After having been used on the Place de Grève, Place du Carrousel, Place de la Révolution (currently Concorde), followed by the Place de la Bastille, the guillotine was moved on June 14, 1794 to the Place du Trône Renversé, currently the Place de l’Ile-de-la-Réunion. Faced with the weariness and criticisms of Parisians in regards to all this spilled blood, the authorities wanted to distance the scaffold from the city center. It stayed here for a month and a half, until July 27, 1794 when it was then brought back to the Place de la Révolution: a spectacular location was needed for the execution of Robespierre and his entourage.
On July 17, 1794, sixteen Carmelite nuns from Compiègne, a city to the north of Paris, were sentenced to death and executed on the Place du Trône-Renversé. Their crime? Having continued to live in a religious community in open defiance of the law. For several years, their behavior was tolerated. However, in the spring of 1794, the civil war was in full swing: examples had to be made. And yet, the effect was the inverse: arriving in Paris in religious dress, the “Carmelites of Compiègne” became symbols of the revolutionary horror. In 1906, they were beatified by the Church.
