Wheel, BREAKING ON THE

Wheel, BREAKING ON THE, a very barbarous mode of inflicting the punishment of death, formerly in use in France and Germany, where the criminal was placed on a wheel, with his arms and legs extended along the spokes, and the wheel being turned round, the executioner fractured his limbs by successive blows with an iron bar, which were repeated till death ensued. There was considerable variety in the mode in which this punishment was inflicted, at different times and in different places. By way of terminating sooner the sufferings of the victim, the executioner was sometimes permitted to deal two or three severe blows on the chest or stomach, known as coups de gràce; and occasionally, in France at least, the sentence contained a provision that the criminal was to be strangled after the first or second blow. Mercy of this kind was, however, not always allowed to be shown to the victims of the wheel: when Patkul, the envoy of Peter the Great, was put to death on the wheel by order of Charles XII. of Sweden, it is said that the officer in command of the guard was cashiered by the Swedish king in consequence of having allowed the head to be struck off before life was extinct in the mangled limbs. The punishment of the wheel was abolished in France at the Revolution—Jean Calas (q.v.) had suffered by this means; in Germany it was inflicted within the 19th century on persons convicted of treason and parricide. The murderer at the wife's instigation of John Kincaid of Warriston was broken on the row or wheel at Edinburgh in 1604, as also two of the slayers of the Regent Lennox.