Part 7 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ryding the Wooden-Horse]

X

MILITARY PUNISHMENTS

An English writer of the seventeenth century, one Gittins, says with a burst of n.o.ble and eloquent sentiment: ”A soldier should fear only G.o.d and Dishonour.” Writing with candor he might have added, ”but the English soldier fears only his officers.” The shocking and frequent cruelty practiced in the English army is now a thing of the past, though it lasted to our own day in the form of bitter and protracted floggings.

It is useless to describe one of these military floggings, and superfluous as well, when an absolutely cla.s.sic description, such as Somerville's, in his _Autobiography of a Workingman_, can be read by all. He writes with stinging, burning words of the punishment of a hundred lashes which he received during his service in the British army, and his graphic sentences cut like the ”cat”--we seem to see in lurid outlines the silent, motionless, glittering regiment drawn up in a square four rows deep; the unmoved and indifferent officers, all men of gentle birth and liberal education, but brutalized and inhuman, standing within these lines and near the cruel stake; the impa.s.sive quartermaster marking with leisurely and unmoved exactness every powerful, agonizing lash of the b.l.o.o.d.y whip as it descended on the bare back of a brave British soldier, without one sign of protest or scarce of interest from any of the hundreds who viewed the scene, save on the part of the surgeon, who stood perfunctorily near with basin and drugs to revive the sufferer if he fainted, or stop the punishment if it seemed to foretell a fatal result. We read that raw recruits sometimes cried out or dropped down in the ranks from fright at the first horrifying sight of an army-flogging, but they soon grew scarcely to heed the ever-frequent and brutalizing sight. These floggings were never of any value as a restraint or warning in the army; the whipped and flayed soldiers were ruined in temper and character just as they were often ruined in health.

Deaths from exhaustion and mortification from the wounds of the lash were far from infrequent. The story of the inquiry in army circles that led to the disuse of the whip in the British army (as for instance, the _Evidence on Military Punishment_ contains some of the most revolting pages ever put in print.

English army-laws of course ruled the royal troops in the American provinces, and the local train bands, and were continued among the volunteer American soldiers of the Revolution. I have read scores of order-books and seen hundreds of sentences to flogging, both during the French and Indian wars, and in the Revolutionary war. A few instances may be given. Edward Munro, of Lexington, Ma.s.s., was a Lieutenant in a company of Rangers in 1758, and in 1762 he was Lieutenant in Saltonstall's regiment at Crown Point, and he acted as adjutant for four regiments. His order-book still exists. On October 19, 1762, a court-martial found several soldiers guilty of neglect of duty, and he records that they were sentenced to receive punishment in the following manner:

”Robert McKnight to receive 800 lashes on his naked back with cat-o'-nine-tails. John Cobby to receive 600 lashes in the same manner; and Peter McAllister 300 lashes in the same maner. The adjutant will see the sentences put in execution by the Drum of the line at 5 o'clock this evening; the Surgeon to attend the execution.”

As Peter McAlister was very young his lashes were remitted. He was led in disgrace to watch the others as they were whipped, two hundred lashes at a time, at the head of the four regiments, _if the surgeon found they could endure it_.

These sentences were horribly severe. Thirty-nine lashes were deemed a cruel punishment. Ten was the more frequent number. Dr. Rea, in his diary, kept before ”Ticonderogue,” tells of a thousand lashes being given in one case. Another journal tells of fifteen hundred lashes. He also states that he never witnessed a military flogging, as he ”found the shreaks and crys satisfactory without the sight.” Occasionally a faint gleam of humanity seems dawning, as when we find Colonel Crafts in camp before Boston in 1779 sending out this regimental order:

”The Colonel is extreamly sorry and it gives him pain to think he is at last Obliged to Consent to the Corporal Punishment of one of his regiment. Punishments are extreamly erksome and disagreeable to him but he finds they are unfortunately necessary.”

After that date the ”cat” was seldom idle in his regiment, as in others in the Continental army. Lashes on the naked back with the cat-o'-nine-tails was the usual sentence, diversified by an occasional order for whipping ”with a Burch Rodd on the Naked Breech,” or ”over such Parts as the commanding officer may apoint.” There was, says one diary writer of Revolutionary times, ”no spairing of the whip” in the Continental army; and floggings were given for comparatively trivial offenses such as ”wearing a hat unc.o.c.kt,” ”malingering,” swearing, having a dirty gun, uttering ”scurulous” words, being short of ammunition, etc.

A New York soldier in 1676 was accused of pilfering. This was the sentence decreed to him:

”The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said Melchoir Cla.s.sen shall run the Gantlope once, the length of the fort: where according to the custom of that punishment, the souldiers shall have switches delivered to them, with which they shall strike him as he pa.s.ses between them stript to the waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall is to receive him, and there to kick him out of the garrison as a cas.h.i.+ered person, when he is no more to returne, and if any pay is due him it is to be forfeited.”

All of which would seem to tend to the complete annihilation of Melchoir Cla.s.sen.

Gantlope was the earlier and more correct form of the word now commonly called gantlet. Running the gantlope was a military punishment in universal use in the seventeenth century in England and on the continent. It was the German _Ga.s.senlaufen_ and it is said was the invention of that military genius, the Emperor Gustavus Adolphus.

The method of punis.h.i.+ng by running the gantlope was very exactly defined in English martial law. The entire regiment was drawn up six deep. The ranks then were opened and faced inward; thus an open pa.s.sage way was formed with three rows of soldiers on either side. Each soldier was given a lash or a switch and ordered to strike with force. The offender, stripped naked to the waist, was made to run between the lines, and he was preceded by a sergeant who pressed the point of his reversed halbert against the breast of the unfortunate culprit to prevent his running too swiftly between the strokes. Thus every soldier was made a public executioner of a cowardly and degrading punishment.

Several cases are on record of running the gantlope in Virginia; and an interesting case was that of Captain Walter Gendal of Yarmouth, Maine, a brave soldier, who for the slightest evidence of a not very serious crime was sentenced to ”run the gauntelope” through all the military companies in Boston with a rope around his neck. This sentence was never executed.

It is certainly curious to note that the first two parsons who came to Plymouth, named Oldham and Lyford, came in honor and affection, but had to run the gantlope at their leaving. They were most ”unsavorie salt,”

as poor, worried Bradford calls them in his narrative of their misbehaviors (one of the shrewdest, most humorous and sententious pieces of seventeenth century writing extant), and after various ”skandales, aggravations, and great malignancies” they were ”clapt up for a while.”

He then writes of Oldham:

”They comited him till he was tamer, and then apointed a guard of musketiers, wch he was to pa.s.s thorow, and every man was ordered to give him a thump on ye breech wth ye end of his musket, then they bid him goe and mende his manners.”

Morton of Merry-mount tells in equally forcible language in his _New England Canaan_ of the similar punishment of Lyford.

A Dutch sailor, for drawing a knife on a companion, was dropped three times from the yard-arm and received a kick from every sailor on the s.h.i.+p--a form of running the gantlope. And we read of a woman who enlisted as a seaman, and whose s.e.x was detected, being dropped three times from the yard-arm, running the gantlope, and being tarred and feathered, and that she nearly died from the rough and cruel treatment she received.

Similar in nature to running the gantlope, and equally cowardly and cruel, was ”pa.s.sing the pikes.”

In the fierce _Summarie of Marshall Lawes_ for the colony of Virginia under Dale, I find constantly appointed the penalty of ”pa.s.sing the pikes:” it was ordered for disobedience, for persistence in quarrelling, for waylaying to wound, etc.

”That Souldier that having a quarrell with an other, shall gather other of his acquaintances, and a.s.sociates, to make parties, to bandie, brave second, and a.s.sist him therein, he and those braves, seconds and a.s.sistants shall pa.s.s the pikes.”