Impaling girls on a stake. Martin Monestier - The death penalty. History and types of capital punishment from the beginning of time to the present day

Impaling girls on a stake. Martin Monestier - The death penalty. History and types of capital punishment from the beginning of time to the present day. The whole village saw

Impaling girls on a stake. Martin Monestier - The death penalty. History and types of capital punishment from the beginning of time to the present day. The whole village saw the execution Executed in Russia for a long time, subtly and painfully. Historians to this day have not come to a consensus about the reasons for the appearance of the death penalty. Some are inclined to the version of the continuation of the custom of blood feud, others prefer the Byzantine influence. How did they deal with those who broke the law in Russia? 
Drowning 

This type of execution was very common in Kievan Rus. Usually it was used in cases where it was required to deal with a large number of criminals. But there were also isolated cases. So, for example, the Kyiv prince Rostislav was somehow angry with Gregory the Wonderworker. He ordered to tie the rebellious hands, throw a rope loop around his neck, at the other end of which a heavy stone was fixed, and throw it into the water. With the help of drowning, in Ancient Russia, apostates, that is, Christians, were also executed. They were sewn into a bag and thrown into the water. Usually such executions took place after battles, during which many prisoners appeared. Execution by drowning, in contrast to execution by burning, was considered the most shameful for Christians. Interestingly, centuries later, the Bolsheviks during the Civil War used drowning as a massacre against the families of the "bourgeois", while the condemned were tied hands and thrown into the water. burning From the 13th century, this type of execution was usually applied to those who violated church laws - for blasphemy against God, for unpleasing sermons, for witchcraft. Ivan the Terrible especially loved her, who, by the way, was veryinventive in the methods of execution. So, for example, he came up with the idea of ​​sewing the offenders into bearskins and giving them to be torn to pieces by dogs or skinning a living person. In the era of Peter, execution by burning was applied to counterfeiters. By the way, they were punished in another way - they poured molten lead or tin into their mouths.
instillation

Burying alive in the ground was usually applied to murderers. Most often, a woman was buried up to her throat, less often - only up to her chest. Such a scene is excellently described by Tolstoy in his novel Peter the Great. Usually a crowded place became a place for execution - a central square or a city market. Next to the still alive executed criminal, a sentry was put up, who stopped any attempts to show compassion, to give the woman water or some bread. It was not forbidden, however, to express their contempt or hatred for the criminal - to spit on her head or even kick her. And those who wished could give alms for the coffin and church candles. Usually, a painful death came on 3-4 days, but history recorded a case when a certain Euphrosyne, buried on August 21, died only on September 22.
Quartering

 During quartering, the condemned were cut off their legs, then their arms, and only then their heads. So, for example, Stepan Razin was executed. It was planned to take the life of Emelyan Pugachev in the same way, but he was first cut off his head, and only then he was deprived of his limbs. From the examples given, it is easy to guess that this type of execution was used for insulting the king, for an attempt on his life, for treason and for imposture.
It is worth noting that, unlike the Central European, for example, Parisian crowd, which perceived the execution as a spectacle and dismantled the gallows for souvenirs, Russian people treated the condemned with compassion and mercy. So, during the execution of Razin, there was deathly silence on the square, broken only by rare female sobs. At the end of the procedure, people usually dispersed in silence. 
Boiling 

Boiling in oil, water or wine was especially popular in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The condemned was put into a cauldron filled with liquid. Hands were threaded into special rings built into the cauldron. Then the cauldron was put on fire and slowly heated up. As a result, the person was boiled alive. Such an execution was applied in Russia to state traitors. However, this view looks humane compared to the execution called "Walking in a circle" - one of the most cruel methods used in Russia. The condemned was cut open in the stomach in the area of ​​​​the intestines, but so that he did not die too quickly from blood loss. Then they removed the gut, nailed one end of it to a tree and forced the executed person to walk around the tree in a circle.
wheeling 

Wheeling became widespread in the era of Peter. The sentenced was tied to a timbered St. Andrew's cross fixed on the scaffold. Notches were made on the rays of the cross. The criminal was stretched on the cross face up in such a way that each of his limbs lay on the rays, and the places of the folds of the limbs were on the notches. The executioner dealt one blow after another with an iron crowbar of a quadrangular shape, gradually breaking the bones in the folds of the arms and legs. The work of crying ended with two or three precise blows to the stomach, with the help of which the ridge was broken. The body of the broken criminal was connected so that the heels converged with the back of the head, laid on a horizontal wheel and left to die in this position. The last time such an execution was applied in Russia to the participants in the Pugachev rebellion. 
Impaling

Like quartering, impalement was usually applied to rebels or thieves' traitors. So Zarutsky, an accomplice of Marina Mnishek, was executed in 1614. During the execution, the executioner drove a stake into the human body with a hammer, then the stake was placed vertically. The executed gradually, under the weight of his own body, began to slide down. After a few hours, the stake came out through his chest or neck. Sometimes a crossbar was made on the stake, which stopped the movement of the body, preventing the stake from reaching the heart. This method significantly extended the time of painful death. Impaling until the 18th century was a very common type of execution among the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. Smaller stakes were used to punish rapists - they were driven a stake through the heart, as well as against mothers who killed children. Since ancient times, people brutally dealt with their enemies, some even ate them, but mostly they were executed, deprived of their lives in terrible and sophisticated ways. The same was done with criminals who violated the laws of God and man. Over a thousand-year history, a lot of experience has been accumulated in the execution of the condemned.Decapitation The physical separation of the head from the body with the help of an ax or any military weapon (knife, sword) later, a machine invented in France, the Guillotine, was used for these purposes. It is believed that during such an execution, the head, separated from the body, retains sight and hearing for another 10 seconds. Decapitation was considered a "noble execution" and was applied to aristocrats. In Germany, beheading was abolished in 1949 due to the failure of the last guillotine. Hanging Strangulation of a person on a rope loop, the end of which is fixed motionless. Death occurs in a few minutes, but not at all from suffocation, but from squeezing the carotid arteries. In this case, the person first loses consciousness, and later dies. The medieval gallows consisted of a special pedestal, a vertical column (pillars) and a horizontal beam, on which the condemned were hung, placed above the likeness of a well. The well was intended for falling off parts of the body - the hanged remained hanging on the gallows until complete decomposition. In England, a type of hanging was used, when a person was thrown from a height with a noose around his neck, while death occurs instantly from a rupture of the cervical vertebrae. There was an “official table of falls”, with the help of which the necessary length of the rope was calculated depending on the weight of the convict (if the rope is too long, the head separates from the body). A variation of hanging is garrote. A garrote (an iron collar with a screw, often equipped with a vertical spike on the back) is generally not strangled. She breaks her neck. The executed in this case does not die from suffocation, as happens if he is strangled with a rope, but from crushing the spine (sometimes, according to medieval evidence, from a fracture of the base of the skull, depending on where to put it on) and a fracture of the cervical cartilage. The last high-profile hanging - Saddam Hussein.

Quartering It is considered one of the most cruel executions, and was applied to the most dangerous criminals. When quartered, the victim was strangled (not to death), then the stomach was cut open, the genitals were cut off, and only then the body was cut into four or more parts and the head was cut off. Body parts were put on public display "where the king deems it convenient." Thomas More, the author of Utopia, sentenced to quartering with burning of the inside, on the morning before the execution was pardoned, and the quartering was replaced by decapitation, to which More replied: "God spare my friends from such mercy." In England, quartering was used until 1820, formally abolished only in 1867. In France, quartering was carried out with the help of horses. The convict was tied by the arms and legs to four strong horses, which, whipped by the executioners, moved in different directions and tore off the limbs. In fact, the convict had to cut the tendons. Another execution by tearing the body in half, noted in pagan Russia, was that the victim was tied by the legs to two bent young trees, and then released. According to Byzantine sources, Prince Igor was killed by the Drevlyans in 945 because he wanted to collect tribute from them twice.

Hanging by the rib A type of death penalty in which an iron hook was thrust into the side of the victim and hung up. Death came from thirst and blood loss after a few days. The hands of the victim were tied so that he could not free himself. Execution was common among the Zaporizhian Cossacks. According to legend, Dmitry Vishnevetsky, the founder of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, the legendary “Baida Veshnivetsky”, was executed in this way.

stoning After the appropriate decision of the authorized legal body (the king or the court), a crowd of citizens gathered to kill the guilty person by throwing stones at him. At the same time, small stones should have been chosen so that the condemned person would not be exhausted too quickly. Or, in a more humane case, it could be one executioner, dropping one large stone from above on the condemned. Currently, stoning is used in some Muslim countries. On January 1, 1989, stoning remained in the legislation of six countries of the world. An Amnesty International report gives an eyewitness account of a similar execution in Iran: “Next to a wasteland, a lot of stones and pebbles were poured out of a truck, then they brought two women dressed in white, bags were put on their heads ... A hail of stones fell on them, turning their bags red ... The wounded women fell, and then the guards of the revolution broke through their heads with shovels to finally kill them.

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