A gentle gust of wind awakens the body that has been sleeping for a thousand years; a gentle gust of wind blows away the mysterious veil of history. Standing on the shoulders of time, I talk to history.
Torture, as the name suggests, is a cruel punishment imposed on the person, some for the purpose of extorting confessions by words and deeds, some to deter others, if the former may be able to save life, the latter will mostly cause death. In ancient times, the punishment that would lead to the painful death of the offender can be roughly divided into three types, namely the death penalty in the law, the death penalty outside the law, and the punishment that is not a death penalty but is enough to cause death.
The death penalty in the law: hanging, beheading, waist beheading, lingchi, car cracking.
Although there were many punishments in ancient times, in fact, there were only five types of punishments listed as the main punishments, namely, the "ink, sword, sword, palace, and dapu" that were mainly corporal punishments in the ancient period, and after the reform, the five main punishments of "flogging, rod, disciple, stream, and death" were formed after the Sui and Tang dynasties. The death penalty is undoubtedly the most serious of them, and although there are many ways of death since the Sui and Tang dynasties, only "beheading and hanging" are the correct punishment, and the more cruel waist beheading, lingchi, and car cracking are also included in the law, but mainly to deter others of special death penalties.
1. Hanging. One of the positive punishments of the death penalty is a relatively light punishment compared to the beheading, after all, the deceased can leave the whole body, so in the ancient law, it is often the existence of the beheading and demotion of one level. Different from foreign countries, the hanging in ancient China was usually hanged with a bow string, that is, the bow was put on the neck of the prisoner, the bow string was facing forward, the executioner began to rotate the bow in the back, the more the bow turned tighter, the prisoner's anger became less and less, and finally he died of breath. As for strangling with silk brocade, that is a privilege that only a few people can enjoy.
2. Beheading. One of the ordinations of the death penalty is also the main means of carrying out the death penalty in ancient times. According to the severity of the crime, it is divided into two types: the beheading decision and the beheading of the prisoner, that is, the decision is that there is no injustice after the supervision and examination, and the law department reviews the agreement, and waits for the return of the ministry to arrive and executes on the same day; the beheading of the prisoner is not immediately executed, and should be temporarily detained, and then dealt with separately according to the specific circumstances until the autumn trial or the court trial. In addition to "never waiting for the time" to rebel against the great rebellion, the general death row prisoners implement the "autumn and winter execution" system, that is, the general death row prisoners must be executed after the autumn frost falls, before the winter solstice, so it is also called "autumn decision".
3. Waist chopping. Although this kind of death penalty is not one of the correct punishments, it does appear in ancient laws, such as the "Chronicle of the Shang Dynasty" that "the people are shiwu, and the priest sits continuously, and does not behead the adulterer", and existed for a long time, until the Yongzheng period was abolished. During executions, a heavy axe is usually used to cut the prisoner from the waist into two sections, and since the waist slash is to cut the person from the middle, the prisoner will not die instantly, but will remain conscious for a period of time, after a period of time to die. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, Fang Xiaoru, after being rumored to have been beheaded at the waist, Fang Xiaoru also crawled on the ground with his elbow propped up, dipping his hand in blood and even twelve and a half "usurpation" words before he lost his breath. In addition, Li Si of the Qin Dynasty, Chao Que of the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty Debater, and Yu Hongtu of the Qing Dynasty all died of waist beheading.
4. Ling Chi. One of the most cruel of the death penalties is often used to punish people who commit the most heinous crimes, but it was formally included in the law relatively late, and it is currently the earliest appearance in the Liao Shi Criminal Law Chronicle, and has been widely used since the Song Dynasty, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, Ling Chi did not have a fixed method, but was carried out according to the severity of the criminal's crime, the light one only "split the limbs", the heavy one "a thousand knives", the less than ten knives, and the more as many as 3,000 knives. It is said that the executioner is extremely skilled, and if the knife is not cut, it must ensure that the prisoner does not die, otherwise the executioner will also be punished, so the prisoner is often tortured to death.
5. Car crack. This kind of punishment appeared earlier, and gradually abolished since the Tang Dynasty, and appeared briefly in the five dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty, before the appearance of Ling Chi, the car crack was often cut off as a punishment for the most heinous offenders, and appeared in the law during the Northern Zhou and Sui Dynasties. The chariot rift, also known as the "five horses and corpses", is to put the head and limbs of the prisoner on a rope, and five fast horses (carriages or cattle) pull them in five directions, tearing the person into five pieces. Shang Martin of the Qin State and Li Cunxiao of the Fifth Dynasty were all killed by the car split.
The above four are the methods of death penalty that appear in the laws of various dynasties, of which the two kinds of "beheading and hanging" as the right punishment are the most widely used, and the waist beheading and Ling Chi are relatively special, although they have existed in all dynasties and dynasties, but they are often only aimed at people who have committed the most heinous crimes.
Death penalties outside the law: skinning, cannon burning, sawing, vertebral severance, lead filling, etc.
Compared with the above death penalties, most of these punishments have typical human characteristics, that is, they are not punishable in the law, but are often determined by the attitude of the ruler, so most of the means of execution are more cruel.
1. Peeling. This kind of punishment is one of the most widely used outside the law, and it is mostly found in historical records. Initially, the prisoners were executed and then skinned, but later they developed into live stripping. At the time of execution, it is often cut down by the spine, a knife divides the skin of the back into two halves, and slowly uses the knife to separate the skin and muscles, tearing them apart like butterflies spreading their wings. In addition, there is a theory that a person is buried in the soil, and then an opening above his head is filled with mercury, which then separates the human skin and muscles. After the skin was peeled off, it was made into a two-sided drum and hung at the entrance of the ya gate to be used to show the ring, and Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, used this method to execute corrupt officials and warn those who came after.
2. Cannon branding. Also known as the cannon grid, it is said that it was created by the King of Shang, which is a relatively unpopular punishment, and it seems that it only appeared during the shang king's period. The "History of Yin Benji" contains, "Therefore, it is a heavy punishment, and there is a method of cannon burning", "Cooking charcoal under it, so that sinners will follow on it". It is also recorded in the Biography of the Daughters of Lie, "Anointing the copper pillar, adding charcoal to the bottom, making the guilty do the work, falling into the charcoal, laughing at oneself, and the punishment of the cannon burning." In other words, the charcoal rack burns the copper pillar, causing people to walk on it (or tie people to it), so that they are burned to death.
3. Sawing. As it literally means, it refers to the sawing of people alive, which is also a relatively unpopular punishment. According to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Wushu Sun Hao's biography, Sun Hao's concubine once instructed his close attendants to go to the market to rob the people's belongings, only to be captured by Chen Sheng, the zhonglang in charge of the market, and brought to justice. Chen Shengben was also Sun Hao's favorite courtier, but under the rebuke of his concubine, Sun Hao arrested Chen Sheng in anger and ordered the samurai to cut off Chen Sheng's head with a large red-hot saw and throw his body under the four-looking platform.
4. Fracture of the vertebrae. It is also a relatively unpopular punishment, which mainly refers to the breaking of the spine of the prisoner, so that he can die a painful death. According to the "Book of Shangjun Rewards and Punishments", during the Spring and Autumn Period, the Jin Dynasty Gongzhong'er planned to formulate a criminal law, so he consulted with the doctors, and as a result, the famous courtiers at that time were late, and some people thought that Qiangjie was guilty and should be punished. Therefore, Ji Zhong'er approved and executed the severed vertebrae.
5. Lead filling. That is, to fill the mouth of the criminal with melted tin or lead, whether it is tin or lead can burn people to death, and the dissolved tin or lead will solidify into hard blocks as soon as it enters the belly, and the gravity of this heavy metal can also kill people. According to the "Hanshu Changsha Dingwang Biography", the queen zhaoxin of Liu Go, the king of Guangchuan in the Han Dynasty, was jealous and tyrannical, and after learning that Liu Went had summoned a beautiful girl named Rong Ai to drink many times, he ran to complain to Liu Ai, saying that Rong Ai was having an affair with others. Rong Ai threw himself into the well in fear, Liu Went and ordered someone to fish it out, seeing that he was not dead, he forced a confession by word and deed, Rong Ai was tortured, but he said that he had an adulterous affair with the doctor, Liu Went in a rage and tied it to a pillar, cut off her two eyeballs with a red sharp knife, and then cut off the flesh on her two thighs, and finally poured dissolved lead into her mouth, destroying Rong Ai until death.
As mentioned above, this type of punishment is relatively unpopular, the scope of application is not extensive, and it is mostly used by some cruel emperors, and most of them appear in the pre-Qin period when the law was not perfect. In addition to the above, there are other punishments such as sausage pumping, burial alive, and five punishments (human punishment).
Not the death penalty but enough to cause death: palace punishment, court staff, cooking, grooming, shackles, etc.
In addition to the above death penalties, there were other punishments in ancient times, although these punishments were not intended to execute prisoners, but they were also able to cause extremely painful deaths, and the fatality rate was quite high.
1. Palace punishment. Also known as corruption punishment, belongs to one of the early "five punishments", as the Han Dynasty Kong Anguo said, "palace, adultery punishment, men cut the force, women claustrophobic, the punishment of secondary death", palace punishment is both men and women, men cut the posture, women claustrophobic, is second only to the death penalty. The man's method of punishment is to first take a rope to tie up his life root, so that his blood cannot circulate, naturally necrosis, and then take a sharp blade to cut it all off, and finally stop the bleeding with incense ash, and insert goose feathers into the urethra to ensure that the urethra is unobstructed. As for women, although it is certain that it was still implemented on women in the Ming Dynasty, the specific implementation methods are controversial and inconclusive. Although the palace punishment does not lead to death, due to the relative backwardness of ancient medical methods, the punishment and the death are also not in the minority. In ancient times, the most famous person who was tortured by the palace was probably Ma Qian of the Taishi Company.
2. The staff. Originating from the "Five Punishments", the "cane punishment" mainly refers to the cane punishment of imperial court officials, which began as early as the Ming Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty (also known as the Northern Zhou Xuan Emperor), and is especially famous for the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming Dynasty, the court staff was mainly used by the factory guards, and the practitioners were all people who had received special training, and they could grasp the measure of their subordinates at will, that is, there was no major problem after a hundred staffs, and they could also take people's lives within a few staffs. It is reported that before Chenghua, the king of the mortal staff removed his clothes, used a thick cotton bottom coat, and repaid it with a heavy veil, showing insults, but he was still lying in bed for several months, and then he was healed. In the early years of Zhengde, Liu Jin (Liu Jin) used things, evil courtiers, and began to wear clothes, so there was a staff to die. The most famous one is undoubtedly the "Zuo Shunmen Massacre" during the reign of Emperor Ming Shizong Zhu Houxi, because of the contradiction between courtiers and the emperor caused by the "Great Ceremonial Dispute", which caused Zhu Houxi to use a court staff on more than 180 people in anger and kill 17 people on the spot.
3. Steam. A relatively rare type of capital punishment, during the reign of Wu Zetian, he used a number of cool officials, one of whom was named Lai Junchen. When interrogating prisoners, prisoners who refused to confess were treated, a large urn was found, stuffed into it, and then heated with firewood under the urn. The temperature is getting higher and higher, and the prisoners are becoming more and more unable to stand it, and if they refuse to confess, they are often burned in the urn. Of course, Lai Junchen himself was eventually treated in this way, and "inviting the king into the urn" was derived from this.
4. Freshen up. The inventor of the punishment was Zhu Yuanzhang, and according to Shen Wen's "Records of the First Politics of the Holy Emperor", when the punishment of grooming was carried out, the executioner stripped the prisoner naked, placed his naked body on the iron bed, poured boiling water on his body several times, and then brushed the skin and flesh of his body with an iron brush, until the skin and flesh were brushed away, revealing white bones, and the tortured person died of exhaustion before the end. The most famous application of this punishment is the Ming Dynasty Jinyiwei-controlled Zhao Prison, which is often used by Jinyiwei when interrogating prisoners.
5. Shackles. This is a punishment that has appeared since the Tang Dynasty, usually used for short-term imprisonment or as an additional punishment, except that prisoners are required to wear special shackles and stand in a prescribed place to show the public. Judging from the qing dynasty's regulations, it is mainly an additional punishment applicable to ethical and weathering cases, and those who do not have children and grandchildren, violate religious decrees, or commit crimes such as "adultery" and "single sticks" are often displayed to the public. Although it seems to be a relatively light punishment, because the weight of the shackles is extremely large (the Great Qing Laws stipulate that the ordinary shackles weigh twenty-five pounds, and the heavy shackles weigh thirty-five pounds), and the prisoners are often tortured, so there are not a few people who are crushed alive by the heavy shackles.
As mentioned above, although most of these non-death sentences are not intended to kill people in the end, in the process of implementation, they will still cause a large number of deaths of prisoners, and most of the deaths are more painful and miserable.