On the Nature and Law of Waters

CHAPTER II. On the Use of Water.

In China, Lunchinium Likely referring to the Ming dynasty officials or generals defending Kaifeng. is recorded to have wiped out the army of the bandit Licungzi Li Zicheng, the rebel leader who overthrew the Ming Dynasty. as it besieged the capital Kaifeng by breaking the dams of a nearby river in October of the year 1642, according to Martini’s History of China.

§. 6. On the other hand, the besieged are sometimes forced to surrender if a nearby river is dammed up so that it overflows and floods the fortification, as we read was the case when the fortress of Wolfenbüttel A major fortress in Lower Saxony. was captured in the year 1641.

§. 7. A legal use for water is found in the punishment established by the Pompeian law for parricide The killing of a parent or close relative., which provides that if anyone plots the death of a parent, a child, or any relative within the degree of kinship covered by the name of 'parent,' they shall be subjected neither to the sword, nor to fire, nor to any other common punishment, but shall be sewn into a sack original: culleo; a large leather sack used specifically for this Roman execution method. with a dog, a rooster, a viper, and a monkey; and, trapped within those deathly confines, they shall be thrown either into the nearby sea or into a river. §. 6. Inst. d. Publ. jud. leg. 9. pr. ff. de Leg. Pompeja de Parricid.

§. 8. This punishment was approved in a certain way by Charles V in the Criminal Ordinance, article 131 The 'Constitutio Criminalis Carolina,' the fundamental criminal law code of the Holy Roman Empire issued in 1532. with these words: original German: "Welche Weiber ihre Kinder... heimlicher, boßhafftiger, williger Weise ertödten..." > Those women who secretly, maliciously, and willfully kill their children who have received life or limbs shall usually be buried alive and impaled; but to prevent despair, the same evildoers may be drowned, provided the convenience of water is available in that jurisdiction.

§. 9. This was also accepted into Saxon Law according to Carpzov’s Criminal Practice, part 1, question 10, number 9, and question 128, numbers 28, 46, etc. where, among many other legal precedents in number 11, he recounts a sentence pronounced in the month of May, 1617: original German: "...zu samt einem Hunde / Hahn / Schlangen / und einer Katzen / an statt eines Affen..." > ...so he might, on account of the murder committed and confessed against his child, be put into a sack together with a dog, a rooster, a snake, and a cat (in place of a monkey), thrown into the water, and drowned.

§. 10. Although this punishment is still in use in certain provinces of Germany, many legal consultants (whom Eric Mauritius lists in Kiel Consultations XI, number 6 and following) nevertheless disapprove of it. In our Faculty as well, the punishment of the sword, with the head subsequently placed on a stake, has several times been dictated for infanticides Those who kill an infant..