Barbaric Military Punishments. and blood gushed from his nose and mouth. A form of punishment known as " bot tling," or "cold-burning," was dreaded by the men more than any other. It was sim ple but the torture was horrible. It con sisted in tying the offender's hand, palm uppermost, so that it was held quite motion less, and then allowing water to fall upon it, drop by drop, from a height of five feet. The pain caused in this way is said to have been so intolerable that the strongest men fainted away under its infliction. Often " cobbing " was inflicted for minor offenses. It consisted of a flagellation with a cross belt or musket sling, and was in flicted by the man's own comrades. In the cavalry, " booting" took the place of " cob bing." Booting was similar to the 'Turkish bastinado, and was a beating of the soles of the feet with a leather belt. In the whole history of military punish ments, flogging takes the first place. Its earliest form was known as " running the gauntlet." The offender was stripped naked to the waist, and driven slowly through the ranks of his regiment, each man of whom had been armed with a stout rattan. In front of the prisoner marched a file of the guard, stepping slowly backwards, and holding their bayonets pointed to the culprit's breast, in order to make him take the regulation step. At either end of the line the drummers kept up a continual " rat-a-plan " to drown the victim's screams. The senior major rode alongside to see that no man shirked his duty in giving the hardest blow with the rattan he could possibly inflict. In 1700 an army regulation made men tion, for the first time, of the " cat." This terrible weapon of torture was made of nine leather thongs, knotted near the end and fastened to a handle about twelve inches long. Every stroke brought blood, and when a man was sentenced to receive twelve lashes, it was equivalent to nine times that number, and his back was one mass of bleeding scars. A case is recorded where a man was or
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dered to receive a dozen lashes for being unsteady in the ranks, his offense being the brushing away of a troublesome fly which perched on his nose. Another man received two dozen for untidiness, he having " tied his pigtail carelessly." For grave offenses, such as mutiny, or desertion, the " cat" was used with such violence that death often en sued. Lieutenant Shipp, the historian of the wars of the eighteenth century, tells of one instance where some Frenchmen serv ing in an English regiment in the Island of Jersey, were sentenced, for desertion, to re ceive 1,000 lashes apiece; and in order to prolong the torture, the officer counted five slowly between each lash, so that it took nearly four hours to inflict the whole number. Right- and left-handed drummers were se lected to strike alternately so that no two lashes fell in the same place. The 28th foot was called for half a cen tury the " flogging regiment," and it well earned its distinction, if a sergeant, writing in 1806 from Bremen, is to be believed. He says that in the regiment from ten to twenty men were flogged daily. In the 9th many sickening experiences are related. Once a young soldier had been tried for some petty misdemeanor, sentenced and triced up to the halberds, when an old sergeant of unimpeachable conduct and ac knowledged bravery stepped forward and interceded for the culpit, for whom, he ex plained, he had a high esteem. "You mutinous rascal," roared the colonel, "I'll teach you manners." Ten minutes later the sergeant was reduced to the ranks by sentence of a drumhead court-martial, and sentenced to receive fifty lashes for daring to question the justice of a previous sentence. Sir Charles Napier says that it was " ter rible to see the new tender skin of the scarcely healed back, again laid bare to receive a new punishment." He tells of a colonel of the 50th regiment who ordered a man to be flogged because he did not stand steady oh
