how many htaccess files there shall be? - .htaccess

Question

How i shall organise htaccess files?
Shall there be a single file, or file in each folder?
I have somedomain/public/.htaccess, which puts url string to $_REQUEST['url'] variable. This is the second part of the code below, and it works.
Later, i created somedomain/.htaccess with code for redirecting to https://www.
Two separate files did not work, thus i pasted the somedomain/public/.htaccess to somedomain/.htaccess. But nothing works. How to achieve these two functionalities. I means redirection to https://www and url fetching to variable. Where is the mistake below?
Shall i create somedomain/.htaccess, somedomain/public/.htaccess, somedomain/somefolder/.htaccess, ....
Or i shall have only one somedomain/.htaccess which deals with all redirections?
If i have only one somedomain/.htaccess as it is below, how i shall redirect
somedomain to somedomain/public/index.php
somedomain/{url not matching somedomain/public/index.php/parameters} to error
folder structure
somedomain.com/
.htaccess
/public
#.htaccess #the second part of code, which i copied to somedomain.com/.htaccess
index.php
.htaccess in somedomain.com/
#first part of htaccess
# Rewrite to HTTPS:
# If www. is already there it will be included, if not
# it will be catched by the subsequent rule.
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
#[L,R=301]
# Now, rewrite any request to the wrong domain to use www.
# [NC] is a case-insensitive match
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
#[L,R=301]
RewriteEngine On
# the default webpage loaded by the server:
DirectoryIndex /public/index.php/security/login
IndexIgnore *
#Second part of htaccess
#rules to fetch controller name and method name starting from /public/index.php/
RewriteBase /public/
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{ENV:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{ENV:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{ENV:REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^index.php?(.+)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
I am gettting the error : The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. ...
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Previously i had only the second part of .htaccess in somedomain.com/public .
Server error logs:
[Thu Apr 20 08:37:36 2017] [error] [client 213.133.81.6] File does not exist: /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/500.shtml
[Thu Apr 20 08:45:43 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 08:45:43 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 08:46:04 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 08:46:04 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 08:46:08 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 08:46:08 2017] [alert] [client 213.133.81.6] /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbf', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
[Thu Apr 20 10:05:04 2017] [warn] RSA server certificate CommonName (CN) `typejoy.biz' does NOT match server name!?
[Thu Apr 20 10:50:27 2017] [error] [client 115.118.128.202] File does not exist: /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/favicon.ico
[Thu Apr 20 10:50:27 2017] [error] [client 115.118.128.202] File does not exist: /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/404.shtml
[Thu Apr 20 10:51:41 2017] [error] [client 115.118.128.202] File does not exist: /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/favicon.ico
[Thu Apr 20 10:51:41 2017] [error] [client 115.118.128.202] File does not exist: /home/gintare/public_html/typejoy.biz/404.shtml