Running the gauntlet (originally gantlet, and, rarely, gantlope or gantelope) 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.
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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' War. The modern spelling of "gauntlet" was influenced by the French-derived word used for a glove worn as protection or armour.[1][2][3][4][5] 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.[6]
Fustuarium (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.
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 subaltern 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 [says who?] 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.
A number of Native American 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 [7]: "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.
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.
During the days of the People's Republic of Poland 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:
"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."[8]
Polish Wikipedia has an article on the method here: Ścieżka zdrowia.
Similar practices are used in other initiations and rites of passage, as on pollywogs (those passing the equator for the first time;[9] 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.[10]
In the television series Star Trek, 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.