Ancient torture, in order to confess to the prisoner, can be described as hollowing out the mind, that piece of the invention of criminal detention, its ultimate purpose is to make the prisoner suffer the greatest pain, speaking of cruel torture, have to mention is the Ming Dynasty, in order to force the prisoner to confess, the interrogator will use torture to make the prisoner's life worse than death, in addition to Ling Chi, the Ming Dynasty also has a kind of torture called playing the pipa.
Talking about "playing the pipa", we have to mention the Jinyiwei and the East Factory, the Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang has a lot of doubts, the ministers who followed him in his career were all knighted at the beginning, but later, most of them were removed, and even, he also established the Gongwei Division in 1370, and in 1382, it was changed to the Jinyiwei.
Jinyiwei was specially in the service of the emperor, responsible for investigation, arrest, interrogation, intelligence gathering, and plotting against enemy generals, of which interrogation was an important part. In addition to the Jinyi guards, in 1420, the East Factory was also established, and the people in the East Factory were all close associates of the emperor, and they were fierce and vigorous, and they could arrest their subjects at will without the unification of the judicial organs.
Similarly, these two "right and left arms", although they have nothing to do with each other, are secretly competing, and in order to seek credit, they often use torture to extract confessions. According to the "Ming Shi And Criminal Law Chronicle", "The criminal law has been created from the Ming dynasty but not the ancient system, the court staff, the East Factory and the West Factory, the Jinyi Guard, and the Zhenfu Si Prison. Killing people to the point of misery, but not to the law, and to the point of doing so, to the point of not being created. "In the Ming Dynasty, many torture devices that did not comply with the ancient criminal law system were created, and the Ming Dynasty reached the pinnacle of perfection in this matter.
Among them, there are 18 sets of torture devices in Jinyiwei alone, each of which can make the prisoner's life worse than death, according to the description of the people at the time, the people who were severely tortured by Jinyiwei were like walking through the ghost gate, and they had a way to make people bear the greatest pain when they did not harm their lives, one of which was called "playing the pipa".
Literally understanding the pipa, the eyes can immediately present a beautiful and weak woman, holding the pipa and singing, with a poignant feeling of tears, but the Ming Dynasty period of playing the pipa is not so good, this punishment was favored by Jinyiwei and Dongchang, the tortured people are itchy and painful, miserable.
Before the execution, the prisoner is first ordered to hold his hands and feet, lift his clothes, as long as his ribs can be exposed, and then tie him up and stand up. At this time, a knife will be taken out and repeatedly "plucked" at the ribs of the prisoner, just like playing the piano. Every time the torture was used, the prisoner could feel an incomparably intense pain. When their flesh and blood have been "plucked" and rotten, at this time it will directly touch their ribs, and the pain of drilling the heart is something that few people can bear, especially women, so weak and even more unbearable.
Even in the "Criminal Law Chronicle", it is said: "Its coolest person is the pipa, every time it goes up, a hundred bones are shed, sweat is like rain, the dead are resurrected, if it is two or three times, under the coolness, what hell can not be achieved." ”
Torture is actually the most likely to arouse resentment among the people, but these tortures of the Ming Dynasty perfectly avoided this point, because they generally only used torture against arrested officials, not against ordinary people, and the use of torture was extremely secretive, and these people were generally secretly arrested.
However, the eighteen-like torture of the Ming Dynasty was too cruel, and few people could endure such torture, and the struggle between the East Factory, the Jinyiwei, and the West Factory, abusing punishment, killing innocent people, caused many unjust, false and wrong cases, and made the imperial court unstable, which was also one of the reasons for the demise of Daming. Especially when this kind of punishment is used against women, it is difficult for female prisoners to die, but they are in pain.
In the Qing Dynasty, the Shunzhi Emperor not only entered the imperial palace of the Ming Dynasty, but also followed the Ming system in many legislations, and the Jinyi Wei was also established for one year, but it was only one year, and then it was abolished. In 1644, the Jinyi Guard was changed to "Luan Yiwei", which was mainly responsible for controlling the emperor and empress's car driving ceremonial guard, and its role changed thousands of times, and it also ended the 290-year Jinyi guard system, so that everyone no longer suffered such torture.