Law is the foundation of the nation, and law is also a barrier to maintaining social order under moral codes. Since ancient times, the most fundamental purpose of the formulation of criminal law is to attract people to goodness, play a role in education and warning, the punishment of successive dynasties has started from making criminals "ashamed and then reformed", but the intensity is different, and even some serious punishments have become humiliation in disguise.
Among these humiliating punishments, the "shackles" are typical of them.
The word "shackles" is often used in our metaphors today for some of the responsibilities that we bear, and the word "shackles" has been used since the ancient Yanhuang period, and has been used by subsequent dynasties as a torture device for escorting criminals. Time passed to the founding period of the Ming Dynasty, and when the torture device of the shackles reached the hands of Zhu Yuanzhang, who killed decisively, it began to evolve into a punishment measure with a humiliating nature.
According to the Ming Dynasty, the shackles were five feet five feet long and one foot five wide, and the whole body was made of wood, and the shackles worn by death row prisoners weighed thirty-five pounds. It can be said that from then on, the shackles became an additional means in addition to punishment, with a little meaning of "showing the public".
At that time, after the yamen tried and convicted the criminals, they would wear shackles on the criminals and parade the streets in the lively places of the locals, which not only played the role of killing chickens and scaring monkeys, but also gave the criminals a psychological blow. With the passage of time, the shackles on the criminals became heavier and heavier, and during the Zhengde years, Liu Jin increased the weight of the wooden shackles to one hundred and fifty kilograms, which also led to some criminals suffocating to death under heavy pressure.
The History of the Ming Dynasty records:
The Kyoshi said that the inner factory, although the east and west factories were in the service, plus the fierceness. And it is a precedent that all sins are judged by the rod, and the side is always broken, or the shackles are sent. The shackles weighed to one hundred and fifty pounds, and they died within a few days.
The laws of the early Qing Dynasty basically followed the laws of the Ming Dynasty, and in many film and television works and residual old photographic materials, we can see the shackled prisoners of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing court divided wooden shackles into various types by weight, such as 25 pounds of heavy shackles, 35 pounds of heavy shackles, 60 pounds of heavy shackles, 70 pounds of heavy shackles and even 100 pounds of heavy shackles, so as to deal with prisoners involved in different crimes separately.
Just imagine, these wooden shackles are real, not those thin paper paste props in film and television works, dozens of pounds of big guys are sandwiched on the neck and wrist, whenever the criminal moves his muscles and bones, he can't help but rub the wooden shackles, and the neck and wrists are blurred with blood and flesh for a long time. Rich people can still save themselves from the shackles through the relationship between the two sides of the silver, but those criminals who cannot escape can only endure in heavy shackles day and night until the end of the sentence.
In addition to the difference in the specifications of the wooden shackles, the time of shackles for each crime is also different, for example: prisoners sentenced to one year of imprisonment must be shackled for twenty days, prisoners sentenced to exile two thousand miles away must be shackled for fifty days, and criminals sentenced to be assigned to the army must be shackled according to the distance of the place of distribution. This kind of shackle time is only for manchus who commit crimes, and according to the Great Qing Law, manchus who are sentenced to more than three sentences can use shackles instead of punishment.
If the Han people violate the criminal law, the original punishment is inevitable, and the shackles must be enforced as usual, and even the terrible "permanent shackles" are also imposed. Although there is such an "eternal shackle", this "forever" often does not last long, because under the heavy shackles, these prisoners have long been tortured and breathless, and often do not live for a few years and are tortured to death by this wooden shackle.
The shackled person's neck is tightly clamped, the wooden shackles are long and heavy, and the hands of the criminals cannot play any role at all, so the diet and convenience of the criminals have become a great problem. If the criminals have some relatives and friends, it is better to say that they can take care of the living, if they are alone, they will have to suffer in silence, and the officials and messengers can only feed some poor food and water to the criminals in the morning and evening.
The prisoners carried the scorching heat of the sun, ate the worst food, and had to be spurned by passers-by, which was extremely miserable. However, the wearing of this shackle is not the most cruel. In addition to this kind of wooden shackle hoop on the neck, the Qing Dynasty people also developed a kind of standing shackle, also called: standing cage, standing shackle.
The appearance of the shackles is like the prison cart in the movie, but it is narrower than the prison cart, and the bottom is slightly more spacious, and the part of the wooden shackle on the top only allows the prisoner to stretch out his neck.
In addition to being stuck in the neck, prisoners who were shackled to the ground were also covered with stone bricks, which became an important weight in measuring the severity of the punishment. There are more masonry pads, the prisoner can still breathe, if the cushion is less or even all removed, the prisoner will have to leave the ground with his feet off the ground, breathing difficult, and eventually, until he is hanged alive in the cage.
Even, from the peeling handwriting on the wooden cage pillar of the Qing Dynasty, you can faintly see the three characters of "Xu Laojiu", which may be the name of this tragic death. According to records: In the late Qing Dynasty, a Dian opera actor named Liu Songting also died in the cage. Because of his martial arts skills, he was falsely accused of stealing the silver of the Yunnan Domain and put him into a station cage to force a confession, and because he could not bear the torture, he kicked open the bricks under his feet and was hanged.
Regarding the shackles, although "The Journey of the Old Remnant" is a novel, it can also confirm a little bit of the cruelty of this thing from the side:
A certain asked, "Why didn't you pick it up?" They all laughed and shook their heads, "Do you still want your family's life?" "In this way, it can be seen that the road is not lost, and the ancients were not deceitful, and they can do it today!"' Miyaho liked it very much, so he planned to fold it out to protect him. The person on the left said, "The Sachen people are capable, but they are too cruel." In the coming year, more than 2,000 people died in the cage station, is there no injustice? A person next to him said: "There must be some wrongs, there is no need to argue, but I don't know how many percent are not wronged?" The person on the right: "The politics of the cool officials is beautiful on the outside." Zhu Jun remembered that when he used to peel his skin to make the Yanzhou capital, why wasn't this the case? Everyone who always does it looks sideways and is finished. ”
This torture lasted almost the entire Qing Dynasty, and it was only twenty-nine years after Guangxu that the punishment was gradually abolished.
Examining this kind of punishment from the eyes of our modern people is tantamount to being inhumane, but since ancient times, Chinese civilization has had the habit of "chaotic world and heavy codes"; in the absence of a sense of morality in history, the road is not left behind, the night is not closed, and it is all empty talk, and it is even more a joke to paint the ground as a prison.
Just imagine, if a person who harbors evil intentions walks in the downtown area at that time and looks at the miserable situation of the prisoners sitting on their knees and carrying heavy shackles, their hearts will definitely be shocked, and a bad idea will be dispelled.
Resources:
"History of the Ming Dynasty", "The Journey of the Old Remnant", "Ancient Punishment - Shackles".