The process of ancient interrogation and beheading

Decapitation means cutting off your own head with a knife, which sounds simple, but if you refine the process, you can write hundreds of thousa

The process of ancient interrogation and beheading

Decapitation means cutting off your own head with a knife, which sounds simple, but if you refine the process, you can write hundreds of thousands of words of monographs. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, beheading was divided into three types: beheading, beheading and abandoning the city. "decapitation" refers to cutting off the head directly, "decapitation" refers to cutting off the head and hanging it on a high pole for public display, and "abandoning the city" refers to directly executing prisoners or executing other death sentences (such as hanging) in downtown areas, and then beheading for public display.

In ancient times, beheading was one of the five punishments (slap, stick, imprisonment, exile and death penalty), which was lighter than the year of death and heavier than hanging. After the Qing Dynasty, with the widespread use of firearms, beheading was gradually replaced by shooting.

But if you want to execute beheading, the first thing to consider is time, unlike catching up with the construction period. The sooner the better. People who have seen costume dramas generally know that it is after autumn. In fact, this statement has existed since ancient times. In Zuo Zhuan, there is a record of "appreciating winter and summer and punishing autumn and winter". As for the reason, it may be due to the fall of autumn and winter. However, there are exceptions. It is estimated that there are too many prisoners in the Qin Dynasty, so there is no requirement for the execution season, and all seasons can be used.

I emphasized the question of time from the beginning, because this rule must be strictly observed. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, if someone executed a prisoner after beginning of spring or before the autumnal equinox, he would be beaten with eighty sticks. It was also stipulated in the Tang Dynasty that if the execution was not between the autumnal equinox and beginning of spring, it would have to wait until next year.

In addition to the season, the choice of date is also very particular. In the Tang Dynasty, prisoners could not be executed on many days, such as big memorial day, full moon, new moon, 24 solar terms, leap month, rainy weather and so on. After such a reduction, it can actually meet the requirements in a few days. Therefore, the executioners in the Tang Dynasty usually faced many problems such as tight time and heavy tasks.

It is difficult to determine the date, but we still need to choose the time. According to the requirements, the execution time must be noon during the day, and it will have to wait until dawn at night. These are the rules handed down by our ancestors, so we should not be careless. In case the executioner takes a nap, he has to take care of the prisoner for one more day. But generally speaking, prisoners can not only have a full meal before they die, but also be allowed to see their families. This is also a manifestation of ancient people's humanistic care.

There is no special regulation on the location of beheading, which is usually carried out in the city center, and sometimes the location is adjusted according to the identity of the beheaded person. He was beheaded at the Five Dynasties Gate in Bianjing (now Kaifeng) in the Northern Song Dynasty, and at the Wumen Gate in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. But in the Qing dynasty, most people still chose the food market.

After the location was selected, the prisoner was escorted to the execution ground. When escorting, there are also rules. As stipulated by Chen in the Southern Dynasties, prisoners on death row must sit in an uncovered carriage, with three sets of neck, hands and feet, and their hands should be fixed with iron bars. The name and crime of the prisoner should also be clearly written on the document. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the names and crimes of prisoners were written on a board and inserted behind the prisoners. Nowadays, film and television dramas often ignore such small details and mislead countless audiences. Telling jokes is simply a crime.

But the next appearance is not the executioner, but the supervisor. The biggest duty of a supervisor is to "find the right person". This procedure must be available, otherwise it will be a very serious "accident" if the prisoner is stolen.

Another job of the supervisor is to determine whether the prisoner has any grievances. When Wu Zetian was in power in the Tang Dynasty, in order to prevent prisoners from shouting, the executioner once invented a wooden pill to plug the prisoners' mouths. Fortunately, this system was abandoned after the Tang Dynasty. Before death, prisoners can communicate face to face with beheaded officials and practice their voices, even if there is no injustice.

The executioner was the last one to appear. The executioner should not only have good physique and courage to kill, but also need certain technical training, because a person's neck is not made of steel plate, but it can't be cut off at once. If you can't cut the prisoner's neck in two minutes, you might as well give him a rope to hang himself. In the Qing dynasty, there was a military commander named Youma, who was beheaded for committing a crime. This man belongs to the kind with a hard neck, and the executioner can't cut him at all. A horse told the executioner to cut off his neck tendon first, and then cut it. The executioner didn't finish the task until he finished it. Of course, the records of this matter in later generations will inevitably have exaggerated elements.

In practice, in order to prevent prisoners from resisting, they are usually tied behind a wooden stake. After being tied back, the prisoner's posture is kneeling on his knees and his head naturally leans forward, which is convenient for the executioner to aim at the knife. It's faster, and the prisoner won't have much pain. But if someone doesn't want you to die happily, they will give you a big gift during the execution. In the ninth year of Daiwa in Tang Wenzong (835), manna disaster occurred. Eunuch Chou Shiliang arrested Prime Minister Wang Ya and others and sentenced them to beheading. During the execution, the executioner untied their hair and tied it to a stake, and then nailed their hands and feet with nails before the execution began. Although the poet Lutong was innocent, he was arrested and went to disaster. Lutong is a bald man. Seeing that there was no hair tied to the stake, the executioner nailed the back of his head to the wood with a sharp nail.

So this kind of work really seems beyond the ability of ordinary people. People with bad hearts can imagine and estimate. Therefore, executioners usually kill one prisoner at a time even if they complete their tasks. If you kill a lot of prisoners at once, you need multiple executioners to execute them at the same time, or let one executioner cut first and wait until other executioners are tired of cutting. Therefore, the most important criterion to measure an executioner's professional ability is to see how many people he can hack to death in one breath. There is no historical record of how much the executioner can cut at a time, but what is certain is that it must be related to personal physical strength and whether the knife has been rolled.

It should be noted that the executioner was a well-paid profession at that time, but it was not popular because it damaged Yin's virtue. But fortunately, the lower the diploma of the executioner, the better, which is just the opposite of today.