Why do you say year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year, year after year?

When we study history, we often hear some criticisms of ancient feudal society, which are mainly aimed at those pedantic, rigid and cruel behaviors in the past. When it comes to cruelty, the torture of "Nian" is always mentioned. So how cruel was the ancient year? Let's take a look at its changes and development in history, and maybe we can find one or two.

Many people may think that this cruel punishment was handed down from a very early time. Because the older you get, the more savage you are, and the more likely you are to be born in a cruel and abnormal punishment. This is not the case.

The punishment of "year-old" really became law from Liao Dynasty, about 1000 years ago, which was a way of death for the Khitans. Although some central plains regimes had scraped human flesh piece by piece with knives before this, there was another name before that behavior, called "cutting".

It was recorded in the Southern and Northern Dynasties that people killed people with laser scalpel, but this kind of behavior was not common in the history before the demise of the Tang Dynasty, and it was a special case, and it was not recognized by the imperial statute law. During the Sui Dynasty, Hu Sizheng was an official in the Ministry of War. Later, because he did not participate in the rebellion, he fled to Koguryo to seek political asylum. However, he was handed over to the Sui Dynasty by the Koguryo regime. Finally, he was tied to a big post and shot to death with a bow and arrow. What's more, someone once cut off his meat and boiled it in water. Finally, the remaining skeleton was burned to ashes.

During the reign of Wu Zetian in the Tang Dynasty, Lai Junchen, a brutal official, did many evils, and officials of the people hated him. After Lai Junchen was publicly executed, the people actually scraped all the meat off his body to vent their anger, but it was the meat of the dead, which was different from the meat of the living later.

Although these examples are bloody and cruel, they are not the norms of national laws and belong to special circumstances. The word "nian" has really been written into a country's law and has become a formal way of execution. It was in the sixth year after Bao Ji, that is, in 9 12 AD, Liao executed several rebellious political prisoners in the form of "annual income". After that, it was particularly cruel, especially cruel.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, although there was already a "mid-year" penalty, it was still an extra-legal penalty and was not officially recognized by the law at that time. There are only two kinds of routine death penalty in the Northern Song Dynasty, beheading and beheading. The "year of the year" is used to make an exception and execute criminals with particularly bad nature. If you want to force the "year-end", you can't go through the judicial process. Usually the imperial edict and execution.

During the reign, the maid of Rong Palace secretly sold the gold and silver vessels in the palace. To cover up his crime, a fire was set in the palace. After the truth was discovered, the handmaiden who set the fire was sentenced to death. During the period of Song Renzong, people organized people to enliven the people to make sacrifices, and the emperor also ordered the leader of this cult to be arrested and put to death that year.

In addition to the above-mentioned crimes that are particularly harmful to society, criminals with particularly bad political influence will also be sentenced to one year in prison. For example, "Tell Ride on". What do you mean by "riding on"? Pointing at the emperor's nose. During the reign of Xuanhe, Song Huizong was upstairs drinking tea and enjoying the lanterns. Suddenly, someone jumped out and pointed at Song Huizong's nose and scolded him. Huizong was furious and let his men catch the man and torture him. Finally, he was executed in 2004. In the Southern Song Dynasty, year in, beheading and hanging became official death sentences.

The Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties after the Song Dynasty inherited the torture of the Southern Song Dynasty, and it became more and more cruel. In the Ming dynasty, in order to cause extreme pain to prisoners, the court often stipulated that thousands of knives or even thousands of knives were needed in the process of passing through the year. In different periods, the methods of Lingchi are different.

However, according to the research of some later scholars, the first three knives are the most important in the year-end process. The executioner must fix the prisoner first, and then clap his hand according to his chest, in order to shock the heart and interfere with blood circulation. Then he will cut off the prisoner's right nipple with a knife and hold it high for public display. Next to the apprentice or assistant will loudly say "the first knife", and then the executioner will throw the meat into the sky to sacrifice to God. These two pieces of meat, also called "money meat", are used to worship heaven and earth. After that, the third knife was cut off from the chest and thrown into the sky to sacrifice to ghosts and gods. From the fourth knife, the executioner was free to play.

However, there are strict rules on how many knives "Ling Chi" has to cut. According to the old news of national history, Liu Jin, the great eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, was sentenced to torture in the middle of the year and was finally chopped with 3357 knives. During the apocalypse of the Ming Dynasty, a scholar named "Zheng Man" was sentenced to years. At dawn on the day of execution, every executioner came to the scene with a small basket full of hooks and knives. When everyone was talking about it, an official entered the meeting, read out the imperial edict loudly and scraped 3,600 knives. Hundreds of executioners present responded in unison, and their voices thundered, which made the people present tremble with fear. The whole process has a unique sense of ceremony, the purpose of which is to shock the people and combat their rebellious consciousness, and the effect is really obvious.

In the Qing Dynasty, Ling Chi, also known as Shi Dakai, a general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was executed by Ling Chi. At that time, when Shi Dakai and his adjutant were in the execution ground, the Qing soldiers always cut the skin off their foreheads with a knife, pulled the scalp down to block their eyes, and then cut other places. The adjutant couldn't help screaming in pain, but when Shi Dakai was tortured, he looked happy as if nothing had happened. As for the reason, he is tough by nature.

At the end of Qing Dynasty, there was a wicked man like Shi Dakai named Kang Tianxin. This man, called Kang Xiaoba in the Jianghu, is skilled in martial arts and ruthless. With a revolver, he was bullying in the village, doing many evils and doing several bad things. Finally, the old Buddha of Cixi was alarmed, and was subdued by several martial arts experts jointly sent by the imperial court and the escort agency, and was sentenced to years.

The last person to die in China was Xu Xilin. At that time, Mr Xu devoted himself to the revolutionary cause. In order to overthrow the reactionary rule of the Manchu government, he assassinated the then governor of Anhui, but was arrested and killed afterwards. In fact, when Xu Xilin died, the annual sentence had been abolished, which was entirely because the Qing court was lynching at that time, because 1866, the British ambassador to China proposed to the Qing government that the annual sentence should be abolished. At that time, Prince Gong said that foreigners were right and beheading was enough for the death penalty, so it was unnecessary to end the year.

Of course, this caused great controversy at that time, and some ministers began to express their opinions on abolishing the year number. The debate about the year of the year lasted for more than 40 years. It was not until 1905 that the court accepted the suggestion of Shen Jiaben, a jurist in the late Qing Dynasty, and deleted Ling Chi from the law forever. This torture, which lasted for more than 1000 years in China's history, has finally come to an end.