all suddenly urged on with the whip in different directions, and thus all the limbs were strained at one moment.  If the tendons and ligaments still resisted the combined efforts of the four horses, the executioner assisted, and made several cuts with a hatchet on each joint.  When at last—­for this horrible torture often lasted several hours—­each horse had drawn out a limb, they were collected and placed near the hideous trunk, which often still showed signs of life, and the whole were burned together.  Sometimes the sentence was, that the body should be hung to the gibbet, and that the limbs should be displayed on the gates of the town, or sent to four principal towns in the extremities of the kingdom.  When this was done, “an inscription was placed on each of the limbs, which stated the reason of its being thus exposed.”

The wheel is the name applied to a torture of very ancient origin, but which was applied during the Middle Ages to quite a different torture from that used in olden times.  The modern instrument might indeed have been called the cross, for it only served for the public exhibition of the body of the criminal whose limbs had been previously broken alive.  This torture, which does not date earlier than the days of Francis I., is thus described:—­The victim was first tied on his back to two joists forming a St. Andrew’s cross, each of his limbs being stretched out on its arms.  Two places were hollowed out under each limb, about a foot apart, in order that the joints alone might touch the wood.  The executioner then dealt a heavy blow over each hollow with a square iron bar, about two inches broad and rounded at the handle, thus breaking each limb in two places.  To the eight blows required for this, the executioner generally added two or three on the chest, which were called coups de grace, and which ended this horrible execution.  It was only after death that the broken body was placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot.  Sometimes, however, the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a rope round the neck.

Strangling, thus carried out, was called garotting.  This method is still in use in Spain, and is specially reserved for the nobility.  The victim is seated on a scaffold, his head leaning against a beam and his neck grasped by an iron collar, which the executioner suddenly tightens from behind by means of a screw.

For several centuries, and down to the Revolution, hanging was the most common mode of execution in France; consequently, in every town, and almost in every village, there was a permanent gibbet, which, owing to the custom of leaving the bodies to hang till they crumbled into dust, was very rarely without having some corpses or skeletons attached to it.  These gibbets, which were called fourches patibulaires or justices, because they represented the authority of the law, were generally composed of pillars of stone, joined at their summit by wooden traverses, to which the bodies of criminals were tied by ropes or chains.  The gallows, the pillars of which varied in number according to the will of the authorities, were always placed by the side of frequented roads, and on an eminence.