Pugachev's execution: function of equipment

[John Schillinger]

    Students in my Russia/US course have asked me to explain the
function of a wheel suspended by four chains from a collar fitted to the
top of a sharply-pointed post which is centered in a high execution
platform  (pictured in Hingley's Russia, A Concise History, p. 90, which
depicts Pugachev awaiting execution).  The wheel itself is high above
the heads of the prisoner and the attending officials and clergy.  I
have been unable to find a source that sheds light on this apparatus.
Pugachev was reportedly drawn and quartered, but how this equipment was
used for that purpose is  a mystery to me.
    Can anyone enlighten me in time for an appropriately ghoulish
Halloween lecture?

    Thanks!  John Schillinger, American University

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