Sacrilege in late sixteenth century Rome, bestiality in early eighteenth century Sweden, forgery in late eighteenth century London, murder at most times and places: the methods used to achieve an execution could change, but the goal was firm. Writing about the strategies of the governments is possible, but how to write about the strategies of those seeking executions, rarely published and probably seldom formulated? Still, the criminals were in reality often more successful than the governments in seeking the best actions to attain their goal. Sometimes the authorities do seem quite uncertain in how to handle the situation, but they needed to do something. These crimes could also be understood as a dangerous attack against the state whose power rarely was so clearly displayed as in an execution. This is an old idea with roots in Antiquity. About the many forms of death in the arenas in ancient Rome Donald Kyle writes: ”Blood sports were acceptable because institutionalized violence was essential to the formation and continuity of Roman culture.”814 Joseph de Maistre in the early nineteenth century could describe the scaffold and the executioner as two foundations for the state.815 In a more secularised language, Louis de Bonald propagated similar ideas. For him a person who through crime destroyed society must be destroyed. Prison was not enough. The possibility of an escape or of the criminals being released after a revolution was too great a risk. Yet he also found that the power of society to impose the penalty of death was limited to presenting the criminal to her natural judge, God.816 Although those involved probably would not use such a term, there was a struggle for power where the reign of the authorities was neither undisputed nor certain and it had two enemies, the condemned and those interpreting the execution in alternative fashions to the one chosen by the state. The power of the authorities over the execution could be challenged in at least three ways: who were to be executed, how did the conThe counterstrategies the strategies behind the reactions and the counterstrategies 814 Kyle 1998 p 270. 815 Maistre 1837 I:53 sqI:er entretien, II:141 X:e entretien. 816 Bonald 1843 p 448 sqq. 230
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