VINCENNES AND THE BASTILE
Vincennes and the Bastile--Vincennes described--Castle
and woods--Torture--Methods and implements--_Amende
Honorable_--Flagellation and mutilations--Notable inmates--Prince
de Condé--Origin of the Bastile--Earliest records--Hugues
d'Aubriot--Last English garrison--Sir John Falstaff--Frequented by
Louis XI and Anne of Beaujeau--Charles VIII--Francis I--Persecution
of the Huguenots--Henry II, Diane de Poitiers, and Catherine de
Medicis--Her murderous oppressions--Bastile her favorite prison.
We come now to the two great metropolitan prisons that played so large
a part in the vexed and stormy annals of France. Vincennes and Bastile
may be said to epitomise Parisian history. They were ever closely
associated with startling episodes and notable personages, the best
and worst Frenchmen in all ages, and were incessantly the centres of
rebellions, dissensions, contentions and strife. They were both State
prisons, differing but little in character and quality. Vincennes was
essentially a place of durance for people of rank and consequence.
The Bastile took the nobility also, but with them the whole crowd of
ordinary criminals great and small. These prisons were the two weapons
forged by autocratic authority and freely used by it alike for the
oppression of the weak and down trodden, and the openly turbulent but
vainly recalcitrant. The royal relatives that dared oppose the king,
the stalwart nobles that conspired or raised the standard of revolt,
the great soldiers who dabbled in civil war, found themselves committed
to Vincennes. The same classes of offenders, but generally of lesser
degree, were thrown into the Bastile. The courtier who forgot his
manners or dared to be independent in thought or action, the bitter
poetaster and too fluent penman of scurrilous pamphlets, were certain
of a lodging at the gloomy citadel of Saint Antoine.
The castle of Vincennes was used primarily as a royal palace and
has been called the Windsor of the House of Valois. Philip IV, the
first king of that family, kept high festival there in a splendid
and luxurious court. The great edifice was of noble dimensions--both
a pleasure house and a prison, with towers and drawbridges for
defense and suites of stately apartments. It stood in the centre of
a magnificent forest, the famous Bois de Vincennes, the name often
used to describe the residence; and the crowned heads and royal
guests who constantly visited the French sovereigns hunted the deer
in the woods around, or diverted themselves with tilts or tournaments
in the courtyard of the castle. The first to use Vincennes largely
as a prison was that famous gaoler Louis XI. He did not live there
much, preferring as a residence his impregnable fortified palace at
Plessis-lez-Tours. Not satisfied with Loches, he utilised Vincennes and
kept it constantly filled. Some account of his principal victims will
be found in the narrative of succeeding reigns and the extensive use of
the various prisons made by succeeding kings.
The prison fortress of Vincennes in its palmiest days consisted of nine
great towers; and a tenth, loftier and more solid, was the Donjon, or
central keep, commonly called the Royal Domain. Two drawbridges must be
passed before entrance was gained by a steep ascent. This was barred
by three heavy doors. The last of these communicated directly with the
Donjon, being so ponderous that it could only be moved by the combined
efforts of the warder within and the sergeant of the guard without. A
steep staircase led to the cells above. The four towers had each four
stories and each story a hall forty feet long, with a cell at each
corner having three doors apiece. These doors acted one on the other.
The second barred the first and the third barred the second, and none
could be opened without knowledge of secret machinery.
The torture chamber, with all its abominable paraphernalia of "boots,"
rack, "stools" and other implements for inflicting torture, was on
the first floor. Every French prison of the olden times had its
"question" chamber to carry out the penalties and savage processes
of the French judicial code. The barbarous treatment administered in
it was not peculiar to France alone, but was practised in prisons
throughout the so-called civilised world. Torture was in general use
in French prisons till a late date and really survived till abolished
by the ill-fated Louis XVI in 1780. It may be traced back to the
ancient judicial ordeals when an accused was allowed to prove his
innocence by withstanding combat or personal attack. It was also known
as the "question" because the judge stood by during its infliction
and called upon the prisoner to answer the interrogations put to him,
when his replies, if any, were written down. The process is described
by La Bruyère as a marvellous but futile invention "quite likely to
force the physically weak to confess crimes they never committed
and yet quite as certain to favor the escape of the really guilty,
strong enough to support the application." The "question" was of two
distinct categories: one, the "preparatory" or "ordinary," an unfair
means of obtaining avowals for the still legally innocent; the other,
"preliminary" or "extraordinary," reserved for those actually condemned
to death but believed to know more than had yet been elicited. There
were many terrible varieties of torture exhibiting unlimited cruel
invention. We are familiar enough with the "rack," the "wheel," the
"thumb screw" and the "boot." Other less known forms were the "veglia"
introduced into France by the popes when the Holy See came to Avignon.
The "veglia" consisted of a small wooden stool so constructed that when
the accused sat upon it his whole weight rested on the extremity of
his spine. His sufferings soon became acute. He groaned, he shrieked
and then fainted, whereupon the punishment ceased until he came to
and was again placed on the stool. It was usual to hold a looking
glass before his eyes that his distorted features might frighten him
into confession. The "estrapade," like the "veglia," was borrowed
from Italy. By this the torture was applied with a rope and pulley by
which the patient was suspended over a slow fire and slowly roasted,
being alternately lifted and let down so as to prolong his sufferings.
Elsewhere in France fire was applied to the soles of the feet or a
blade was introduced between the nail and the flesh of finger or toe.
Sometimes sulphur matches or tow was inserted between the fingers and
ignited.
In the chief French prisons the "question" was generally limited to the
two best known tortures: swallowing great quantities of water and the
insertion of the legs within a casing or "boot" of wood or iron. For
the first, the accused was chained to the floor and filled with water
poured down his throat by means of a funnel. In the "ordinary question"
four "cans"--pints, presumably--of water were administered, and for
the "extraordinary" eight cans. From a report of the proceedings
in the case of a priest accused of sacrilege, who had been already
sentenced to death but whose punishment was accentuated by torture, it
is possible to realise the sufferings endured. After the first can the
victim cried "May God have mercy on me;" at the second he declared, "I
know nothing and I am ready to die;" at the third he was silent, but at
the fourth he declared he could support it no longer and that if they
would release him he would tell the truth. Then he changed his mind
and refused to speak, declaring that he had told all he knew and was
forthwith subjected to the "extraordinary question." At the fifth can
he called upon God twice. At the sixth he said, "I am dying, I can hold
out no longer, I have told all." At the seventh he said nothing. At
the eighth he screamed out that he was dying and lapsed into complete
silence. Now the surgeon interfered, saying that further treatment
would endanger his life, and he was unbound and placed on a mattress
near the fire. He appears to have made no revelations and was in due
course borne off to the place of execution.
The torture of the "boot" was applied by inserting the legs in an iron
apparatus which fitted closely but was gradually tightened by the
introduction of wedges driven home within the fastenings. The pain was
intense and became intolerable as the wedge was driven farther and
farther down between the knee and the iron casing by repeated blows of
the mallet. The "boot" was better known in France as the _brodequin_
or _buskin_. In England some modification of it was introduced by one
Skeffington, a keeper in the Tower, and this gave it the nickname of
"Skeffington's gyves" which was corrupted into the words "scavenger's
daughters."
It was sometimes shown that the torture had been applied to perfectly
innocent people. The operation was performed with a certain amount
of care. One of the master surgeons of the prison was always present
to watch the effect upon the patient and to offer him advice. The
"questioner" was a sworn official who was paid a regular salary, about
one hundred francs a year.
Of the secondary punishments, those less than death, there was the
_amende honorable_, a public reparation made by degrading exposure with
a rope round the neck, sometimes by standing at the door of a church,
sometimes by being led through the streets seated on a donkey with face
towards the tail. The culprit was often stripped naked to the waist and
flogged on the back as he stood or was borne away. Blasphemy, sacrilege
and heresy were punished by the exaction of the _amende honorable_. An
old King of France was subjected to it by his revolted sons. A reigning
prince, the Count of Toulouse, who was implicated in the assassination
of a papal legate concerned in judging the _religieuses_, was brought
with every mark of ignominy before an assemblage at the door of a
church. Three archers, who had violated a church sanctuary and dragged
forth two fugitive thieves, were sentenced on the demand of the clergy
to make the _amende_ at the church door arrayed in petticoats and
bearing candles in their hands.
Flagellation was a cruel and humiliating punishment, largely used
under degrading conditions and with various kinds of instruments.
Mutilation was employed in every variety; not a single part of the body
has escaped some penalties. There were many forms of wounding the eyes
and the mouth; tongue, ears, teeth, arms, hands and feet have been
attacked with fire and weapons of every kind. To slice off the nose,
crop the ears, amputate the wrist, draw the teeth, cut off the lower
limbs, were acts constantly decreed. Branding with red hot irons on
the brow, cheeks, lips and shoulders, kept the executioner busy with
such offenses as blasphemy, petty thefts and even duelling. The effects
served to inhibit like offenses, but the punishment was in no sense a
preventive or corrective.
Prisoners were generally received at Vincennes in the dead of night,
a natural sequel to secret unexplained arrests, too often the result
of jealousy or caprice or savage ill-will. The ceremony on arrival was
much the same as that which still obtains. A close search from head to
foot, the deprivation of all papers, cash and valuables, executed under
the eyes of the governor himself. The new arrival was then conducted
to his lodging, generally a foul den barely furnished with bedstead,
wooden table and a couple of rush-bottomed chairs. The first mandate
issued was that strict silence was the invariable rule. Arbitrary and
irksome rules governed the whole course of procedure and daily conduct.
The smallest privileges depended entirely upon the order of superior
authority. Books or writing materials were issued or forbidden as the
gaoler, the king's minister, or the king himself might decide. Dietary
was fixed by regulation and each prisoner's maintenance paid out of the
king's bounty on a regular scale according to the rank and quality of
the captive. The allowance for princes of the blood was $10 per diem,
for marshals of France $7.50, for judges, priests and captains in the
army or officials of good standing about $2, and for lesser persons
fifty cents. These amounts were ample, but pilfering and peculation
were the general rule. The money was diverted from the use intended,
articles were issued in kind and food and fuel were shamelessly stolen.
Prisoners who were not allowed to supply themselves, were often half
starved and half frozen in their cells. So inferior was the quality of
the prison rations, that those who purloined food could not sell it
in the neighborhood and the peasants said that all that came from the
Donjon was rotten. In sharp contrast was the revelry and rioting in
which prisoners of high station were permitted to indulge. These were
attended by their own servants and constantly visited by their personal
friends of both sexes. An amusing sidelight on the régime of Vincennes
may be read in the account of the arrest of the great Prince de Condé,
during the Fronde, and his two confederate princes, the Prince de
Conti, his brother, and the Duc de Longueville, his brother-in-law. No
preparations had been made for their reception, but Condé, a soldier
and an old campaigner, supped on some new-laid eggs and slept on a
bundle of straw. Next morning he played tennis and shuttle-cock with
the turnkeys, sang songs and began seriously to learn music. A strip
of garden ground, part of the great court, surrounding the prison,
where the prisoners exercised, was given to Condé to cultivate and he
raised pinks which were the admiration of all Paris. He poked fun at
the Governor and when the latter threatened him for breach of rule,
proposed to strangle him. This is clearly the same Condé who nicknamed
Cardinal Mazarin, "Mars," when his eminence aspired to lead an army,
and when he wrote him a letter addressed it to "His Excellency, the
Great Scoundrel."
Prison discipline must have been slack in Vincennes, nor could
innumerable locks and ponderous chains make up for the careless guard
kept by its gaolers. Many escapes were effected from Vincennes, more
creditable to the ingenuity and determination of the fugitives than to
the vigilance and integrity of those charged with their safe custody.
Antiquarian researches connect the Bastile in its beginning with the
fortifications hastily thrown up by the Parisians in the middle of the
fourteenth century to defend the outskirts of the city upon the right
bank of the river. The walls built by Philip Augustus one hundred and
fifty years earlier were by this time in a ruinous condition. The
English invasion had prospered, and after the battle of Poitiers the
chief authority in the capital, Étienne Marcel, the provost of the
merchants, felt bound to protect Paris. An important work was added
at the eastern entrance of the city, and the gateway was flanked by a
tower on either side. Marcel was in secret correspondence with the then
King of Navarre, who aspired to the throne of France, and would have
admitted him to Paris through this gateway, but was not permitted to
open it. The infuriated populace attacked him as he stood with the keys
in his hand, and although he sought asylum in one of the towers he was
struck down with an axe and slain.
This first fortified gate was known as the Bastile of St. Antoine.
The first use of the word "Bastile," which is said to have been of
Roman origin, was applied to the temporary forts raised to cover
siege works and isolate and cut off a beleaguered city from relief or
revictualment. The construction of a second and third fortress was
undertaken some years later, in 1370, when the first stone of the
real Bastile was laid. Another provost, Hugues Aubriot by name, had
authority from Charles V to rebuild and strengthen the defences, and
was supplied by the king with moneys for the purpose. Aubriot appears
to have added two towers to the gateway, and this made the Bastile into
a square fort with a tower at each angle. This provost was high-handed
and ruled Paris with a rod of iron, making many enemies, who turned on
him. He offended the ever turbulent students of the University and was
heavily fined for interfering with their rights. To raise money for the
king, he imposed fresh taxes, and was accused of unlawful commerce with
the Jews, for which he was handed over to the ecclesiastical tribunal
and condemned to be burnt to death. This sentence was, however,
commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and tradition has it that he was
confined in one of the towers he had himself erected. The historian
compares his sad fate with that of other designers of punishment, such
as the Greek who invented the brazen bull and was the first to be burnt
inside it, or Enguerrand de Marigny, who was hung on his own gibbet of
Montfauçon, and the Bishop Haraucourt of Verdun, who was confined in
his own iron cage.
Hugues Aubriot was presently transferred from the Bastile to
For-l'Évêque prison where he was languishing at the time of the
insurrection of the Maillotins. These men rose against the imposition
of fresh taxes and armed themselves with leaden mallets which they
seized in the arsenal. A leader failing them, they forcibly released
Hugues Aubriot and begged him to be their captain, escorting him in
triumph to his house. But the ex-provost pined for peace and quiet and
slipped away at the first chance. He was a native of Dijon in Burgundy
and he escaped thither to die in obscurity the following year.
Charles VI enlarged and extended the Bastile by adding four more towers
and giving it the plan of a parallelogram, and it remained with but few
modifications practically the same when captured by the revolutionists
in 1789. The fortress now consisted of eight towers, each a hundred
feet high and with a wall connecting them, nine feet thick. Four of
these towers looked inwards facing the city, four outwards over the
suburb of St. Antoine. A great ditch, twenty-five feet deep and one
hundred and twenty feet wide, was dug to surround it. The road which
had hitherto passed through it was diverted, the gateway blocked up
and a new passage constructed to the left of the fortress. The Bastile
proper ceased to be one of the entrances of Paris and that of the Porte
St. Antoine was substituted. Admission to the fortress was gained at
the end opposite the rue St. Antoine between the two towers named the
Bazinière and Comté overlooking the Seine. On the ground floor of
the former was the reception ward, as we should call it, a detailed
account of which is preserved in the old archives. The first room was
the porter's lodge with a guard bed and other pieces of furniture of
significant purpose; two ponderous iron bars fixed in the wall, with
iron chains affixed ending in fetters for hands and feet, and an iron
collar for the neck; the avowed object of all being to put a man in
"Gehenna," the ancient prison euphemism for hell. A four-wheeled iron
chariot is also mentioned, no doubt for the red hot coals to be used in
inflicting torture, the other implements for which were kept in this
chamber. The tower of the Comté was like the rest, of four stories, and
became chiefly interesting for the escapes effected from it by Latude
and D'Allègre in later years.
All the towers of the Bastile received distinctive names derived from
the chance associations of some well-known personage or from the
purpose to which they were applied. These names became the official
designation of their occupants, who were entered in the books as "No.
so and so" of "such and such a tower." Personal identity was soon lost
in the Bastile. If we made the circuit of the walls, starting from
the Bazinière Tower first described, we should come to that of La
Bertaudière in the façade above the rue St. Antoine and overlooking
the city, the third floor of which was the last resting place of that
mysterious prisoner, the Man with the Iron Mask. Next came the tower of
Liberty, a name supposed by some to have originated in some saturnine
jest, by others to have been the scene of successful escape, although
attempts were usually made on the other side of the Bastile which
overlooked the open country. The tower of the Well (Du Puits) had an
obvious derivation.
At the north-east angle was the Corner Tower, so called, no doubt,
because it was situated at the corner of the street and the Boulevard
St. Antoine. Next came the Chapel Tower, from its neighborhood to the
old Chapel of the Bastile. This at one time took rank as the noble
quarter of the fortress and was called the "Donjon"--for in the time
of the English domination the king's chamber and that of the "captain"
were situated in this tower. In later days the Chapel Tower had
accommodation for only three occupants, two on the second and one on
the third floor, the first floor being used as a store house. Next came
the Treasure Tower, a title which referred back to a very early date,
as witness receipts in existence for moneys paid over to the king's
controller-general of finances. In the reign of Henry IV, a prudent
monarch with a thrifty minister, the ever faithful and famous Duke de
Sully, large sums were deposited in this tower as a reserve for the
enterprises he contemplated. The money was soon expended after Henry's
assassination, in wasteful extravagances and civil wars. It is of
record that after payment of all current expenses of State, the surplus
collected by Sully in the Bastile amounted to 41,345,000 livres or
upwards of 120,000,000 francs, or $25,000,000. On reaching the eighth,
or last tower, that of the Comté, we return to the northernmost side of
the great gate already spoken of.
Speaking generally, all these towers were of four stories, with an
underground basement each containing a number of dens and dungeons of
the most gloomy and horrible character. The stone walls were constantly
dripping water upon the slimy floor which swarmed with vermin, rats,
toads and newts. Scanty light entered through narrow slits in the wall
on the side of the ditch, and a small allowance of air, always foul
with unwholesome exhalations. Iron bedsteads with a thin layer of dirty
straw were the sole resting places of the miserable inmates. The fourth
or topmost floors were even more dark than the basement. These, the
Calottes, or "skull caps," (familiar to us as the head-dress of the
tonsured priests) were cagelike in form with low, vaulted roofs, so
that no one might stand upright within save in the very centre of the
room. They were barely lighted by narrow windows that gave no prospect,
from the thickness of the walls and the plentiful provision of iron
gratings having bars as thick as a man's arms.
The fortress stood isolated in the centre of its own deep ditch, which
was encircled by a narrow gallery serving as a _chemin-des-rondes_, the
sentinel's and watchman's beat. This was reached by narrow staircases
from the lower level of the interior and there were sentry boxes at
intervals for the guards. North of the Bastile, beyond the main prison
structure, but included in the general line of fortifications, was
the Bastion, used as a terrace and exercising ground for privileged
prisoners. In later years permission was accorded to the governors
to grow vegetables upon this open space and fruit gardens were in
full bearing upon the final demolition of the Bastile. The privilege
conceded to the governor in this garden became a grievance of the
prisoners, for it was let to a contractor who claimed that when the
prisoners frequented it for exercise damage was done to the growing
produce, and by a royal decree all prisoners were forbidden henceforth
to enter this space.
The Bastile was for the first two centuries of its history essentially
a military stronghold serving, principally, as a defensive work, and
of great value to its possessors for the time being. Whoever held
the Bastile over-awed Paris and was in a sense the master of France.
In the unceasing strife of parties it passed perpetually from hand
to hand and it would be wearisome to follow the many changes in its
ownership. In the long wars between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians,
the latter seized Paris in the reign of the half-witted Charles V, but
the Armagnacs held the Bastile and the person of the king's eldest
son, whose life was eventually saved by this seclusion. This dauphin
came afterwards to the throne through the help of the English king,
Henry V, who married his daughter Catherine and was appointed Regent of
France. Under this régime Paris was occupied for a time by an English
garrison. When at length the rival factions in France made common
cause against the intrusive strangers the French re-entered Paris and
the English were forced to retire into the Bastile, where they were
so closely besieged that they presently offered to capitulate. The
fortress was greatly over-crowded, supplies ran short and there was no
hope of relief. The Constable of France, Richemont, was master of the
situation outside, and at first refused terms, hoping to extort a large
ransom, but the people of Paris, eager to be rid of the foreigners,
advised him to accept their surrender and to allow the English garrison
to march out with colors flying. It was feared that the people of Paris
would massacre them as they passed through the streets and they were
led by a circuitous route to the river where, amidst the hoots and
hisses of a large crowd, they embarked in boats and dropped down the
river to Rouen.
It is interesting to note here that one of the English governors of the
Bastile was a certain Sir John Falstaff, not Shakespeare's Sir John but
a very different person, a stalwart knight of unblemished character,
great judgment and approved prowess. He was a soldier utterly unlike
the drunken, and disreputable "Jack Falstaff," with his unconquerable
weakness for sack, who only fought men in buckram. The real Sir John
Falstaff was careful to maintain his charge safely, strengthening the
fortress at all points, arming and victualling it and handing it over
in good order to his successor, Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. History has
to record other good things of Sir John Falstaff, who is remembered
as a patron of letters, who paid a price for the translation of
Cicero's "De Senectute," who endowed Magdalen College, Oxford, with
much valuable property and whose name is still commemorated among the
founders of the College in the anniversary speech. He was a Knight of
the Garter, held many superior commands and died full of honors at the
advanced age of eighty. Lord Willoughby was governor at the time of the
surrender. He withdrew in safety and evidently in good heart for he won
a victory over the French at Amiens after his retreat.
After the exodus of the English and with the accession of Louis XI, the
two State prisons of Paris were very fully and constantly occupied.
The chief episodes in the checkered history of France, conspiracies,
revolts and disturbances, were written in the prison registers and
their records are a running commentary upon the principal events of
French history. The personal qualities of the rulers, their quarrels
with their great subjects, the vindictive policies they followed, their
oppression of, and cruelty to the people, may be read in the annals of
Vincennes and the Bastile. By taking the reigns seriatim and examining
the character of the sovereigns, we shall best realise passing events
and those who acted in them.
Let us take up the story with Louis XI to whom some reference has
already been made. Some of his victims, the prisoners of Loches and the
Comte de Saint Pol have figured on an earlier page. To these we may add
the story of the two Armagnacs, Jacques and Charles. Charles, although
wholly innocent, was arrested and imprisoned because his brother
Jacques had revolted against the king. Charles d'Armagnac was first
tortured horribly, then thrown into one of the cages of the Bastile,
which he inhabited for fourteen years and when released was found to be
bereft of reason. Jacques, better known as the Duc de Nemours, had been
the boy friend and companion of Louis, who lavished many favors on him
which he repaid by conspiring against the royal authority. When orders
were issued for his arrest he withdrew to his own castle, Carlet,
hitherto deemed impregnable. It succumbed, however, when besieged in
due form, and the Duke was taken prisoner. He had given himself up
on a promise that his life would be spared, but he received no mercy
from his offended king. His first prison was Pierre-Encise, in which
his hair turned grey in a few nights. Thence he was transferred to a
cage in the Bastile. The minute instructions were issued by the King
as to this prisoner's treatment, and in a letter it was directed that
he should never be permitted to leave his cage or to have his fetters
removed or to go to mass. He was only to be taken out to be tortured,
in the cruel desire to extort an avowal that he had intended to kill
the King and set up the Dauphin in his place. The Duke made a piteous
appeal, signing himself "Pauvre Jacques," but he was sent for trial
before the Parliament in a packed court from which the peers were
absent. He was condemned to death and executed, according to Voltaire,
under the most revolting circumstances. It is fair to add that no other
historian reports these atrocities. It is said that the scaffold on
which he suffered was so constructed that his children, the youngest
of whom was only five, were placed beneath clad in white and were
splashed with the blood from his severed head that dropped through the
openings of the planks. After this fearful tragedy these infants were
carried back to the Bastile and imprisoned there in a narrow cell for
five years. Other records, possibly also apocryphal, are preserved of
additional torments inflicted on the Armagnac princes. It is asserted
that they were taken out of their cells twice weekly to be flogged in
the presence of the governor and to have a tooth extracted every three
months.
The character of Louis XI shows black and forbidding in history. His
tireless duplicity was matched by his distrustfulness and insatiable
curiosity. He braved all dangers to penetrate the secrets of others,
risked his own life, spent gold, wasted strength, used the matchless
cunning of a red Indian, betrayed confidences and lied to all the
world. Yet he was gifted with keen insight into human nature. No one
knew better than he the strength and weakness of his fellow creatures.
Withal, France has had worse rulers. He may be credited with a desire
to raise and help the common people. He saw that in their industry and
contentment the wealth of the kingdom chiefly lay and looked forward
to the day when settled government would be assured. "If I live a
little longer," he told Comines the historian, "there shall be only
one weight, one measure, one law for the kingdom. We will have no more
lawyers cheating and pilfering, lawsuits shall be shortened, and there
shall be good police in the country." These dreams were never realised;
but at least, Louis was not a libertine and the slave of selfish
indulgence, the most vicious in a vicious court, ever showing an evil
example and encouraging dissolute manners and shameless immorality, as
were many of those who came after him.
Although the Salic law shut the female sex out of the succession to
the throne, supreme power was frequently wielded by women in France.
One of the earliest instances of this was in the steps taken by Louis
XI to provide for the government during the minority of his son, who
succeeded as Charles IX. The King's daughter, Anne de Beaujeu, was
named regent by her father, who had a high opinion of her abilities
and considered her "the least foolish of her sex he had met; not the
wisest, for there are no sensible women." She was in truth possessed
of remarkable talents and great strength of character, having much of
her father's shrewdness and being even less unscrupulous. But she ruled
with a high hand and her young brother submitted himself entirely to
her influence. She felt it her duty to make an example of the evil
counsellors upon whom Louis had so much relied. Oliver le Daim, the
ex-barber who had been created Comte de Meulan, was hanged, and his
estates confiscated; Doyat, chief spy and informer, was flogged and
his tongue pierced with a hot iron; Coictier, the King's doctor, who
had wielded too much authority, was fined heavily and sent into exile.
Anne's brother-in-law, the Duc d'Orleans, afterwards King Louis XII,
had expected the regency and rebelled, but she put him down with a
strong hand, destroyed the insurgent forces that he gathered around
him, and made him a close prisoner in the great tower of Bourges,
where he endured the usual penalties,--confinement in a narrow,
low-roofed cell by day and removal to the conventional iron cage at
night. Better fortune came to him in a few short years, for by the
death of the Dauphin, only son of Charles VIII, Louis became next
heir to the throne, and ascended it on the sudden death of the King
from an accident in striking his head against the low archway of a
dark corridor. He succeeded also to the King's bed, for in due course
he married his widow, Anne of Brittany, another woman of forcible
character, on whom he often relied, sometimes too greatly.
The reign of Charles VIII and Louis brought military glory and a great
increase of territory to France. The records of generally successful
external war rather than internal dissensions fill the history of the
time and we look in vain for lengthy accounts of prisoners relegated
to the State prisons. With the accession of Francis I another epoch
of conflict arrived and was general throughout Europe, involving all
the great nations. It was the age of chivalry, when knights carried
fortunes on their backs and the most lavish outlay added to the "pomp
and circumstance" of war. "The Field of the Cloth of Gold" remains as
a landmark in history, when kings vied with each other in extravagant
ostentation and proposed to settle their differences by personal
combat. The reign was brilliant with achievement abroad, but at home
the people suffered much misery and Francis kept his prisons filled.
Some great personages fell under his displeasure and were committed to
the Bastile; notably, Montmorency, Constable of France, and Chabot,
Admiral of France. These two, once school companions of the King,
became bitter rivals and the Constable persuaded the King to try the
Admiral on a charge of embezzlement. Francis, jealous of Chabot,
readily accepted the accusation, and sent him to the Bastile, where the
most flagrant violations of justice were used to secure conviction. He
escaped with fines and banishment; and the next year the fickle monarch
forgave him and released him from durance. He had been so sorely tried
by his imprisonment that no doctor could restore him to health. The
Chancellor, Poyet, who had framed the indictment, next found himself
in the Bastile, suspected of being in the possession of important
State secrets. The King himself appeared as the witness against him
and although the charges were vague, he was sentenced to fine and
confiscation of property.
[Illustration: _Castle St. André, Avignon_
Fortress and prison used by the popes when Avignon was the papal
residence, in the fourteenth century. Avignon remained the property
of the popes after their return to Rome, until its annexation by the
French in 1791.]
The persecution of the Huguenots began in the reign of Francis I, who
from the first declared himself on the side of the Pope. Protestantism
as preached by Martin Luther took another form in France, and the
Geneva doctrines of Calvin, which went much further, were followed.
Calvin, it may be said here, rejected the Episcopate which Luther had
retained. He recognised only two sacraments,--Baptism and the Last
Supper, and desired his disciples to imitate the early Christians in
the austerity of their morals. The French Protestants were styled
Calvinists and more generally Huguenots, a name taken from the German
word, "_Eidgenossen_," or "confederates." Calvinism made slow progress
in France although it numbered amongst its adherents some of the
best heads in the nation, men of letters, savants, great lawyers and
members of the highest aristocracy. They were persecuted pitilessly. In
1559 Berquin, a king's councillor, a man of much learning, was burned
alive in Paris and many shared his fate as martyrs to the new faith
in the great cities such as Lyons, Toulouse, and Marseilles. The most
horrible atrocities were perpetrated against the Vaudois, a simple,
loyal population residing in the towns and villages around Avignon and
on the borders of the Durance. Two fanatical prelates of the Guise
family, the Cardinal de Tournon and the Cardinal de Lorraine, headed
the movement in the course of which 3,000 persons were massacred,--men,
women and children, and any who escaped were condemned to the galleys
for life. Nevertheless the reformed religion gained ground steadily.
The new ideas appealed to the people despite opposition. Neither
persecution, nor the threats fulminated by the Council of Trent, nor
the energies of the new order of Jesuits, could stamp out the new
faith; and religious intolerance, backed by the strong arm of the
Church was destined to deluge France with bloodshed in the coming
centuries.
Henry II, who followed his father Francis on the throne, redoubled the
persecution which was stained with incessant and abominable cruelties.
The ordinary process of law was set aside in dealing with the Huguenots
who were brought under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. An edict published
in 1555, enjoined all governors and officers of justice to punish
without delay, without examination and without appeal, all heretics
condemned by the judges. The civil judge was no longer anything but the
passive executant of the sentences of the Church. The Parliament of
Paris protested, but the King turned a deaf ear to these remonstrances
and summoned a general meeting of all the Parliaments, which he
attended in person and where he heard some home truths. One of the most
outspoken was a great nobleman, one Anne Du Bourg, who defended the
Protestants, declaring that they were condemned to cruel punishment
while heinous criminals altogether escaped retribution. Du Bourg and
another, Dufaure, were arrested and were conveyed to the Bastile
where they were soon joined by other members of the Parliament. After
many delays Du Bourg was brought to trial, convicted and sentenced
to be burnt to death. "It is the intention of the Court," so ran the
judgment, "that the said Du Bourg shall in no wise feel the fire, and
that before it be lighted and he is cast therein he shall be strangled,
yet if he should wish to dogmatise and indulge in any remarks he shall
be gagged so as to avoid scandal." He was executed on the Place de la
Grève on the top of a high gallows under which a fire was lighted to
receive the dead body when it fell.
Henry II had been a weak and self-indulgent king. Ostentatious and
extravagant, he wasted large sums in the expenses of his court and
lavished rich gifts on his creatures, a course which emptied the
treasury and entailed burdensome taxation. He was entirely under the
thumb of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, a cold-blooded, selfish
creature, who ruled him and the country with unquestioned supremacy,
before whom even the lawful queen, Catherine de Medicis, humiliated
herself and paid abject court. The King's ministers, the Constable
Montmorency and the Duc de Guise, were at first rivals in power with
Diane, but soon joined with her in riding roughshod over the country,
and in bestowing all good things, places, governments and profitable
charges on their friends and creatures. Foreign adventure, external
wars, famine and pestilence constantly impoverished France. The people
rose frequently in insurrection and were always suppressed with
sanguinary cruelty. Constable Montmorency, above mentioned, dealt so
severely with Bordeaux, that in a short space of time no fewer than
four hundred persons were beheaded, burned, torn asunder by wild horses
or broken on the wheel.
A prominent figure of those days was Mary Stuart, better known as Mary,
Queen of Scots, that fascinating woman who was "a politician at ten
years old and at fifteen governed the court." She was the child-wife of
Francis II, who unexpectedly came to the throne on the sudden death by
mischance of Henry II at a tournament held in front of the Bastile. He
had challenged Montgomery, an officer of the Scottish Guard, to break a
lance with him and in the encounter a splinter entered Henry's eye and
penetrated to the brain.
The tragic death of Francis II was another of those instances in which
the Salic Law was evaded and a woman held supreme power. Catherine
de Medicis has already appeared on the scene in the sanguinary
suppression of the conspiracy of Amboise. This was only one of the
atrocities that stained her long tenure of power as Regent of France
during the minority of her son Charles IX. Her character has been
already indicated. Evil was ever in the ascendant with her and in
her stormy career she exhibited the most profound cunning, a rare
fertility of resource, and the finished diplomacy of one trained in
the Machiavellian school. She was double-faced and deceitful beyond
measure. Now the ally of one political party, now of the other, she
betrayed both. She even affected sympathy at times with the Protestants
and often wept bitter crocodile tears over their sufferings. For a
time liberty of conscience was conceded to the Huguenots but Catherine
desired always to conciliate the Catholics and concerted measures with
Philip of Spain to bring about a new persecution. A fresh conflict
ensued in which successes were gained on both sides, but the Huguenots
showed so firm a front that peace could not be denied them. They were
always prepared to rise, offering a hydra-headed resistance that might
be scotched but could not be killed. To crush them utterly Catherine
planned the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in which the Admiral Coligny
and 10,000 Protestants were murdered in Paris alone and 30,000 more
in the provinces. This ineffaceable crime to which Charles IX had
weakly consented, seemed to paralyse the Huguenot cause and many of
their principal leaders abjured the new faith. Charles IX, tortured by
remorse, constantly haunted by superstitious terrors, rapidly succumbed
to wasting disease and died penitent, acknowledging his guilt.
Some time previously Henri d'Anjou had been elected King of Poland
and on his departure, efforts were made to secure the succession for
his younger brother, the Duc d'Alençon, who was to own himself the
protector of the Huguenots. The plot failed and served only to fill the
prisons of Vincennes and Bastile. Montgomery, the Huguenot leader, was
implicated. He had surrendered on a vague promise of safe conduct which
ended in his torture to compel confession of complicity in the plot. He
was on the point of being secretly strangled when Catherine de Medicis,
who had gone to the Bastile to be present at his execution, suddenly
changed her mind and set the surprised prisoner free.
Another class was committed to the Bastile by Catherine de Medicis. She
waged war constantly against coiners and issuers of false money; their
chief ringleader was sent to the Bastile with special instructions
for his "treatment." He was transferred secretly to Paris from Rouen
and shut up alone in an especially private place where no news could
be had of him. This order was signed by Catherine herself. Next year
(1555) a defaulting finance officer was committed and the lieutenant
of the Bastile was ordered to forbid him to speak to a soul or write
or give any hint where he was. Again, a Gascon gentleman, named Du
Mesnil, was taken in the act of robbing and murdering a courier on his
way to Italy, the bearer of 30,000 crowns worth of pearls. Du Mesnil's
accomplices, two simple soldiers, were hanged at the Halles but he
himself was sent to the Bastile and recommended to its governor for
"good discipline." This prisoner seems to have preferred liberty to
the favor shown him, such as it was, for in November, 1583, he made
a desperate attempt to escape. The account given by L'Estoile in his
memoirs, is that Du Mesnil, weary of his close confinement, burned down
the door of his cell, got out, became possessed of a rope from the well
in the court, climbed to the top of the terrace (the Bastion), fastened
his rope through an artillery wheel and lowered himself into the ditch.
The rope had been lengthened by another made from his sheets and
bedding, but it was still too short to reach the bottom, and letting
himself fall he was caught on a window below and making outcry was
recaptured and re-imprisoned. A more distinguished prisoner was Bernard
Palissy, the famous potter who was committed to gaol as a Protestant
and died in the Bastile in 1590 when eighty years of age. L'Estoile
tells us that Palissy at his death bequeathed him two stones, one of
them, part of a petrified skull which he accounted a philosopher's
stone, the other, a stone he had himself manufactured. "I have them
still," says L'Estoile, "carefully preserved in my cabinet for the sake
of the good old man whom I loved and relieved in his necessity,--not as
much as I could have wished, but to the full extent of my power."
When Henry III assassinated the Duc de Guise at Blois, Paris took it
greatly to heart and swore vengeance. The "Sixteen" held the Bastile,
and its governor, Bussy-Leclerc, an ex-fencing master, sought to coerce
the Parliament, seizing at once upon all with royalist leanings and
driving them into the Bastile. President Auguste de Thou was arrested
and with him his wife, who is said to have been the first female
occupant of this prison. Now the King, in despair, turned to the
Huguenots and formed an alliance with Henry of Navarre. The two kings
joined forces to recover Paris and the Parisians, alarmed, feeling they
could not make long resistance, accepted the worst. Some said there
would be a second St. Bartholomew, for the "Leaguers" and the Royalists
boasted that so many should be hanged that the wood for gibbets would
run short. But the situation suddenly changed, for Henry III was
unexpectedly assassinated by a fanatical monk, Clément, in the very
heart of the royal apartments.