Running the gauntlet
Encyclopedia
Running the gauntlet is a form of physical punishment wherein a captive is compelled to run between two rows—a gauntlet—of soldiers who strike him as he passes.
. The modern spelling of "gauntlet" was influenced by the French-derived word
used for a glove worn as protection or armour. Robert Hartwell "The Grumbling Grammarian" Fiske asserts in The Dictionary of Disagreeable English that the word "gantlet" (the form of punishment) has been incorrectly conflated with "gauntlet" (the medieval glove covered with metal plates) and should be used separately.
(a Latin abstraction from the Latin fustis, a branch or rod) was a Roman military form of execution by cudgeling
(clubbing), the excruciating effects of which are comparable to running the gauntlet. Compare also to breaking on the wheel.
It could also be applied to every tenth man of a whole unit as a mode of decimation
.
walked in front of him with a blade to prevent him from running. The condemned might sometimes also be dragged through by a rope around the hands or prodded along by a pursuer. Various rules might apply, such as banning edged weapons, requiring the group to keep one foot in place, or allowing the soldier to attempt to protect his head with his hands. The punishment was not necessarily continued until death. If so, he might be finished off when unable to walk. Running the gauntlet was considered far less of a dishonor than a beating (with exposure to ridicule) on the pillory
, pranger
, or stocks
, since one could "take it like a man" upright and among soldiers.
In some traditions, if the condemned was able to finish the run and exit the gauntlet at the far end, his faults would be deemed paid, and he would rejoin his comrades with a clean slate. Elsewhere, he was sent back through the gauntlet until death.
The practice persisted in parts of Germany (mainly Prussia) and Austria as the Spießrutenlaufen, or "pike-run", and also in Russia, until the 19th century.
A magnificent description of it is in Tolstoy
's short story "After The Ball."
In Ernest Hemingway
's For Whom The Bell Tolls
the aristocrats of the town are subjected to a form of the gauntlet wherein they are led to and run off a cliff by villagers.
In Sweden, running the gauntlet was also a civilian punishment for certain crimes until the 18th century.
tribes of the Eastern Woodlands culture area forced prisoners to run the gauntlet. (See Captives in American Indian Wars
.) The Jesuit Isaac Jogues
was subject to this treatment while a prisoner of the Iroquois
in 1641. He described the ordeal in a letter that appears in the book The Jesuit Martyrs of North America : "Before arriving (at the Iroquois Village) we met the young men of the country, in a line armed with sticks...", and he and his fellow Frenchmen were made to walk slowly past them "for the sake of giving time to anyone who struck us."
Other European-Americans captured by Indians and made to run the gauntlet included John Stark
, Daniel Boone
, James Smith
, Col. William Crawford
, Simon Kenton
, Lieutenant-Colonel John B. McClelland
, and Susanna Willard Johnson.
See Bruce Beresford
's 1991 film of Brian Moore
's novel Black Robe
, as well as Stanley Kubrick
's 1975 award-winning period film Barry Lyndon
, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon
by William Makepeace Thackeray
. The recent PBS docudrama
The War that Made America
shows the captive frontiersman Smith enduring the ritual.
As these do not cause serious injuries, only bearable pain, they are sometimes eagerly anticipated by the initiate as a sign of acceptance into a more prestigious group.
The phrase running the gauntlet has also been used, informally, to express the idea of a public but painless, merely ritual humiliation such as the walk of shame or perp-walk. It is sometimes confused with the phrase run the gamut.
the Communist authorities used a gauntlet-like procedure on dissidents, protestors, and prisoners, but it was called the "Path of Health" or "Ścieżka zdrowia".
In "KOR, A history of the Worker's Defense Committee in Poland, 1976 - 1981", Jan Jósef Lipski documents the experience of one such dissident during the June 1976 protests
:
Polish Wikipedia has an article on the method here: Ścieżka zdrowia.
s (those passing the equator for the first time; includes a paddling version) or in aviation when a new pilot gets his first license. It has also been used to "tack on" a recently promoted enlisted man's rank insignia.
In one Tailhook Association
convention for Navy
and Marine Corps
pilots, female participants were allegedly forced to run the gauntlet in a hotel hallway as male participants fondled them.
, the Second Rite of Ascension for Klingons includes passing through a line of Klingons armed with painsticks.
In the Adventures of Superman
episode called "Test of a Warrior", the title character (who is unknown to the tribe portrayed in the episode) is forced to walk the gauntlet and of course is unharmed by the numerous blows from tomahawks and other weapons.
Etymology
The word "gauntlet" is derived from "gantelope", from the Swedish "gatlopp" (street run, street race); a loanword probably acquired by English soldiers during the Thirty Years' WarThirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
. The modern spelling of "gauntlet" was influenced by the French-derived word
Gauntlet (gloves)
Gauntlet is a name for several different styles of glove, particularly those with an extended cuff covering part of the forearm. Gauntlets exist in many forms, ranging from flexible fabric and leather gloves, to mail and fully articulated plate armour....
used for a glove worn as protection or armour. Robert Hartwell "The Grumbling Grammarian" Fiske asserts in The Dictionary of Disagreeable English that the word "gantlet" (the form of punishment) has been incorrectly conflated with "gauntlet" (the medieval glove covered with metal plates) and should be used separately.
Roman predecessor
FustuariumFustuarium
In the military of ancient Rome, fustuarium or fustuarium supplicium was a severe form of military discipline in which a soldier was cudgeled to death...
(a Latin abstraction from the Latin fustis, a branch or rod) was a Roman military form of execution by cudgeling
Club (weapon)
A club is among the simplest of all weapons. A club is essentially a short staff, or stick, usually made of wood, and wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times....
(clubbing), the excruciating effects of which are comparable to running the gauntlet. Compare also to breaking on the wheel.
It could also be applied to every tenth man of a whole unit as a mode of decimation
Decimation (Roman Army)
Decimation |ten]]") was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".-Procedure:...
.
Post-Roman usage
A very similar military punishment found in later armies was known as "running the gauntlet". The condemned soldier was stripped to the waist and had to pass between a double row (hence also known as die Gasse, "the alley") of cudgeling or switching comrades. A subalternSubaltern (rank)
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was...
walked in front of him with a blade to prevent him from running. The condemned might sometimes also be dragged through by a rope around the hands or prodded along by a pursuer. Various rules might apply, such as banning edged weapons, requiring the group to keep one foot in place, or allowing the soldier to attempt to protect his head with his hands. The punishment was not necessarily continued until death. If so, he might be finished off when unable to walk. Running the gauntlet was considered far less of a dishonor than a beating (with exposure to ridicule) on the pillory
Pillory
The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...
, pranger
Pranger
The pranger is a German physical punishment device related to the stocks and the pillory. The Middle Low German word means something that pinches badly.The pranger chained the victim's neck to a pair of leg restraints fastened around the ankles...
, or stocks
Stocks
Stocks are devices used in the medieval and colonial American times as a form of physical punishment involving public humiliation. The stocks partially immobilized its victims and they were often exposed in a public place such as the site of a market to the scorn of those who passed by...
, since one could "take it like a man" upright and among soldiers.
In some traditions, if the condemned was able to finish the run and exit the gauntlet at the far end, his faults would be deemed paid, and he would rejoin his comrades with a clean slate. Elsewhere, he was sent back through the gauntlet until death.
- A PrussiaPrussiaPrussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n cavalry variation was to beat the condemned with stirrup straps instead of rods. - It was also common practice in the French army, especially for thieves.
- Also used in training, notably on military cadets, as in a scene in the movie Oberst RedlOberst RedlColonel Redl ; ) is a 1985 drama film by Hungarian director István Szabó. It tells the life story of an Austrian Imperial military officer Alfred Redl who was blackmailed into espionage for the Russian secret service to prevent the revelation of his homosexuality...
. - There was also a naval version of the gauntlet, notably used in the Royal Navy as a punishment for minor theft. The condemned was prevented from rushing by the master-at-armsMaster-at-armsA master-at-arms may be a naval rating responsible for discipline and law enforcement, an army officer responsible for physical training, or a member of the crew of a merchant ship responsible for security and law enforcement.-Royal Navy:The master-at-arms is a ship's senior rating, comparable in...
with a cutlassCutlassA cutlass is a short, broad sabre or slashing sword, with a straight or slightly curved blade sharpened on the cutting edge, and a hilt often featuring a solid cupped or basket shaped guard...
and pushed forward by a corporal, while being beaten with rope yarns that were plaited into so-called "knittles" (a word for a string; possibly sound-associated with nettles), which looked like smaller, improvised versions of the cat o' nine tailsCat o' nine tailsThe cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to the cat, is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe physical punishment, notably in the Royal Navy and Army of the United Kingdom, and also as a judicial punishment in Britain and some other...
. The condemned could also receive a dozen lashes from the cat o' nine tails beforehand, so that blows received while running the gauntlet would aggravate the lacerations on his back. - The Yiddish tale "Drei Matones" ("Three Gifts") by Isaac Leib Peretz http://benyehuda.org/perets/matanot.html, http://www.enotes.com/short-story-criticism/peretz-isaac-leib recounts the self-sacrificing acts of three Jewish martyrs; one of them, when forced to run the gauntlet, finds that his yarmulka has been thrown off his head and thereupon turns back to retrieve it, being whipped on every extra step he takes.
- Mild forms, not intended to cause permanent damage, have also been used on or by children.
The practice persisted in parts of Germany (mainly Prussia) and Austria as the Spießrutenlaufen, or "pike-run", and also in Russia, until the 19th century.
A magnificent description of it is in Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
's short story "After The Ball."
In Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
's For Whom The Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
the aristocrats of the town are subjected to a form of the gauntlet wherein they are led to and run off a cliff by villagers.
In Sweden, running the gauntlet was also a civilian punishment for certain crimes until the 18th century.
Native American usage
A number of Native AmericanIndigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
tribes of the Eastern Woodlands culture area forced prisoners to run the gauntlet. (See Captives in American Indian Wars
Captives in American Indian Wars
Treatment applied to captives in the American Indian Wars was specific to the local culture of each tribe. Captive adults might be killed, while children were, most of time, kept alive and adopted...
.) The Jesuit Isaac Jogues
Isaac Jogues
Isaac Jogues was a Jesuit priest, missionary, and martyr who traveled and worked among the native populations in North America. He gave the original European name to Lake George, calling it Lac du Saint Sacrement, Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. In 1646, Jogues was martyred by the Mohawks near ...
was subject to this treatment while a prisoner of the Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
in 1641. He described the ordeal in a letter that appears in the book The Jesuit Martyrs of North America : "Before arriving (at the Iroquois Village) we met the young men of the country, in a line armed with sticks...", and he and his fellow Frenchmen were made to walk slowly past them "for the sake of giving time to anyone who struck us."
Other European-Americans captured by Indians and made to run the gauntlet included John Stark
John Stark
John Stark was a New Hampshire native who served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He became widely known as the "Hero of Bennington" for his exemplary service at the Battle of Bennington in 1777.-Early life:John Stark was born in Londonderry, New...
, Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
, James Smith
James Smith (frontiersman)
James Smith was a frontiersman, farmer and soldier in British North America. In 1765, he led the "Black Boys", a group of Pennsylvania men, in a nine-month rebellion against British rule, ten years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War...
, Col. William Crawford
William Crawford (soldier)
William Crawford was an American soldier and surveyor who worked as a western land agent for George Washington. Crawford fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War...
, Simon Kenton
Simon Kenton
Simon Kenton was a famous United States frontiersman and friend of Daniel Boone, Simon Girty, Spencer Records and Isaac Shelby.-Family and early life:Simon Kenton was alive even before Ohio was a state...
, Lieutenant-Colonel John B. McClelland
John B. McClelland
John B. McClelland was an officer in the American Revolutionary War. He was captured by American Indians during the Crawford Expedition and tortured to death at the Shawnee town of Wakatomika, which is currently located in Logan County, Ohio, about halfway between West Liberty, Ohio and...
, and Susanna Willard Johnson.
See Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 40-year career.-Early life:...
's 1991 film of Brian Moore
Brian Moore (novelist)
Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The...
's novel Black Robe
Black Robe
Black Robe is a historical novel by Brian Moore based on the Jesuit missionaries in New France. It was published in 1985.The novel takes place in the 17th century in New France. It follows Father Laforgue, a French Jesuit priest traveling up river to repopulate the mission to the Huron Indians...
, as well as Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's 1975 award-winning period film Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period romantic war film produced, written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer...
, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon
The Luck of Barry Lyndon
The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in serial form in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy...
by William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
. The recent PBS docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
The War that Made America
The War that Made America
The War that Made America is a PBS miniseries about the French and Indian War, which was first aired in January 2006. The series features extensive reenactments of historical events, with on-screen narration provided by Canadian actor Graham Greene...
shows the captive frontiersman Smith enduring the ritual.
Modern use
The original meanings of the phrase notwithstanding, the expression (to run) the gauntlet has been applied to various less severe punishments or tests consisting of consecutive blows or tasks endured sequentially and delivered collectively, especially by colleagues such as roommates.As these do not cause serious injuries, only bearable pain, they are sometimes eagerly anticipated by the initiate as a sign of acceptance into a more prestigious group.
The phrase running the gauntlet has also been used, informally, to express the idea of a public but painless, merely ritual humiliation such as the walk of shame or perp-walk. It is sometimes confused with the phrase run the gamut.
Path of Health - Communist Poland
During the days of the People's Republic of PolandPeople's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
the Communist authorities used a gauntlet-like procedure on dissidents, protestors, and prisoners, but it was called the "Path of Health" or "Ścieżka zdrowia".
In "KOR, A history of the Worker's Defense Committee in Poland, 1976 - 1981", Jan Jósef Lipski documents the experience of one such dissident during the June 1976 protests
June 1976 protests
June 1976 is the name of a series of protests and demonstrations in People's Republic of Poland. The protests took place after Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz revealed the plan for a sudden increase in the price of many basic commodities, particularly foodstuffs...
:
"WALDEMAR MICHALSKI: "On the first day I walked the 'path of health' on the way from a truck to the police van, about 50 meters. They ordered me to walk slowly so that each one could hit me. They beat me with fists, clubs, boots. At the very end, I fell down. I couldn't get up again under the hail of clubs. . . A 'path of health' from the van to the second floor . . . when they took us to get haircuts - another 'path of health' some 40 meters long, from the door of the room all the way to the car . . . . Yet another 10 meters in the corridor leading to the table . . . . Then, a 'path of health' (10 meters) to cell number nine . . . to the court in a prison truck; of course another 'path of health' . . . then again a 'path' from prison to prison. I survived another 'path of health' in the morning when they took me to Kielce."
Polish Wikipedia has an article on the method here: Ścieżka zdrowia.
Military custom
Similar practices are used in other initiations and rites of passage, as on pollywogLine-crossing ceremony
The ceremony of Crossing the Line is an initiation rite in the Royal Navy, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, and other navies that commemorates a sailor's first crossing of the Equator. Originally, the tradition was created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates...
s (those passing the equator for the first time; includes a paddling version) or in aviation when a new pilot gets his first license. It has also been used to "tack on" a recently promoted enlisted man's rank insignia.
In one Tailhook Association
Tailhook Association
The Tailhook Association is a U.S.-based, fraternal, non-profit organization, supporting the interests of sea-based aviation, with emphasis on aircraft carriers...
convention for Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
and Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
pilots, female participants were allegedly forced to run the gauntlet in a hotel hallway as male participants fondled them.
Sports
- In pro-wrestling, a gauntlet match is one where a wrestler faces multiple opponents, one after another, until they lose a fall.
- In certain team sports such as lacrosseLacrosseLacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...
and hockeyHockeyHockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick.-Etymology:...
, the gauntlet is a common name for a type of drill whereby players are blocked or checked by the entire team in sequence. - In American football, the gauntlet is used as a running-back drill, in which the players swat and try to strip the ball out to get the ball carrier accustomed to being hit.
- In some Brazilian jiu-jitsuBrazilian Jiu-JitsuBrazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a martial art, combat sport, and a self defense system that focuses on grappling and especially ground fighting...
schools the gauntlet is an event after a student has received a new belt where every other student of equal or greater rank hits them on the back with their belts as they walk past them.
Science fiction
In the television series Star TrekStar Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
, the Second Rite of Ascension for Klingons includes passing through a line of Klingons armed with painsticks.
In the Adventures of Superman
Adventures of Superman (TV series)
Adventures of Superman is an American television series based on comic book characters and concepts created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The show is the first television series to feature Superman and began filming in 1951 in California...
episode called "Test of a Warrior", the title character (who is unknown to the tribe portrayed in the episode) is forced to walk the gauntlet and of course is unharmed by the numerous blows from tomahawks and other weapons.