1.
The combination of pain and the longevity of this sentence will be the most severe that the victim can endure. It begins with a
wheel and its iron rim. The victim will be tied to stakes, naked and spread out upon the ground, where triangular blocks of wood
will be placed beneath each of their joints. One by one, the people will smash them to splinters with the rim of the wheel, from
their wrist to elbow, shoulder to hip, knee to ankle, and then the bones between. This will be done with caution, so as not to
accidentally inflict a fatal blow and release the victim from their penance. Then, the victim’s shattered limbs will be woven
through the spokes of the wheel which was their destruction, and bound in place. The victim will be hoisted up, and left to bake in
the sun or freeze in the snow, and left as food for the scavenging birds who will pick their eyes from their sockets as they watch.
Death will not come peacefully or soon.
"The victim is transformed into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like a
sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones."
-Newsletter, Hamburg, 12th June 1607

2.
After hanging, "breaking with the wheel" was the most common means of execution throughout Europe from the early Middle
Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The victim, naked, was stretched out on the ground or on the execution dock,
with his or her limbs spread, and tied to stakes or iron rings. Wooden crosspieces were placed under the wrists, elbows, ankles,
knees and hips. The executioner then smashed limb after limb and joint after joint, including the shoulders and hips, with the
iron-tyred edge of the wheel, but avoiding fatal blows. The victim was transformed, according to the observations of a
seventeenth-century German chronicler, "into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four
tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones". Thereafter the
shattered limbs were "braided" into the spokes of the large wheel, and the victim hoisted up horizontally to the top of a pole, and
were then feasted upon by the crows. Death came after what was probably the longest and most atrocious agony that the
innocence of the power structure could inflict. Together with burning at the stake and drawing-and-quartering, this was one of the
most popular exibits among the many similar ones that took place in all the squares of Europe more or less every day.

3.
Being broken or "braided" on the wheel was one of the most insidiously painful methods of torure and execution practised in
Europe. After hanging, “breaking with the wheel” was the most common means of execution throughout Germanic Europe from
the early Middle Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth century; in Gallic and Latin Europe the breaking was done with massive
iron bars and with maces instead of wheels. The victim, naked, was stretched out supine on the ground or on the execution dock,
with his or her limbs spread, and tied to stakes or iron rings. Stout wooden crosspieces were placed under the wrists, elbows,
ankles, knees and hips. The executioner then smashed limb after limb and joint after joint, including the shoulders and hips, with
the iron-tyred edge of the wheel, but avoiding fatal blows. The victim was transformed, according to the observations of a
seventeenth-century German chronicler, “into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four
tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh (rohw, schleymig und formlos Fleisch wie di Schleuch eines
Tündenfischs) mixed up with splinters of smashed bones”. Thereafter the shattered limbs were “braided” into the spokes of the
large wheel, and the victim hoisted up horizontally to the top of a pole, where the crows ripped away bits of flesh and pecked out
eyes. Death came after what was probably the longest and most atrocious agony that the ingenuousness of the power structure
couldinflict.
Together with burning at the stake and drawing-and-quartering, this was one of the most popular spectacles among the many
similar ones that took place in all the squares of Europe more or less every day. Hundreds of depictions from the span 1450
1750 show throngs of plebeians and the well-born lost in rapt delight around a good wheeling, better if of a woman, best of all if of
several women in a row