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139 C H A P T E R XIV The justice meted out by the king of Siam and his tyranny, and how they cremated an elephant that had died, and how they worshipped it, because the king said that it was his father Since that king of Siam, whose captive I had been, was so capricious and volatile and a tyrant in his governance I thought it opportune to mention certain things about his governance and tyrannies. All the sentences that he ordered to be implemented were issued verbally and were very often executed in his presence. I saw him in one of the towers, at the foot of which inside his palace could be found a wooden gate, behind which were eight ferocious mountain buffaloes. He ordered that ten men who had been sentenced to death be brought and gave instructions to put them inside the gate, saying that whoever fought the best with those beasts would be allowed to live. Each of the men entered with their lance. In the end no more than one of them managed to escape, but he was very badly wounded and [King Naresuan] ordered him to be removed since he was valiant; and he greatly enjoyed watching the others being mutilated. I also saw him order people to be “fried” and inflicted various punish­ ments on 28 young girls each of whom was eight years old, as well as on an old woman and a hunchbacked man. It was a pitiful spectacle. They  Ms. fol. 48 verso–53 recto.  Ms. bufanos. 13-14 MJdC.indd 139 10/24/13 5:23:59 PM The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre 140 first extracted an eye from each of them, then they flayed their hands and pulled out their nails; a little later they cut off a piece of their back and put it in their mouths. Then they “fried” them very slowly, each of them in their own frying pan, so that they suffered for a long time until they died. When I asked why the king had ordered those cruelties they told me that the old hag was a woman who entered the palace as a messenger and she had asked one of the 28 girls for some keys to the treasury, which were lying near the queen’s bed. Unaware of what she was doing the girl gave them to her. After the old woman obtained the keys she did not know how to use them and was unable to open the door of the treasury room. She returned the keys to the girl, who left them where she had found them. The old woman, who wished to steal, had described this to the hunchback, who was a wizard and gave her a small pick telling her to use it on the padlock, which would then open. The old woman followed his instructions and removed 150 marks in gold from a safe, which were in the form of spheres sealed with the royal insignia. She locked up the treasury room and broke one of the spheres where she gave a piece of gold to the young girl who had given her the keys to thank her even though she had not used them. A part of the royal insignia was visible on that little piece of gold. As the girl was not aware of the importance of the gold she ran around the house playing with it and that was how the robbery came to light. Soon after, the king ordered that the old woman and the wizard be brought to justice along with the girl and all the girls of the same age who were in his palace. They were guilty of nothing except being of the same age. All of them were the daughters of leading dignitaries and gentlemen of his kingdom. I saw him implement another, no less cruel, sentence in the presence of our ambassador [Pereira de Abreu] and Friar Jorge [de Mota] along with all the Portuguese who were being held captive. He ordered a pretty young woman to be brought before him. He ordered her to be stripped down to her bare skin and they brought the mastiff that we had brought along with the embassy, which the friar had said was a fierce dog, [but in reality] was more mild mannered than a sheep. They let the dog loose on the woman  Ms. freyeron. See the glossary (frying).  Ms. sarten. The...

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