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To run the gauntlet is to take part in a form of corporal punishment in which the party judged guilty is forced to run between two rows of soldiers who strike out and attack them.
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Etymology and spelling
The word originates from Swedish: gatlopp, from gata "lane" and lopp "course, running". It was borrowed into English in the 17th century, probably from English and Swedish soldiers fighting in the Protestant armies during the Thirty Years' War. The word in English was originally spelled gantelope or gantlope, but soon its pronunciation was influenced by the unrelated word gauntlet meaning an armored glove, which is from French: gantelet. The spelling changed with the pronunciation. Both senses of gauntlet had the variant spelling gantlet. The spelling gantlet is preferred for the punishment in American English usage guides by Bryan Garner and Robert Hartwell Fiske. American dictionaries list gantlet as a variant spelling of gauntlet, while British dictionaries additionally label it American.
Predecessor in Antiquity
Known as Xylokopia in Ancient Greece, used as a severe military punishment and Fustuarium (a Latin abstraction from the Latin fustis, a branch or rod) in the Roman military as a form of execution by cudgeling (clubbing).
It could also be applied to every tenth man of a whole unit as a mode of decimation.
Post-Roman usage
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.
In the early records of the Dutch colonial settlement of New Amsterdam appears a detailed description of running the "Gantlope/Gantloppe" as a punishment for the "Court Martial of Melchior Claes" (a soldier). It states "... The Court Marshall doe adjudge that hee shall run the Gantlope once the length of the fort, where according to the Custome of that punishment the souldyers shall have switches delivered to them with which they shall strike him as he passes through them stript to the wast, and at the fort gate the Marshall is to receive him and there to kick him out of the Garrison as a cashiered person where hee is no more to returne ..."
In Sweden, running the gauntlet was also a civilian punishment for certain crimes until the 18th century. The practice also persisted in parts of Germany (mainly Prussia) and Austria as the Spießrutenlaufen, or "pike-run", and also in Russia, until the 19th century.
A notable description of the process appears in Tolstoy's short story "After The Ball"; it is also depicted in Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon. 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.
An example of the Royal Navy's variation of the gauntlet can be seen in the Hornblower film The Examination for Lieutenant, wherein Acting Lieutenant Hornblower and Matthews take the role of Master-at-Arms and Corporal and lead a sailor through the Gauntlet. The sailor in question was carefully guided through by swordpoint - one sword ahead of him (Hornblower's) to ensure that he did not rush through the Gauntlet, and one sword at his back (Matthews') to ensure he did not run away and was also moved through the Gauntlet. The film shows the lacerations caused by the knittles were effective, with blood running freely down the condemned man's back by the time a halt to the process was called for by Captain Sir Edward Pellew.
Native American usage
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: "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 Native Americans and made to run the gauntlet included John Stark, Daniel Boone, James Smith, Col. William Crawford, Simon Kenton, Lieutenant-Colonel John B. McClelland, Susanna Willard Johnson, and Capt. Daniel McDowell.
Modern use
The original meanings of the phrase notwithstanding, the expression (to run) the gauntlet has been applied to various less severe punishments or tests, often consisting of consecutive blows or tasks endured sequentially and delivered collectively, especially by colleagues such as roommates or fraternity brothers. As these do not usually cause serious injuries, only bearable pain, the rituals 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, ritual humiliation such as the walk of shame or perp-walk. It is sometimes confused with the phrase run the gamut.
Fitness trail in communist Poland
During the days of the People's Republic of Poland, the Communist authorities forced dissidents, protestors, and prisoners through a gauntlet-like process which they called the "ścieżka zdrowia" (literally health path, but idiomatically used to mean early fitness trails).
In KOR, A History of the Worker's Defense Committee in Poland, 1976–1981, Jan Józef Lipski documents the experience of one such dissident during the June 1976 protests:
On the first day I walked the "path of health" on the way from a truck to the police van, about 50 metres. 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 metres long, from the door of the room all the way to the car... Yet another 10 metres 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.
Military custom
Similar practices are used in other initiations and rites of passage, as on pollywogs (those passing the equator for the first time; 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.