We must include in the category of punishment by fire certain penalties, which were, so to speak, but the preliminaries of a more severe punishment, such as the sulphur-fire, in which the hands of parricides, or of criminals accused of high treason, were burned.  We must also add various punishments which, if they did not involve death, were none the less cruel, such as the red-hot brazier, bassin ardent, which was passed backwards and forwards before the eyes of the culprit, until they were destroyed by the scorching heat; and the process of branding various marks on the flesh, as an ineffaceable stigma, the use of which has been continued to the present day.

In certain countries decapitation was performed with an axe; but in France, it was carried out usually by means of a two-handed sword or glave of justice, which was furnished to the executioner for that purpose (Fig. 346).  We find it recorded that in 1476, sixty sous parisis were paid to the executioner of Paris “for having bought a large espee a feuille,” used for beheading the condemned, and “for having the old sword done up, which was damaged, and had become notched whilst carrying out the sentence of justice upon Messire Louis de Luxembourg.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 346.—­Beheading.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature on Wood in the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster:  in folio, Basle, 1552.]

Originally, decapitation was indiscriminately inflicted on all criminals condemned to death; at a later period, however, it became the particular privilege of the nobility, who submitted to it without any feeling of degradation.  The victim—­unless the sentence prescribed that he should be blindfolded as an ignominious aggravation of the penalty—­was allowed to choose whether he would have his eyes covered or not.  He knelt down on the scaffold, placed his head on the block, and gave himself up to the executioner (Fig. 347).  The skill of the executioner was generally such that the head was almost invariably severed from the body at the first blow.  Nevertheless, skill and practice at times failed, for cases are on record where as many as eleven blows were dealt, and at times it happened that the sword broke.  It was no doubt the desire to avoid this mischance that led to the invention of the mechanical instrument, now known under the name of the guillotine, which is merely an improvement on a complicated machine which was much more ancient than is generally supposed.  As early as the sixteenth century the modern guillotine already existed in Scotland under the name of the Maiden, and English historians relate that Lord Morton, regent of Scotland during the minority of James VI., had it constructed after a model of a similar machine, which had long been in use at Halifax, in Yorkshire.  They add, and popular tradition also has invented an analogous tale in France, that this Lord Morton, who was the inventor or the first to introduce this kind of punishment, was himself