmes had surprised in the forest and were unable to arrest without inflicting serious wounds upon them. It would be difficult to describe the appearance of Robespierre. His face was wrapped in a bandage of dirty, blood-stained linen, and his features were horribly disfigured. A pale pallor made it even more repulsive. He kept his eyes downward and almost closed. Whether that was from the pain of his wounds or the awareness of his misdeeds, one cannot say.
And just before arriving at the place of execution, Robespierre was shaken out of his lethargy by a woman who forced her way through the crowd and rushed up to the cart carrying this cannibal. She grasped the cart rail with one hand and threatened Robespierre with the other, saying:
“Monster spewed from hell, the thought of your punishment intoxicates me with joy.”
Robespierre opened his eyes and looked at her sadly as she said:
“Go now, evildoer. Go down into your grave carrying the curses of the wives and mothers of France.”
When the cart had reached the foot of the scaffold, the executioners carried the tyrant down and laid him out prone until it was his turn for execution. While his accomplices were being beheaded, Robespierre appeared not to be taking notice. He kept his eyes shut and did not open them until he himself was carried to the scaffold. Some say that when he saw the instrument of death, he heaved a sigh of pain, but before dying, he had to endure bitter suffering. After having thrown down his coat, the executioner roughly tore away the bandage and splint which the surgeon had put on his wounds. This unhinged his lower jaw from the upper jaw and caused the blood to flow. The wretched man’s head was now no more than an object of horror and repulsion when at last it was severed from his body, and the executioner held it by the hair to show the people. It presented an indescribably horrible sight.
Thus perished the fiercest of the savage beasts, the most monstrous criminal that nature ever conceived. On the two days that followed, eighty-three other rebels were put to death, mainly members of the Commune or their outlawed accomplices.
Following the execution, the remains of Robespierre were collected and were placed inside of a coffin, including his head. This was placed between his legs to symbolize that Robespierre died in disgrace, and that the coffin was then taken to the Errancis Cemetery, a newly established cemetery at the time that was dealing with the enemies of the revolution. A mass grave was dug, and Robespierre’s coffin was thrown into the grave along with a number of his associates who were also executed that day.
But that would not be the final resting place for his remains and his head. Between 1844 and 1859, most probably in the year 1848, the remains of Robespierre and the others buried in the Errancis Cemetery were moved into the Catacombs in Paris, the underground mausoleum and ossuaries. And in there, the remains were deposited along with millions of other people’s bodies. Because of this, it’s impossible to identify the remains of Robespierre, and they remain somewhere inside of the catacombs, but no one knows where. This also includes the rest of his remains, including his skeletal remains, and parts of the former tyrant may have been split up to be arranged in certain ways inside of the catacombs. Today, these underground tunnels hold the story to the head of Robespierre, and where his head truly is today remains a mystery.
Louis XVI was not a cruel tyrant in the traditional sense. He was born in 1754 and he became king in 1774, inheriting a kingdom already burdened by debt, poor harvests, and growing discontent. By personality, Louis was shy, indecisive, and more interested in hobbies like lock-making and hunting than politics. His marriage to the Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette, did little to improve his popularity, as many French people disliked her foreign origins and extravagant spending.
By the late 1780s, France was deep in financial crisis. Wars, including support for the American Revolution, had drained the Treasury. The government faced bankruptcy. Yet Louis resisted reforms that would tax the nobility. When he finally called the Estates-General in 1789, it opened the floodgates for revolution. The Third Estate (commoners) soon declared itself the National Assembly, sparking events that led to the storming of the Bastille in July of 1789.
The monarchy’s authority began to crumble, and in 1791, Louis and his family attempted to escape Paris in the infamous flight to Varennes. But they were caught and brought back in humiliation. Trust in the king had collapsed. To many revolutionaries, Louis was no longer a ruler but a traitor to the people. By 1792, France was at war with Austria and Prussia. The revolution was becoming more radical, and royalists were suspected of conspiring with foreign enemies. On the 10th of August, 1792, revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace, and the monarchy was effectively overthrown. Louis XVI was arrested and placed in the Temple prison with his wife and children. The monarchy was abolished, and France was declared a republic.
Now the question arose: what should be done with the former king? The new National Convention put Louis on trial. He was charged with conspiring against liberty and national security, accused of plotting with foreign powers and encouraging civil war. The evidence included secret documents found in a hidden iron chest in the palace. The trial was tense and deeply political. To some deputies, executing the king was necessary to secure the revolution. To others, sparing him might prevent France from falling deeper into violence. After long debates, the Convention voted. The verdict: Louis Capet, formerly king of the French, was guilty of treason. And on the 20th of January, 1793, by a narrow margin, the Convention voted for his execution.
At dawn on the 21st of January, 1793, Louis was awakened in his cell at the Temple prison. He spent his final hours in prayer with his confessor, the Irish priest Abbé Edgeworth. At about 8:00 a.m., Louis was taken from the prison in a carriage. Thousands of armed soldiers lined the route to prevent rescue attempts or riots, and the crowd was silent, not cheering, not shouting, only watching. Many later remarked on the eerie calm of that January morning.
The carriage crossed Paris slowly, heading to the Place de la Révolution, formerly known as Place Louis XV, where a large guillotine had been set up. This was the same square where the statue of his grandfather, Louis XV, once stood. The guillotine was a new invention, introduced in 1792 as a more humane and efficient method of execution. It symbolized equality in death. Nobles and commoners alike would be executed in the same way. For Louis XVI, it was both a political and symbolic instrument. By dying on the guillotine, he would become not just a man punished for treason, but a king stripped of divine privilege.
When Louis arrived at the scaffold, he stepped down from the carriage calmly. His hands were tied, though he resisted at first, saying he should die as a king. Abbé Edgeworth whispered:
“Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven.”
Louis then addressed the crowd. Witnesses reported his final words:
“I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me. I forgive those who are the cause of my death, and I pray that my blood may not fall on France.”
He tried to continue, but drum rolls drowned out his voice. Guards quickly pushed him beneath the blade, and at 10:22 a.m., the guillotine fell. The executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, held up the severed head for the crowd to see. Cries of “Vive la République!” echoed across the square.
The immediate response in Paris was mixed. Some in the crowd cheered, but others went silent or even wept. Many felt uneasy. A king had been killed, not by God or by fate, but by the will of the people. And across Europe, monarchs were horrified. To them, the execution was not just the death of a man, but an attack on the monarchy itself. Britain, Spain, and other powers soon declared war on revolutionary France. The execution also hardened divisions within France between royalists, moderates, and radical revolutionaries.
After the execution, the body and head of King Louis XVI were taken into the Madeleine Cemetery. His remains were placed into a coffin, and this was placed on the back of a cart. Inside the cemetery, a grave had been dug, and it wasn’t too deep. The coffin was placed inside the grave, and the head of Louis XVI was then placed between his legs, which was to show that he died in disgrace. This practice was done for key offenders and criminals, but then quicklime was thrown over the coffin, and this was done to try and decay his remains and body quicker so that no trace of him would ever be found.
But this did not completely work. Because in the January of 1815, the call was made to exhume the bodies of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who had also met the same fate. Marie’s body was found quicker, but there was less of Louis XVI to be found. It was claimed that a deep trench near the wall being opened in our presence, we discovered some earth mingled with lime and several small pieces of board indicative of a coffin. The search was then carried on with the greatest care, but instead of a bed of pure lime as round as the queen’s coffin, we found that the earth and lime had been mixed, but that there was a greater proportion of the latter substance. In this mixture of earth and lime, we discovered the bones of a man, several of which were on the point of crumbling to dust. The skull was covered with lime and placed between the leg bones. Fragments of clothes were carefully looked for, but none were discovered. We collected all the remains and placed them together with some pieces of lime in a cloth brought for the purpose. Although the spot in which the body was found corresponds with that pointed out by several eyewitnesses of the interment, the situation of the head left no doubt as to its identity.
So the head and fragmentary skeletal remains of Louis XVI were discovered. The gravediggers and officials were in no doubt that this was the remains of the king, and it was no secret where his grave actually was. But what happened next? It was clear the quicklime had done its job, and some was even found on the king’s skull. The remains were placed into a new box, and they were then prepared to be given a decent burial.
Today, King Louis XVI is buried inside the royal crypt within the Basilica of St. Denis, and it’s interred within the same wooden chest that it was buried in within a vault. The vault is covered with a marble slab marking Louis’s final resting place. The head and skull were in better shape than the rest of the king’s remains, but it was still covered in lime. There is a possibility, of course, that this has still taken effect, and over two hundred years that the lime has disintegrated the skull, leaving very little left of King Louis XVI inside of his new tomb. The vault hasn’t been opened since the day of burial, meaning we don’t actually know today the exact state of his remains.
