Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
"In the spring of 1793 some three months after the beheading of King Louis XVI. and while the poor queen, the dauphin and the princesses, his sister and aunt, still languished in their dreadful prisons a French army was attempting to enter Piedmont from Dauphiny, which they could do only through the mountain-passes; and these all the able-bodied Waldenses and some Swiss troops, under the command of General Godin, a Swiss officer, were engaged in defending.
I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own notion by calling it Be-liar. "That Be-liar," swore he, "would cross hell on a rotten rail to git into my 'tater patch!" Finally I could stand it no longer, and took down my rifle. It was a nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squirrels, was in good form.
Also, strewn about the floor, in such profusion as to leave little room for anything else, were larger implements, whose use Frobisher was fortunately unable to guess at; while in the two corners of the room there were piles of variously-shaped knives and swords which he guessed the torturers were wont to employ in the discharge of their ghastly business, among which he recognised the long, razor-edged weapon used for administering the terrible "death of the thousand cuts", also a sword with a saw, instead of smooth edge, and a big, broad-bladed, keen knife or short, heavy sword, used upon those victims who were lucky enough to be sentenced to a quick death by beheading.
Better the sanguinary rites of Belgic Druids, better the yell of slaughtered victims from the "wild wood without mercy" of the pagan forefathers of the nation, than this fantastic intermingling of divine music, glowing colors, gorgeous ceremonies, with all the burning, beheading and strangling work which had characterized the system of human sacrifice for the past half-century.
Charles signed on June 12th a warrant for the execution of Vane by hanging at Tyburn on the 14th, which sentence on the following day "upon humble suit made" to him, Charles was "graciously pleased to mitigate," as the warrant terms it, for the less ignominious punishment of beheading on Tower Hill, and with permission that the head and body should be given to the relations to be by them decently and privately interred.
That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a body to perform certain charms.
"Well, the first question, you know, is why a man should kill another with a clumsy sabre at all when a man can kill with a bodkin?" "A man cannot behead with a bodkin," said Brown calmly, "and for this murder beheading was absolutely necessary." "Why?" asked O'Brien, with interest. "And the next question?" asked Father Brown.
In one of those towers Murdoch, the blind Duke of Albany, was imprisoned for seven years by James I before he was executed at Stirling; and they say that in the green hollow where the great red ruin glows he can be seen walking in the moonlight on the anniversary of his beheading.
Thus Chrysostom was sent to a dreary place on the banks of the Euxine. Ovid was banished to Tomi. Death, when inflicted, was by hanging, scourging, and beheading, also by strangling in prison. Slaves were often crucified, and were compelled to carry their cross to the place of execution. This was the most ignominious and lingering of all deaths.
For all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking