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1573: Lippold ben Chluchim, scapegoat
On this date in 1573, the Jewish courtier Lippold ben Chluchim was broken on the wheel and cut into quarters. Most of the readily available information about poor Lippold is in German; his was a fate...
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1699: Nikol List, Golden Plate robber
On this date in 1699 the robber prince Nikol List was broken on the wheel in the town of Celle — along with seven other members of his gang. A former soldier and beer-house keeper, Saxony’s bandit...
View Article1768: Francesco Arcangeli, Winckelmann-Mörder
For murdering German Enlightenment intellectual Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Habsburg Trieste on this date in 1768 inflicted a breaking-wheel execution straight out of antiquity. A Saxon cobbler’s son,...
View Article1554: A handsome young man from Montpellier
From the diary of Felix Platter, a Swiss youth studying in Montpellier, France: On the 28th [of September, 1554] the Provost came to Montpellier, and there were several executions. On the first day he...
View Article1554: A false coiner and a masked dummy
From the diary of Felix Platter, a Swiss youth studying in Montpellier, France. It is not completely evident from context (“afterwards …”) whether the masked dummy was “executed” on the same occasion...
View Article1783: Jacques Francois Paschal, rapist monk
For this date’s post, we are indebted to Rictor Norton, who maintains the invaluable Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century Enland site. Norton wrote a book about England’s proto-gay “molly house”...
View Article1755: Henri Mongeot, Lescombat assassin
On this date in 1755, Henri Mongeot was broken on the wheel for assassinating the husband of his adulterous lover, Marie. Louis Alexandre Lescombat was a Paris architect; the betrayal of his flighty...
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1785: Horea and Closca, Transylvanian rebels
On this date in 1785, two of the three leaders of Transylvania’s great peasant uprising were broken on the wheel in the city of Alba Iulia — the third having cheated the executioner by hanging himself...
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1464: Johann Breyde, via Schandbild
On April 1, 1464 mayor of Cologne Johann Breyde was chopped into quarters … with ink. This startling image does not depict an actual flesh-and-blood execution. It is, instead, an outstanding (and...
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1755: Louis Mandrin
On this date in 1755, the French outlaw Louis Mandrin was broken on the wheel. In common with the whole French populace, Mandrin had a beef with the Ferme general — the country’s tax-farming concern —...
View ArticleA day in the executions of Franz Schmidt
The free imperial city of Nuremberg has been a regular feature on this site thanks to the detailed journal of executions kept by its legendary executioner Franz Schmidt. We have profiled many of the...
View Article1588: Two Nuremberg highwaymen
Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt on this date in 1588 broke on the wheel two of the countless violent thieves that haunted the byways of early modernity. As the meticulous Nachrichter did for all...
View Article1673: La Chaussee, for the giblet pie
On this date in 1673, a footman named La Chaussee paid the forfeit for acting the agent of fugitive poisoner. The malevolent concoctions of the Marquise de Brinvilliers have already been detailed in...
View Article1720: Antoine-Joseph de Horn, humanity from an executioner
(Thanks to Henry-Clement Sanson for the guest post. The former executioner — the last of his illustrious dynasty comprising six generations of bourreaux — was the grandson of that dread figure of the...
View Article1775: A robber under the apartments of Joseph Jekyll
We owe this date’s entry to Joseph Jekyll, a young gentleman (kin to the late judge of the same name whom Alexander Pope had once teased as an “odd old Whig/Who never changed his principle or wig”) who...
View ArticleUnspecified Year: Vilem, the Forest King
On this date in an unspecified year, the bandit Vilem is broken on the wheel and beheaded in the classic Czech poem Maj, by Karel Hynek Macha. Maj (“May”) commences with a lass called Jarmila on the...
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1581: Christman Genipperteinga
June 17 of 1581 was the alleged condemnation date — the best specific calendar date we have — for the German robber/murderer Christman Genipperteinga or Gniperdoliga, who was broken on the wheel for a...
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1726: Franz Laubler, Hermann Joachim Hahn’s murderer
Franz Laubler was broken on the wheel in Dresden on this date for assassinating Protestant deacon Hermann Joachim Hahn. Hahn was a well-connected pastor who had been plying his trade in the Lutheran...
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1704: Roland Laporte, posthumously, and five aides, humously
On this date in 1704, the great Camisard commander Pierre Laporte was publicly burned. He was already two days dead, but the same could not be said by five comrades-in-rebellion who were quite alive as...
View Article1581: Peter Niers
The execution of legendary German bandit and mass-murderer Peter Niers took place in Neumarkt on this date in 1581 … or at least, it started on this date. A veritable bogeyman figure thanks to the...
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