The mode of torture employed at Loudun was a variety of the boot, and one of the most painful of all.

Each of the victim's legs below the knee was placed between two boards, the two pairs were then laid one above the other and bound together firmly at the ends; wedges were then driven in with a mallet between the two middle boards; four such wedges constituted ordinary and eight extraordinary torture; and this latter was seldom inflicted, except on those condemned to death, as almost no one ever survived it, the sufferer's legs being crushed to a pulp before he left the torturer's bands.

In this case M.de Laubardemont on his own initiative, for it had never been done before, added two wedges to those of the extraordinary torture, so that instead of eight, ten were to be driven in.
Nor was this all: the commissioner royal and the two Franciscans undertook to inflict the torture themselves.
Laubardemont ordered Grandier to be bound in the usual manner, I and then saw his legs placed between the boards.

He then dismissed the executioner and his assistants, and directed the keeper of the instruments to bring the wedges, which he complained of as being too small.

Unluckily, there were no larger ones in stock, and in spite of threats the keeper persisted in saying he did not know where to procure others.