It was extremely popular to see women broken by the wheel
(www.cecut.org.mx/galeria/tortura/wheel.htm).
Breaking by the wheel happened as follows: the naked victim would be
stretched out supine with crosspieces under her elbows, ankles, knees,
and hips; the executioner would then smash every limb and joint with the
iron-tyred wheel, but avoiding fatal blows
(www.cecut.org.mx/galeria/tortura/wheel.htm.)
The victim was described by a seventeenth-century German chronicler as
being transformed "into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in
rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of
raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed
bones" (as quoted at
www.cecut.org.mx/galeria/tortura/wheel.htm).
