Regicide murdered, or attempted to murder, the king) was especially hard, even in regard to the harsh judicial practices of pre-revolutionary France. As with many criminals, the regicide was tortured so as to make him tell the names of his accomplices. However, the method of execution itself was a form of torture. Here is a description of the death of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV: In "Discipline and Punish", the French philosopher Michel Foucault cites this case of Damiens the Regicide as an example of disproportionate punishment in the era preceding the "Age of Reason". The classical school
Killing field of fire. Such a term may be used to describe the approaches to an "ideal" defensive fortification. An example of a killing field would be the exposed beaches in front of the seawall at Normandy. The term originated in medieval warfare to describe clear areas outside of a castle's walls such as pastures or specifically cleared fields where enemy soldiers could be easily and methodically killed in large numbers by ranged weapons. It also refers to areas within castles specially designed to bunch attackers who had breached the outer defenses into an area where the defenders could kill them easily