Sowing the Land with Salt October 19, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Modern , trackback
What do you do if you really dislike someone? Hurt them, tax them, kill them obviously… But if you really hate them you salt their land… Confused? Let’s head back to mid eighteenth century Portugal. The Tavora executions were some of the bloodiest from the eighteenth-century west: even fifty years later the family would have been dealt with by firing squad or a number of ropes. The story goes like this. 3 September 1758 two men on horses shot and injured the King of Portugal, Joseph I. This may have been a highway robbery gone wrong or it may have been an actual assassination attempt. The royal family, however, appear to have decided to use the event to settle accounts with a noble family the Tavora. The Tavoras had known where Joseph was because he had been having sex with one of their number on the night of the attack.
The Tavoras were arrested, and judicially murdered not with efficiency but with carnival. The image above tells its own story and is a reminder of just how bestial enlightenment monarchs could be. It all began with the execution of the Marchioness of Tavora, who was lucky to be just beheaded, and then each member of the family was brought out to suffer increasingly horrid punishments. The royal family and the entire aristocracy had been brought out to stare: the Tavora’s passing were supposed to convince the kings’ nobles that resistance to his rule was bound to end badly. But what fascinates Beach is the final part of the punishment. When the entire structure of execution had been incinerated, the ground on which the executions had taken place was sown with salt, as were the houses of the killed. Interestingly inscriptions were routinely places to remind the populace of the terrible deeds that had been done.
Salt sowing was used in the ancient world. The Romans famously finished off Carthage by covering the land with salt to make it sterile. But are there other examples from the modern world, or is this just a freak Portuguese barroquism? Straight Dope have a nice piece on this showing that it is a credible method: but they are not so good on the history. Can anyone fill in the gaps? Drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
