A blundering sort of justice was meted out to criminals in those days, it being quite as probable that an innocent man would suffer as that the guilty would be convicted. But some one was punished, an example was made, and the law was satisfied. Occasionally special commissions were issued to try such powerful criminals as defied the ordinary courts of justice. The “grands jours,” or special assize of Poitou, was held under a guard of four hundred men, and lasted all the months of September and October. Twelve persons were beheaded for their crimes, one heretic was burned, and the houses of some gentlemen who had refused to appear were burned down. Many of the punishments were grossly trivial and indecent, others were barbarously severe. All England rings with execrations if the agony of a convicted murderer is unnecessarily prolonged by the bungling of the hangman; but in the sixteenth century offenses were sometimes punished with a refined ferocity worthy of the kingdom of Dahomey. No code was mild three hundred years ago, but practices survived in France which the more merciful instincts of our law had banished from England. Traitors were scourged, their ears were cut off, and their tongues pierced with a red-hot iron, after which they were hanged or torn in pieces by horses. Highway robbers were condemned by a special edict (1534), to have their arms broken in two places, as well as their ribs, legs, and thighs;[196] they were then to be extended face uppermost on a wheel elevated on a tall pole, and “there they should remain to repent so long as our Lord should please to let them linger.” “If the criminals are favored,” says an English traveler, “their breast is first broken. That blow is called the _blow of mercy_, because it doth quickly bereave them of their life.”[197] Kindness to the weak, tenderness and commiseration even for the criminal are the slow growth of civilizing influences.[198] The pen almost refuses to describe how some women--Huguenot women--were on one occasion buried alive. They were placed, each in a box or coffin without a top but with bars across, after which they were lowered into a deep trench and the earth was thrown upon them. The executioner was a master (maître) in those days, and represented rather the sheriff than the Calcraft of 1867. He was a salaried officer of justice, not very far below the judge in rank. The office was frequently hereditary, and its emoluments great. At Carcassonne in 1538, his gloves for one execution cost at one time twelve deniers, and twenty at another. He was paid five sols for the tumbrel or hurdle on which the criminal was dragged to the place of execution; ten for hanging him, twenty for beheading him, and five for the pole on which the head was exhibited. For flogging a culprit round the town he received seven sols six deniers. For burning a heretic at Toulouse, the wood, straw, chain, turpentine, brimstone, etc., cost