LAST DAYS OF THE BASTILE
Closing days of the Bastile--Latest inmates--Lally-Tollendal
suffers death for alleged treason--Damiens attempts life of Louis
XV--Sentence and execution--Dumouriez in the Bastile--Linguet
and his experiences--Marquis de Sade--Cagliostro--The
Revolution--Attack upon the Bastile--Weakly defended--Garrison
massacred--De Launay, the governor, murdered--Demolition of the
Bastile--Last days of Vincennes--The Temple prison survives in
part--The last home of Louis XVI--Prisons in great request through
Revolutionary epoch--Treatment in them more horrible than in old
days--Unlimited atrocities.
The days of the Bastile's existence were numbered. It had not long to
stand, but it maintained its reputation to the last. Philosophers,
princes, libellous poets, unfortunate commanders and traitors to the
State rubbed shoulders within.
De La Chalotais, the Attorney-General of Brittany, was committed
in connection with a rising in his province and disputes with its
Governor, the Duc d'Aiguillon; but chiefly for his hostility to the
Jesuits,--a circumstance which culminated in the expulsion of the
society from France and many of the Catholic countries of Europe.
The Prince of Courland, Charles Ernest, an undeniable swindler and
adventurer, was arrested and sent to the Bastile on a charge of forgery
and detained there for three months. Marmontel, the historian, was
committed, accused of writing a satire against the Duc d'Aumont, and
has preserved an interesting account of his reception in the Castle.
"The Governor, after reading my letters," writes the historian,
"allowed me to retain my valet.... I was ushered into a vast chamber,
in which were two beds, two baths, a chest of drawers and three straw
chairs. It was cold, but the gaoler made a good fire and brought plenty
of wood. At the same time he gave me pen and ink and paper on condition
of giving an account of how each sheet was employed. I found fault
with my bed; said the mattresses were bad and the blankets unclean.
All was instantly changed.... The Bastile library was placed at my
disposal, but I had brought my own books." The dinner brought him was
excellent. It was a _maigre_ day and the soup was of white beans and
very fresh butter, a dish of salt cod for second service, also very
good. This proved to be the servant's dinner and a second came in for
Marmontel himself, served on china and fine linen with forks and spoons
in silver, and was _gras_, consisting of an excellent soup, a succulent
slice of beef, the fat leg of a boiled capon, a dish of artichokes,
some spinach, a fine pear, some grapes, a bottle of old Burgundy and a
cup of fragrant coffee. After all this he was still offered a chicken
for supper. "On the whole," says Marmontel, "I found that one dined
very well in prison." His stay in the Bastile was for a few days only,
as the libel was the work of another, whom Marmontel would not betray.
Scant favor was shown to French officers of those days who were
unsuccessful in war. One Dutreil was accused of misconduct in the
defence of Martinique, and after trial by court martial was sentenced
to military disgrace, to have his sword broken, the cross of St. Louis
torn from his breast, and to be imprisoned for life. He came first to
the Bastile with two other officers and passed on thence to the Isle of
Sainte Marguerite to occupy the same prison as the whilom "Man with the
Iron Mask." The harsh measure meted out to French officers who failed
is much commented upon by the French historians. Too often disaster was
directly traceable to neglect to provide means and the lack of proper
support. It was seen already in India, and Dupleix bitterly complained
that the government gave him no assistance, kept him ill supplied with
money and sent out the most indifferent troops.
A very prominent and very flagrant case was that of Count
Lally-Tollendal, who was denounced as having betrayed the interests of
France, and caused the loss of her Indian possessions. He was of Irish
extraction, a hot-headed, hare-brained Irishman, whose military skill
was unequal to a difficult campaign. His had been an eventful career.
He became a soldier in his tender years, and held a commission in
Dillon's Irish regiment when no more than twelve and was engaged in
the siege of Barcelona. He rose quickly to the command of a regiment,
and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general at the early age
of thirty-seven. At one time he conceived a plan for landing a body
of ten thousand on the English coast to support the rights of the
Pretender, and spent a large portion of his fortune in the carrying out
of the scheme, which, of course, came to nothing. During his career as
commander in India, the Count committed very grievous blunders, and
lacked the tact and diplomacy which had brought success to his great
predecessor, Dupleix. Count Lally began by committing fearful excesses,
and showed his contempt for the native religion by desecrating the
most honored temples and sanctuaries. He triumphed over the English
for a time, and drove them back into the heart of the country, whence
they turned and attacked afresh; and having delayed his retreat he was
defeated with considerable loss. Other disasters speedily followed
until he was eventually surrounded and besieged in Pondichéry, which
he defended and held with desperate bravery, but was forced at last to
surrender.
Lally became a prisoner of war at the fall of Pondichéry and was sent
to England. He heard there of the storm of abuse that was vented upon
him in Paris, and he asked permission to go over and stand his trial.
He was released on parole for the purpose, and arrived in his native
country, taking with him "his head and his innocence," as he wrote to
the Duc de Choiseul. A man of fierce temper and overbearing demeanor,
he had made numerous enemies and incurred the bitter jealousy of his
colleague, the naval commander in Indian waters, Comte d'Ache. When
brought to trial after a long and wearisome detention for fifteen
months in the Bastile, the long list of charges against him contained
many that were pitiful and contemptible. When at last arraigned,
the trial lingered on for more than a year and a half, when fresh
evidence was found among the papers of Father Lavuar, the superior
of the Jesuits in Pondichéry. The priest had gone to Paris to claim
a pension from the government, but died suddenly, and it was found
that he had left a large amount of gold and a number of documents
compromising Lally-Tollendal's character and accusing him of treason
and malversation. This testimony was accepted and led to his conviction
and sentence to death.
His demeanor during his trial won him a certain sympathy with the
crowd. The vehemence of his denials of guilt and his violent temper
impressed people with an idea that he was a much wronged man. In
England he had many apologists and supporters. It was said on his
behalf that he went to India a perfect stranger to the country, he made
native allies who proved false to him, his troops mutinied, he had no
horsemen; yet he took ten fortresses, won nine battles and made a good
fight until he was out-numbered, and all through was badly seconded
by his own officers. Voltaire's opinion of him is worth quoting: "I
am persuaded that Lally was no traitor. I believe him to have been an
odious man, a bad man, if you will, who deserved to be killed by any
one except the executioner." Again, "It is very certain that his bad
temper brought him to the scaffold. He is the only man who ever lost
his head for being brutal."
The sentence of the Parliament was death by decapitation, and Lally
was sent from the Bastile to the Conciergerie to hear his sentence.
Great precautions were taken along the road as it was feared the
populace might make some demonstration in his favor. He resented being
compelled to kneel to hear sentence, and was greatly incensed when told
he must die. "But what have I done?" he vainly protested. The sentence
produced a great effect upon him, but he regained his self-possession
on returning to the Bastile. Many persons interceded on his behalf, but
the King remained unmoved, although public opinion remained the same
and disapproved of his execution. The authorities, however, feared that
the people might be inclined to rescue him, and therefore ordered him
to be gagged while being led to the Place de Grève. The Count strongly
resisted this mode of treatment, but the gag was placed in his mouth,
and he was otherwise held in check. Just before the execution took
place he ordered the headsman, young Sanson, to remove a handsome vest
he (Lally) was wearing, composed of the golden tissue made only in
India, and directed that it should be presented to the executioner's
father, who was also present. The first blow from the younger was not
successful, so the final act was performed by old Sanson, and was
greeted with a cry of horror from the assembled crowds.
A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since Ravaillac had suffered
for the assassination of Henri Quatre and had brought no diminution
of the savage cruelty of the French criminal law. In 1757 the extreme
penalty was inflicted upon another culprit who had dared to lift his
hand against the cowardly voluptuary who occupied the throne, and in
precisely the same bloodthirsty and abominable fashion. Ravaillac
killed his victim; Damiens did no more than prick his man with the
small blade of a horn handled penknife. Louis XV was so frightened
at this pitiful wound that he "trembled between the sheets," under
the strong belief that the weapon had been poisoned. A confessor was
instantly summoned, and absolution was pronounced after the King had
detailed his sins. This absolution was repeated aloud every minute of
the night.
What had actually happened? It was an intensely cold night, the 5th
of January, 1757, and the King, clad in his furs, came down-stairs at
Versailles to enter his carriage. A crowd of courtiers, footmen and
an escort surrounded the doorway as the King emerged on the arm of his
grand equerry. Suddenly the King exclaimed, "Some one has struck me and
pricked me with a pin. That man there!" and as he spoke he inserted
his hand beneath his fur coat, to find it smeared with blood when he
withdrew it. "That is certainly the man," added the King, pointing
to Damiens. "Let him be arrested, but do not kill him." In the wild
confusion that now arose, Damiens might easily have slunk away, but he
stood his ground and was seized by the guards. Immediate vengeance was
wreaked by his removal to the nearest guard-house, where he was put to
the torture by the application of red-hot irons to his legs, but he
would say no more than that he had not desired to kill the King, but
only to give him a salutary warning.
Deep anxiety prevailed when this trifling attempt upon the life of a
worthless, self-indulgent monarch was known through the country. The
story was exaggerated absurdly. "This fearful attempt is of a nature to
cause so just an alarm that I do not lose a moment," writes one of the
ministers, "in diminishing your apprehension and acquainting you with
the facts of this terrible event." After "the terrible accident," the
King was bled twice. "The wound is healthy, there is no fever, and he
is perfectly tranquil, and would be inclined to sleep, were it not that
the wound is on the right side, that on which his Majesty is accustomed
to lie," continued the minister. The provinces were greatly excited.
"I found the whole city of Bordeaux in the greatest consternation,"
writes the Lieutenant-Governor of Guienne. At Aix the courier was
expected with breathless impatience, and good news was received with
shouts of joy and clapping of hands. The delight at Marseilles when
good news came was equal to the terror inspired by the first evil
report.
Damiens was taken straight to the Conciergerie, where the legal
machinery could be best set in motion for his trial and the preliminary
torture. His conviction was a foregone conclusion, and his sentence
in all its hideous particulars was on exactly the same lines as that
of Ravaillac. He was to be subjected to the question, ordinary and
extraordinary, to make the _amende honorable_, to have his right arm
severed, his flesh torn off his body with red-hot pincers, and finally,
while still alive, to be torn asunder limb from limb by teams of
horses in the Place de Grève. The whole of the details are preserved
in contemporary accounts; but having been described in the case of
Ravaillac, they are too brutal and revolting for a second reproduction.
The motive by which Damiens was led to this attempted crime is
generally attributed to his disapproval of the King's licentious life.
Louis so thought it, and for a time was disposed to mend his ways, to
give up the infamous _Parc aux Cerfs_ where he kept a harem, and to
break with Madame de Pompadour. But the favorite was not dismissed
from the apartments she occupied upon the top floor of the palace at
Versailles, and the King still saw her from day to day. Her anxiety
must have been great while the King's wound was still uncured, for she
feigned illness and was constantly bled; but she soon recovered her
health when she was reinstalled as the King's mistress. The occasion
had been improved by the Jesuits, for the King when sick was very much
in the hands of the priests; but de Pompadour triumphed, and the matter
ended in their serious discomfiture and expulsion from France.
Although Damiens did not himself see the interior of the Bastile, many
persons suspected of collusion in the crime were committed to it;
some supposed to be accomplices, others as apologists or as authors
of lampoons and satirical verses. Among the prisoners were Damiens's
nearest relations, his wife and daughters, his father, mother, nieces,
several abbés, ladies of mature years and young children. The detention
of some of these was brief enough, but one or two were imprisoned for
twenty odd years. The Dauphin was charged with complicity, but there
was no more proof of it than that he was little at court, and was known
to sympathise with the Jesuits. As a matter of fact no one was shown
to be privy to the attempt. Damiens, in spite of the most horrible
tortures, never betrayed a soul.
A story told by Jesse in his "Memoirs of George Selwyn" may be related
here to give a ray of relief to this sombre picture. The eccentric
Englishman was much addicted to the practice of attending executions.
He went over to Paris on purpose to see Damiens done to death, and
on the day mixed with the crowd. He was dressed in a plain undress
suit and a plain bob wig, and "a French nobleman observing the deep
interest he took in the scene, and imagining from the plainness of his
attire that he must be a person in the humbler walks of life, resolved
that he must infallibly be a hangman. '_Eh bien, monsieur_,' said he,
'_etes-vous arrive pour voir ce spectacle?_' '_Oui, monsieur._' '_Vous
etes bourreau?_' '_Non, monsieur_,' replied Selwyn, '_je n'ai pas cet
honneur, je ne suis qu'un amateur._'"
Among the latest records affording a graphic impression of the interior
of the Bastile is that of the French officer Dumouriez, who afterwards
became one of the first, and for a time, most successful of the
Revolutionary generals, who won the battles of Fleurus and Jernappes
and repelled the German invasion of the Argonne in the west of France.
Dumouriez fled to England to save his head, and was the ancestor of one
also famous, but in the peaceful fields of literature and art. George
Du Maurier, whose name is held in high esteem amongst all English
speaking races, traced his family direct to the French _emigré_, who
lived long and died in London. It is a little curious that the eminent
caricaturist who long brightened the pages of "Punch" the author of
"Trilby," should be connected with the French monarchy and the ancient
castle of evil memory.
The elder Dumouriez was imprisoned as the outcome of his connection
with the devious diplomacy of his time. He had been despatched on a
secret mission to Sweden on behalf of the King, but the French Minister
of Foreign Affairs suspected foul play. The movements of Dumouriez were
watched, and he was followed by spies as far as Hamburg, where he was
arrested and brought back to France straight to the Bastile. He gives a
minute account of his reception.
First he was deprived of all his possessions, his money, knife and
shoe buckles, lest he should commit suicide by swallowing them. When
he called for a chicken for his supper, he was told it was a fast day,
Friday, but he indignantly replied that the major of the Bastile was
not the keeper of his conscience if of his person, and the chicken was
provided. Then he was ushered into his prison apartment, and found
it barely furnished with a wooden table, a straw bottomed chair, a
jar of water and a dirty bed. He slept well, but was aroused early to
go before the Governor, the Comte de Jumilhac, who gave him a very
courteous and cordial welcome, but, after denying him books and writing
materials, ended by lending him several novels, which he begged him to
hide. The Governor continued to treat him as a friend and companion
rather than a prisoner. "He came and saw me every morning and gossiped
over society's doings. He went so far as to send me lemons and sugar
to make lemonade, a small quantity of coffee, foreign wine and every
day a dish from his own table, when he dined at home," he writes. No
fault could be found with the daily fare in the Bastile. The quality
was usually good and the supply abundant. "There were always five
dishes for dinner and three for supper without counting the dessert."
Besides, Dumouriez had his own servants, and one of them, the _valet de
chambre_, was an excellent cook.
After a week of solitary confinement, which he had relieved by entering
into communication with a neighbor, the captain of a Piedmontese
regiment, who had been confined in the Bastile for twenty-two years for
writing a song about Madame de Pompadour, which had been hawked all
over Paris, Dumouriez was removed to another chamber which he describes
as "a very fine apartment with a good fireplace." Near the fireplace
was an excellent bed, which had been slept in by many notable inmates
of the prison. The major of the Bastile said it was the finest room
in the castle, but it had not always brought good luck. Most of its
previous inhabitants, the Comte de St. Pol, the Maréchal de Biron, the
Chevalier de Rohan and the Count de Lally-Tollendal, ended their days
upon the scaffold. Significant traces of them were to be found in the
sad inscriptions upon the walls. Labourdonnais had inscribed some
"touching reflections;" Lally had written some remarks in English; and
La Chalotais some paraphrases of the Psalms. Dumouriez's immediate
predecessor had been a young priest, who had been forced into taking
orders and tried to evade his vows, inherit an estate and marry the
girl of his choice. He was committed to the Bastile, but was presently
released on writing an impassioned appeal for liberty.
Dumouriez was detained only six months in the Bastile and was then
transferred to Caen in Normandy, where he was handsomely lodged, and
had a garden to walk in. The death of Louis XV and the complete change
of government upon the accession of the ill-fated Louis XVI immediately
released him. He came to Court and was told at a public reception that
the new King profoundly regretted the harshness with which he had been
treated, and that the State would make him amends by promotion and
employment.
With Louis XVI began a milder and more humane régime, too late,
however, to stave off the swiftly gathering storm that was soon to
shake and shatter France. The King desired to retain no more State
prisoners arbitrarily, and sent a minister to visit the prisons of the
Bastile, Vincennes and Bicêtre to inquire personally into the cases of
all, and to liberate any against whom there was no definite charge. He
proposed that there should be no more _lettres de cachet_, and the
Bastile became gradually less and less filled. The committals were
chiefly of offenders against the common law, thieves and swindlers; but
a large contingent of pamphleteers and their publishers were lodged
within its walls, and one ancient prisoner still lingered to die there
after a confinement of twenty-seven years. This was Bertin, Marquis
de Frateau, guilty of writing lampoons on Madame de Pompadour, and
originally confined at the request of his own family.
A man who made more mark was Linguet, whose "Memoirs," containing a
bitter indictment of the Bastile, from personal experience, were widely
read both in England and France. They were actually written in London,
to which he fled after imprisonment, and are now held to be mendacious
and untrustworthy. Linguet had led a strangely varied life. He had
tried many lines--had been in turn poet, historian, soldier, lawyer,
journalist. He wrote parodies for the Opera Comique and pamphlets in
favor of the Jesuits. Such a man was certain to find himself in the
Bastile. He spent a couple of years there, and the book he subsequently
wrote was full of the most extravagant and easily refuted lies. Yet
there is reason to believe that his statements did much to inflame the
popular mind and increase the fierce hatred of the old prison, which
ere long was to lead to its demolition.
The Bastile also received that infamous creature, most justly
imprisoned, the Marquis de Sade, whose name has been synonymous with
the grossest immorality and is now best known to medical jurisprudence.
Beyond doubt he was a lunatic, a man of diseased and deranged mind,
who was more properly relegated to Charenton, where he died. He was
at large during the Revolutionary period and survived it, but dared
to offer some of his most loathsome books to Napoleon, who when First
Consul wrote an order with his own hand for the return of the Marquis
to Charenton as a dangerous and incurable madman.
One of the last celebrities confined in the Bastile was the Cardinal
de Rohan, a grandee of the Church and the holder of many dignities,
who was involved in that famous fraud, dear to dramatists and romance
writers, the affair of the Diamond Necklace. His confederates, some
of whom shared his captivity, were the well known Italian adventurer
and arch impostor, who went by the name of Cagliostro, who played upon
the credulity of the gullible public in many countries as a latter day
magician, and the two women, Madame de La Motte-Valois, who devised the
fraud of impersonating the Queen before de Rohan, and Mdlle. d'Oliva,
who impersonated her.
We come now to the eventful year 1789, when the waters were closing
over the Bastile, and it was to sink under the flood and turmoil of
popular passion in the first stormy phase of the French Revolution.
Paris was in the throes of agitation and disturbance, the streets
filled with thousands of reckless ruffians, who terrorised the capital,
breaking into and plundering the shops, the convents, even the royal
_Garde-Meuble_, the repository of the Crown jewels; and committing the
most violent excesses. A large force of troops was collected in and
about Paris, more than sufficient to maintain order had the spirit
to do so been present in the leaders or had they been backed up by
authority. But the King and his Government were too weak to act with
decision, and, as the disorders increased, it was seen that no reliance
could be placed upon the French Guards, who were ripe for revolt and
determined to fraternise with the people. The people clamored for arms
and ammunition, and seized upon a large quantity of powder as it was
being removed secretly from Paris. Fifty thousand pikes were turned out
in thirty-six hours.
Two revolutionary committees directed affairs, and it was mooted at
one of them whether an attack should not be made upon the Bastile. The
more cautious minds demurred. It would be neither useful nor feasible
to gain possession of the ancient fortress which, with its guns mounted
and its impregnable walls, might surely make a vigorous resistance.
At last it was decreed to approach the Governor of the Bastile with
peaceful overtures, asking him to receive a garrison of Parisian
citizen-militia within the place as a measure of public safety. M. de
Launay, the veteran Governor, civilly received the deputations with
this proposal, but although inwardly uneasy would make no concessions.
He awaited orders which never arrived, but was stoutly determined to do
his duty and remain staunch to the King.
His position was indeed precarious. The garrison consisted of a handful
of troops, chiefly old pensioners. The guns on the ramparts were of
obsolete pattern, mostly mounted on marine carriages, and they could
not be depressed or fired except into the air. Moreover the powder
magazine was full, for the whole stock of powder had been removed from
the Arsenal, where it was exposed to attack and seizure, and it was now
lodged in the cellars of the Bastile. But the Governor had done his
best to strengthen his defence. Windows had been barred, and exposed
loopholes closed. A bastion for flanking fire had been thrown out from
the garden wall. Great quantities of paving stones had been carried up
to the tops of the Towers, and steps taken to pull down the chimney
pots,--the whole for use as missiles to be discharged on the heads of
the besiegers. Nevertheless the place could not hold out long, for it
was almost entirely unprovisioned.
The attack upon the Bastile appears to have been precipitated by a
cowardly report spread that the guns of the castle were ranged upon the
city and that a bombardment was threatened. A deputation was forthwith
despatched to the Governor, insisting the direction of the guns be
changed and inviting him to surrender. M. de Launay replied that the
guns pointed as they had done from time immemorial, and that he could
not remove them without the King's order, but he would withdraw them
from the embrasure. This deputation retired satisfied, assuring the
Governor that he need expect no attack, and went back to the Hotel de
Ville. But presently an armed mob arrived, shouting that they must have
the Bastile. They were politely requested to return, but some turbulent
spirits insisted that the drawbridges should be lowered, and when the
first was down, advanced across them, although repeatedly warned that
unless they halted, the garrison would open fire. But the people,
warmed with their success, pressed on, and a sharp musketry duet began,
and put the assailants to flight in great disorder, but did not send
them far. Presently they came on again toward the second drawbridge and
prepared to break in by it, when firing was resumed and many casualties
ensued.
At half past four o'clock in the afternoon three carts laden with
straw were sent forward and used to set fire to the outbuildings, the
guard-house, the Governor's residence and the kitchens. A number of
French grenadiers with three hundred citizens now advanced and made
good their entrance; but the drawbridge was let down behind them and
a cry of treachery arose. Fire was opened on both sides and a sharp
combat ensued. The issue might have been different had the defence
been better organised, but the garrison was small (barely a hundred
men), was short of ammunition, had not taken food for forty-eight
hours, and could make no use of the artillery. At five o'clock
M. de Launay, hopeless of success, desired to blow up the powder
magazine, urging that voluntary death was preferable to massacre by
the infuriated people. The vote of the majority was against this
desperate means and in favor of capitulation. Accordingly a white
flag was hoisted on one of the towers to the sound of the drum, but
it was ignored, and the firing continued amid loud shouts of "Lower
the drawbridge! Nothing will happen to you!" The Governor thereupon
handed over the keys to a subordinate officer. The mob rushed in and
the fate of the garrison was sealed. The sub-officers, who had laid
down their arms and were unable to defend themselves, were killed, and
so also were the grand old Swiss Guards, stalwart veterans, who were
slaughtered with but few exceptions.
In the midst of the affray, M. de Launay was seized and carried off to
the Hotel de Ville. Frenzied cries of "Hang him! Hang him!" greeted him
on the way, and the unfortunate Governor is reported to have looked
up to Heaven, saying, "Kill me. I prefer death to insults I have not
deserved." They now fell upon him from all sides with bayonet, musket
and pike, and as a dragoon passed, he was called upon to cut off the
victim's head. This man, Denot (whose own account has been followed
in this description), essayed first with a sword, then completed the
decapitation with his knife. The severed head was paraded through
Paris till nightfall on a pike. This was the first of many similar
atrocities. The people, without restraint, became intoxicated with
brutal exultation. The wildest orgies took place, and the wine shops
were crowded with drunken desperadoes, who were the heroes of the hour.
The now defenceless castle was visited by thousands to witness its
final destruction. Numbers of carriages passed before it or halted to
watch the demolition as the stones were thrown down from its towers
amid clouds of dust. Ladies, fashionably dressed, and dandies of the
first water mingled with the half-naked workmen, and were now jeered
at, now applauded. The most prominent personages, great authors and
orators, celebrated painters, popular actors and actresses, nobles,
courtiers and ambassadors assembled to view the scene of old France
expiring and new France in the throes of birth.
The wreck and ruin of the Bastile were speedily accomplished. The
people were undisputed masters, and they swarmed over the abased
stronghold, filling it from top to bottom. "Some threw the guns from
the battlements into the ditch; others with pickaxes and hammers
labored to undermine and destroy the towers. These smashed in
furniture, tore and dispersed all the books, registers and records;
those laid prompt hands on anything they fancied. Some looted the rooms
and carried off what they pleased. Strict search was made through the
Bastile for prisoners to set free, yet the cells were for the most part
empty. The committals during this last reign had not exceeded 190 for
the whole period, and when it capitulated only seven were in custody.
Gruesome rumors prevailed that several still lingered underground, in
deep subterranean cells; but none were found, nor any skeletons, when
the whole edifice was pulled down."
This demolition was voted next year, 1790, by the committee of the
Hotel de Ville, which ordered that "the antique fortress too long the
terror of patriotism and liberty" should be utterly razed to its very
foundations. The workmen set to work with so much expedition that in a
little more than three months a portion of the materials was offered
for sale. A sharp competition ensued at the auction, and the stones
were fashioned into mementoes, set in rings, bracelets and brooches,
and fetched high prices. The contractors for demolition made a small
fortune by the sale of these trinkets.
Napoleon at first intended to erect his great Arc de Triomphe upon
the site of the Bastile, but changed his mind and selected the place
where it now stands. The Place de la Bastile remained for forty years
a wilderness--in summer a desert, in winter a swamp. The revolution of
1830, which placed Louis Philippe upon the throne of France, was not
accomplished without bloodshed, and it was decided to raise a monument
to those who lost their lives on this somewhat unimportant occasion.
The result was the elegant column, which every visitor to Paris may
admire to-day in the Place de la Bastile.
Vincennes, the second State prison of Paris, survived the Terror and
exists to this day converted into a barracks for artillery. A portion
of the Temple, the especial stronghold of the Knights Templars already
described, still existed in part when the Revolution came. Strange to
say, its demolition had been contemplated by the Government of Louis
XVI, and it had already partly disappeared when the storm broke,
and rude hands were laid upon the luckless sovereign who became a
scapegoat, bearing the accumulated sins of a long line of criminal
and self-indulgent monarchs. When Louis and his family fell into the
power of the stern avengers of many centuries of wrong doing, they
were hurried to the Temple and imprisoned in the last vestige of the
fortress palace. It stood quite isolated and alone. All had been razed
to the ground but the donjon tower, to which was attached a small strip
of garden enclosed between high walls. This became the private exercise
ground of the fallen royalties. The King occupied the first floor of
the prison and his family the second floor. The casements were secured
with massive iron bars, the windows were close shuttered so that
light scarcely entered, and those within were forbidden to look out
upon the world below. The staircase was protected by six wicket gates,
each so low and narrow that it was necessary to stoop and squeeze to
get through. Upon the King's incarceration a seventh wicket was added
with an iron bar fixed at the top of the staircase, always locked and
heavily barred. The door opening directly into the King's chamber was
lined with iron.
Louis was never left alone. Two guards were constantly with him day
and night, as is the rule to this day with condemned malefactors in
France. They sat with him in the dining-room when at meals and slept
in the immediate neighborhood of his bedroom. His guards were in the
last degree suspicious, and he endured many indignities at their hands.
No whispering was allowed, not even with his wife and children. If he
spoke to his valet, who slept in his room at night, it must be audibly,
and the King was constantly admonished to speak louder. No writing
materials were allowed him at first. He was forbidden to use pens,
ink and paper until he was arraigned before the National Convention.
But he was not denied the solace of books, and read and re-read his
favorite authors. In Latin he preferred Livy, Cæsar, Horace, Virgil. In
French he preferred books of travel. For a time he was supplied with
newspapers, but his gaolers disliked his too great interest in the
progress of the Revolution, and the news of the day was withheld from
him. His reading became the more extensive and it was calculated on the
eve of his death that he had read through 257 volumes during the five
months and seven days of his captivity in the Temple.
The daily routine of his prison life was monotonously repeated. He
rose early and remained at his prayers till nine o'clock, at which
hour his family joined him in the breakfast room as long as this was
permitted. He ate nothing at that hour but made it a rule to fast till
midday dinner. After breakfast he found pleasant employment in acting
as schoolmaster to his children. He taught the little Dauphin Latin and
geography, while the Queen, Marie Antoinette, instructed their daughter
and worked with her needle. Dinner was at one o'clock. The table was
well supplied, but the King ate sparingly and drank little, the Queen
limiting herself to water with her food. Meat was regularly served,
even on Fridays, for religious observances no more controlled his
keepers, and the King would limit himself to fast diet by dipping his
bread in a little wine and eating nothing else. The rest of the day was
passed in mild recreation, playing games with the children till supper
at nine o'clock, after which the King saw his son to bed in the little
pallet prepared by his own hands.
The time drew on in sickening suspense, but Louis displayed the
unshaken fortitude of one who could rise above almost intolerable
misfortune. Insult and grievous annoyance were heaped upon his
devoted head. His valet was changed continually so that he might have
no faithful menial by his side. The most humiliating precautions were
taken against his committing suicide--not a scrap of metal, not even a
penknife or any steel instrument was suffered to be taken in to him.
His food was strictly tested and examined; the prison cook tasted
every dish under the eyes of a sentry, to guard against the admixture
of poison. The most horrible outrage of all was when the bloodthirsty
_sans-culottes_ thrust in at his cell window the recently severed and
still bleeding head of one of the favorites of the court, the Princess
de Lamballe.
We may follow out the dreadful story to its murderous end. Years of
tyrannous misgovernment in France, innumerable deeds of blood and
cruel oppression, such as have been already presented in this volume,
culminated in the sacrifice of the unhappy representative of a system
to which he succeeded and innocently became responsible for. The bitter
wrongs endured for centuries by a downtrodden people, goaded at length
to the most sanguinary reprisals, were avenged in the person of a
blameless ruler. Louis XVI was a martyr beyond question; but he only
expiated the sins of his truculent and ferocious forerunners, who had
no pity, no mercy, no compassion for their weak and helpless subjects.
Louis' trial, under a parody of justice, and his execution amid the
hideous gibes of a maddened, merciless crowd, was the price paid by
the last of the French kings, for years of uncontrolled and arbitrary
authority.
The day of arraignment, so long and painfully anticipated, came as
a sudden surprise. On Monday, December 10th, 1793, the captive King
when at his prayers was startled by the beating of drums and the
neighing of horses in the courtyard below the Donjon. He could not
fix his attention on the morning lesson to his son, and was playing
with him idly when the visit of the Mayor of Paris roused him and
summoned him by the name of Louis Capet to appear at the bar of the
Convention. He then heard the charges against him, and the day passed
in mock proceedings of the tribunal. The King's demeanor was brave, his
countenance unappalled by the tumultuous outbursts that often came from
the audience in the galleries. As the judges could come to no agreement
on the first day, the proceedings were declared "open," to be continued
without intermission. For three more days the stormy debates lasted and
still the Convention hesitated to pass the death sentence on the King.
In the end it was carried by a majority of five.
Louis XVI bore himself like a brave man to the last. He addressed a
farewell letter to the Convention in which he said, "I owe it to my
honor and to my family not to subscribe to a sentence which declares me
guilty of a crime of which I cannot accuse myself." When he was taken
to execution from the Temple and first saw the guillotine, he is said
to have shuddered and shrank back, but quickly recovering himself he
stepped out of the carriage with firmness and composure and, calmly
ascending the scaffold, went to his death like a brave man.
The Bastile was gone, but the need for prisons was far greater under
the reign of liberty, so-called, than when despotic sovereigns ruled
the land. The last of them, Louis XVI, would himself have swept away
the Bastile had he been spared. He had indeed razed For-l'Evèque
and the Petit Châtelet, and imported many salutary changes into the
Conciergerie out of his own private purse. During the Revolutionary
epoch many edifices were appropriated for purposes of detention, the
ordinary prisons being crowded to overflowing. In the Conciergerie
alone, while some two thousand people waited elsewhere for vacancies,
there were from one thousand to twelve hundred lodged within the walls
without distinction of age, sex or social position. Men, women and
children were herded together, as many as fifty in the space of twenty
feet. A few had beds, but the bulk of them slept on damp straw at the
mercy of voracious rats that gnawed at their clothing and would have
devoured their noses and ears had they not protected their faces with
their hands.
Within six months of 1790, 356 prisoners were confined in the prisons
of Bicêtre, Luxembourg, the Carmelites and Saint Lazare, en route to
the guillotine. St. Pélagie held 360 at one time. "In Paris," says
Carlyle, "are now some twelve prisons, in France some forty-four
thousand." Lamartine's figures for Paris are higher. He gives the
number of prisons as eighteen, into which all the members of the
Parliament, all the receivers-general, all the magistrates, all the
nobility and all the clergy were congregated to be dragged thence to
the scaffold. Four thousand heads fell in a few months. A number of
simple maidens, the eldest only eighteen, who had attended a ball at
Verdun when it was captured by the Prussians, were removed to Paris and
executed. All the nuns of the Convent of Montmartre were guillotined,
and next day the venerable Abbé Fenelon. In September, 1792, there was
an indiscriminate massacre, when five thousand suspected persons were
torn from their homes and either slaughtered on the spot or sent to
impromptu prisons. That of the Abbaye ran with blood, where 150 Swiss
soldier prisoners were murdered at one sweep. The details of these
sanguinary scenes are too terrible to print. Every prison provided its
quota of victims--La Force 80, the great Châtelet 220, and 290 from the
Conciergerie.
"At Bicêtre," says Thiers, in his history of the Revolution, "the
carnage was the longest, the most sanguinary, the most terrible. This
prison was the sink for every vice, the sewer of Paris. Everyone
detained in it was killed. It would be impossible to fix the number of
victims, but they have been estimated at six thousand. Death was dealt
out through eight consecutive days and nights; pikes, sabres, muskets
did not suffice for the ferocious assassins, who had recourse to guns."
Another authority, Colonel Munro, the English diplomatist, reported to
Lord Grenville that Bicêtre was attacked by a mob with seven cannon,
which were loaded with small stones and discharged promiscuously into
the yards crowded with prisoners. Three days later, he writes: "The
massacre only ended yesterday and the number of the victims may be
gathered from the time it took to murder them." He puts the total at
La Force and Bicêtre at seven thousand, and the victims were mostly
madmen, idiots and the infirm.
The picture of these awful times is lurid and terrible, and brings
the prevailing horror vividly before us. The prisons of Paris were
thirty-six in number, all of large dimensions, with ninety-six
provisional gaols. In the French provinces the latter were forty
thousand in number, and twelve hundred more were regularly filled with
a couple of hundred inmates. The most cruel barbarities were everywhere
practised. Prisoners were starved and mutilated so that they might
be driven into open revolt and justify their more rapid removal by
the guillotine. Paris sent 2,600 victims to the scaffold in one year.
In the provincial cities the slaughter was wholesale. Lyons executed
1,600, Nantes, 1,971, and a hundred were guillotined or shot daily.
Many were women, some of advanced age and infirm. At Angers, to
disencumber the prisons, 400 men and 360 women were beheaded in a few
days. Wholesale massacres were perpetrated in the fusillades of Toulon
and the drownings of Nantes, which disposed of nearly five thousand
in all. Taine says that in the eleven departments of the west half of
France a million persons perished, and the murderous work was performed
in seventeen months.
Of a truth the last state of France was worse than the first, and
the sufferings endured by the people at the hands of irresponsible
autocracy were far outdone by the new atrocities of the bloodthirsty
revolutionaries in mad vindication of past wrongs.
END OF VOLUME III.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including some inconsistent hyphenation. Some minor
corrections of spelling have been made.