Vikings were some twisted motherfuckers. According to some of their poems and sagas they used a totally tweaked form of execution they liked to call the “Blood Eagle“. The shape of an eagle would be carved into the back of the condemned and his ribs would be severed close to the spine and pulled back so they resembled wings or feathers. Salt would be rubbed into the wound and finally, the lungs would be pulled out through the opening.

From the Orkneyinga saga:

“There they found Halfdan Long-leg, and Einar made them carve an eagle on his back with a sword, and cut the ribs all from the backbone, and draw the lungs there out, and gave him to Odin for the victory he had won…”

Whether the Blood Eagle was real or not or whether the method described above was the de facto way to do it is not really known for sure. I’d like to think it was real. Vikings rule!

Edward II was King of England from 1307 until he was booted from the throne. He was widely despised as incompetent, weak and homosexual, given to inappropriate and politically dangerous affairs. Instead of jousting and doing manly medieval dude things, he enjoyed the theater, boating, gardening and hanging out with a certain swishy French knight named Piers Gaveston, lavishing him with attention, money, gifts and an earldom. This kind of pissed of the other English nobles. So, they had Gaveston killed by running him through with a sword and then beheading him as he lay dying on the ground

Soon after, King Eddie took up with Hugh the Despenser, a man the British nobility really hated. When Edward broke the law of the land by seizing the title of the Lord of Gower and giving it to Hugh, the British Barons had had enough. They took up arms against the Despenser family and got his ass banished. Edward, understandably pissed by this, decided to show some nuts. He had some ass kicked, some heads removed and got Hugh back. He then passed a statute dissolving any limitations on his power and freeing him from any control by Parliament, the House of Lords, Prelates and Commons. Edward was sick and tired of people coming between him and his dude.

After this, things really started to go downhill for Edward and Hugh. England was invaded and they both fled London, being captured shortly after. Edward was imprisoned and Hugh was executed.

“Immediately after the trial, [Hugh] was dragged behind four horses to his place of execution, where a great fire was lit. He was hanged from a gallows fifty feet high, but cut down before he could choke to death and tied to a ladder, in full view of the crowd. A man climbed up beside him, and sliced off his penis and testicles which were then burnt before him, while he was still alive and conscious. Subsequently, the executioner plunged his knife into his abdomen, and cut out his entrails and heart, which were likewise burnt before the delighted crowd. Finally, he was beheaded, and his body cut into four pieces, and his head was mounted on the gates of London.

Edward was deposed in a ceremony where, dressed in black and weeping, his crown was taken from him and the steward of his household broke his staff of office.

Settling into a life of misery, imprisoned in a damp cell above a smelly morgue, Edward wore moldy clothes and ate rotted food. When he wanted to shave, he was given nasty, stagnant moat water. A far cry from his days as King.

Finally, in 1327, Edward was murdered in a spectacular fashion.

“On the night of October 11, while lying in on a bed [the king] was suddenly seized and, while a great mattress… weighed him down and suffocated him, a plumber’s iron, heated intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his secret parts so that it burned the inner portions beyond the intestines.”

Or, as they say in Latin, “Cum veru ignito inter celanda confossus ignominiose peremptus est” which means, “He was ignominiously slain with a red-hot spit thrust into the anus.”

The tube was likely used to prevent burning to any visible exterior part of his ass, thus making it look like he had possibly died of natural causes. Awesome.

I’ve been reading a bit about slow-slicing a.k.a. Ling-chi, Leng T’che, the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts. There’s a lot of hype and bullshit about what this Chinese form of execution entailed, most common being that the process literally had the condemned being strategically sliced anywhere from 1,000-10,000 times, kept alive through careful cutting and drugs. This is more than likely complete and total bullshit. But, Ling-chi was a real method of execution. In fact, there’s a good number of photos out there.

Used for little over a thousand years in China, until it was outlawed in 1905, Leng-Chi was an extreme punishment usually reserved for treason, murder or crimes against one’s parents. Judging from existing photos of Leng-Chi executions that I’ve found, the convicted was brought out into a public area and tied upright to a stake. First, the prisoners breasts were removed, exposing the ribs, then the arms were removed at the bicep. Both legs were cut off at the knees and finally the head was removed. Some existing photos show the victim seeming to be lost in an ecstatic state, eyes cast to the sky and grinning. This could be caused by the prisoner being given a large amount of opium prior to the execution.

If you have the stomach for some old, black and white photos of several Ling-Chi executions as well as a plethora of beheadings, check out this gallery. There’s a ton of images, spanning many pages. Just start sifting through, be patient and you’ll find plenty of stuff.

I was reading about the origins of the word decimate and noticed a cool little nugget of historical cruelty.

A decimation was used to punish Roman soldiers for acts of cowardice or mutiny. When a cohort (a military unit consisting of 800-450 soldiers, depending on the time period) was to be punished, the men were divided into ten groups and lots were chosen. This was usually done by choosing colored pebbles from a sack. The man who chose the wrong colored pebble would then be executed by his fellow group members, usually by stoning or clubbing.

The reasoning behind this punishment was that since every member of a cohort, from the top to the bottom, was susceptible to being executed for the actions of other members, such punishment would hammer in fear, correct behavior and group resolve. Since the execution of one-tenth of a cohort is a fairly sizable amount of men, this punishment was rarely used except instances where extreme behavioral modification was warranted.

The method of execution known as scaphism is some sincerely funky and evil shit. Practiced in ancient Persia, the name is a combination of the Greek word skaphe and the Latin word for boats.

A man who had sufficiently fucked the rule of law enough to rate a dispatch by scaphism was stripped of clothing and bound up tightly; secured within a trough or small canoe-like boat. He was then force-fed milk and honey until a situation of extreme diarrhea had been reached. The condemned was then rubbed down with more honey and then set afloat in stagnant water, exposed to the sun.

Insects would be attracted to the honey covering the body, biting and stinging him and as feces accumulated in the boat, the bugs would begin laying eggs and starting a happy little community amongst the shit as well as in the man’s flesh.

Death, from a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock probably came a very long time after the prisoner went completely fucking insane (as I know I would).

Way back in the days of ancient Greece, a brass worker named Perillos invented a contraption known today as a brazen bull. A large, hollow brass casting in the shape of a bull with a door set in it’s side, it’s purpose was to execute criminals or other such undesirables by roasting them alive.

A condemned individual was shut inside the bull and fires were stoked underneath till the metal was red hot and the prisoner was roasted alive, leaving nothing but scorched bones. An elaborate series of horns-like tubes and stoppers built into the head served to transform the person’s screams of terror and agony into something reminiscent of a really pissed off bull. Smoke and fumes from the roasting were forced out through incense burners so as not to offend anyone’s sense of smell or kill their appetite.

Perillos designed this wacky killing machine for a really ill-tempered man named Phalaris, ruler of Agrigentum (an area in modern Sicily). Upon seeing the finished product, Phalaris was pleased but desired to hear the sounds it was supposed to make so he had Perillos sealed inside and the fires lit beneath. Satisfied with the transformation of the man’s screams into bull sounds, he had him pulled out before he could die. However, the reprieve of Perillos didn’t last long as shortly thereafter, the king had the inventor tossed from a hill and killed. Phalaris himself was fed to the brazen bull after he was overthrown by Telemachus. Call it karma.

The Romans liked to use the brazen bull as it made for a highly entertaining way to dispose of those pesky Christians. Notable roasted Jesus-lovers include Saint Pelagia of Tarsus, Saint Eustace (along with his wife and children) and Saint Antipas.

[Photo credit]

To say that being hung, drawn and quartered was a sucky experience is an understatement akin to describing Liberace as just a teeny bit gay. It was a horrible way to exit life, reserved for traitors to the state or crown and other serious crimes that required the authorities to put a dude down in such a wretched way that no one could question as to whether they were serious about punishing a crime. This was some hardcore not-fucking-around shit.

If you were unlucky enough to earn yourself such an delightful treatment, you were strapped to a wooden frame and dragged by horse to the place of execution. You were then hung by the neck in what’s called the “short drop” method. An example of this would be standing someone on a stool, a cart or the back of a horse. A rope is then put around their neck and whatever they are standing or sitting on is removed from under them, resulting in strangulation with very little or no body drop or neck breakage. This was ideal, since the condemned needed to be kept alive for as long as possible. Once hung, they were carefully observed and taken down before death ensued. The prisoner was then taken to the quartering table and strapped down. If they were unconscious. they were awakened with some cold water. After the poor bastard was in a a suitable state of alertness, he was treated to the thrilling experience of having his genitals removed. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, a large incision was made across the lower abdomen and the intestines slowly pulled out with the aid of a contraption similar to a dough roller since they were usually too slippery to be removed by hand. The organs, including the genitalia were then burnt before the eyes of the condemned (although how you manage to stay conscious or not just keel straight over from the shock and pain alone is beyond me). Last but not least, poor guy was decapitated and the body chopped into four pieces. The head was usually put on display somewhere conspicuous and the remaining pieces were disposed of, often in different locations.

You know you fucked up when the law of the land wants to do something like that to you.

Another method, used by the French would entail torture with red-hot tongs. Then, the hand which had been used to commit the crime (usually regicide) would be burnt with sulfur and molten lead followed by wax and boiling oil being poured into the wounds. The prisoner’s limbs would be tied to horses, who would then be whipped into running, subsequently tearing the man to pieces. Finally, for the cherry to top it all off, the torso would be burnt. Often the dude was still alive (barely) for this last bit.

Samuel Pepys, who witnessed the quartering of Thomas Harrison, had this to say of the event:

“I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.”

Pretty funny.