“Ad mala patrata hæc sunt atra theatra parata.”
Revolting as the idea of torture is to us, it would not be fair to concentrate our indignation on the Nurembergers, as we are tempted to do, when we see these things and still more when, in the Castle, we visit the stupendous collection of torture-instruments, those melancholy monuments of human error. For torture as a system of trial, as the great alternative to the ordeal, has received the sanction of the wisest lawgivers throughout far the greater portion of the world’s history. It is, indeed, only quite recently that we have in practice acknowledged Quintilian’s objection to torture—that under it one man’s constancy makes falsehood easy to him whilst another’s weakness makes falsehood necessary. History, too, has shown us the evil effects of this system upon the judge, who became inevitably eager to convince himself of the guilt of the poor wretch whom he had already caused to suffer. How completely the prisoner thus became a quarry to be hunted to the death is shown by the jocular remark of Farinacci, a celebrated authority in criminal law, that the torture of sleeplessness invented by Marsigli was most excellent, for out of a hundred martyrs exposed to it not two could endure it without becoming confessors as well. This form of torture was practised in England even without the continental limit of time. But on the whole, torture in England fell short of the best continental standard. Still, it remains true to say that human ingenuity could not invent suffering more terrible than was constantly and legally employed in every civilised community. Satan himself, one writer exclaims, would be unable to increase its refinements. A visit to the Tower of London will prove that Nuremberg was not a solitary and disgraceful exception to the manners of her day. The robber-barons, who flourished under King Stephen in England used the same methods as their German brethren to extract ransoms from the rich merchants they captured, using knotted ropes twisted round the head, crucet-houses, or chests filled with sharp stones in which the victim was crushed, sachentages, or frames with a sharp iron collar preventing the wearer from sitting, lying, or sleeping. A visit to the Castle of Nuremberg shows us that the rich merchants were ready to use similar arguments to the robber-barons.
When the prisoner had been brought into the torture chamber and the professional gentlemen (the Hangman and the Secretary) had decided how much the patient could bear, operations began. A circular opening on the inside of the room above the entrance marks the place behind which sat the person who took down the prisoner’s confession. Innumerable devices and instruments had been invented, as we see in the Castle, by using which separately and in combination the confession was extorted. Burning candles held under the arms were found very effective and the favourite Spanish methods, the Strappado (suspension by the arms behind the back with weights to the feet), pouring water down the throat and applying fire to the soles of the feet were in frequent use. We find many varieties of the “little ease” or rack in the Castle. The severity of the instrument is attested by the signature of our Guy Fawkes before and after being submitted to that ordeal. But even less attractive than this must have been the peine forte et dure. John Gow, it will be remembered, in “The Pirate,” stands mute even when his thumbs were squeezed by two men with a whipcord till it broke, and again when it was doubled and trebled so that the operators could pull with their whole strength. But his fortitude gave way and he confessed when he had seen the preparations for pressing him to death with the peine forte et dure, a board loaded with heavy weights. A peculiar atrocity marked the torture system of Scotland. Torture retained its place in that kingdom’s laws as long as she preserved the right of self-legislation. Her system could not surpass, but it serves to illustrate the fiendish barbarities of the Nuremberg questions. Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember his description of the “boot”—an iron frame in which the leg was inserted and broken by iron wedges driven in with a hammer. The penni-winkis, thumb-screws, and caschielawis, iron frames for the leg heated from time to time over a brazier, were also favourite instruments both there and here.
It is not surprising that such persuasion usually succeeded in producing a confession from the prisoners, whether true or not, of their own or of other people’s guilt. They were not infrequently compelled to confess to crimes which they had never committed[37] and were hanged for murdering persons who afterwards were found to be alive and well. Real criminals, however, often refused to speak; for habitual and professional malefactors used to torture each other regularly in order to be hardened when brought to justice. But in that case their wives and children often proved less reticent. Confession having been secured the Council appointed a day of judgment for the armen, “poor fellow,” as they termed him. If when he came before them he still persisted in his confession he was condemned. But condemnation depended on the confession of the criminal, and the Church had long maintained that confessions obtained under torture were invalid. If, therefore, when brought before the Council he recanted he was tortured again, and as often as he retracted this process was repeated until a confession apart from torture was obtained. The humane intervention of the Church thus resulted in a redoublement of cruelty. Even after condemnation, if the convict told the clergyman, who came to prepare him for death, that he was really not guilty but had confessed only because of the torture, the Council on hearing of it had to begin all over again. This became such a nuisance that they warned the clergy not to talk to the condemned too much about temporal matters! After sentence had been passed by the Council a public trial of an entirely formal character was held, very wearisome to the condemned wretch, who probably knew that it was so empty a form that it was held even if the prisoner had already succumbed to the torture or committed suicide in the cells.
In Nuremberg, as elsewhere, various methods of punishment were employed. Much ingenuity and some humour were displayed in making “the punishment fit the crime.” The shrew was tamed, as in England, by the application of the Brank or scold’s bridle—an iron framework placed over the head in such a way that a plate covered with spikes, which was attached to it, fitted into the mouth. Thieves, like English authors, had their ears cut off. This operation was performed on the Fleischbrücke. The tongues of blasphemers were torn out, and if the banished returned to the city their eyes were gouged out. The latter treatment was often applied in the East to junior princes not required to be heirs. But there the removal of the eyeball gave way, in later times, to the drawing of a red-hot sword blade across the eyeball. In Italy the use of a heated metal basin (bacinare) was preferred. Whilst, in England, we punished drunkenness, as lately as 1872, with confinement in the stocks, the use of the ordinary Nuremberg punishment—“The Drunkard’s Cloak”—a barrel worn after the manner of a cloak—was almost confined to Newcastle. The ancient Moslem punishment for wine-drinkers—the pouring of melted lead down the offender’s throat—does not appear to have been in vogue. Other devices shown in the Five-Cornered Tower are the Spanish horse, which suggests the modern American method of “riding on a rail,” the finger-cramp for bad musicians, pipes for excessive smokers, faces to be worn by husband-beaters, ducking-stools and the wheel, last used in 1788, and the cradle, last used in 1803.
Even the sentence of death was variously performed. Robbers were hanged; murderers beheaded; worse criminals were torn asunder by horses or broken on the wheel. Sinners against the Church were exposed barefooted and bareheaded and hanged before the church doors; sinners against morality were branded. Jews—if it was a question of hanging them—were always hung from the end of the gallows’ beam, so that they and the Christians might swing from a different place. Boiling oil does not seem to have been indulged in, though it was used in France for mere counterfeiters, and in England for poisoners. The Bishop of Rochester’s cook for instance was treated in this manner in 1630. Terrible as these atrocities were, they are also terribly recent. The last burning at the stake in Germany took place in Berlin, 1786, and in the same year at Vienna occurred the last case of breaking on the wheel. The victim was tortured with red-hot pincers as he walked to the place of execution. And in England the execution of the rebels after the “45” was carried out in exact accordance with the statute of treason of Edward III., 1351, by which the unhappy victim of justice must be drawn to the gallows and not walk; be cut down alive and his entrails be then torn out and burnt before his face.
Women in Nuremberg, as in France and England, were not exposed on gibbets in chains but were buried alive, till 1515, when at the hangman’s request they were drowned instead. In 1580 they took to being decapitated. Women who had murdered their husbands were bound to a cart on the way to execution, bared to the waist and tortured with red-hot tongs. The condemned criminal usually walked from the
