The French debate on the abolition of the death penalty begins in late Enlightenment thinking, and abolition is called for in some of the cahiers de doléances (list of grievances) prepared for the meeting of the Estates-General that marked the inception of the first phase of the French Revolution. Abolitionists included Robespierre and others who would later use the guillotine heavily in their political purges. What if the Reign of Terror had forsworn capital punishment? The history of the world would have been startlingly altered. The abolition campaign did not succeed then, however, nor when it again became of acute interest following the bloodless French Revolution of 1830, nor quite after the February 1848 Revolution, despite a remarkably progressive set of legislative acts by the short-lived Second Republic, which was terminated by Napoléon III's coup d'état. In 1981, under the leadership of Minister of Justice Robert Badinter, the abolitionist goal was finally achieved, giving the French again the role that they have cherished since 1789, as proponents of universal ideals of human rights.

Victor Hugo's novel of a man about to be guillotined dates from 1829. It is the work of a 26-year-old who began his precocious writing career as a monarchist and Catholic, founder of a journal called Le Conservateur littéraire.