Thought I'd share this description of a French execution by torture with you, which I ran across in the Voltaire bio I'm reading:
The prisoner was placed, around five o’clock, on a scaffold eight and a half feet square. They tied him with heavy cords held by iron rings which immobilised his arms and his thighs. They started by burning his hand in a brazier filled with burning sulphur. Then they took red-hot pincers and tore at his flesh on his arms, his thighs and his chest. They poured molten lead and pitch and boiling oil on all his wounds. These tortures dragged from him the most frightful screams.
Four vigorous horses, whipped on by four executioners’ assistants, pulled with cords on the bleeding and flaming wounds of the patient; these pullings lasted an hour. His limbs stretched but did not part. The executioners finally cut some muscles. His limbs parted one after the other. Damiens, having lost two legs and an arm, was still breathing, and did not expire until his other arm was separated from his bleeding trunk. The limbs and the trunk were thrown on a pyre ten feet from the scaffold.
The individual being tortured is Robert-François Damiens, an evidently mentally ill man who tried to assassinate Louis XV with a pocketknife, but only gave him a scratch. Wikipedia tells me he was the last to undergo this sort of execution.
Remember, the guillotine was a big hit because it was so humane!
Lol, flipping through Kloosterhuis looking for info on Katte portraits, I saw that Peter's effects that were left behind were sold, and the proceeds were used for various expenses, including 6 thalers for the creation of a portrait of him to hang in effigy, and 10 for the executioner's fee.
Re: Peter Keith
The prisoner was placed, around five o’clock, on a scaffold eight and a half feet square. They tied him with heavy cords held by iron rings which immobilised his arms and his thighs. They started by burning his hand in a brazier filled with burning sulphur. Then they took red-hot pincers and tore at his flesh on his arms, his thighs and his chest. They poured molten lead and pitch and boiling oil on all his wounds. These tortures dragged from him the most frightful screams.
Four vigorous horses, whipped on by four executioners’ assistants, pulled with cords on the bleeding and flaming wounds of the patient; these pullings lasted an hour. His limbs stretched but did not part. The executioners finally cut some muscles. His limbs parted one after the other. Damiens, having lost two legs and an arm, was still breathing, and did not expire until his other arm was separated from his bleeding trunk. The limbs and the trunk were thrown on a pyre ten feet from the scaffold.
The individual being tortured is Robert-François Damiens, an evidently mentally ill man who tried to assassinate Louis XV with a pocketknife, but only gave him a scratch. Wikipedia tells me he was the last to undergo this sort of execution.
Remember, the guillotine was a big hit because it was so humane!
Lol, flipping through Kloosterhuis looking for info on Katte portraits, I saw that Peter's effects that were left behind were sold, and the proceeds were used for various expenses, including 6 thalers for the creation of a portrait of him to hang in effigy, and 10 for the executioner's fee.