thumb|Gauntlet in Russia, 1845
"Running the gauntlet" refers to taking part in a form of corporal punishment in which one or more individuals is forced to run between two rows of people who attack them with weapons. Metaphorically, the term is also used to convey a public trial that one must overcome.
Etymology and spelling
The word gauntlet originates from Swedish , from 'lane' and '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 punishment itself was rarely used in the Swedish Army during the reign of the monarch Gustav III in the 1770s and was abolished in the Swedish Army in 1851.
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, derived from the . and is listed as a variant spelling of gauntlet by American dictionaries. British dictionaries label gantlet as American.
Usage and severity
thumb|left|250px| (pike-alley), [[Jost Amman illustration, Kriegs Ordnung, 1564]]
A naval version of the gauntlet was historically used in the Royal Navy as a punishment for minor offences such as leaving the crew berths in an unsanitary state, or failing to return on time from leave. The condemned was ordered to make a prescribed number of circuits around the ship's deck, while his shipmates struck him with improvised versions of the cat o' nine tails. Runs of the gauntlet could also be preceded by a dozen lashes from the boatswain's cat o' nine tails, so that any subsequent blows from the crew would aggravate the lacerations on his back. The effectiveness of the punishment would somewhat depend on the popularity of the sailor being punished, and the seriousness of the offence. In 1760, Francis Lanyon, a seaman aboard the guardship , was sentenced to three runs of the gauntlet, for failing to return from leave. The crew clearly disagreed with the punishment, as the ship's lieutenant later recorded that Lanyon received no substantial injury from the process.
Native American usage
thumb|right|A captive runs the gauntlet between Shawnee warriors.Several Native American tribes of the Eastern Woodlands cultural 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."
In 1755, Charles Stuart was taken prisoner by Lenape warriors during the Great Cove massacre, and upon arriving at the village of Kittanning, was forced to run the gauntlet. He provides a description of the practice:
Several years before he fought in the American Revolutionary War, John Stark was captured by natives and forced to run a gauntlet. Knowing what was about to happen, Stark stunned them by grabbing the weapon away from the first person about to strike him and proceeded to attack the warrior with it. The warriors and their chief were so surprised by this that they stopped the gauntlet and adopted him into their tribe. He was later ransomed along with Amos Eastman for $163 and returned home.
Modern use
Fitness trail in communist Poland
During the days of the Polish People’s Republic, the communist authorities forced political dissidents, criminals, protestors, and prisoners through a gauntlet-like process, which they called the (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 criminal during the June 1976 protests: