B A S 



15 



B A S 



of Louis XVI., and there is not now remaining the smalles 

 vestige of this edifice. 



(Dulaure, Higtoire de Paris; Remarques Historique 

 fur la Bastille ; La Bastille devoilee ; Memoiree de Lin 

 gitet ; Memnires de la. Tude.) 



B ASTJMENTOS, a port in Colombia, in the departmen 

 of Istmo, to the north-east of Porto Bello, and near thi 

 harbour, 10 \tf N. lat., and 79 40' W. long. It is forme 

 by some islands which line the coast at a distance of abou 

 500 paces : two of them are tolerably large, but the rest s< 

 small that they rather deserve the name of rocks. The; 

 are all uninhabited, the soil being in general barren, but in 

 some places it is overgrown with wood, in which fine timbe 

 occurs. The harbour formed by them is safe, and resorte< 

 to by vessels in distress, and in time of war by cruisers 

 The bottom of the narrow sea between the islands and the 

 shore is quite level, and affords excellent anchoring ground 

 (Alcedo.) 



BASTINA'DO is derived from the Italian bastone, a 

 stick, baitonare, to beat with a stick, &c. The word woult 

 have been more correct in the form bastonifa, but long use 

 has confirmed our etymological error. 



The bastinado is the chief governing instrument of a 

 great part of the world, from Corea and China to Turkey 

 Persia, and Russia. It is administered in different ways 

 and called by different names, as the bamboo in China, the 

 knout in Russia, &c. 



According to our modern acceptation, the term bastinado 

 does not include all these methods of stick-beating, but is 

 confined to the Turkish and Persian method, which is to 

 beat the soles of the feet with sticks. This excessively painful 

 punishment is thus inflicted. Two men support between 

 them a strong pole which is kept in a horizontal position ; 

 about the middle of the pole are some cords with two run- 

 ning knots or nooses ; through these the naked feet of the 

 sufferer are forced, and then made tight in such a manner 

 that the soles are fairly exposed ; the sufferer is then thrown 

 on his back, or left to rest on his neck and shoulders with 

 his feet inverted, which are forthwith beaten by a third man 

 with a heavy tough stick. When the presiding officer or 

 magistrate gives the word, the heavy blows cease, the maimed 

 feet are cast loose from the cords and pole, and the victim is 

 left to crawl away and cure himself as best he can. 



According to the letter of the penal code of the Ottoman 

 Empire, this punishment can only be indicted on the men of 

 the fourth and last class of society, which comprises the 

 slaves, and the rayahs or tributary subjects of the, empire, 

 as Jews, Armenians, Greeks, &c. The other three classes, 

 viz.: ]. The Emirs, or issue of the race of the prophet 

 Mohammed, and the Oulemas, or men of the law ; 2. Public 

 functionaries, civil and military ; 3. Free citizens and private 

 individuals who live on their rents or the proceeds of their 

 industry, were all exempted by law from this cruel and de- 

 grading punishment. By the original code the number of 

 blows to be given was from three to thirty-nine ; but a later 

 clause permitted them, in certain cases, to be carried to 

 seventy-five, and in practice, when the passions are inflamed, 

 the Turks seem to dispense with the ceremony of keeping 

 any account of the blows, and the men lay on till they are 

 tired, and the sufferer's feet reduced to an unsightly jelly. 

 As late as 1828, it was a very common thing to see a poor 

 Greek or Jew crawling about the streets of Constantinople 

 on his hands and knees, in the greatest agony, and unable 

 to use his wounded feet many days after the infliction ; at 

 times they were crippled for life. 



The punishment, called zarb in Turkish, was generally 

 inflicted in a summary manner, without examination or any 

 form of trial, at the will or caprice of the sultan, his repre- 

 sentatives, and the officers of justice and police. The most 

 frequent dispensers of it were probably the Meuhtessibs, or 

 the commissaries of police at Constantinople, each of whom, 

 from time to time, and always unexpectedly, made the round 

 of the quarter of the city assigned him, to see that the pro- 

 visions were sold at the exact prices despotically and most 

 absurdly fixed by the government, and to ascertain whether 

 the weights and measures in use by the dealers were all just. 

 Tills officer generally went on horseback, followed by an 

 armed mob of irregular soldiers, and preceded by his basti- 

 nado-men (falacadjii), whose office was to execute the sen- 

 tence the moment it was uttered. If the offending dealer 

 were absent, then his shopman or journeyman was punished 

 as his substitute, the commissary only requiring a victim ad 

 terrorem, and not having patience to await the return or 



arrest of the master. The punishment was always inflicted on 

 the spot, in front of the shop in the open street. Sometimes, 

 instead of being bastinadoed, the offender or his journeyman 

 (accomplice or not as it might be) was nailed by the ear to the 

 door-post of his shop, and so exposed till sun-set ; at other 

 times there was substituted the punishment of the portable 

 pillory, called khang or cang by the Chinese (who make 

 great use of it as well as of the bamboo), and styled tahta- 

 kulah by the Turks, who probably derived the instrument 

 from the Tartars, who may either have borrowed the inven- 

 tion from or given it to the Chinese. [See GANG.] 



Under the old system the greatest violence, caprice, in- 

 justice, and corruption prevailed in the administration of 

 justice. The man with money in his hands could always 

 save the soles of his feet by bribing the authorities, and the 

 pain of the bastinado was seldom inflicted except on the 

 very poorest of the baccals, or shop-keepers, and destitute 

 and unprotected rayah subjects of the Porte. Sultan Mah- 

 moud is said to have recently introduced some improve- 

 ments ; but under a despotic government, like that of Turkey, 

 a summary and rapid mode of proceeding will always obtain 

 more or less. 



Although the privileges of the free Turks, or Osmanlis, 

 civil and military, were not always respected, yet their pashas 

 and men of authority or dignity were never subjected to the 

 bastinado like the khans, begs, and others in Persia, where 

 the shah would frequently have his vizier, or prime minister, 

 cudgelled on the feet in his presence, and the vizier would 

 do the like with the highest of the ministers and officers 

 under him. The Osmanlis were always a more sturdy and 

 proud-spirited people than the Persians, and thought that 

 only Jews, Christians, and other tributary subjects could be 

 beaten with propriety. It appears, however, that in the 

 time of Busbequius the Janissaries were basted with clubs.' 

 That excellent old traveller says ' Their lighter offences 



are chastised by the club And here let me acquaint 



you with the patience of the Turks in receiving that punish- 

 ment: they will receive sometimes a hundred blows on their 

 e^s, their feet, and buttocks, so that divers clubs are broken, 

 and the executioner cries out, " Give me another ! " Yea, 

 sometimes the chastisement is so severe, that several pieces 

 of torn flesh must be cut off from the wounded parts before 

 anything can bo applied to cure them. Yet, for all this, 

 hey must go to the officer who commanded them to be 

 lunished ; they must kiss his hand, and give him thanks; 

 lay, they must also give the executioner a reward for beating 



hem As some relief to their misery, they count 



hose parts wounded with the rod or club to be free from 

 my purgations and expiations after this life.' 



(See D'Ohsson, Tableau General de F Empire Othoman ; 

 iusbequius, Embassy to Solyman the Great ; and Modern 

 Travellers in Turkey, &c.) 



BA'STION. This term is applied to a species of tower 

 which constitutes the principal member of the fortifications 

 mmediately surrounding a town, or position to be defended. 

 The rampart by which it is formed is disposed on four sides 

 )f a pentagon, two of which, technically called the faces, 

 neet in an angle whose vertex projects towards the coun- 

 ry ; the other two, denominated the flanks, connect the 

 ipposite extremities of the faces with the curtain, or that 

 lart of the rampart which coincides in direction with the 

 ides of a polygon supposed to inclose the town: the fifth 

 ide of the pentagon is generally unoccupied by a rampart, 

 .nd is called the gorge of the bastion. 



From the infancy of the art of war the defenders of a 

 srtress must have felt the necessity of having the walls 

 isposed so as to afford means of observing the enemy 

 vhen very near their foot ; for, when these means were 

 wanting, the enemy was enabled to plant his scaling- 

 " adders against, or even to make a breach in the wall itself, 

 alii almost perfect security. This was inevitably the case 

 hen the ground-plan of the enceinte, or inclosing rampart, 

 .as a simple polygon, since the men stationed on the ram- 

 art for its du fence, behind the parapet by which they were 

 rotected, were incapable of seeing the exterior ground 

 ?hich lay near the base of the walls. Thus, according to 

 lie old story in Pausanias (iv. 20), when the Messcnians 

 re re besieged in their hastily erected fort on Mount Ira, the 

 ,uards being driven from their posts by violent rains, and 

 here being no towers or projections from the walls to shelter 

 iiem, the Spartans gained possession of the parapets by 

 >scalade. To avoid such a surprise, it was the practice o. 

 be antient engineers to construct either machicoulis on 



