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Authors: Geoffrey Abbott

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‘I announce to you that about two thousand Catholic prisoners who were detained here, and whom we started to evacuate, have perished. A part of these gentlemen revolted against the guard, who did justice in the matter (
qui en à fait justice
). When the rest were crossing the Ponts-de-Ce, two arches collapsed, and they unfortunately fell into the Loire, where they drowned. Unfortunately for them, their feet and hands were tied.
Vive la République!

The committee continued to sit in judgment, holding tribunals, sentencing captured and refugee Vendeans to death. By now the
noyade
method had been perfected, one that could deal with large numbers of victims. On 23 December 1793 one such drowning took place, an eyewitness describing what he saw:

‘Two barges laden with people stopped at a place called Prairie-au-Duc. There I and my comrades witnessed the most horrible carnage that could possibly be seen. More than eight hundred persons of all ages and both sexes were inhumanly drowned and cut to pieces. I heard deputy Fouquet and his officers reproach some among their own people that they did not know how to use their sabres, and he showed them by his example how they ought to use them. The barges did not sink to the bottom quickly enough, so they fired with their guns at those who were still above water. The cries of these unfortunate victims only seemed to increase the energy of their executioners.

I wish to point out that all the individuals who were drowned this night were previously stripped as naked as one’s hand. In vain the women besought that they might be left their chemises; but the drowners laughed at their tears, and joked about the figures of their victims, with horrid comments according as they were old or young. Their rags, their jewels, all their belongings were the prey, and what one can scarcely believe is, that those who thus despoiled them sold these spoils the next day to the highest bidder.’

The
noyades
continued, one on Christmas Eve, one on Christmas Day, and more in January. Lamberty, exulting and merciless in his dedication to the aims of the Revolution, boasted that he had ‘already sent 2,800 brigands into the national bath’. Protests by the doomed captives were ignored. On being herded aboard a barge, one prisoner asked for a glass of water. ‘No need,’ replied his guard, adding cynically: ‘In a few minutes you will be drinking out of the Big Cup.’

The slaughter continued, French men drowning French men, French women, even French children. A
noyade
of 144 women took place, followed by one of ‘80 women of improper character’, the incident being seized on by some admirers of the Revolution as proof of Carrier’s high morality and of his intention to improve the moral condition of Nantes. And as many as 600 children were reportedly put to death in the Loire, infants as young as four to six years old, guilty only of being the children of those who had been guillotined as traitors to the Republic.

The campaign in the Vendée raged until late in 1794 when, with both sides exhausted and the countryside ravaged and desolate, the execution of the revolutionary leader Robespierre and others led to a change of policy in Paris. By October 1795 peace had been declared and an amnesty granted.

But not so where Carrier, Lamberty and others of the committee were concerned. Public exposure of their murderous acts brought horror and condemnation, and despite their pleas that they were only carrying out the orders received from Paris, with the full knowledge and approval of the revolutionary government, they were put on trial. Within days of being found guilty, they were escorted to the scaffold, where the descending blade of the guillotine brought fitting retribution – albeit a swifter one than had they been drowned in the River Loire.

 

DRY PAN

The dry pan was yet another method of execution and torture in the varied repertoire of the Spanish Inquisition, although not in every case was it used solely for religious coercion. In 1706, after the battle of Almanza, French troops stationed in Aragon rescued women who, being the more attractive ones, had been held against their will by members of the Inquisition for their own personal enjoyment.

One of these, a girl of 15, had been taken forcibly from her home in the middle of the night on the orders of Don Francisco Terrejon, one of the chief Inquisitors, and was taken to Don Francisco’s headquarters.

John Marchant, in his book
The History of the Inquisition
, written in 1770, described in the girl’s own words what happened to her:

‘Early in the morning the maid, Mary, got up, and told me that no one in the house was yet up, and that she would show me the “Dry Pan and Gradual Fire”, on condition that I should keep it secret for her sake and mine too; which I having promised her, she took me along with her, and showed me a dark room with a thick iron door, and within it an oven with an immense brass pan upon it, with a cover of the same, and a lock to it.

The oven was burning at that time, and I asked Mary for what use the pan was there. And she, without giving me any answer, took me by the hand out of that place and led me into a large room, where she showed me a thick wheel covered on both sides with thick boards and, opening a little window in the centre of it, desired me to look with a candle on the inside of it, and I saw that all the circumference of the wheel was set with sharp razors; and after that she showed me a pit full of serpents and toads.

Then she said to me, “Now, my good Mistress, I will tell you the use of these three things. The Dry Pan and Gradual Fire are for heretics and those who oppose the Holy Father’s Will and pleasure, for they are put naked and alive into the Pan and, the cover of it being locked up, the executioner begins to put into the oven a small fire, and by degrees he augmenteth it till the body is reduced to ashes.

The second is designed for those that speak against the Pope and the Holy Fathers, for they are put within the wheel and, the little door being locked, the executioner turns the wheel, thereby piercing their flesh with the knives and mutilating them sorely, until they are dead.

And the third is for those that condemn the images and refuse to give due respect and veneration to ecclesiastical persons, for they are thrown into the pit, and there they become food for the serpents and toads.”

Then Mary said to me that another day she would show me the torments for public sinners and transgressors of the five commandments of our Holy Church; so I in much horror desired Mary to show me no more places, for the very thoughts of those three which I had seen were enough to terrify me to the heart.

So we went to my room, and she charged me again to be very obedient to all the commands Don Francisco should give me, or to be assured that if I did not, that I would undergo the torment of the Dry Pan. Indeed, I conceived such a horror for the Gradual Fire that I was not mistress of my senses, nay, nor of my thoughts; so I told Mary that I would follow her advice, and grant Don Francisco everything he desired me to do.’

 

EATEN BY ANIMALS

‘Near Lindau I did see a malefactor hanging in iron chains on the gallows, with a massive dog hanging each side by the heels as, being nearly starved, they might eat his flesh before he himself died of famine…’

‘Throw them to the lions!’ was a cry often heard in Roman amphitheatres, this in the days when the authorities decided to combine judicial punishment with entertainment for the populace. This means of execution was originally on the law books to deal with recalcitrant slaves, but Christian martyrs also found themselves in the arena pitted against wild beasts and shackled by having their feet fixed in hollow stones by means of molten lead. St Benignus was thrown to 12 savage and half-starved dogs, red-hot bradawls having first been inserted under his fingernails; St Blandina was swathed in a net and tossed by wild bulls, afterwards being killed by having her throat cut by a sword.

Leopards, bears and boars were also used, common criminals being paraded on a platform erected in the middle of the arena. Wild animals were penned beneath the platform, and, when the crowd’s blood lust had reached fever pitch, a trapdoor would be released, the victims falling into the cage, there to be mauled and eaten alive by the beasts.

Centuries later, in 1893, the Negus of Abyssinia discovered that one of his servants was plotting to kill him, and so sentenced the man to have his tongue cut out, his right hand amputated, and then turned loose in the desert, there to be attacked and eaten by hyenas.

Dogs rather than lions, bulls or hyenas performed the same function in Europe, albeit rarely, an account by a traveller in medieval Germany recounting: ‘Near Lindau I did see a malefactor hanging in iron chains on the gallows, with a massive dog hanging each side by the heels as, being nearly starved, they might eat his flesh before he himself died of famine; and at Frankfurte I did see the like punishment of a Jew.’

And in England, on St Bryce’s Day, 13 November 1002, when Ethelred the Unready ordered the people to rise up and slay all the Danes in the country, a massacre took place, during which the children of Danish women were buried up to their waists in the ground, to be set upon by mastiff dogs and worried to death. In revenge Swein later invaded, and in 1013 was crowned king of England.

 

BOOK: Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty
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