The Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty recorded the scene that Zheng Zhi, the Emperor Chongzhen of the late Ming Dynasty, was executed by Ling Chi.
1639 At dawn on August 26th, the imperial edict issued the execution on that day, and an official immediately ordered relevant personnel to escort the prisoner to Xishi (later called Xisi Pailou, now Xisi in Beijing). That morning, a group of servants set up a shed next to the memorial archway, and the supervisor and other officials sat there. A thick wooden pole was erected in front of the shed, and a fork was inserted into the wooden pole. In a short time, the executioner of the execution also arrived ahead of time. Each of them brought a small basket with iron hooks and sharp knives. The executioner took out an iron hook, a sharp knife, etc. Put them in the sand and sharpen them very sharply. In the morning and the third hour, the supervisor took Zheng Zhi to the execution ground with a captain and a servant. Zheng Zhi was temporarily parked in the south row downstairs. He is sitting in a big basket, without a headscarf or shoes and socks, telling an extremely bookish person what to do at home. At this time, the onlookers were crowded, blocking the surrounding roads and open spaces, and the nearby roofs were full of people. After the president of Xicheng Procuratorate was in place, he read out the imperial edict loudly. Because of the noise around, no one could hear what he was reading clearly, except his last sentence: "According to the law, you should cut 3357 knives." The executioner echoed in unison, sounding like Lei Zhen. The onlookers trembled with fear. Only three shots were heard, and then the execution began.
The crowd became more excited, and some people who climbed into the room stood up and craned their necks to see how the executioner chopped people. However, due to the dense crowd nearby, the execution site is far from being seen. After a long time, I saw a rope hanging from the forked thick wooden pole. Someone pulled the rope behind the wooden pole, and something was hanging from the other end of the rope, dripping with blood. It turned out to be human lungs and liver, which were hoisted to the highest point of the wooden pole. This shows that the prisoner's meat has been cut off, and he has begun to gut. After a while, put down the rope on the wooden pole, took out the liver and lungs, and hung a head, indicating that Zheng Zhi had been beheaded. Then Zheng Zhi's body was hung, and his chest was attached to a wooden pole, with his back to the crowd. Everyone saw that the muscles on his back were cut into strands, but they were not cut off. Thousands of dense hemp clusters were like hedgehogs. At this time, the one-year punishment came to an end. Two captains waved red flags and rode fast Ma Xiangdong. They went to the palace to report to the emperor how many knives they had cut. Later, an executioner took down Zheng Zhi's body and sold his meat one by one. It is said that people buy this kind of human flesh as a raw material for preparing medicines for treating boils.
"human leather bag" and "asphalt man"
The punishment of skinning people alive is not included in the official death penalty. But it has been used many times in history, and it is also recorded in history books. Before the Six Dynasties, the punishment of skinning was only to skin a person's face and then skin his whole body. Especially in the Ming dynasty, the punishment of peeling was the most used and the most cruel.
According to Ye's Records of Vegetation, Zhu Yuanzhang was very strict with officials. If there is corruption and tyranny, he allows people to go to Beijing to complain. If the amount of corruption exceeds 620 taels of silver, it will be put to death, beheaded and made public, and its skin will be peeled off and watered with grass. This "human skin bag" will be placed next to the official position in the yamen, which will make subsequent officials feel frightened and play a warning role. There should be a hall near the yamen in Fuzhou county to worship the land god. If peeling is needed, it will be done here, so this hall is called "Pichang Temple".
During the Apocalypse, Wei Zhongxian also used skinning when he was good at politics. The skinning method was very strange. Xia Chongyi recorded in Surviving Records: One day, five people were drinking together in a hotel, and one of them, a warlock named Xu, said that Wei Zhongxian was evil and would soon fall. Some of the other four people were silent, some were afraid, and some advised him to be careful, otherwise it would bring disaster. The man said loudly, "Although Wei Zhongxian is bossy, he can't skin me. What am I afraid of! " At night, everyone was sleeping. Suddenly, the door was pushed open, and several people broke in and arrested the braggart. In a short time, he took four other people who were drinking together to a yamen. The man who caught first was lying there naked, his hands and feet nailed to the door panel, and Wei Zhongxian was sitting high in the class. He said to four people, "This guy says I can't skin him, so I'd better try it today." He ordered his men to pour molten asphalt on the man. After a while, the asphalt cooled and solidified. He knocked it with a hammer and saw that the asphalt and human skin were taken off together, forming a complete human skin shell. The four men were scared to death, and Wei Zhongxian gave them five taels of silver each to scare them and let them go.
To cook/boil
This punishment is better than peeling. Commonly known as "frying" or "frying".
When Chu and Han contended, Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, threatened to "cook" Liu Bang's father. Liu Bang did not care: "Xiang Yu and I were ordered to be the king of Huaibei and said,' We are about brothers'. If I were an Weng, I would cook, be an Weng and share a piece of the action. " Xiang Yu was so angry that he wanted to cook Liu Bang's father. Thanks to Xiang Bo's timely advice, Liu Bang's father was spared this difficulty.
Tie Xuan, the general of the Ming Dynasty, was not so lucky as Liu Bang's father. When Judy, the Prince of Yan, launched an army subversion, Tie Xuan and other loyal officials struggled to resist. However, they always threw eggs at stones. Judy occupied Nanjing and Tiexuan was occupied by Judy's army. After Yongle Emperor ascended the throne, he killed all the ministers, and Tie Xuan naturally born to die. Cai Dongfan's "The Legend of the Ming Dynasty" recorded in the 26th chapter-
..... Tie Xuan, minister of the Ministry of War, was arrested in Beijing. When he saw him, he stood back resolutely and said unyielding words loudly. The prince forced him to take care of it, but he couldn't get it. He ordered people to cut off his ears and nose, cooked Ruo meat, put it in Xuan's mouth, and asked if the meat was delicious. There has been no such criminal law since ancient times. Xuan said loudly, "What happened to the meat of the loyal minister and dutiful son?" The prince was very angry and ordered him to stand in the middle of the court. Xuan was still cursing until his death, and the prince was sent to the temple again, boiling oil for a few fights, throwing Xuan's body in and instantly turning it into charcoal. When the guide rail goes up, the body will eventually turn outward. The heir ordered people to clamp the wreckage with more than ten iron bars and turn him to the north. He smiled and said, "Are you coming to see me today?" Before a word was finished, the hot oil in the wok boiled and splashed, scalding the left and right hands and feet. Abandon the stick and walk around, and the body still stands as before. Worthy of the iron porch. The prince was frightened and ordered the burial.
Guoshanlong
Li Boyuan's "Hell on Earth" recorded this kind of punishment: "It is to ask the blacksmith to make a curved pipe and pull it straight for more than 20 feet, so as to undress the prisoner, wrap it up and down with the pipe, and take out the heart and lower part. Open a big mouth at the top of the tin tube and a small mouth at the bottom. If you pour boiling water from this end, it will flow all over your body and drip out from that end. This boiling water is uninterrupted. "
This is the same as the "tin snake" placed on the prisoner's waist by an official in Fujian during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty in Wen Hai Pi Sha by Xie. When interrogating a prisoner, pour boiling water into the empty heart of a tin snake. The prisoner can't stand this kind of scalding, so he has to act rashly ... In contrast, the dragon crossing the mountain in the Qing Dynasty is more imaginative and interesting than the tin snake in the Ming Dynasty.
Continuous castration
Castration, the punishment of making men not men, is not only in China, but also widely spread in China. Because a man's genitals are cut off, the wound will give off the smell of muscle rot within a few days, so it is also called corruption. The most famous person who was sentenced to imprisonment in the history of China was Sima Qian. The man lost his penis because he didn't mind his mouth. This has taught many lessons to later scholars, and scholars have been honest since then.
Looking back at the history of China, it is not surprising that so many people were punished, most of whom were eunuchs. However, a "sitting in the palace" that happened in the Qin Dynasty is really puzzling-
Treacherous court official Zhao Gao of the Qin Dynasty was a distant relative of the Zhao royal family, who was one of the seven heroes of the Warring States at that time. Before he broke into the Qin state, he was castrated by Zhao. After the injury, he fled to Qin Gong to become a eunuch, and became a tutor for Ying Zheng's youngest son, Hu Hai. Later, he was promoted to prime minister and held a high position. Speaking of Zhao Gao's punishment, it's really a grievance. In fact, it was not he who made the mistake, but his father. His father was sentenced to castration according to Zhao's law, and Zhao Gao's mother was so old that she could live alone with the cripple, so she remarried and gave birth to a son. According to the regulations of Zhao, a wife enjoys the rights of her husband. Even if she changes her marriage, all her sons will inherit the surname Zhao, so the unfortunate person's name is Zhao Gao, not Gao Li and Aric. As a result, Zhao Gao was caught in the hot water by a more ingenious law-at that time, the law of Zhao Gao stipulated that the son born in this way should also be castrated.
For this kind of punishment, let's call it "sitting in the palace." All kinds of abnormal psychology contained in it are really worth playing. Is this extermination punishment or hateful revenge?
Where is the eunuch's genitals?
The fate of eunuch genitals has always been an unknown secret, of course, more often because people don't care about the humble details in this historical detail.
Outside the Xihuamen Gate of the Forbidden City in Beijing, there is a dilapidated house called "Factory", which was a famous eunuch factory in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Those "swordsmen" with special skills constantly produce eunuchs according to the will of the "holy family". According to the rules of eunuch gate, the cut genitals can't be thrown away casually, which is very ostentatious, commonly known as "baby". When you meet the opportunity of promotion, you must take it out for inspection; Just before the eunuch died in the coffin, he had to find the "treasure" and install it in the same place. In the underworld, he will not be mutilated, so that he can have six complete bodies in the afterlife and enjoy the splendor again.
Li was a great eunuch in Qing Dynasty, and his eunuch status made him suffer greatly. He said more than once that he must be a real man in the afterlife. He begged his family to install a wooden genitalia for his lower body after his death, and to welcome his ancestors in the underworld with a complete body. However, this "oral history" can't stand scrutiny after all. When the archaeological team opened the well-preserved tomb of Li, they found nothing but a head. Later generations speculated that although his family gave him a lot of light, he was a eunuch after all. Even if he had a wooden handle, he would humiliate his ancestors, so he was ruined.
-Punishment and killing in ancient China.
Punishment and Killing in Ancient China
Our ancestors left us many precious legacies, among which punishment and killing are one.
From light to heavy, it is roughly as follows:
1, tattooed on the cheek (or forehead), then painted black, never erased.
2. Well, it means to cut off a living nose, which is much heavier than that.
3. Chop your feet. This can be divided into three types: cutting the left foot, cutting the right foot, and cutting the left and right feet. Ancient medicine was not developed, and it is not known whether people with their feet cut off can survive. There is a saying in history that "the foot was broken and the car was full." Emperor Jing of the Western Han Dynasty changed mowing (cutting off his left foot) to "abandoning the market"-"going up" is really kind!
4, palace men don't be afraid, committing a big crime is nothing more than being "palace"-the big deal is sex! It's just that this punishment began in Shang dynasty, when there was no anti-inflammation. The wound will not be too small when the scrotum is cut off. It stinks to the sky when it is hot. According to unofficial history's records, at the age of 265,438+0 in the late Ming Dynasty, Wei Zhongxian, as the father of two sons and one daughter, entered Wei from the palace, and no one dared to approach it within three miles of Fiona Fang. Therefore, punishment is also called "corruption".
5. Fixed killing began when the first emperor threw the living into the water and suffocated: this is generally only used by people who have committed infectious diseases, so its cruelty is not the most.
6. The pit was buried alive. Burying alive is a very interesting thing, because it does not put people upside down in the pit, but stands, so people's life will not be long, and they will not die soon. Little by little, most criminals will die before they reach the top. Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng in Qin Dynasty claimed that the emperor was "autocratic", so they demanded libel. All "more than 460 people were trapped in Xianyang".
7. This is a humiliating and uneducated death sentence, but it's just beheading, barely counting.
8, waist-cutting class 7, just a little more artistic, because waist-cutting people is more difficult than beheading. It is estimated that the executioner's "professional title" is one level higher than "Da Bi".
9. The history books say that "killing its limbs" is the so-called "dismemberment", or what our people call it "dismemberment"-but the people are a little too kind, because they are not "corpses", but living people, and Shang Yang, who was the first to dismember many living people, was "dismembered".
10, killing and humiliating others, and then beheading-today, people over 40 have memories, which is roughly equivalent to holding a "10,000-person conference" before shooting, then holding placards to show the public, and then shooting. At present, this tradition is in danger of being lost, so it is suggested that relevant parties carry it forward, otherwise how to face the underground ancestors?
1 1, the cannon-first put oil on the big copper column-I don't know if it's meat or vegetables, then add carbon to ignite it below, so that people can walk on the ground. I've already said-don't make too kind a mistake again. If I pass, well, do it again! The law is the evidence of the emperor's power, and it is impossible to "dig out the paste". This is not only an execution, but also an endless death.
12, sugar is also called sugar. This punishment is creative, but not artistic. After the murder, the body was cut into paste.
13. Dried fruits, please ask ladies to go away, especially those who like dried fruits, because the word "candied fruit" is next to the word "meat", which is a punishment instead of food, that is, after "sugar", it is dried into dried meat.
14, cut the nose first, then kill the whole family. There is a saying in the history books, "I am unlucky. The more disrespectful I am, the more I am raped and ruined." The people of Shang Dynasty were kind, which seemed to be just a threat, but later generations really carried it forward.
15, five punishments in one, as the name suggests, five punishments in one. Hanshu. "Criminal Law Tongzhi" records that "anyone who involves the three clans, chop it, chop it, chop it, kill it, chop its head and kill its flesh and blood in the city. Those who slander and curse them should be cut off first. " Poor recipient, but who let you commit such a big crime? Why is this crime not that others suffer, but that you suffer? Others can live, why can't you live? According to non-authoritative research (blue arc self-examination, not suitable for writing handwritten papers), this punishment was created by Li Si. Li Si's power in the period of Ying Zheng, the king of Qin, was attributed to the Qin Dynasty's "accepting all the world and annexing the Eight Famines", burning books to bury Confucianism, torturing Qin, forbidding private studies and teaching "poetry, books and hundreds of languages", which can be described as a great achievement of the unity of culture and thought. But its ending is the same as that of Shang Yang, and the inventor's "patent" is over again. According to historical records, "On the 7th of two years, he was sentenced to five sentences and talked about beheading Xianyang". This reminds me of the story of "Please flock to the urn". Why are those violent and cruel people in China always unable to wake up despite countless stories of "retribution"?
16, Ling Chi is commonly known as "killing thousands of knives". If any lady has not scolded others for "killing thousands of knives", she can receive the prize in the Blue Arc, but this lady is just talking. The year is true, which can reflect the profoundness of our ancient culture. No one has the right year. The original meaning, the mountain is gradually gentle, and killing people is expected to die slowly but not quickly. Usually a year is from the soles of the feet to the head and neck. For example, Yuan Chonghuan, a famous anti-Qing star in the late Ming Dynasty, was named "Chongzhen in the middle of the year". Before the execution, the fishing net was tied to his naked body, so that his muscles stood out one by one, which was convenient for cutting meat. Unexpectedly, when he paraded the streets, angry Beijing citizens broke through many obstacles and the executioner ate Yuan's outstanding meat raw. It seems that Yuan Chonghuan will greatly thank his people before he dies. Give me a website,/a//A /a/20040629/000288.htm
(Not suitable for children and ladies) There are some old photos of prostitutes in the late Qing Dynasty, which are really "nice". That is to start with the breasts of beautiful women, then the private parts, and then the others. I can't remember which article I read that the executioner of "senior title" killed for three days and nights, and the prisoner was still alive!