Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (7 page)
‘And the whole Wheel was stained with his blood, and the grate containing the burning coals was put out by reason of the drops of blood pouring down on it, while about the axle of the Wheel the gobbets of flesh were carried round and round…’
The invention of the wheel may have been a boon, bringing immeasurable benefits to mankind generally, but thousands of people must have cursed its very existence as, while bound to a wheel, they were subjected to some of the most fiendish tortures ever devised.
There were many adaptations over the centuries, but this particular method of execution is believed to have originated during the reign of the Roman Commodus, who died in
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192. In his day the victim was secured on a wide wooden bench, and an iron-flanged wheel was then laid on his body. The executioner, wielding a heavy hammer, then pounded the wheel, starting at the victim’s ankles and working slowly upwards, smashing the bones to splinters, the impact of each blow on the wheel also causing dreadful injuries to other parts of the victim’s body.
The Romans used the wheel for the punishment of slaves and to overcome the obstinacy of the Christian martyrs, and employed several different methods. In some, the wheel was mounted horizontally, in others vertically. In either position the victim would be bound to the face of the wheel or around the circumference, and the suffering could be increased by lighting a fire underneath, thereby converting the wheel into a roasting-spit. The author Josephus wrote:
‘Then were the Apparitors [executioners] directed to bring in the Christian prisoner and, tearing away his tunic, bound him hand and foot with thongs. Then they fixed him about a great Wheel, whereof the noble-hearted youth had all his joints dislocated and all his limbs broken. And the whole Wheel was stained with his blood, and the grate containing the burning coals was put out by reason of the drops of blood pouring down on it, while about the axle of the Wheel the gobbets of flesh were carried round and round, the parts adjoining the joints of the bones being everywhere cut to pieces.
Another was fastened to the Wheel, on which he was stretched and burned with fire; moreover they applied spits, sharpened and made red hot, to his back, and pierced his sides and inwards, searing the latter dreadfully.’
Some wheels were smaller, so that once the victim had been spreadeagled on it, with his ankles and wrists extending beyond the rim, the executioner would smash the limbs, then drape them round the perimeter of the wheel.
In other modes the device consisted of two wheels, their circumferences joined by laths, like a cylinder, round which the victim was spreadeagled. This, known as the great wheel, was then either pushed over a cliff, the fall shattering the victim’s body and limbs en route, or rolled around the city’s square, the victim being eventually killed by a blow to the rib-cage.
Other wheels were broad, with spikes, like extensions of the spokes, extending outwards from the circumference. On this wheel, called for obvious reasons the scorpion, the martyr was stretched around the rim between the spikes, the wheel then being propelled over rows of other spikes set into the ground.
This was the torture inflicted on St Catherine by the Romans in the fourth century. Once she had been secured round the rim, the wheel was pushed along. But divine providence interceded, for the wheel broke and the spikes snapped off, injuring many of the hitherto gloating spectators.
Frustrated, Emperor Maxentius sentenced her to be beheaded, but so holy was she that milk, rather than blood, flowed from her corpse. As well as giving her name to that well-known firework, the Catherine wheel, she is the patron saint of wheelwrights and philosophers, and not only do a 170 medieval steeple bells in England bear her name, but 62 churches are also dedicated to her memory.
As well as churches, a hospital was named after her. It was founded in 1148 by Queen Matilda, wife of King Stephen, and was situated by the River Thames, near where Tower Bridge now stands. The staff cared for travellers and the sick, inmates wearing the hospital’s symbol, a wheel, on the backs of their coats.
Another martyr, St Clement, was secured to a wheel by the Romans, it then being rotated while his tormentors beat him with rods. And Felix, a priest, together with deacons Fortunatus and Achilleus, were each tied to the face of a wheel. Their limbs were broken with iron bars, the stumps being then intertwined with the spokes, and they were left to die in agony.
A modification of this latter method was introduced into France in 1534 by Francis I as the punishment for no fewer than 115 crimes, but it was mainly reserved for traitors and murderers.
The most common technique involved binding the felon, face upwards, on a large cartwheel which lay on the scaffold. An alternative device was a St Andrew’s cross, consisting of two lengths of timber nailed together in that ‘X’ shape. Once secured, the felon would be lifted so that the wheel or cross could be fixed to a post horizontally or inclined at an angle, thereby affording the spectators a clear and uninterrupted view.
The executioner would take up his iron bar, 3 feet long by 2 inches square, or a sledgehammer if he so preferred, and, with great deliberation, slowly and accurately proceed to smash to pulp the arms and legs of the victim. Depending on the sentence, the end would be brought about either by a blow to the heart, neck or stomach or by administering the ‘retentum’, a thin, almost invisible cord passed round the victim’s throat and pulled tight, thereby strangling him.
The more serious the crime, the greater the length of time before the coup de grâce was given. In the case of 86-year-old John Calas of Toulouse, who in 1761 was believed to have killed his own son, he was first tortured to persuade him to reveal the names of his accomplices. He was then sentenced to be broken on the wheel, but not to receive the retentum until two hours had passed; and after death his body was to be burned to ashes.
Perhaps the most famous case in French history was the execution by the wheel of Count Antoine de Horn and his companion, a Piedmontese, the Chevalier de Milhe, in 1720. Both were accused of murdering a share-dealer in a tavern in the Rue Quincampoix in Paris. They had made an appointment to meet their prey, ostensibly to sell him shares worth 100,000 crowns, but in reality to rob the man. Surprised by a servant while attacking the dealer, they leaped from the window but were captured and committed to gaol.
Such was the prominence of de Horn in French society that his aristocratic relatives sought to influence the judges, hoping that any punishment might be mitigated. But shock ran through the court as both were sentenced to be broken on the wheel. Petitions signed by earls, dukes, bishops, and even a prince, were raised, claiming that insanity in the de Horn family was the real cause, but these were rejected by the regent, despite his being distantly related to the condemned man through his mother, the Princess Palatine.
Not only was pressure, subtle or otherwise, brought to bear on the regent; the man charged with performing the executions, Monsieur de Paris, Charles Sanson, a member of that redoubtable family of hangmen and torturers, was approached by the Comtesse de Parabère, the regent’s mistress, who begged him to save the life of ‘her’ Antoine – confirming the rumours in fashionable circles that the ladies of the court hesitated little before surrendering to de Horn’s overtures.
Desperately, the comtesse offered him gold, anything, to allow the condemned man to escape, but Charles valued his own head more than any bribe, promising, however, to whisper her name in the victim’s ear before dispatching him.
On the day of the execution Sanson collected his prisoners from the Conciergerie, the prison, to find them both severely crippled. In accordance with the law, they had both been subjected to torture designed to make them admit the names of any accomplices. The instrument used had been the dreaded brodequins, iron boots which could be tightened with agonising slowness by means of screw mechanisms until the wearer’s ankles were crushed to the bone.
Sanson and his assistants carried them out to the tumbril and laid them on the straw. In view of the possibility of a rescue attempt, the cart was strongly guarded, and it soon arrived at the Place de Grève, where the scaffold stood. Two wheels had already been mounted on posts in readiness, with a St Andrew’s Cross lying flat on each, and to these the two condemned men were bound. Without any delay Sanson gave the order. Instantly, Nicolas Gros and his other assistant seized the iron clubs and proceeded to strike at the arms and legs of the helpless victims. Fearsome screams issued from the chevalier, who was now writhing in agony, but from de Horn came only silence. In defiance of orders, Sanson had surreptitiously administered the retentum; the young man was already dead.
The crowd, horrified yet unable to look away, watched the tragedy unfolding before them as the priest sought to ease the chevalier’s sufferings by wiping his brow and pouring a few drops of water into his mouth. His cries of pain increased, cries accompanied by the screams of the women around the scaffold, and at last Sanson gave the final order. Gros obediently picked up a large block of iron and dropped it on to the chevalier’s chest, caving it in and bringing merciful relief to the mangled victim. After some time the corpses, their limbs adhering to their bodies only by shreds of skin, were cut free from the wheels and gently carried to waiting carriages, then taken to a nearby chapel where the clergy would perform the mass of the dead before the funerals took place.
And on the afternoon of the execution an envelope was delivered to the sorrowing Comtesse de Parabère, a missive from Charles Sanson which bore the inscription ‘Promised souvenir’. Inside, it contained a lock of Antoine de Horn’s hair.
The next occupant of the wheel came from a decidedly different walk of life. A matter of months later, on 15 October 1721, the Paris paper Barbier’s Journal excitedly announced that ‘Cartouche, the notorious robber who was sought everywhere and found nowhere, is captured! He has been discovered committing a robbery, and M. le Blanc, Secretary of State for War, who conducted the whole affair, took with him forty picked soldiers and a number of policemen, who had orders to take Cartouche dead or alive, that is, to fire on him if he attempted to run away.’
It would seem that the house had been surrounded. When caught, the much-wanted criminal had six pistols on the table. Arrested, he was taken to the Chatelet prison, where he was confined in a cell with triple doors and not only guarded by four men but was also chained to a stake attached to a pillar.
But who was this desperado who, with his gang, had terrified the worthies of Paris? Louis Dominic Cartouche, thief and pickpocket, although only 4½ feet tall, was the scourge of the French gendarmerie. A typical Parisian gamin, unable to read or write, but inherently intelligent and tinning, he soon recruited a large gang of miscreants and remained at large for many years.