Variations on a theme - "wheeling" in the old days

The Italian Princes preferred to have their victims broken on the ground with the use of the iron-tired wheel as the striking agent and blocks beneath the limbs.

In Northern Europe the popular method was to lash the victim to the wheel, break them with an iron bar, then lace the limbs through the spokes around the periphery of the wheel, compound fractures providing the requisite flexibility, with the still noisy head and trunk in the centre.

The latter method was a more satisfactory spectacle, but the recreation might be cut short if a piece of marrow went to the heart.