How cruel is a person: types and methods of the death penalty of the past. Hanging

25. Skafism

An ancient Persian method of execution, when a person was stripped naked and placed in a tree trunk so that only the head, arms and legs protruded. They were then fed only milk and honey until the victim had severe diarrhea. Thus, honey got into all open areas of the body, which was supposed to attract insects. As the person's feces accumulated, the insects became increasingly attracted and they began to feed and multiply in his/her skin, which would become more gangrenous. Death can take over 2 weeks and most likely resulted from starvation, dehydration, and shock.

24. Guillotine

Created in the late 1700s, it was one of the first execution methods that called for the end of life rather than the infliction of pain. Although the guillotine was specifically invented as a form of human execution, it was banned in France, and was last used in 1977.

23. Republican marriage

A very strange method of execution was practiced in France. The man and woman were tied together and then thrown into the river to be drowned.

22. Cement shoes

The method of execution preferred to use the American mafia. Similar to the Republican Marriage in that drowning is used, but instead of being bonded to a person of the opposite sex, the victim's feet were placed in concrete blocks.

21. Execution by an elephant

Elephants in Southeast Asia have often been trained to prolong the death of a prey. The elephant is a heavy animal, but easily trained. Teaching him to stomp on criminals on command has always been a fascinating thing. Many times this method has been used to show that there are rulers even in the natural world.

20. Plank Walk

Mostly practiced by pirates and sailors. The victims often did not have time to drown, as they were attacked by sharks, which usually followed the ships.

19. Bestiary - being torn apart by wild animals

Bestiaries are criminals in ancient Rome, who were given to be torn to pieces by wild animals. Although sometimes the act was voluntary and carried out for money or recognition, often bestiaries were political prisoners who were sent into the arena naked and unable to defend themselves.

18. Mazatello

The method is named after the weapon used during the execution, usually a hammer. This method of capital punishment was popular in the papal state in the 18th century. The convict was escorted to the scaffold in the square and he was left alone with the executioner and the coffin. Then the executioner raised the hammer and struck the victim's head. Since such a blow, as a rule, did not lead to death, the throat of the victims was cut immediately after the blow.

17. Vertical "shaker"

Originating in the United States, this method of capital punishment is now commonly used in countries such as Iran. Although it is very similar to hanging, in this case, to sever the spinal cord, the victims were violently lifted up by the neck, usually with the help of a crane.

16. Sawing

Allegedly used in parts of Europe and Asia. The victim was turned upside down and then sawn in half, starting at the groin. Since the victim was upside down, the brain received enough blood to keep the victim conscious while the large abdominal vessels were severed.

15. skinning

The act of removing skin from a person's body. This type of execution was often used to stir up fear, as the execution was usually carried out in a public place in front of everyone.

14. Blood Eagle

This type of execution was described in the Scandinavian sagas. The ribs of the victim were broken so that they resembled wings. Then light victims were pulled through the hole between the ribs. The wounds were sprinkled with salt.

13. Grid for torture

Roasting the victim on hot coals.

12. Crush

Although you have already read about the elephant crush method, there is another similar method. Crushing was popular in Europe and America as a method of torture. Each time the victim refused to comply, more weight was placed on their chest until the victim died from lack of air.

11. Wheeling

Also known as Catherine's Wheel. The wheel looked like an ordinary wagon wheel, only larger with a large number of spokes. The victim was undressed, arms and legs were laid out and tied, then the executioner beat the victim with a large hammer, breaking the bones. At the same time, the executioner tried not to inflict mortal blows.

So, the most brutal executions and torture top 10:

10. Spanish tickler

The method is also known as "cat's paws". These devices were used by the executioner, tearing and tearing the skin from the victim. Often death did not occur immediately, but as a result of infection.

9. Burning at the stake

In history, the most popular method of the death penalty. If the victim was lucky, then he or she was executed along with several others. This ensured that the flames would be large and death would result from carbon monoxide poisoning rather than being burned alive.

8. Bamboo

An extremely slow and painful punishment was used in Asia. Bamboo stalks sticking out of the ground were sharpened. Then, over the place where this bamboo grew, the accused was hung up. The rapid growth of bamboo and its pointed tops allowed the plant to pierce the human body through and through in one night.

7. Premature burial

This technique has been used by governments throughout the history of capital punishment. One of the last documented cases was during the 1937 Nanjing massacre, when Japanese troops buried Chinese citizens alive.

6. Ling Chi

Also known as "death by slow cutting" or "slow death", this form of execution was eventually outlawed in China in the early 20th century. The organs of the victim's body were slowly and methodically removed while the executioner tried to keep him or her alive for as long as possible.

5. Seppuku

A form of ritual suicide that allowed the warrior to die with honor. It was used by the samurai.

4. Copper bull

The design of this death unit was developed by the ancient Greeks, namely the coppersmith Perill, who sold the terrible bull to the Sicilian tyrant Falaris so that he could execute criminals in a new way. Inside the copper statue, through the door, a living person was placed. And then ... Falaris first tested the unit on its developer, the unfortunate greedy Perilla. Subsequently, Falaris himself was roasted in a bull.

3. Colombian tie

The throat of a person is cut with a knife, and the tongue protrudes through the hole. This method of murder indicated that the victim had given the police some information.

2. Crucifixion

A particularly cruel method of execution was used mainly by the Romans. It was as slow, painful and humiliating as it could be. Usually after a long period of beating or torture, the victim was forced to carry his cross to the place of his death. Subsequently, she was either nailed or tied to a cross, where she hung for several weeks. Death, as a rule, came from lack of air.

1 Worst Executions: Hanged, Drowned, and Dismembered

Mainly used in England. The method is regarded as one of the most brutal forms of execution ever created. As the name implies, the execution was performed in three parts. Part one - the victim was tied to a wooden frame. So she hung almost to death. Immediately after that, the victim's stomach was cut open, and the insides were taken out and removed. Further, the insides were burned in front of the victim. The condemned man was then beheaded. After all this, his body was divided into four parts and scattered throughout England as a public display. This punishment was applied only to men, condemned women, as a rule, were burned at the stake.

MAIN TYPES OF EXECUTIONS

The death penalty at all times performed and performs the function of prevention, i.e. general crime prevention. At the same time, the main deterrent role is played by the criminal's fear of punishment, which is likely to follow the crime. Knowing this, the ancient rulers sought to make the execution the most painful and frightening. At various stages of human history, both simple types of the death penalty (hanging, beheading, shooting) were used, as well as qualified ones, i.e. more cruel, appointed for especially dangerous crimes. The well-known Russian lawyer and jurist Alexander Fedorovich Kistyakovsky, in his “Study on the Death Penalty”, cites such methods of killing that were common in the past, such as hanging, wheeling, stoning, skinning, hanging by the rib, impalement, pouring red-hot lead into the throat, burning, boiling in oil, wine, water, tearing or cutting into small pieces, drowning, throwing from a tower, from a hill into the sea, into an abyss, crucifixion, giving to wild animals to be eaten, guts pulled out, trampled by an elephant, burning in the womb red-hot metal bull, burying alive in the ground, cutting off breasts and others.

Some other cruel types of executions are also known. So, in ancient China, one of the varieties of execution was the bleeding of a naked person tied to a pole by mosquitoes, horseflies and other insects. A Chinese parable is known, when a monk, seeing a criminal executed in this way, out of pity began to drive away blood-sucking insects from him. Feeling this, the unfortunate man opened his eyes, raised his head and spat in the face of the monk. When asked by the monk why, instead of gratitude, he spits in his face, the man replied that now, instead of already satiated insects, new, hungry and angry ones will fly in, and this will only increase his torment.

The Roman emperor Tiberius practiced the following type of execution: having drunk the unfortunate drunk with wine, they, intoxicated and helpless, bandaged their members, and they were exhausted and died from urinary retention. Another emperor, Caligula, ordered to saw through living people with a saw. (There were cases of such an execution during the uprising of peasants in the Tambov region in the 20s of the last century.) Emperor Makrin immured living people into the wall as an execution (2: 128).

The Russian rulers - Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great - impaled their opponents. One of the types of executions that survived from ancient times until the 20th century was execution by lot - decimation (from Latin decimatio, from decimus - “tenth”). Decimation was used as the ultimate punishment in the Roman army for the loss of a banner, rebellion, and even desertion. The earliest documented use of it dates back to 471 BC. During decimation, the punished unit was divided into dozens, regardless of rank and length of service. Each ten cast lots, and the one on whom it fell was executed by his own nine comrades, sometimes by stoning or clubs. The surviving soldiers were also punished: in their diet, wheat was replaced by barley, they were forbidden to sleep inside the camp, etc. (3: "Beauty", X). Decimation as a possible punishment is also spelled out in the Military Regulations of Peter I - “Military Article”, which imposes punishments for military crimes. In Russia, decimation was also used during the Civil War by People's Commissar Lev Trotsky (Bronstein Leiba Davidovich). So, on August 29, 1918, the 2nd Petrograd Regiment near Kazan was defeated by Kappel, left their positions and fled. On Trotsky's orders, regimental commissar Panteleev, commander Gneushev, and every tenth Red Army soldier were shot. The corpses of the executed were thrown into the Volga and, to be sure, were ironed with boat propellers. The next day, in the morning, the inhabitants of Sviyazhsk fished out several mutilated bodies. These were Petrograd workers - printers, not even trained in the basics of military affairs. The unfortunate were buried by the monks at the monastery cemetery of the Dormition Monastery (4: Ch. 4). During the defense of Petrograd in October 1919, every tenth Red Army soldier was also shot in the retreating Red Army units. Other units of the Red Army were also subjected to decimation (for example, on the Khabarovsk Front on December 26, 1921 and January 5, 1922). In Finland, during the Civil War at the beginning of 1918, there was a case of using decimation on captured Red Guards by the White Finns, who shot all the commanders and every fifth ordinary soldier. This incident is known as the "Khuruslahti Lottery" after the name of the river on whose ice the execution was carried out (5: 316).

The most common types of executions in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages were beheading, hanging, crucifixion and burning. Decapitation was perhaps the most common method of deprivation of life in human history. It was widely used in the states of the Ancient East, in the Ottoman Empire, in Ancient Rome and in medieval Europe. In this way, the English kings Richard II and Charles I, the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, the French king Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were executed. Currently, beheading is used only in Saudi Arabia, and as a method of deprivation of life is legally established in the Yemen Arab Republic and the United Arab Emirates.

Until the middle of the 16th century, the main tools for carrying out executions were an ax and a sword, but with an increase in the number of executions, this technology did not meet the requirements of the time. The execution took a long time, and the "productivity" of the executioners was low - it also decreased due to the need to constantly sharpen blunted swords. An inaccurate blow by the executioner when cutting off the head from the body with a sword or an ax led to the torment of the executed. There were cases when an inexperienced executioner had to make up to ten blows to cut off his head. Therefore, in different countries, attempts were made to mechanize the execution process. The first mechanical devices for decapitation appeared in Europe at the end of the 13th century. In Italy, such a device was called mannaya (mannaia; finished, "axe"). It is known that with his help, in 1268, the last representative of the Hohenpggaufen dynasty, Conradin of Swabia, was executed in Naples. In the 14th century, a mechanism was invented in Germany that made it possible to drive a heavy and sharp iron ax into the neck of a convict with a hammer. In 1564, in Scotland and Ireland, they began to use a device for decapitation, which was called the "maiden" (maiden), or Scottish maiden. The working body of such a machine was a sharp knife weighing 30-40 kilograms. From the moment of its appearance and until the prohibition of its use in 1708, more than 150 people were executed on the Scottish Maiden. Devices like this machine were tried in the UK, Italy and Switzerland, but they were not widely used.

The reason for the further improvement of the execution machine was the mass terror during the French Revolution, which led to a shortage of executioners. Joseph Guillotin (Guillotin) (1738-1814) proposed to change the technology of execution of death sentences. Being elected to the Constituent Assembly, in December 1789 he proposed that the death penalty for all categories of citizens should be carried out only by decapitation and using a machine (before that, mostly nobles were executed by beheading). The aim of the proposal was for the execution to take place as quickly as possible and thus cause less suffering to those executed, and the application of one type of execution to criminals from all walks of life emphasized their equality before the law. Guillotin's proposal was accepted. At the suggestion of the surgeon Antoine Louis, it was decided to take the Scottish maiden as a prototype. The first guillotine was designed and built in early 1792 by engineer and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt. The head of the condemned was cut off by a heavy (from 40 to 100 kilograms) knife, falling from above along the guide grooves. The knife was raised to a height of 2-3 meters with a rope, where it was held by a latch. The sentenced was tied to a vertical board, which was then lowered to a horizontal position so that his neck was in the line of the knife's fall. His head was placed in a special recess at the base of the mechanism and fixed on top with a wooden board with a notch for the neck, after which the latch holding the knife opened with a lever mechanism, and it fell at high speed onto the victim's neck.

At the end of April 1792, after tests on animals and corpses, in Paris, on the Place Greve, the guillotine was first used as an execution tool. With a large gathering of people, the executioner Charles Henri Sanson executed the thief Nicolas Pelletier. The crowd of onlookers, accustomed since the Middle Ages to painful executions, was disappointed with the speed of the execution. The execution lasted only a few seconds, after which the executioner's henchmen pushed the decapitated body into a prepared box. Initially, the car was given the name “Louison” or “Luizetga” (Louison, Louisette; from A. Louis), but soon it was replaced by the “guillotine” (guillotine; from J.I. Guillotin); the people dubbed her "The Widow" (la Veuve). After testing, the guillotine worked at full capacity - during the mass terror, on some days, 60 or more people were executed on it. Soon it was transported from the Place de Greve and mounted on the Place de la Révolution (now Place de la Concorde), where most of the executions took place and where King Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793.

During the period of the Jacobin dictatorship (September 1793 - July 1794), the guillotine became a symbol of terror. In France at that time, 50 guillotines were “working”, with the help of which more than 20 thousand people were executed. During the execution, the executioner raised the severed head and showed it to the crowd. This was done because it was believed that the severed head could see and think for about ten seconds after it was separated from the body. Thus, the head of a person was raised so that at the last moment before death he could see the crowd laughing at him. Despite the odious reputation that the guillotine acquired during the era of revolutionary terror, it was used in France for almost two centuries. In 1870-1872. it was improved by the executioner's assistant and carpenter Léon Berger. Berger's guillotines were collapsible, easily transported and did not require a special scaffold.

On the guillotine in France, among others, were executed Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the representative of the royal dynasty Philippe d'Orleans, prominent figures and leaders of the revolution Georges Jacques Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, Georges Couton, Louis Antoine Saint-Just, Camille Desmoulins and the founder of modern chemistry Antoine Lavoisier . In 1932, a Russian émigré, doctor and writer Pavel Gorgulov was executed by guillotine for the assassination of French President Paul Doumer. On June 17, 1939, in Versailles, on the boulevard, the German Eugen Weidmann, the murderer of seven people, was guillotined. This was the last public execution in France: due to the "obscene behavior of the crowd during the passing of sentences", further executions were carried out on the territory of the prisons. The last execution by guillotine and the last execution in Western Europe was in Marseille during the reign of Giscard d'Estaing on September 10, 1977, when the Arab Hamid Djandoubi was executed.

In Germany, the guillotine was used from the 17th century and was the main type of execution until its abolition in 1949. Unlike the French models, the German guillotine was lower and had a winch for lifting a heavy knife. Guillotines were installed in the prisons of Berlin (the famous Plötzensee prison), Leipzig and Brandenburg. Between 1933 and 1945, about 40,000 people were beheaded in Germany and Austria. This number also includes the resistance fighters, classified by the Nazis as criminals. Decapitation in Germany was considered an "ignoble" type of execution, as opposed to shooting. Among those executed by the Nazis on the guillotine were the Reichstag arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe, the Czechoslovak journalist and anti-fascist Julius Fucik, the Tatar poet Musa Jalil, and the Russian princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya, a member of the Resistance in France. In the GDR, beheading was used until 1966, before being replaced by execution.

I.S. Turgenev, who observed the guillotining of the criminal Tropman in 1870, describes his impressions as follows: “Vaguely and more strange than scary, two pillars were drawn in the dark sky, 3 arshins apart from each other with an oblique line connecting them blades. For some reason I imagined that these pillars should be much further apart; this closeness of theirs gave the whole car a kind of ominous slenderness - the slenderness of a long, attentively stretched neck, like that of a swan. The feeling of disgust was aroused by a large wicker body, like a suitcase, of dark red color. I knew that the executioners would throw a warm, still shuddering corpse and a severed head into this body ... "

Turgenev says about the very moment of execution: “I saw how he (Tropman) appeared at the top, how two people rushed at him from the right and left, like spiders on a fly, how he suddenly fell head first and how his soles kicked ... But then I turned away - and began to wait - and the earth swam quietly under my feet ... And it seemed to me that I had been waiting for a terribly long time. I managed to notice that when Tropmann appeared, the human din suddenly seemed to curl up into a ball - and there was a breathless silence ... Finally, a slight knock was heard, as if wood on wood - this was the upper semicircle of the collar with a longitudinal slit for the passage of the blade, which covers the neck of the criminal and keeps his head motionless... Then something suddenly roared dully and rolled - and hooted... It was as if a huge animal coughed up... Everything became muddled...” (6: 84).

The Russian writer Pyotr Boborykin, recalling the executions in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, writes: “Those who lived in Paris for a long time, like me, know what kind of disgust it was: public executions that took place near the La Koquette prison. It was impossible to imagine anything more vile than this! Thousands of people, from secular weavers and first-class cocottes to rabble - pimps, street sluts, thieves and runaway convicts, spent the whole night in the surrounding taverns, drinking, singing obscene songs and at dawn rushed to the cordon of soldiers that surrounded the area where “les bois” rose de la justice” (guillotines), as this disgusting apparatus is officially called. It was impossible to see well from a distance, but this whole mass felt in admiration only because they “were at the execution”, spent the night so dashingly and cheerfully in anticipation of such a captivating spectacle” (7: 194).

Hanging was also a very common punishment, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. One of the earliest mentions of hanging is found in the Book of Numbers: “And the Lord said to Moses: Take all the leaders of the people and hang them to the Lord before the sun, and the fury of the wrath of the Lord will turn away from Israel” (Numbers 25: 4).

The popularity of execution by hanging is evidenced by the fact that at the end of the 20th century it remained as the only type of execution in the legislation of such countries as Burma, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbud, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, UK, Virgin Islands, Guyana, Gambia, Hong Kong, Grenada, Dominica, Zambia, Western Samoa, Zimbabwe, Israel, Ireland, Cayman Islands, Kenya, Cyprus, Lesotho, Mauritius, Malawi, Malaysia, Montserrat, Namibia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Singapore, Tanzania, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Fiji, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Jamaica, Japan (6:92). (It should be noted that most of these countries currently retain the death penalty in their legislation, but actually abandoned it.) Hanging was carried out in a variety of ways. At first they hung on trees; later - on poles, on specially built gallows, on the gates and towers of buildings. A special type of hanging was hanging on a cross with your head up or down. This method was widespread in the East, in Greece and Rome, where mainly slaves were executed in this way.

In medieval Russia, people were hanged on gallows specially built in city squares in the form of the letters T, G or P, or simply on trees along roads (this was applied to robbers). Sometimes the gallows were built on rafts. Thus, they dealt with the participants in riots and uprisings. Rafts with hanged men were floated down large rivers to intimidate the population. In India, criminals were hung on the banks of the Irrawaddy so that the water at high tide would slowly flood the convict.

According to A.F. Kistyakovsky, “in Germany, to aggravate the execution of criminals, especially from Jews, they hung them together with two dogs or two wolves; serious thieves were decorated before hanging in a ridiculous way: the harder the theft was, the higher the thief was hanged. Hanging in Europe was considered more serious and more inglorious than, for example, beheading. Therefore, it was an execution that punished criminals from the people. The criminals from the privileged classes were executed by decapitation. Women, instead of being hanged, were burned or fueled” (8: 38).

In ancient times and the Middle Ages, hanging became widespread due to the simplicity of organizing executions, and also due to the fact that public executions were, in fact, the only cultural, entertainment and educational event and attracted crowds of spectators. For intimidation, the death penalty was carried out in public, with solemn processions, in the center of the city, near churches and palaces, in the most crowded squares. To attract people to executions, they rang bells, as, for example, in Spain during the burning of heretics or in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, heralds were sent or trumpets were blown. Both in the East and in Europe, the main location of the gallows and scaffolds were city gates, streets and roads. There were gallows in every big city in Europe. Almost every lord had his own gallows.

In his History of Civilization in Europe, Guizot François notes that in the Middle Ages in Europe, gallows stood along the entire length of the roads and the torn members of the executed were lying around (9). This is also confirmed by the well-known Russian criminologist, Doctor of Law Sergei Ivanovich Barshev, who notes that “there was, one might say, not a single roadway in all of Europe where gallows were not constantly standing at that time” (10). The bodies of criminals were not removed from the gallows for years, so that they served as a constant reminder and turned the people away from crime.

Over time, the technology of hanging has been improved and developed. From executions on trees and on the simplest gallows, designed for 1-2 people, the rulers gradually switched to the construction of monumental structures. In the 13th century, northeast of Paris, in the possessions of a certain Count Falcon (Faucon), a huge stone gallows was built, which was called Montfaucon (from French mont - mountain, faucon - falcon). Up to 50 people could be hanged at Montfaucon at the same time. (On some engravings, you can see that two people could be hanged in one cell.) It is believed that the gallows was built according to the design of the adviser of Philip IV the Handsome - Enguerrand de Marigny. According to his plan, the terrible sight of the many decomposing bodies of the hanged was to make a strong impression on the subjects of the king and warn them against serious offenses. Ironically, de Marigny himself was subsequently hanged at Montfaucon.

According to the description of Victor Hugo in the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" and contemporaries, the gallows was a square three-tiered structure on a high stone foundation. Its upper part was a platform on which 16 massive quadrangular stone pillars 12 meters high were installed on three sides. The pillars were connected by crossbars embedded in them, to which chains were attached, intended for hanging the condemned. Another row of crossbars, also designed for hanging, connected the posts in the middle. Hanging was carried out on three sides of the gallows. The fourth side was used for lifting and lowering bodies and was a stone staircase with a gate, the key to which was kept by the city executioners. The bodies of the hanged were left on the gallows until partial decomposition. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, from 50 to 60 dried up, disfigured and swaying corpses were constantly hanging on the gallows. Decayed corpses were dumped into a special stone well (ossuary), as it was forbidden to bury the hanged according to Christian custom. (The custom of not removing the corpses of the executed also existed among the Jews, the Romans and the Germans.) The last execution at Montfaucon was carried out in 1629, after which the gallows was not used for its intended purpose and by 1760 it completely collapsed.

In 1571, the famous Tyburn tree gallows was built in the village of Tyburn near London (the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmodern Hyde Park). It consisted of three massive supports connected in the form of a triangle by beams, on which 24 people could be hung at the same time. The gallows served for more than 200 years and was destroyed in 1783, when the square in front of Newgate prison became the site of public executions. Traditional hanging, in which a support was knocked out from under a person, did not guarantee a quick and reliable death. To speed up the process of execution, various tricks were used: the executioners jumped on the shoulders of the victims or pulled them by the legs; in the time of Louis XIII, the executioner held his hands on the crossbar of the gallows and pressed his feet on the victim's bound hands.

Modern hanging technology, which is used by most countries that use this type of execution, was developed in 1949-1953. Royal Commission on the death penalty in the UK. According to this technology, “the convict is hung on a rope wrapped around his neck; death occurs as a result of the pressure of the rope on the body under the influence of gravity. Loss of consciousness and death occur as a result of damage to the spinal cord or, if this is not enough to cause death, due to asphyxia from compression of the trachea "(6). The commission proceeded from the "humane" need for "an early and painless death by displacement of the vertebrae without separating the head from the body." In accordance with the recommendations of the commission, after a noose was put on the convict's neck, a hatch opened under his feet. At the same time, the length of the rope (and, accordingly, the distance of the fall) was selected taking into account the height and weight of the convict in such a way as to achieve a rupture of the spinal cord without tearing off the head. However, with an incorrect calculation or inexperience of the executioner, the spinal cord did not break, and the convict died from suffocation. The English gallows has become a model of perfection. Neither the Germans with their execution on a string, nor the Soviet performers of the “highest measure of social protection”, who replaced the stool knocked out from under the feet of the criminal with a driving truck, could not surpass it.

"Leadership" in the number of hanged at the end of the last century belonged to Iran and the Republic of South Africa. In South Africa, 537 people were hanged between 1985 and the first half of 1988. In Iran, according to official figures, in the second half of 1981 alone (from July to December) 2,444 people were executed, most of them by hanging. In Iran, public executions by hanging are still practiced today, with crane booms used as gallows.

Strangulation was a form of hanging. It was used in ancient Greece and in ancient Rome. As an independent type of execution, it has been widely used in Spain since 1828, when Ferdinand VII abolished hanging and introduced strangulation as the only method of execution for criminals. In this case, the garrote (Spanish garrote - twisting, tightening) served as an instrument of execution, which is a noose with a stick, twisting which the executioner killed the victim. Over time, the garrote was improved, and in its final form it was a metal collar with a screw at the back, which the executioner rotated by the handle. When tightening, the screw pulled back the ends of the collar, tightening it, and slowly squeezing the convict. This form of execution was excruciating and lasted up to 10 minutes. Before execution, the convict was tied to a pole, and a bag was put on his head. After the execution of the sentence, the bag was removed so that the audience could see the face of the victim.

Here is how Lion Feuchtwanger describes the execution of the robber Torres in the novel Goya: “The executioner dragged the convict onto the platform, forced him to sit on a wooden chair and very firmly tied him to a post. There was a case when one convict, having escaped, killed the executioner, who was about to execute him. Then he threw a black handkerchief over the condemned man's head and began to quickly tighten the garrotte screw. One could see how terribly the chest heaved and the knees of the panting man trembled. His bubbling wheeze reached the crowd. Finally, everything was quiet. The executioner quickly looked under the handkerchief, pulled it off and went to smoke a cigar. The audience saw a terrible blue face with a gaping, grinning mouth, a tongue that protruded far, along which saliva, stained with blood, glassy eyes, and a disheveled beard flowed down. Onlookers, laughing happily, pointed to each other at the pants of the executed man, raised in the groin, where a wet dark spot could be seen.

In the Catalan garrote, the screw was sharpened and, gradually screwing into the neck or head of the convict, crushed his cervical vertebrae or damaged the brain. Garrote was also used for torture. Garrote strangulation was carried out in Spain until the abolition of the death penalty in this country in 1977. During the conquest of America, garrote became widespread in the Spanish colonies. With her help, the last emperor of the Inca Empire, Atahualpa, was executed. The garrote was also used in the United States before the invention of the electric chair by Edison.

Garrote is also called a weapon made of a strong cord 30-60 cm long with handles attached to its ends. At the beginning of the 20th century, such a garrote became widespread among members of criminal gangs in the United States, becoming the tool of professional assassins from Cosa nostra. The killing with such a garrote is carried out either with a gradual (within 2-4 minutes) squeezing of the neck with a cord, which leads to asphyxia, or with a sharp jerk of the cord thrown over the neck, resulting in a fracture of the cervical vertebrae.

Crucifixion as a type of execution was carried out on a T-shaped cross, however, executions are also known on crosses of a different shape: on two crossed beams and on an “X”-shaped cross. Sometimes a small protrusion was made in the lower part of the cross, on which the crucified could lean with his feet. Such a support facilitated the breathing of the executed, but increased his torment up to 5-6 days. To speed up the execution, the convicts were interrupted with a club of their shins, which deprived them of additional support. Often, the crucifixion was preceded by a procession, during which the condemned to death had to carry a patibulum, a wooden beam, which then served as the horizontal bar of the cross. Upon arrival at the place of the convict, they laid him on the ground and nailed his hands to the crossbar. Nails were driven not into the palms, but into the wrists, since the nails driven into the palms did not hold the body on the cross. Then, with the help of ropes, the executed was pulled up to the top of a pillar previously dug into the ground. Sometimes the person sentenced to death was nailed to the crossbar on the cross lying on the ground, and the cross with the body was lifted with ropes and fixed in a pre-dug hole. The main cause of death during crucifixion was asphyxia caused by developing pulmonary edema. Additional causes of death were dehydration and blood loss.

Crucifixion as an execution was known among the Jews, in Ancient Babylon, Greece, Palestine, Carthage. According to Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ was subjected to crucifixion, which made the cross a symbol of the Christian religion. The Christian holy apostles Andrew and Peter were also executed by crucifixion. In Jerusalem, in the Rockefeller Museum at the Shechem Gate, a terrible exhibit is exhibited: a leg bone with a rusty nail stuck in it. This find was made by archaeologist Vasilios Tzaferis in 1968 while excavating Mount Scopus in northern Jerusalem. Four caves were discovered in this area, which were family tombs, with the bones of people who died from violent death - from a sword, arrow and crucifixion. In many crypts the bones are well preserved. In total, 15 limestone crypts were discovered, in which the remains of 35 people were stored. According to the found clay objects, it was possible to establish that the burial dates back to the period between the end of the 2nd century BC. and 70 AD of the 1st century AD. One of the tombs contained the remains of an adult man and a child, which confirm the dramatic details of crucifixion technology in the time of Pontius Pilate. During the crucifixion, a man's heel bone was pierced with a nail about 17 centimeters long and both legs were deliberately broken (11:44-53).

According to Josephus Flavius, the Jewish king Alexander Yang-nai, after capturing the rebellious city, took the soldiers taken captive from there to Jerusalem. Here he ordered about 800 captives to be crucified in the town square, among whom were many learned Pharisees, and while they were still alive, he ordered the wives and children to be slaughtered in front of their eyes. Tradition adds that during these executions the king feasted merrily with his mistresses. This unheard-of cruelty inspired such panic among the opponents of the king that on the same night 8,000 of them fled from Judea and did not dare to return to their homeland before Yannai died (12: Ch. 14.2).

Execution by crucifixion was also widespread in ancient Rome, where it became the main type of execution for especially dangerous criminals. After the suppression of the Spartacus rebellion, all the captured slaves, about 6,000 people, were crucified along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome, where their remains hung on crosses for years. As a form of the death penalty, crucifixion still exists in the legislation of Sudan and Saudi Arabia. But before the crucifixion, the preliminary hanging of the condemned is performed, that is, the already dead body is crucified. In the 20th century, crucifixion was used by Chechen fighters in relation to Russian prisoners of war during the first Chechen war (13: Ch. 15).

Burning as a method of execution was used by almost all ancient eastern and western peoples. The Jews were burned for carnal crimes, the Romans - for political crimes, under the Caesars - for arson, witchcraft, sacrilege, parricide and lèse majesté. In the Middle Ages, burning in Europe was a non-alternative form of execution for heretics, sorcerers and witches, as well as for crimes within the jurisdiction of church courts, such as blasphemy, sodomy, bestiality, adultery and others. Burning executed arsonists, as well as women sentenced to hanging for the murder of their husbands. Burning was especially widely used in Europe in the Middle Ages, when the Holy Inquisition chose this method of execution for its victims.

The ritual of the execution of the sentences of the Holy Inquisition is described by many contemporaries. Usually executions were carried out several times a year on holidays. The population was notified of executions a month in advance and encouraged to take part in them. The priests promised indulgences (liberation from sins) for forty days to those participating in the auto-da-fé. Avoidance of participation was seen as a sign of pity for the executed and could bring suspicion of heresy. The presence of women and children at executions was welcomed. On the eve of the execution, the city was decorated with flags and garlands of flowers, carpets were hung on the balconies, and a general rehearsal of the holiday was held. A solemn procession of parishioners, priests, personnel of the local Inquisition with its informants-fiscals in white overalls, hiding their faces (relatives of the Inquisition) passed through the streets. The participants in the procession built a platform and a “brazier”, a place for the burning of the pretended, and decorated the place of execution.

The burning was preceded by an auto-da-fe - a solemn service, the announcement of the verdict and execution. The convicts were in prison and did not know about the fate they had prepared - the verdict was announced only at the auto-da-fé. The guards prepared them for the execution: they cut them, shaved them, dressed them in clean linen, fed them a hearty breakfast, sometimes they gave them a glass of wine for courage. Then they threw a rope loop around the neck and put a green candle into their bound hands. In this form, the convicts were taken out into the street, where the guards and "relatives" of the inquisitors were waiting for them. Particularly malicious heretics were planted backwards on donkeys and tied to animals. The prisoners were led to the cathedral, where the procession was formed. It was attended by the same persons as the day before - now they carried the standards of the parishes, drawn in black cloth as a sign of mourning. Fiscals carried mannequins depicting dead, escaped or uncaptured heretics condemned to the stake.

The procession, whose participants sang mourning church hymns, slowly headed for the square, where the auto-da-fé was to take place. The monks and "relatives" who accompanied the prisoners loudly urged them to repent and reconcile with the church. The townspeople watched the procession from the windows of houses or from the pavement. Following the instructions of the clergy, many of them showered abuse on the prisoners, but it was forbidden to throw any objects at the heretics, as the priests, "relatives" and the staff of the Inquisition could suffer. Secular and spiritual authorities and guests gathered at the place where the auto-da-fé was performed, as well as the townspeople who filled the square. With the arrival of the procession, the prisoners were seated on the benches of shame, set up on a platform, somewhat lower than the honorary stands. After that, a funeral mass began, followed by a formidable sermon by the inquisitor, which ended with the announcement of sentences. The verdicts were read in Latin, and the prisoners had difficulty grasping their meaning; they were long, began with quotations from the Bible and from the works of the Church Fathers, and were read slowly. If there were many convicts, it sometimes took several hours to announce the verdicts. The auto-da-fe was crowned with executions: some convicts were clothed in san benito (a yellow shroud with a red cross - the clothes in which heretics were burned) and clownish caps, others were whipped with whips, the third guards and monks were dragged to the "brazier".

The “brazier” was located on the neighboring square, where, following the suicide bombers, church and secular leaders and ordinary citizens moved. At the "brazier" the convicts were tied to a pole and the scaffold was lined with firewood and brushwood. The monks and "relatives" who accompanied the suicide bombers tried at that last minute to extort renunciation from their victims. The convict could only give a sign of his desire to repent, because, fearing that he would agitate before the people in favor of heresy, he was often led to execution with a gag in his mouth. If the convict repented, then he was first strangled, after which the dead body was burned; if he persisted, he was burned alive. When the fire was lit, especially respected parishioners were given the honorable right to throw brushwood into the fire, thereby increasing their virtues before the church.

Although the executioners tried to maintain the fire so that the body of the convict burned completely, they did not always succeed. In most cases, the charred remains were torn into small pieces by the executioners, the bones were crushed, and this terrible mess was re-ignited. Then the ashes were carefully collected and thrown into the river. So the inquisitors tried to deprive the heretics of the opportunity to preserve the remains of their martyrs and worship them. If the person sentenced to burning died before execution, then his corpse was burned. The remains of those who were convicted posthumously were also burned after exhumation.

In the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, it was customary to burn dolls depicting convicts (execution in efigie) at the stake. Such a symbolic execution was subjected to those sentenced to life imprisonment, as well as victims of the Inquisition who fled from prisons or from persecution. The bonfire was also used by the Inquisition to destroy the writings of apostates, non-Christians and writers objectionable to the church.

In the manual for inquisitors (“Ones Yugsht tyashvkogit”) developed at the beginning of the 14th century by the chief inquisitor of the Kingdom of Aragon, Nicolae Eymerik, curious explanations are given about possible “judicial errors” and the responsibility of the Inquisition for them. Aymeric states: “If an innocent person is unjustly convicted, he should not complain about the decision of the church, which passed its sentence on the basis of sufficient evidence, and which cannot look into the hearts, and if false witnesses contributed to his conviction, then he is obliged to accept the sentence with humility and rejoice in the fact that he had the opportunity to die for the truth. The question arises, Nicolae Eymeric continues to argue on the same topic, whether a believer slandered by a false witness, trying to escape from a death sentence, has the right to confess to an imperfect crime, i.e. heresy, and to cover oneself with shame as a result of such recognition. First, the inquisitor explains, a man's reputation is an external good, and everyone is free to sacrifice it in order to avoid torture that brings suffering, or to save his life, which is the most precious of all goods; secondly, the loss of reputation does not harm anyone. If, the inquisitor concludes, such a convict refuses to “sacrifice his reputation” and plead guilty, then the confessor is obliged to urge him to face torture and death with humility, for which he will be prepared in the next world for the “immortal crown of a martyr” (14: 336-352 ). Thus, from the reasoning of one of the leaders of the Inquisition, it follows that the "sacred" tribunal acted with the permission of God, and the Lord God himself bears ultimate responsibility for his actions. These arguments testify to the criminal morality of the inquisitors and their patrons, including the monarchs and heads of the church who led the inquisition. It was them, the vicars of God on earth, that this bloody machine, created by the church and existing with its blessing, served and obeyed. The activities of the “holy” Inquisition left a sinister imprint on the theory and practice of further legal proceedings, from which, under its influence, the rudiments of objectivity and impartiality disappeared.

As rightly noted by G.Ch. Lee, until the end of the 18th century, in most countries of Europe, inquisitorial proceedings, the purpose of which was the destruction of heresy, became the usual method used against all the accused. In the eyes of the judge, the accused became a person outside the law, his guilt was always assumed, and it was necessary to extract a confession from him at all costs by cunning or force. However, in the 20th century in the USSR, the application of the principle “confession is the queen of evidence” led to tragic results, when confessions obtained under torture during the period of mass repressions of 1936-1938 were the basis for the imposition of death sentences (15).

According to the Spanish historian, Catholic priest and doctor of canon law Juan Antonio Llorente, the number of people persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition alone from 1481 to 1809 was 341,021. Of these, 31,912 were publicly burned, 17,659 were burned in absentia (in effigie), 291,460 were subjected to imprisonment and other punishments. Claiming that the given data on the number of executions is not complete, Llorente notes: “It would be impossible to determine exactly and reliably the number of victims that the Holy Tribunal killed in the first years from the time of its establishment. His fires began to glow in 1481; but the Supreme Council was created only in 1483. The registers of its archives and those of the subordinate tribunals date back to an even earlier era. If I added to the number of victims of the Inquisition of the peninsula all the unfortunates who were condemned by the tribunals of Mexico, Lima and American Cartagena, Sicily, Oran, Malta and sea galleys, their number would be truly incalculable ... It is impossible to determine the measure of so many misfortunes and misfortunes "( 16: Ch. 66).

The scale of the actions of executioners in cassocks is also characterized by the decision of the Holy Inquisition of February 16, 1568, when it condemned to death all the inhabitants of the Netherlands as heretics. “Only some persons, named by name, were excluded from the number of convicts. Philip II, by his proclamation, approved the sentence of the Inquisition and ordered its immediate execution, without distinction of sex, age and rank. This sentence, of course, was not executed in full, nevertheless, the courts of Charles V executed, according to Sarpi's calculation, 50 thousand, and according to the calculation of Hugo Grotius - 100 thousand of the Netherlands, and Philip's courts - 25 thousand. Duke of Alba in one letter to the king calmly counts “up to 800 heads assigned for execution after Holy Week” (8: Ch. 5).

The fires of the Inquisition burned throughout Europe for several centuries. “No matter how disgusting the details of the persecution raised against witchcraft until the 15th century,” writes G.Ch. Lee, - they were only a prologue to the blind and insane murders that left a shameful stain on the next century and half of the 17th century. It seemed as if madness had gripped the whole of Christendom, and that Satan could rejoice in the worship that was paid to his power, seeing how the smoke of sacrifices ascended endlessly, testifying

About his triumph over the Almighty. Protestants and Catholics competed in deadly fury. They no longer burned witches singly or in pairs, but in tens and hundreds ... "They say that one Bishop of Geneva burned five hundred witches in three months; Bishop of Bamberg - six hundred, Bishop of Würzburg - nine hundred; eight hundred were condemned, in all likelihood, at one time by the senate of Savoy ... "

In Italy, after the publication of the bull on witches by Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523), addressed to the inquisitor of the Como region, more than 100 witches were burned annually. In France, the first known burning took place at Toulouse in 1285, when a woman was accused of cohabiting with the devil, from which she allegedly gave birth to a cross between a wolf, a snake and a man. In 1320-1350. 200 women climbed the fires in Carcassonne, more than 400 in Toulouse. In Toulouse, on February 9, 1619, the famous Italian pantheist philosopher Giulio Vanini was burned. The execution procedure was regulated in the verdict as follows: “The executioner will have to drag him in one shirt on a mat, with a slingshot around his neck and a board on his shoulders, on which the following words should be written: “Atheist and blasphemer.” The executioner must deliver him to the main gate of the city's cathedral of Saint-Étienne and there put him on his knees, barefoot, with his head bare. In his hands he must hold a lit wax candle and will have to beg for the forgiveness of God, the king and the court. Then the executioner will take him to the Place de Salene, tie him to a stake erected there, rip out his tongue and strangle him. After that, his body will be burned on a fire prepared for this, and the ashes will be scattered to the wind” (14: 360).

The German historian Johann Scherr writes that the mass executions of heretics in Germany began around 1580 and continued for nearly a century. “While the whole of Lorraine was smoking from the fires ... in Padeborn, in Brandenburg, in Leipzig and its environs, many executions were also carried out. In the county of Werdenfeld in Bavaria in 1582, one trial led 48 witches to the stake ... In Braunschweig between 1590-1600. burned so many witches (10-12 people daily) that their pillory stood in a “dense forest” in front of the gates. In the small county of Genneberg, 22 witches were burned in one year in 1612, in 1597-1876. - only 197... In Lindheim, with 540 inhabitants, from 1661 to 1664, 30 people were burned. The Fulda judge of sorcerers, Balthasar Voss, boasted that he alone burned 700 people of both sexes and hoped to bring the number of his victims to 1000. In the county of Neisse, which belonged to the bishopric of Breslau, from 1640 to 1651 about 1000 witches were burned; we have descriptions of more than 242 executions. Between the victims come across children from 1 to 6 years. At the same time, several hundred witches were murdered in the bishopric of Olmütz. In Osnabrück in 1640, 80 witches were burned. A certain Mr. Rantsov burned on one day in 1686 in Holstein 18 witches. According to surviving documents, in the Bishopric of Bamberg, with a population of 100,000 people, it was burned in 1627-1630. 285 people, and in the bishopric of Würzburg for three years (1727-1729) more than 200 were burned; among them there are people of all ages, ranks and sex ...

The last burning on a huge scale was arranged by the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1678; at the same time, 97 people fell victim to holy fury. To all these executions known to us from documents, we must add at least the same number of executions, the acts of which are lost to history. Then it will turn out that every city, every town, every prelacy, every noble estate in Germany lit bonfires, on which thousands of people accused of witchcraft perished. We will not exaggerate if we define the number of victims at 100,000 people. In 1586, summer was late in the Rhine provinces, and the cold continued until June; it could only be the work of sorcery, and the Bishop of Trier burned one hundred and eighteen women and two men, from whom the consciousness was torn out that this continuation of the cold was the work of their spells. Special mention should be made of the Bishop of Würzburg, Philipp-Adolf Ehrenberg (1623-1631). In Würzburg alone, he organized 42 bonfires, on which 209 people were burned, including 25 children aged 4 to 14 years. Among those executed were the most beautiful girl, the fattest woman and the fattest man - the deviation from the norm seemed to the bishop direct evidence of connections with the devil "(17).