Torture dates back to ancient times

During Antiquity torture was a commonplace method of punishing slaves, most often using a whip.
After the Church legalised its practice in the 7th century, Inquisition interrogators embraced torture with open arms. There was no limitation on what they used to torture their victims: wheels, funnels, “boots” (wooden shutters strapped increasingly tighter to the victims’ legs until the tibia shattered and he/she began to bleed), the Iron Lady (a tomb with an iron-spike lined interior into which the victim was thrown), escarpolette (when a victim was hoisted up 10 to 15 feet above the ground and then let fall—even a cardinal was once subjected to this form of torture), in additional to any other sadistic variations the Holy Spirit no doubt moved them to dream up. When compared to these methods of torture, burning at the stake seemed like a relatively compassionate way to meet one’s end, seeing as the victim most often died from asphyxiation before his body burned to a crisp.

In France, Louis XVI did away with “preliminary questioning” inflicted upon the condemned prior to execution in 1780 and a royal decree on May 1, 1788 put an end to “preparatory questioning” (which was when prisoners were tortured just after their hearing in order to make them expose the names of their accomplices). That was the age of the Enlightenment.

But war, along with the onslaught of human rights violations that it involves, allowed the practice of torture to persist (pausing to take a brief hiatus during the 19th century), even in France up through the Algerian War.