Sometimes the hardship they have to endure breeds rebellion among
them, but woe betide those who commit any overt act, or become leaders
of any organized attempt to obtain justice. The service requires
frequent victims as examples to enforce the rigid discipline. The
punishment by the garrote is a common resort. It is a machine
contrived to choke the victim to death without suspending him in the
air. At the same time it is fatal in another way, namely, by severing
the spinal column just below its connection with the brain. The
condemned man is placed upon a chair fixed on a platform, leaning his
head and neck back into a sort of iron yoke or frame prepared to
receive it. Here an iron collar is clasped about the throat. At the
appointed moment a screw is suddenly turned by the executioner,
stationed behind the condemned, and instantaneous death follows. This
would seem to be more merciful than hanging, whereby death is produced
by the lingering process of suffocation, to say nothing of the many
mishaps which so often occur upon the gallows. This mode of punishment
is looked upon by the army as a disgrace, and they much prefer the
legitimate death of a soldier, which is to fall by the bullets of his
comrades when condemned to die.