Hanging in Chains :: Chapter III.

Chapter III.

Whilst such horrors were going on in England we may be sure that the Germans, with their dogged brutality, were not behind-hand. With them the bodies of traitors and highwaymen, as well as of murderers, were fixed upon poles, set upon wheels, impaled alive, or hung upon gibbets. Three prints from “La Cosmographie Universelle de MÜnster,” 1552, give some notion of the sternness of the Teutonic penal code.

DECAPITATION.
(Facsimile of an original woodcut in “La Cosmographie universelle de MÜnster,” 1552.)

IMPALEMENT.
(Facsimile of an original woodcut in “La Cosmographie universelle de MÜnster,” 1552.)

BURNING AT THE STAKE.
(Facsimile of an original woodcut in “La Cosmographie universelle de MÜnster,” 1552.)

The last instance of burning at the stake in Germany occurred at Berlin, Aug. 18, 1786. It was then seventy years since a similar punishment had been carried out in the Prussian capital. The criminal, stripped to his shirt, was enclosed in a cage-like frame which fastened with a door, and was surrounded with wood and straw.

The last example of breaking on the wheel was carried out at Vienna in the above-mentioned year. The victim was tortured with red-hot pincers—tenaillÉ—as he walked to the place of execution.

Weever, writing in 1631, says:—

“Hee that commits treason, is adjudged by our Lawes, to be hanged, drawne, and quartered, and his diuided limbes to be set vpon poles in some eminent place, within some great Market-towne, or Citie.

“He that commits that crying sinne of murther, is vsually hanged vp in chaines, so to continue vntill his bodie be consumed, at or near the place where the fact was perpetrated.

“Such as are found guilty of other criminall causes, as Burglarie, Felonie, or the like, after a little hanging are cut downe and indeed buried, but seldom in Christian mould (as we say) nor in the sepulchres of their fathers, except their fathers have their graves made neare, or vnder the gallowes.

“And we vse to bury such as lay violent hands vpon themselues, in or neare to the high wayes, with a stake thrust through their bodies, to terrifie all passengers, by that so infamous and reproachfull a buriall; not to make such their finall passage out of this present world.”[31]

It is important to notice, as regards hanging in chains, that Weever says “vsually,” not “always;” and although in the preceding paragraph, when speaking of treason, he says the punishment for it “is adjudged by our Lawes,” he makes no such remark now, but is significantly silent as to the legal nature of chains; but, from the way Weever puts it, it must have been a common practice at that time in England.

In Scotland, Lord Dreghorn, writing in 1774, says, “The first instance of hanging in chains is in March, 1637, in the case of Macgregor, for theft, robbery, and slaughter; he was sentenced to be hanged in a chenzie on the gallowlee till his corpse rot.”[32]

In 1688 one Standsfield, found guilty of treason for cursing his father, and accession to his father’s murder, was sentenced to be hung at the Mercat Cross till he was dead, his tongue to be cut out and burnt upon a scaffold, his right hand to be cut off and affixed on the East Port of Haddington, and his body to be carried—not drawn—to the gallowlee between Leith and Edinburgh, “and there to be hanged in chains, and his name, fame, memory, and honours to be extinct, and his arms to be riven forth and delet out of the books of arms.”[33] Thus the hanging in chains formed part of the sentence in Scotland which it never did in England for any crime, if we except the solitary instance at Easthampstead in 1381.[34]

We may now pass for a short time to France. In that country the gallows was a feudal right which, held in the first place in capite, could be sub-infeudated to lesser vassals, but they could at any time be suppressed by the Crown.[35] Voltaire, at Ferney, had several gallows or potences, and his reassuring speech about them to his friends was, “I have as many gallows as would suffice to hang half the monarchs in Europe, and half the monarchs in Europe deserve no loftier position.”

Charles V. (1380-1422) granted leave to certain districts to have gallows—fourches patibulaires—with two posts, and a curious question arose in consequence of the Count of Rhodez having placed his armorial bearings upon a gibbet of this kind against the prerogative of the king; it was an abuse of privilege, and implied the seizing of justice. Such gibbets, of which the number of pillars, or, if of wood, posts, varied from two to eight, according to the quality of the lord, were used both to hang criminals from, and for the suspension, exposure, or gibbeting of the bodies of men executed elsewhere upon temporary gallows. The sites of these fourches patibulaires are recognizable at the present day by the names, “La Justice,” “La grande Justice,” titles corresponding to our own more humble and prosaic terms, “Gibbet Hill,” or “Gibbet Field.” The English gibbets have never assumed, like those in France, any monumental character.

It is certain that there was already at the end of the twelfth century a great monumental gibbet on the eminence of Montfaucon, between the faubourgs of St. Martin and the Temple, in Paris. Sauval gives a remarkable description of it as at that period, and, although he does not give his authorities quite in the way English antiquaries might wish, there can be no doubt, from the documents of the thirteenth century, that the monument was as Sauval describes it. It underwent extensive repairs, if not partial re-building, in 1425, when forty-eight old beams were replaced by new ones. It is also recorded that in 1466 “at the Great Justice of Paris were attached and nailed fifty-two iron chains to hang and strangle the malefactors who have been and shall be sent here by order of Justice.” Eight great new ladders were subsequently added, and all these details are corroborated by a representation in an old tapestry at the Hotel de Ville.[36]

From these very curious records the genius of Viollet le Duc has produced an illustration which is here reproduced. It will speak for itself better than any description, and it will be only necessary to say that the fourth, or open side, allowed access to the interior by a broad flight of steps leading to a wide platform on what may be called the first floor, running round the three sides of the interior. Upon this platform the executioner, with his ladders and assistants, performed his office.

GIBBET OF MONTFAUCON.
(From Viollet le Duc, “Dictionnaire raisonnÉ.”)

This arrangement enabled the designer of the building to form a vault in the centre, lighted by a small loop. It had an entrance, or “eye,” in the crown, at the crossing of the ribs, through which were swept from time to time the bones and fragments that fell from above, the ossuarium, or charnel-house, being cleared out, as necessity dictated, through a doorway level with the outside ground on the further or sinister side of the building. It must have been a thing quite unique in the world, somewhat recalling the Towers of Silence of the Parsees.

The mode of operation was as follows:—

The executioner, in his rayed and party-coloured habit of red and yellow, mounted the ladder, placed opposite a convenient space, backwards, holding in his hand the slack ends of three cords placed round the culprit’s neck; two of these cords, “les tortouses,” had slip-knots. The wretch under treatment was encouraged to follow “le maistre des haultes oeuvres,” driven up after him—no doubt with blows and execrations, according to the Gallic fashion—and drawn forward by him by means of the third cord, “le jet.” Arrived at the proper height, the operator, the mediÆval “Monsieur de Paris,” rapidly attached the “tortouses” to the gallows, or chain pendent from it, and, twisting the “jet” firmly round his arm, by means of this, and the action of his knee, threw the culprit off the ladder into mid-air; the knots of the “tortouses” ran home, and the man was strangled. The executioner then gripped the crossbeam, and, placing his feet in the loop formed by the bound hands of the patient, by dint of repeated vigorous shocks terminated his sufferings.[37]

It may not be questioned that death under the circumstances and complicated conditions above described cannot have been other than a very shocking spectacle, and particularly when it is noticed from the arrangement of the chains that many a malefactor may in his agony have broken loose from his bonds, and clutched and grappled in his last moments with a decaying carcass at his side.

We can gather a further idea of the strange and dismal appearance of the Gibbet of Montfaucon, if we consider that the quantity of bodies attached to it, and ceaselessly renewed, attracted thousands of carrion birds to the spot. But that its hideous aspect and pestilential surroundings prevented not the establishment, in its immediate vicinity, of places of amusement and debauch, one would almost have been slow to believe were it not for the testimony of ancient poetry:—

“Pour passer temps joyeusement,
Raconter vueil une repeue
Qui fut faicte subtillement
PrÈs Montfaulcon, c’est chose sceÜe,

Tant parlÈrent du bas mestier,
Qui fut conclud, par leur faÇon,
Qu’ils yroyent, ce soir-lÀ, coucher
PrÈs le gibet de Montfaulcon,
Et auroyent pour provision,
Ung pastÉ de faÇon subtile,
Et menroyent, en conclusion,
Avec eulx chascun une fille.”[38]

So wrote Villon—also called Corbeuil,—in the middle of the fifteenth century. We shall have occasion, later on, to show that human nature on the hill of Montfaucon, in the darkness of the Middle Ages, was the same as human nature in a great English midland town in the enlightened nineteenth century.

Monsieur de Lavillegille tells us that there was another and a smaller gibbet, not far from Montfaucon, called “Le gibet de Montigny.”[39] This was to supply the place of the great scarecrow, when the latter was under repair, because, of course, Justice never stands still. The bodies of men decapitated, quartered, torn to pieces by horses, or boiled, were hung up in sacks of sackcloth or leather; such as committed suicide also,[40] and lay figures of persons condemned in contumaciam. The corpse of the great Captain Coligny, who was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, was hung up by the heels at the gibbet of Montfaucon. L’Etoile reports that Catherine de Medecis—“pour repÂitre ses yeux”—went to view him one evening.

It was the custom in France to try, condemn, and hang on the gibbet, in human clothing, certain animals under special circumstances. So a sow, who had killed a child, was hung up at Montigny. A bull was similarly tried and condemned for killing a man, but whether the beast was gibbeted is not recorded. It may be that the difficulty and inconvenience of carrying the matter out, or perhaps the trouble to obtain garments large enough, caused our fantastic neighbours to draw the line at the bull. But we may fairly admire the principle of mediÆval times, which seems to have been that justice should be meted out equally both to man and beast. It is pleasant to know that in many English towns at the present day societies are active in seeing that not only simple justice, but, what is much better for them, mercy also, is dealt out to the poor dog, the poor horse, the necessary or unnecessary cat, and other harmless, helpless creatures.

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