ross, each of his limbs being stretched out on its arms. Two
places were hollowed out under each limb, about a foot apart, in order
that the joints alone might touch the wood. The executioner then dealt a
heavy blow over each hollow with a square iron bar, about two inches broad
and rounded at the handle, thus breaking each limb in two places. To the
eight blows required for this, the executioner generally added two or
three on the chest, which were called _coups de grace_, and which ended
this horrible execution. It was only after death that the broken body was
placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot. Sometimes, however,
the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being
broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a rope
round the neck.

Strangling, thus carried out, was called _garotting_. This method is still
in use in Spain, and is specially reserved for the nobility. The victim is
seated on a scaffold, his head leaning against a beam and his neck grasped
by an iron collar, which the executioner suddenly tightens from behind by
means of a screw.

For several centuries, and down to the Revolution, hanging was the most
common mode of execution in France; consequently, in every town, and
almost in every village, there was a permanent gibbet, which, owing to the
custom of leaving the bodies to hang till they crumbled into dust, was
very rarely without having some corpses or skeletons attached to it. These
gibbets, which were called _fourches patibulaires_ or _justices_, because
they represented the authority of the law, were generally composed of
pillars of stone, joined at their summit by wooden traverses, to which the
bodies of criminals were tied by ropes or chains. The gallows, the pillars
of which varied in number according to the will of the authorities, were
always placed by the side of frequented roads, and on an eminence.

[Illustration: Fig. 349.--The Gibbet of Montfaucon.--From an Engraving of
the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National
Library.]

According to prescribed rule, the gallows of Paris, which played such an
important part in the political as well as the criminal history of that
city, were erected on a height north of the town, near the high road
leading into Germany. Montfaucon, originally the name of the hill, soon
became that of the gallows itself. This celebrated place of execution
consisted of a heavy mas