cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

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More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

And because I can hear

cahn going, "You can't just SAY 'authorities there used torture to extract confessions from more than a hundred men accused of belonging to the Goat Riders' and not ELABORATE!!", I give you Wikipedia:

The Buckriders (Dutch: Bokkenrijders, French: Les Chevaliers du Bouc) are a part of Belgian and Dutch folklore. They are ghosts or demons, who rode through the sky on the back of flying goats provided to them by a demon. During the 18th century, groups of thieves and other criminals co-opted the belief to frighten the inhabitants of southern Limburg, a province in the southern part of the Netherlands and eastern Belgium. Using the name "Bokkenrijders", these criminal bands launched raids across a region that includes southern Limburg, and parts of Germany and the Netherlands (parts of which were a part of the Southern Netherlands, nowadays Belgium). Commonly, the "Bokkenrijders" raided peaceful communities and farms. Several confessed "Bokkenrijders" were convicted and sentenced to death. Because of the link to the occult, authorities accused a large number of potentially innocent men of being "Bokkenrijders" and a number were tortured and subsequently convicted of crimes they denied having committed.

Edited Date: 2022-09-03 02:21 pm (UTC)