Such punishment was considered an impure death. Often at the time of strangulation, all the muscles in the body relaxed, and this led to complete emptying of the intestine and bladder, so that even after the execution the humiliation continued.
Whether it was a decapitation with an ax or ax, which was considered a quick and less painful death. Such a death allowed to avoid public agony, which was important representatives of noble blood. The crowd of spectators, eager for spectacles, should not have seen low dying manifestations. It was believed that only a strong and courageous warrior was prepared precisely for the death of cold weapons. When the condemned put his head on the block, he showed humility and resignedly accepted punishment. But all the same the main thing depended on the ability of the executioner. Often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money to do his work with one blow, and death was quick and saved from violent torment. The gardener quickly enforced the sentence. The condemned man laid his head on a log, the thickness of which was to be no more than six inches>7, which was ideally suited to the head of a man. A swing with an ax, a blow-that’s all.
Tomorrow’s fugitive was not Sultan’s blood, but he was very noble – it was the Vizier, the right hand of the Lord, whom he trusted as to himself. But something happened, and the Sultan suddenly began another purge of his associates, justifying his name – Selim the Terrible. Most likely, this was implicated in the heir Mustafa>8, the closest pretender to the throne.
Such cruelty justified itself, because in the Ottoman Empire there were no bloody wars because of the throne, unlike Europe. The recent French Revolution>9, which began with the murder in prison of the 10-year-old son of the last French King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, did not have time to start, quickly drowned in the blood of their own leaders.
The gardener looked at the wall, lined with huge roughly chipped pieces of limestone. Behind this place was a fenced part of the palace, which was called Cafe>10. It was a «golden» cage where Sultan’s relatives lived, whom he had not yet killed>11. He kept them next to him, allowing him to enjoy almost all the blessings of the palace in order to fully control their lives. Mustafa was in this cage and, most likely, became a bargaining chip in a never-ending backstage game.