CHAPTER I

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THE HISTORY AND ROMANCE OF CRIME FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES

TO THE PRESENT DAY

The Grolier Society

London

[Illustration: _An Incident During the Communal Revolts of the Twelfth

Century_

A noble being strangled in his castle by one of the men of the

commune (town) in the twelfth century when the villages at the foot

of the castles revolted and wrested charters from their lords, often

peacefully but more frequently by bloodshed and brutal practices.]

EARLY FRENCH PRISONS

Le Grand and Le Petit Châtelets

Vincennes--The Bastile--Loches

The Galleys

Revolutionary Prisons

by

MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain

Author of

"The Mysteries of Police and Crime"

"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc.

The Grolier Society

Edition Nationale

Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

Number 307

INTRODUCTION

The judicial administration of France had its origin in the Feudal

System. The great nobles ruled their estates side by side with, and

not under, the King. With him the great barons exercised "high"

justice, extending to life and limb. The seigneurs and great clerics

dispensed "middle" justice and imposed certain corporal penalties,

while the power of "low" justice, extending only to the _amende_ and

imprisonment, was wielded by smaller jurisdictions.

The whole history of France is summed up in the persistent effort of

the King to establish an absolute monarchy, and three centuries were

passed in a struggle between nobles, parliaments and the eventually

supreme ruler. Each jurisdiction was supported by various methods of

enforcing its authority: All, however, had their prisons, which served

many purposes. The prison was first of all a place of detention and

durance where people deemed dangerous might be kept out of the way

of doing harm and law-breakers could be called to account for their

misdeeds. Accused persons were in it held safely until they could be

arraigned before the tribunals, and after conviction by legal process

were sentenced to the various penalties in force.

The prison was _de facto_ the high road to the scaffold on which

the condemned suffered the extreme penalty by one or another of the

forms of capital punishment, and death was dealt out indifferently by

decapitation, the noose, the stake or the wheel. Too often where proof

was weak or wanting, torture was called in to assist in extorting

confession of guilt, and again, the same hideous practice was applied

to the convicted, either to aggravate their pains or to compel the

betrayal of suspected confederates and accomplices. The prison

reflected every phase of passing criminality and was the constant

home of wrong-doers of all categories, heinous and venial. Offenders

against the common law met their just retribution. Many thousands

were committed for sins political and non-criminal, the victims of an

arbitrary monarch and his high-handed, irresponsible ministers.

The prison was the King's castle, his stronghold for the coercion and

safe-keeping of all who conspired against his person or threatened

his peace. It was a social reformatory in which he disciplined the

dissolute and the wastrel, the loose-livers of both sexes, who were

thus obliged to run straight and kept out of mischief by the stringent

curtailment of their liberty. The prison, last of all, played into the

hands of the rich against the poor, active champion of the commercial

code, taking the side of creditors by holding all debtors fast until

they could satisfy the legal, and at times illegal demands made upon

them.

Various types of prisons were to be found in France, the simpler kind

being gradually enlarged and extended, and more and more constantly

utilised as time passed and society became more complex. All had

common features and exercised similar discipline. All were of solid

construction, relying upon bolts and bars, high walls and hard-hearted,

ruthless jailers. The prison régime was alike in all; commonly

starvation, squalor, the sickness of hope deferred, close confinement

protracted to the extreme limits of human endurance in dark dungeons,

poisonous to health and inducing mental breakdown. In all prisons,

penalties followed the same grievous lines. Culprits were subjected to

degradation moral and physical, to the exposure of the _carcan_ and

pillory. They made public reparation by the _amende honorable_, were

flogged, mutilated, branded and tortured.

Prisons were to be met with throughout the length and breadth of

France. The capital had many; every provincial city possessed one or

more. In Paris the principal prisons were the two Châtelets, the gaols

and, as we should say to-day, the police headquarters of the Provost

or chief magistrate of the city. For-l'Évêque was the Bishops' court;

the Conciergerie, the guardroom of the King's palace, kept by the

_concierge_, porter or janitor, really the mayor and custodian of the

royal residence; in the Temple the powerful and arrogant military order

of the Knights Templars had its seat.

The reigning sovereign relied upon the Bastile, at first merely a

rampart against invasion and rebellion, but presently exalted into the

King's prison-house, the royal gaol and penitentiary. He had also the

donjon of Vincennes, which was first a place of defensive usefulness

and next a place of restraint and coercion for State offenders. Other

prisons came into existence later: the Madelonnettes, St. Pélagie,

Bicêtre, the Salpêtrière and St. Lazare.

All these have historic interest more or less pronounced and notable.

All in their time were the scenes of strange, often terrible episodes

and events. All serve to illustrate various curious epochs of the

world's history, but mark more especially the rise, progress,

aggrandisement and decadence and final fall of the French monarchy.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION 5

I. ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 13

II. STRUGGLE WITH THE SOVEREIGN 35

III. VINCENNES AND THE BASTILE 57

IV. THE RISE OF RICHELIEU 90

V. THE PEOPLE AND THE BASTILE 121

VI. THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK 148

VII. THE POWER OF THE BASTILE 187

VIII. THE TERROR OF POISON 210

IX. THE HORRORS OF THE GALLEYS 232

X. THE DAWN OF REVOLUTION 263

XI. LAST DAYS OF THE BASTILE 287

List of Illustrations

INCIDENT DURING THE COMMUNAL REVOLTS

OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY _Frontispiece_

ISLE ST. MARGUERITE _Page_ 54

THE CASTLE OF ST. ANDRÉ " 82

THE BASTILE " 190

CHATEAU D'IF, MARSEILLES " 250

EARLY FRENCH PRISONS

CHAPTER I

ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY

The Feudal System--Early prisons--Classes of inmates--Alike in

aspect, similar in discipline--Variety of penalties--Chief prisons

of Paris in the Middle Ages--Great and Little Châtelets--History

and inmates--The Conciergerie still standing--For-l'Évêque,

the Bishop's prison--The Temple, prison of the Knights

Templars--Bicêtre--Notable prisoners--Salomon de Caus, steam

inventor--St. Pélagie--St. Lazare.

Let us consider the prisons of Old France in the order of their

antiquity, their size and their general importance in French history.

First of all the two Châtelets, the greater and less, Le Grand and Le

Petit Châtelet, of which the last named was probably the earliest in

date of erection. Antiquarians refer the Petit Châtelet to the Roman

period and state that its original use was to guard the entrance to

Paris when the city was limited to that small island in the Seine

which was the nucleus of the great capital of France. This fortress

and bridge-head was besieged and destroyed by the Normans but was

subsequently rebuilt; and it is mentioned in a deed dated 1222 in which

the king, Philip Augustus, took over the rights of justice, at a price,

from the Bishop of Paris. It stood then on the south bank of the Seine

at the far end of the bridge long afterwards known as the Petit Pont.

Both bridge and castle were swept away in 1296 by an inundation and

half a century elapsed before they were restored on such a firm basis

as to resist any future overflowing of the Seine. At this date its rôle

as a fortress appears to have ceased and it was appropriated by Charles

V of France to serve as a prison and to overawe the students of the

Quartier Latin. Hugues Aubriot, the same Provost of Paris who built

the Bastile, constructed several cells between the pillars supporting

the Petit Châtelet and employed them for the confinement of turbulent

scholars of the university.

The Grand Châtelet was situated on the opposite, or northern bank of

the river, facing that side of the island of the Cité, or the far

end of the Pont au Change on the same site as the present Place du

Châtelet. Like its smaller namesake it was also thought to have been

a bridge-head or river-gate, although this is based on no authentic

record. The first definite mention of the Grand Châtelet is in the

reign of Philip Augustus after he created the courts of justice and

headquarters of the municipality of Paris.

The Chapel and Confraternity of Notaries was established here in 1270.

The jurisdiction of the Provost of Paris embraced all the functions of

the police of later days. He was responsible for the good order and

security of the city; he checked disturbances and called the riotous

and disorderly to strict account. He was all powerful; all manner

of offenders were haled before the tribunals over which he presided

with fifty-six associate judges and assistants. The Châtelet owned a

King's Procurator and four King's Counsellors, a chief clerk, many

receivers, bailiffs, ushers, gaolers and sixty sworn special experts,

a surgeon and his assistants, including a mid-wife or accoucheuse, and

220 _sergents à cheval_, or outdoor officers and patrols, over whom

the Procurator's authority was supreme. The Procurator was also the

guardian and champion of the helpless and oppressed, of deserted and

neglected children and ill-used wives; he regulated the markets and

supervised the guilds and corporations of trades and their operations,

exposed frauds in buying and selling and saw that accurate weights and

measures were employed in merchandising.

The prisons of the two Châtelets were dark, gruesome receptacles.

Contemporary prints preserve the grim features of the Petit Châtelet,

a square, massive building of stone pierced with a few loopholes

in its towers, a drawbridge with a portcullis giving access to the

bridge. The Grand Châtelet was of more imposing architecture, with an

elevated façade capped by a flat roof and having many "pepper pot"

towers at the angles. The cells and chambers within were dark, dirty,

ill-ventilated dens. Air was admitted only from above and in such

insufficient quantity that the prisoners were in constant danger of

suffocation, while the space was far too limited to accommodate the

numbers confined. The titles given to various parts of the interior

of the Grand Châtelet will serve to illustrate the character of the

accommodation.

There was the _Berceau_ or cradle, so called from its arched roof; the

_Boucherie_, with obvious derivation; the _chaîne_ room, otherwise

_chêne_, from the fetters used or the oak beams built into it; the _Fin

d'Aise_ or "end of ease," akin to the "Little Ease" of old London's

Newgate, a horrible and putrescent pigsty, described as full of filth

and over-run with reptiles and with air so poisonous that a candle

would not remain alight in it. A chamber especially appropriated to

females was styled _La Grieche_, an old French epithet for a shrew

or vixen; other cells are known as _La Gloriette_, _La Barbarie_,

_La Barcane_ or _Barbacane_, lighted by a small grating in the roof.

The Châtelet had its deep-down, underground dungeon, the familiar

_oubliettes_ of every mediæval castle and monastery, called also

_in pace_ because the hapless inmates were thrown into them to be

forgotten and left to perish of hunger and anguish, but "in peace." The

worst of these at the Châtelet must have been _La Fosse_, the bottom

of which was knee deep in water, so that the prisoner was constantly

soaked and it was necessary to stand erect to escape drowning; here

death soon brought relief, for "none survived _La Fosse_ for more than

fifteen days."

Monstrous as it must appear, rent on a fixed scale was extorted for

residence in these several apartments. These were in the so-called

"honest" prisons. The _Chaîne_ room, mentioned above, _La Beauvoir_,

_La Motte_ and _La Salle_ cost each individual four deniers (the

twelfth part of a sou) for the room and two for a bed. In _La

Boucherie_ and _Grieche_ it was two deniers for the room, but only

one denier for a bed of straw or reeds. Even in _La Fosse_ and the

_oubliettes_ payment was exacted, presumably in advance. Some light

is thrown by the ancient chronicles upon the prison system that

obtained within the Châtelet. The first principle was recognised that

it was a place of detention only and not for the maltreatment of its

involuntary guests. Rules were made by the parliaments, the chief

juridical authorities of Paris, to soften the lot of the prisoners, to

keep order amongst them and protect them from the cupidity of their

gaolers. The governor was permitted to charge gaol fees, but the scale

was strictly regulated and depended upon the status and condition of

the individuals committed. Thus a count or countess paid ten livres

(about fifty francs), a knight banneret was charged twenty sous, a Jew

or Jewess half that amount. Prisoners who lay on the straw paid one

sou. For half a bed the price was three sous and for the privilege of

sleeping alone, five sous. The latest arrivals were obliged to sweep

the floors and keep the prison rooms clean. It was ordered that the

officials should see that the bread issued was of good quality and of

the proper weight, a full pound and a half per head. The officials were

to visit the prisons at least once a week and receive the complaints

made by prisoners out of hearing of their gaolers. The hospitals were

to be regularly visited and attention given to the sick. Various

charities existed to improve the prison diet: the drapers on their

fête day issued bread, meat and wine; the watchmakers gave a dinner on

Easter day when food was seized and forfeited and a portion was issued

to the pauper prisoners.

In all this the little Châtelet served as an annex to the larger

prison. During their lengthened existence both prisons witnessed many

atrocities and were disgraced by many dark deeds. One of the most

frightful episodes was that following the blood-thirsty feuds between

the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons in the early years of the fifteenth

century. These two political parties fought for supreme authority

in the city of Paris, which was long torn by their dissensions.

The Armagnacs held the Bastile but were dispossessed of it by the

Bourguignons, who were guilty of the most terrible excesses. They

slaughtered five hundred and twenty of their foes and swept the

survivors wholesale into the Châtelet and the "threshold of the prison

became the scaffold of 1,500 unfortunate victims." The Bourguignons

were not satisfied and besieged the place in due form; for the

imprisoned Armagnacs organised a defense and threw up a barricade

upon the north side of the fortress, where they held out stoutly. The

assailants at last made a determined attack with scaling ladders, by

which they surmounted the walls sixty feet high, and a fierce and

prolonged conflict ensued. When the attack was failing the Bourguignons

set fire to the prison and fought their way in, driving the besieged

before them. Many of the Armagnacs sought to escape the flames by

flinging themselves over the walls and were caught upon the pikes of

the Bourguignons "who finished them with axe and sword." Among the

victims were many persons of quality, two cardinals, several bishops,

officers of rank, magistrates and respectable citizens.

The garrison of the Châtelet in those early days was entrusted to the

archers of the provost's guard, the little Châtelet being the provost's

official residence. The guard was frequently defied by the turbulent

population and especially by the scholars of the University of Paris,

an institution under the ecclesiastical authority and very jealous

of interference by the secular arm. One provost in the fourteenth

century, having caught a scholar in the act of stealing upon the

highway, forthwith hanged him, whereupon the clergy of Paris went in

procession to the Châtelet and denounced the provost. The King sided

with them and the chief magistrate of the city was sacrificed to their

clamor. Another provost, who hanged two scholars for robbery, was

degraded from his office, led to the gallows and compelled to take

down and kiss the corpses of the men he had executed. The provosts

themselves were sometimes unfaithful to their trust. One of them in

the reign of Philip the Long, by name Henri Chaperel, made a bargain

with a wealthy citizen who was in custody under sentence of death.

The condemned man was allowed to escape and a friendless and obscure

prisoner hanged in his place. It is interesting to note, however,

that this Henri Chaperel finished on the gallows as did another

provost, Hugues de Cruzy, who was caught in dishonest traffic with

his prisoners. Here the King himself had his share in the proceeds. A

famous brigand and highwayman of noble birth, Jourdain de Lisle, the

chief of a great band of robbers, bought the protection of the provost,

and the Châtelet refused to take cognizance of his eight crimes--any

one of which deserved an ignominious death. It was necessary to appoint

a new provost before justice could be meted out to Jourdain de Lisle,

who was at last tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the

streets of Paris to the public gallows.

In the constant warfare between the provost and the people the latter

did not hesitate to attack the prison fortress of the Châtelet. In

1320 a body of insurgents collected under the leadership of two

apostate priests who promised to meet them across the seas and conquer

the Holy Land. When some of their number were arrested and thrown

into the Châtelet, the rest marched upon the prison, bent on rescue,

and, breaking in, effected a general gaol delivery. This was not

the only occasion in which the Châtelet lost those committed to its

safe-keeping. In the latter end of the sixteenth century the provost

was one Hugues de Bourgueil, a hunch-back with a beautiful wife. Among

his prisoners was a young Italian, named Gonsalvi, who, on the strength

of his nationality, gained the goodwill of Catherine de Medicis, the

Queen Mother. The Queen commended him to the provost, who lodged him in

his own house, and Gonsalvi repaid this kindness by running away with

de Bourgueil's wife. Madame de Bourgueil, on the eve of her elopement,

gained possession of the prison keys and released the whole of the

three hundred prisoners in custody, thus diverting the attention from

her own escapade. The provost, preferring his duty to his wife, turned

out with horse and foot, and pursued and recaptured the fugitive

prisoners, while Madame de Bourgueil and her lover were allowed to go

their own way. After this affair the King moved the provost's residence

from the Châtelet to the Hôtel de Hercule.

References are found in the earlier records of the various prisoners

confined in the Châtelet. One of the earliest is a list of Jews

imprisoned for reasons not given. But protection was also afforded to

this much wronged race, and once, towards the end of the fourteenth

century, when the populace rose to rob and slaughter the Jews, asylum

was given to the unfortunates by opening to them the gates of the

Châtelet. About the same time a Spanish Jew and an habitual thief, one

Salmon of Barcelona, were taken to the Châtelet and condemned to be

hanged by the heels between two large dogs. Salmon, to save himself,

offered to turn Christian, and was duly baptised, the gaoler's wife

being his godmother. Nevertheless, within a week he was hanged "like a

Christian" (_chrétiennement_), under his baptismal name of Nicholas.

The Jews themselves resented the apostasy of a co-religionist and it is

recorded that four were detained in the Châtelet for having attacked

and maltreated Salmon for espousing Christianity. For this they were

condemned to be flogged at all the street corners on four successive

Sundays; but when a part of the punishment had been inflicted they were

allowed to buy off the rest by a payment of 18,000 francs in gold. The

money was applied to the rebuilding of the Petit Pont. Prisoners of

war were confined there. Eleven gentlemen accused of assassination were

"long detained" in the Châtelet and in the end executed. It continually

received sorcerers and magicians in the days when many were accused of

commerce with the Devil. Idle vagabonds who would not work were lodged

in it.

At this period Paris and the provinces were terrorised by bands of

brigands. Some of the chief leaders were captured and carried to

the Châtelet, where they suffered the extreme penalty. The crime of

poisoning, always so much in evidence in French criminal annals, was

early recorded at the Châtelet. In 1390 payment was authorised for

three mounted sergeants of police who escorted from the prison at

Angers and Le Mans to the Châtelet, two priests charged with having

thrown poison into the wells, fountains and rivers of the neighborhood.

One Honoré Paulard, a bourgeois of Paris, was in 1402 thrown into the

_Fin d'Aise_ dungeon of the Châtelet for having poisoned his father,

mother, two sisters and three other persons in order to succeed to

their inheritance. Out of consideration for his family connections

he was not publicly executed but left to the tender mercies of the

_Fin d'Aise_, where he died at the end of a month. The procureur of

parliament was condemned to death with his wife Ysabelete, a prisoner

in the Châtelet, whose former husband, also a procureur, they were

suspected of having poisoned. On no better evidence than suspicion

they were both sentenced to death--the husband to be hanged and the

wife burned alive. Offenders of other categories were brought to the

Châtelet. A superintendent of finances, prototype of Fouquet, arrested

by the Provost Pierre des Fessarts, and convicted of embezzlement,

met his fate in the Châtelet. Strange to say, Des Fessarts himself

was arrested four years later and suffered on the same charge. Great

numbers of robbers taken red-handed were imprisoned--at one time two

hundred thieves, murderers and highwaymen (_épieurs de grand chemin_).

An auditor of the Palace was condemned to make the _amende honorable_

in effigy; a figure of his body in wax being shown at the door of

the chapel and then dragged to the pillory to be publicly exposed.

Clement Marot, the renowned poet, was committed to the Châtelet at the

instance of the beautiful Diane de Poitiers for continually inditing

fulsome verses in her praise. Weary at last of her contemptuous silence

he penned a bitter satire which Diane resented by accusing him of

Lutheranism and of eating bacon in Lent. Marot's confinement in the

Châtelet inspired his famous poem _L'Enfer_, wherein he compared the

Châtelet to the infernal regions and cursed the whole French penal

system--prisoners, judges, lawyers and the cruelties of the "question."

Never from the advent of the Reformation did Protestants find much

favor in France. In 1557 four hundred Huguenots assembled for service

in a house of the Rue St. Jacques and were attacked on leaving it by

a number of the neighbors. They fought in self-defense and many made

good their escape, but the remainder--one hundred and twenty persons,

several among them being ladies of the Court--were arrested by the

_lieutenant criminel_ and carried to the Châtelet. They were accused

of infamous conduct and although they complained to the King they were

sent to trial, and within a fortnight nearly all the number were burnt

at the stake. Another story runs that the _lieutenant criminel_ forced

his way into a house in the Marais where a number of Huguenots were at

table. They fled, but the hotel keeper was arrested and charged with

having supplied meat in the daily bill of fare on a Friday. For this

he was conducted to the Châtelet with his wife and children, a larded

capon being carried before them to hold them up to the derision of the

bystanders. The incident ended seriously, for the wretched inn-keeper

was thrown into a dungeon and died there in misery.

Precedence has been given to the two Châtelets in the list of ancient

prisons in Paris, but no doubt the Conciergerie runs them close in

point of date and was equally formidable. It originally was part of

the Royal Palace of the old Kings of France and still preserves as to

site, and in some respects as to form, in the Palais de Justice one

of the most interesting monuments in modern Paris. "There survives a

sense of suffocation in these buildings," writes Philarète Chasles.

"Here are the oldest dungeons of France. Paris had scarcely begun when

they were first opened." "These towers," says another Frenchman, "the

courtyard and the dim passage along which prisoners are still admitted,

have tears in their very aspect." One of the greatest tragedies in

history was played out in the Conciergerie almost in our own days, thus

bringing down the sad record of bitter sufferings inflicted by man upon

man from the Dark Ages to the day of our much vaunted enlightenment.

The Conciergerie was the last resting place, before execution, of the

hapless Queen Marie Antoinette.

When Louis IX, commonly called Saint Louis, rebuilt his palace in

the thirteenth century he constructed also his dungeons hard by. The

_concierge_ was trusted by the kings with the safe-keeping of their

enemies and was the governor of the royal prison. In 1348 he took the

title of _bailli_ and the office lasted, with its wide powers often

sadly abused, until the collapse of the monarchical régime. A portion

of the original Conciergerie as built in the garden of Concierge is

still extant. Three of the five old towers, circular in shape and with

pepper pot roofs, are standing. Of the first, that of Queen Blanche

was pulled down in 1853 and that of the Inquisition in 1871. The three

now remaining are Cæsar's Tower, where the reception ward is situated

on the very spot where Damiens, the attempted regicide of Louis XV,

was interrogated while strapped to the floor; the tower of Silver, the

actual residence of "Reine Blanche" and the visiting room where legal

advisers confer with their clients among the accused prisoners; and

lastly the Bon Bec tower, once the torture chamber and now the hospital

and dispensary of the prison.

The cells and dungeons of the Conciergerie, some of which might be seen

and inspected as late as 1835, were horrible beyond belief. Clement

Marot said of it in his verse that it was impossible to conceive a

place that more nearly approached a hell upon earth. The loathsomeness

of its underground receptacles was inconceivable. It contained some

of the worst specimens of the ill-famed _oubliettes_. An attempt

has been made by some modern writers to deny the existence of these

_oubliettes_, but all doubt was removed by discoveries revealed

when opening the foundations of the Bon Bec tower. Two subterranean

pits were found below the ordinary level of the river Seine and the

remains of sharpened iron points protruded from their walls obviously

intended to catch the bodies and tear the flesh of those flung into

these cavernous depths. Certain of these dungeons were close to the

royal kitchens and were long preserved. They are still remembered by

the quaint name of the mousetraps (or _souricières_) in which the

inmates were caught and kept _au secret_, entirely separate and unable

to communicate with a single soul but their immediate guardians and

gaolers.

The torture chamber and the whole paraphernalia for inflicting the

"question" were part and parcel of every ancient prison. But the most

complete and perfect methods were to be found in the Conciergerie. As

a rule, therefore, in the most heinous cases, when the most shocking

crimes were under investigation, the accused was relegated to the

Conciergerie to undergo treatment by torture. It was so in the case of

Ravaillac who murdered Henry IV; also the Marchioness of Brinvilliers

and the poisoners; and yet again, of Damiens who attempted the life of

Louis XV, and many more: to whom detailed references will be found in

later pages.

The For-l'Évêque, the Bishop's prison, was situated in the rue

St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and is described in similar terms as the

foregoing: "dark, unwholesome and over-crowded." In the court or

principal yard, thirty feet long by eighteen feet wide, some four or

five hundred prisoners were constantly confined. The outer walls were

of such a height as to forbid the circulation of fresh air and there

was not enough to breathe. The cells were more dog-holes than human

habitations. In some only six feet square, five prisoners were often

lodged at one and the same time. Others were too low in the ceiling for

a man to stand upright and few had anything but borrowed light from the

yard. Many cells were below the ground level and that of the river

bed, so that water filtered in through the arches all the year round,

and even in the height of summer the only ventilation was by a slight

slit in the door three inches wide. "To pass by an open cell door one

felt as if smitten by fire from within," says a contemporary writer.

Access to these cells was by dark, narrow galleries. For long years the

whole prison was in such a state of dilapidation that ruin and collapse

were imminent.

Later For-l'Évêque received insolvent debtors--those against whom

_lettres de cachet_ were issued, and actors who were evil livers. It

was the curious custom to set these last free for a few hours nightly

in order to play their parts at the theatres; but they were still in

the custody of the officer of the watch and were returned to gaol after

the performance. Many minor offenders guilty of small infractions of

the law, found lodging in the For-l'Évêque. Side by side with thieves

and roysterers were dishonest usurers who lent trifling sums. All

jurisdictions, all authorities could commit to the For-l'Évêque, the

judges of inferior tribunals, ministers of state, auditors, grand

seigneurs. The prison régime varied for this various population, but

poor fare and poorer lodgings were the fate of the larger number. Those

who could pay found chambers more comfortable, decently furnished,

and palatable food. Order was not always maintained. More than once

mutinies broke out, generally on account of the villainous ration

of bread issued, and it was often found necessary to fire upon the

prisoners to subdue them.

When the Knights Templars received permission to settle in Paris in

the twelfth century, they gradually consolidated their power in the

Marais, the marshy ground to the eastward of the Seine, and there

laid the foundations of a great stronghold on which the Temple prison

was a prominent feature. The knights wielded sovereign power with the

rights of high justice and the very kings of France themselves bent

before them. At length the arrogance of the order brought it the bitter

hostility of Philippe le Bel who, in 1307, broke the power of the order

in France. They were pursued and persecuted. Their Grand Master was

tortured and executed while the King administered their estate. The

prison of the Temple with its great towers and wide encircling walls

became a state prison, the forerunner of Vincennes and the Bastile. It

received, as a rule, the most illustrious prisoners only, dukes and

counts and sovereign lords, and in the Revolutionary period it gained

baleful distinction as the condemned cell, so to speak, of Louis XVI

and Marie Antoinette.

The prison of Bicêtre, originally a bishop's residence and then

successively a house of detention for sturdy beggars and a lunatic

asylum, was first built at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It

was owned by John, Bishop of Winchester in England, and its name was

a corruption of the word Winchester--"Vinchester" and so "Bichestre"

and, eventually, "Bicêtre." It was confiscated to the King in the

fourteenth century and Charles VI dated his letters from that castle.

It fell into a ruinous state in the following years and nothing was

done to it until it was rebuilt by Louis XIII as a hospital for invalid

soldiers and became, with the Salpêtrière, the abode of the paupers

who so largely infested Paris. The hospital branch of the prison was

used for the treatment of certain discreditable disorders, sufferers

from which were regularly flogged at the time of their treatment by the

surgeons. An old writer stigmatised the prison as a terrible ulcer that

no one dared look at and which poisoned the air for four hundred yards

around. Bicêtre was the home for all vagabonds and masterless men, the

sturdy beggars who demanded alms sword in hand, and soldiers who, when

their pay was in arrears, robbed upon the highway. Epileptics and the

supposed mentally diseased, whether they were actually proved so or

not, were committed to Bicêtre and after reception soon degenerated

into imbeciles and raging lunatics. The terrors of underground Bicêtre

have been graphically described by Masers-Latude, who had personal

experience of them. This man, Danry or Latude, has been called a

fictitious character, but the memoirs attributed to him are full of

realism and cannot be entirely neglected. He says of Bicêtre:

"In wet weather or when it thawed in winter, water streamed from

all parts of our cell. I was crippled with rheumatism and the pains

were such that I was sometimes whole weeks without getting up. The

window-sill guarded by an iron grating gave on to a corridor, the wall

of which was placed exactly opposite at a height of ten feet. A glimmer

of light came through this aperture and was accompanied by snow and

rain. I had neither fire nor artificial light and prison rags were

my only clothing. To quench my thirst I sucked morsels of ice broken

off with the heel of my wooden shoe. If I stopped up the window I was

nearly choked by the effluvium from the cellars. Insects stung me

in the eyes. I had always a bad taste in my mouth and my lungs were

horribly oppressed. I was detained in that cell for thirty-eight months

enduring the pangs of hunger, cold and damp. I was attacked by scurvy

and was presently unable to sit or rise. In ten days my legs and thighs

were swollen to twice their ordinary size. My body turned black. My

teeth loosened in their sockets and I could no longer masticate. I

could not speak and was thought to be dead. Then the surgeon came, and

seeing my state ordered me to be removed to the infirmary."

An early victim of Bicêtre was the Protestant Frenchman, Salomon de

Caus, who had lived much in England and Germany and had already, at the

age of twenty, gained repute as an architect, painter and engineer. One

of his inventions was an apparatus for forcing up water by a steam

fountain; and that eminent scientist, Arago, declares that De Caus

preceded Watt as an inventor of steam mechanisms. It was De Caus's

misfortune to fall desperately in love with the notorious Marion

Delorme. When his attentions became too demonstrative this fiendish

creature applied for a _lettre de cachet_ from Richelieu. De Caus was

invited to call upon the Cardinal, whom he startled with his marvellous

schemes. Richelieu thought himself in the presence of a madman and

forthwith ordered De Caus to Bicêtre. Two years later Marion Delorme

visited Bicêtre and was recognised by De Caus as she passed his cell.

He called upon her piteously by name, and her companion, the English

Marquis of Worcester, asked if she knew him, but she repudiated the

acquaintance. Lord Worcester was, however, attracted by the man and his

inventions, and afterwards privately visited him, giving his opinion

later that a great genius had run to waste in this mad-house.

Bicêtre was subsequently associated with the galleys and was starting

point of the chain of convicts directed upon the arsenals of Toulon,

Rochefort, Lorient and Brest. A full account of these modern prisons is

reserved for a later chapter.

The prison of Sainte Pélagie was founded in the middle of the

seventeenth century by a charitable lady, Marie l'Hermite, in the

faubourg Sainte Marcel, as a refuge for ill-conducted women, those

who came voluntarily and those who were committed by dissatisfied

fathers or husbands. It became, subsequently, a debtors' prison. The

Madelonnettes were established about the same time and for the same

purpose, by a wine merchant, Robert Montri, devoted to good works. The

prison of St. Lazare, to-day the great female prison of Paris, appears

to have been originally a hospital for lepers, and was at that time

governed by the ecclesiastical authority. It was the home of various

communities, till in 1630 the lepers disappeared, and it became a

kind of seminary or place of detention for weak-minded persons and

youthful members of good position whose families desired to subject

them to discipline and restraint. The distinction between St. Lazare

and the Bastile was well described by a writer who said, "If I had

been a prisoner in the Bastile I should on release have taken my

place among _genres de bien_ (persons of good social position) but on

leaving Lazare I should have ranked with the _mauvais sujets_ (ne'er do

weels)." A good deal remains to be said about St. Lazare in its modern

aspects.