Travels in India (Tavernier) 35.2.5

35.2.5

When the Portuguese held Cochin one could live better on 5 sols than under the Dutch with 10 sols, because the Portuguese did not burden the town with taxes. This Governor, I say, was so severe that for the least fault he banished a man to the island of Ceylon, to a certain place where bricks were made, sometimes for five or six years, and sometimes for life. But most frequently, when one is sent to this place, although the committal is only for a few years, he never leaves it again. There was in the garrison of Cochin a soldier of Aix in Provence named Rachepot, who, for having failed to reply to his name at roll-call, and for having delayed half a quarter of an hour longer than he should, was sentenced to mount the wooden horse for three days. It is a common punishment for soldiers who are guilty of an offence, and is a very severe one. This horse is so sharp on the back that, with the great weight of the spurs which they place on the feet of the victim, at the end of three or four hours he is altogether torn and mutilated. The poor Provençal, knowing that he had been sentenced to this punishment not for three hours but for three days, fearing that he would succumb, instead of giving himself up at the guard-house, concealed himself at the house of a Frenchman, one of his friends, who had been but a short time married. The married soldiers sleep three times a week at their own houses, but the others are obliged to sleep every night at the barracks.