LINGCHI DOCUMENTARY - THE DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

In the course of history, many civilizations have developed creative ways to execute and torture criminals and prisoners. China is in the west an infamous example for having invented horrendous methods of inflicting pain and killing people. One such torture was the Lingchi, or death by a thousand cuts. The extreme punishment is estimated to have originated in 9th century BC in the western Zhou dynasty, although it was profoundly developed in the Qin dynasty. It was mainly used against officials accused of high treason and other serious crimes such as multiple murders, although some emperors applied it for minor offenses. Victims were tied down to wooden structure, often a pole stuck in the ground, with their skin exposed. One or several executioners then proceeded to cut slices of skin and flesh off the body in small amounts so that the torture would be lingering on. Generally, the arms would be sliced first, then the legs and chest. Limbs were often amputated later. After the process, death was inflicted by decapitation or a stab to the heart. In some instances, where the crime the victim had committed was not too extreme, or when the executioner was merciful, the throat of the victim would be cut straight away to kill them. The other cuts and amputations would therefore be a humiliation in death. The families of the victims also sometimes bribed the executioner to kill the person on the first cut. Later, the Confucianist doctrine spread and Lingxue became more controversial. Indeed, according to its beliefs, to alter one's body or to cut it open was forbidden. Furthermore, traditionally in China it was believed that people should die with a whole body. The thousand cuts torture was therefore even more controversial, but it was nonetheless still applied. During the short Liu Song dynasty, a violent and impulsive emperor Qianfei, also known by his name Liu Ziyue, ascended to the throne on the 12th of July 464 when he was only 15 years old. Liu Ziyue was famous for his cruelty. He forced his brother to commit suicide and had many members of the royal family killed. The Qianfei emperor was also known for having huge numbers of people tortured and executed, including innocent officials, and he was quite fond of the Lingxue method. Liu Ziyue was assassinated a year after his ascension to the throne. During the Five Dynasties era, Lingxue was a common practice, but some emperors found it too violent and extreme. Shi Jingtang, the first emperor of the later Jin dynasty, abolished the torture in his kingdom, although most other leaders continued to allow its practice. Up to then, the torture had never actually been part of the law. Lingxue was officially prescribed in the law under the Qitan-led Liao dynasty, although it was rarely applied. However, Emperor Tianzuo, the last monarch of the Liao, regularly sentenced people to it. During the Song dynasty, which creation ended the Five Dynasties era, Emperors Renzong, who created the title of Duke Yansheng for the Senate of Confucius that is still used today, and Emperor Shenzong regularly had the torture applied to officials. Lingxue was however vastly criticised. Lu You was a southern Song government official, as well as a celebrated poet and also master of the practice of swords. He had failed the Imperial Civil Service examination when he was 19 years old, but tried again at 29 and scored first of his region. He soon after started a career as a state official. Having strong moral principles, he proposed to abolish Lingxue, but his plea was not successful. His argument did however survive and was used many times by abolitionists later on in history. In the Mongol Yuan dynasty, it was officially defined that 100 cuts were to be inflicted to a person sentenced to Lingxue. However, by the Ming dynasty that followed, there were records of 3,000 incisions inflicted. A powerful reformist eunuch called Liu Jin, at the head of the Eight Tigers, which were a group of eunuchs secretly controlling the court, made radical changes and sentenced many innocents to death in order to complete his plans. Making more and more enemies as time passed, he was eventually accused of plotting and the Zhengde Emperor, already concerned about the power eunuchs held in the Ming government, sentenced him to Lingxue. The torture was supposed to last for three days and the eunuch was to be cut 3,357 times. Many people came to witness it and it was said that some people even bought stripes of Liu Jun's flesh and ate it with rice wine. Liu Jin died on the second day after approximately 400 cuts. Yuan Chonghuan, a famous Ming dynasty general that had brilliantly fought against the Jurchen tribes, the future Manchu, also underwent the terrible ordeal. False charges of treason, which were believed to have been planted against him by the Jurchen, led the Chongzhen Emperor, last of the Ming dynasty, to order Yuan Chonghuan's execution. Unafraid of death due to a life of war, he composed a poem for his last words. A life's work always ends up in vain. Half of my career seems to be in dreams. I do not worry about lacking brave warriors after my death, for my loyal spirit will continue to guard Liaodong. Yuan Chonghuan succumbed after hours of torture. However, after the overthrow of the Ming by the Qing, decisive evidence was found in the old archives proving his innocence. The Qianlong Emperor, whose reign is considered as the golden age of old Chinese civilization, therefore cleared his name. The largest number of people executed by Lingzhi at once was an event that happened on November 1542, also under the Ming dynasty. An assassination plot known as the Palace Plot of Renyinye was designed. The Jiajing Emperor, nicknamed the Taoist Emperor, was a strong believer of alchemy and divination. He regularly drank a substance called red lead, which was essentially menstrual blood of virgin palace girls. To create the concoction, palace girls at 13 or 14 years old were kept and fed only mulberry leaves and rainwater. This diet led many of them to fall ill, in which case they would be thrown out of the palace or beaten. On one occasion, where the Emperor retired to consort Duan's quarters, the palace girls attempted to assassinate him by strangling him with ropes. One of the girls, however, got scared and run to alarm the Empress Fang. The Empress and many guards and eunuchs burst in and arrested the girls. The Jiajing Emperor stayed unconscious for several days, and Empress Fang sentenced all the girls, including consort Duan, who had turned out to be innocent, and the girl who had alerted her to Lingzhi. In addition, many of their family members were beheaded or enslaved. Under the Qing dynasty, Western powers came in close contact with China and discovered its execution methods and tortures. The only Western person known to have suffered the death by thousand cuts was Joseph Marchand, a Catholic French missionary who partook a revolt in Vietnam that tried to overthrow the Nguyen Emperor Minh Mang. Joseph Marchand was arrested in November 1835 and executed in Saigon. In 1866, when the official British consulate to China was built, Sir Thomas Francis Wade, a British diplomat in China and precursor to the Wade-Giles Romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, urged Chinese authorities to abolish Lingzhi, but his plea was rejected. The first Western written accounts and descriptions of Lingzhi were both written in 1895 and both came from secondary sources. These were The People and Politics of the Far East by Sir Henry Norman and An Australian in China by George Ernest Morrison. In 1890, the first photographs of Lingzhi were produced. They were taken by William Arthur Curtis of Kentucky in Canton. These, however, appear to have been lost. After the Boxer Uprising, troops from the Eight Nation Alliance occupied Beijing and French soldiers were able to take photographs of three executions by Lingzhi. I now have to warn you that the upcoming images may be very upsetting for sensitive people. The first victim was Wang Weiqin, killed in 1904. He was a state official who had been accused of unjustly ordering the execution of two innocent families. Wang was executed on the 31st of October. The second victim was a young boy, apparently mentally unstable, who had killed his mother. The photographs taken of his execution in January 1905 were later used in George Dumas' 1930 Nouveau Traité de Psychologie. Lingzhi was officially abolished by an imperial decree in March 1905. Shen Jiaben, a politician and jurist, and Wu Tingfang, a Chinese diplomat, asked for heavy reforms of the Qing Code and for many inhumane tortures to be stopped. Shen Jiaben used Lu You's arguments against Lingzhi. Although the reforms were adopted, one last person was executed in April 1905, two weeks later. The victim was a Mongol guard named Fo Zhouli, who had killed his lord, the prince of Aohan region. Once again, the event was captured with photography. By 1912, a set of 12 postcards bearing the photographs of the execution were created in Tianjin and accepted by the postal service. Some of the cards were even purchased and mailed. Fo Zhouli is believed to be the last person in history to have been sentenced to Lingzhi by law, although it is likely that many more people suffered the terrible punishment as a result of mob justice until the end of the first half of the 20th century. In any case, the death by a thousand cuts is possibly the most horrible death ever invented. Throughout history, countless people ranging from tyrannical killers to innocent children have died under the knives of executioner. And if it wasn't thanks to the dedication of some people holding strong moral principles, Lingzhi could still be, today, a judicial punishment. Thank you for watching the video. Please like it and subscribe to the channel if you enjoyed it and should you have any question relating to the topic, feel free to ask them in the comment section below.