THE BASTILLE.
Absolute Power of the King.--_Lettres de Cachet._--The
Bastille.--Cardinal Balue.--Harancourt.--Charles of
Armanac.--Constant de Renville.--Duke of Nemours.--Dungeons
of the Bastille.--_Oubliettes._--Dessault.--M. Massat.--M.
Catalan.--Latude.--The Student.--Apostrophe of Michelet.
The monarchy was now so absolute that the king, without any regard to
law, had the persons and the property of all his subjects entirely at
his disposal. He could confiscate any man's estate. He could assign any
man to a dungeon for life without trial and even without accusation. To
his petted and profligate favorites he was accustomed to give sealed
writs, _lettres de cachet_, whose blanks they could fill up with any
name they pleased. With one of these writs the courtiers could drag
any man who displeased them to one of the dungeons of the Bastille,
where no light of the sun would ever gladden his eyes again. Of these
sealed writs we shall speak hereafter. They were the most appalling
instruments of torture despotism ever wielded.
_The Bastille._ At the eastern entrance of Paris stood this
world-renowned fortress and prison. In gloomy grandeur its eight towers
darkened the air, surrounded by a massive wall of stone nine feet thick
and a hundred feet high. The whole was encircled by a ditch twenty-five
feet deep and one hundred and twenty feet wide. The Bastille was an
object exciting universal awe. No one could ever pass beneath its
shadow without thinking of the sighs which ceaselessly resounded
through all its vaults. It was an ever-present threat, the great
upholder of despotic power, with its menace appalling even the boldest
heart. It is easy to brave death from the bullet or the guillotine;
but who can brave the doom of Cardinal Balue, who, for eleven years,
was confined in an iron cage, so constructed that he could find no
possible position for repose; or the fate of Harancourt, who passed
fifteen years in a cage within the Bastille, whose iron bars required
in their riveting the labors of nineteen men for twenty days? To be
thus torn from wife, children, and home, and to be consigned for life
to the unearthly woe of such a doom must terrify even the firmest soul.
It is painful to dwell upon these details, but they must be known in
explanation of the scenes of violence and blood to which they finally
gave birth.
Charles of Armanac, for no crime whatever of his own, but because
his _brother_ had offended Charles XI., was thrown into prison. For
fourteen years he lingered in the dungeon, until his reason was
dethroned and his spirit was bewildered and lost in the woes of the
maniac. Constant de Renville, a Norman gentleman, was accused, while
in exile in Holland, of writing a satirical poem against France. For
eleven years he was immured in one of the most loathsome dungeons of
the Bastille. He appears to have been a man of true piety, and upon
his release wrote an account of the horrors of his prison-house, which
thrilled the ear of Europe.
The Duke of Nemours was accused of an intrigue against Louis XI. He
was dragged from the presence of his wife, exciting in her such terror
that she fell into convulsions and died. After two years' imprisonment
he was condemned to be executed. A scaffold was erected with openings
beneath the planks, and his three children were placed beneath the
planks, bareheaded, clothed in white robes, and with their hands bound
behind their backs, that the blood of their beheaded father might
drop upon them, and that his anguish might be increased by witnessing
the agony of his children. The fearful tragedy being over, these
tender children, the youngest of whom was but five years of age, were
again locked up in one of the gloomiest vaults of the Bastille, where
they remained for five years. Upon the death of Louis XI. they were
released. The two eldest, however, emaciate with privation and woe,
soon died. The youngest alone survived.
Imagination can not conceive of an abode more loathsome than some of
these horrible dens. The cold stone walls, covered with the mould of
ages, were ever dripping with water. The slimy floor swarmed with
reptiles and all kinds of vermin who live in darkness and mire. A
narrow slit in the wall, which was nine feet thick, admitted a few
straggling rays of light, but no air to ventilate the apartment where
corruption was festering. A little straw upon the floor or upon a plank
supported by iron bars fixed in the wall afforded the only place for
repose. Ponderous double doors, seven inches thick and provided with
enormous locks and bolts, shut the captive as effectually from the
world and from all knowledge of what was passing in the world as if
he were in his grave. His arrest was frequently conducted so secretly
that even his friends had no knowledge of what had become of him; they
could make no inquiries at the gloomy portals of the Bastille, and the
unhappy captive was left to die unknown and forgotten in his dungeon.
If by any happy chance he was liberated, he was first compelled to take
an oath never to repeal what he had seen, or heard, or suffered within
the walls of the Bastille.
Thus any person who became obnoxious to the king or any of his
favorites was immediately transferred to these dungeons of despair.
Cardinal Richelieu filled its cells with the victims of his tyranny.
The captive immediately received the name of his cell, and his real
name was never uttered within the precincts of the Bastille.
The Bastille was often full to overflowing, but there were other
Bastilles in France sufficiently capacious to meet all the demands of
the most inexorable tyranny.
It is the more necessary to dwell upon these details since the Bastille
was the mailed hand with which aristocratic usurpation beat down all
resistance and silenced every murmur. The Bastille, with its massive
walls and gloomy towers and cannon frowning from every embrasure,
was the terrific threat which held France in subjection. It was the
demon soul of demoniac despotism. So awful was the terror inspired,
that frequently the victim was merely enjoined by one of the warrants
bearing the seal of the king to go himself to the dungeon. Appalled
and trembling in every nerve, he dared not for one moment disobey.
Hastening to the prison, he surrendered himself to its glooms,
despairingly hoping, by prompt obedience, to shorten the years of his
captivity.
There were vaults in the Bastille and other prisons of France called
_oubliettes_, into which the poor victim was dropped and left to die
forgotten. These were usually shaped like a bottle, with a narrow
neck and expanding beneath. In one of these tombs of massive stone,
twenty-two feet deep and seventeen or eighteen feet in diameter,
with a narrow neck through which the captive could be thrust down,
the inmate was left in Egyptian darkness amid the damp and mould of
ages, and, trampling upon the bones of those who had perished before
him, to linger through weary hours of starvation and woe until death
came to his relief. Sometimes he thus lingered for years, food being
occasionally thrown down to him.
There were twenty bastilles in France. In Paris, besides the Bastille,
there were thirty prisons, where people might be incarcerated without
sentence, trial, or even accusation. The convents were amply supplied
with dungeons. All these prisons were at the disposal of the Jesuits.
They were instruments of torture. The wretched victim, once consigned
to those cells, was enshrouded by the oblivion of the tomb. The rich
man was robbed of his wealth and taken there to be forgotten and to
die. Beauty, whose virtue bribes could not destroy, was dragged to
those apartments to minister to the lust of merciless oppressors. The
shriek of despair, smothered by walls of stone and doors of iron,
reached only the ear of God.[35]
During the reign of Louis XV. one hundred and fifty thousand of these
_lettres de cachet_ were issued, making an average of two thousand five
hundred annually.[36] The king could not refuse a blank warrant to his
mistress or to a courtier. All those who had influence at court could
obtain them. They were distributed as freely as in this country members
of Congress have distributed their postage franks. St. Florentin alone
gave away fifty thousand. These writs were often sold at a great price.
Any man who could obtain one had his enemy at his disposal. One can
hardly conceive of a more awful despotism. Such were "_the good old
times of the monarchy_," as some have insanely called them. Even during
the mild reign of Louis XVI. fourteen thousand _lettres de cachet_ were
issued. Let us enter the prison and contemplate the doom of the captive.
A gentleman by the name of Dessault offended Richelieu by refusing to
execute one of his atrocious orders. At midnight a band of soldiers
entered his chamber, tore him from his bed, and dragged him through
the dark streets to the Bastille, and there consigned him to a living
burial in one of its cold damp tombs of iron and stone. Here in silence
and solitude, deprived of all knowledge of his family, and his family
having lost all trace of him, he lingered eleven years.
"Oh, who can tell what days, what nights he spent
Of tideless, waveless, sailless, shoreless woe!"
At last his jailer ventured to inform him that Richelieu was on a dying
bed. Hoping that in such an hour the heart of the haughty cardinal
might be touched with sympathy, he wrote to him as follows:
"My lord, you are aware that for eleven years you have subjected me
to the endurance of a thousand deaths in the Bastille--to sufferings
which would excite compassion if inflicted even upon the most disloyal
subject of the king. How much more then should I be pitied, who am
doomed to perish here for disobeying an order, which, obeyed, would
have sent me to the final judgment with blood-stained hands, and would
have consigned my soul to eternal misery. Ah! could you but hear the
sobs, the lamentations, the groans which you extort from me, you
would quickly set me at liberty. In the name of the eternal God, who
will judge you as well as me, I implore you, my lord, to take pity
on my woe, and, if you wish that God should show mercy to you, order
my chains to be broken before your death-hour comes. When that hour
arrives you will no longer be able to do me justice, but will persecute
me even in your grave."
The iron-hearted minister was unrelenting, and died leaving his victim
still in the dungeon. There Dessault remained _fifty years_ after
the death of Richelieu. He was at length liberated, after having
passed sixty-one years in a loathsome cell but a few feet square. The
mind stands aghast in the contemplation of such woes. All this he
suffered as the punishment of his _virtues_. The mind is appalled in
contemplating such a doom. Even the assurance that after death cometh
the judgment affords but little relief. Michelet, an unbeliever in
Christian revelation, indignantly exclaims, "though a sworn enemy to
barbarous fictions about everlasting punishment, I found myself praying
to God to construct a hell for tyrants."
When we remember that during a single reign one hundred and fifty
thousand were thus incarcerated; that all the petted and profligate
favorites of the king, male and female, had these blank warrants
placed in their hands, which they could fill up with any name at their
pleasure; that money could be thus extorted, domestic virtue violated,
and that every man and every family was thus placed at the mercy of
the vilest minions of the court, we can only wonder that the volcano
of popular indignation did not burst forth more speedily and more
desolatingly. It is true that in many other countries of Europe the
state of affairs was equally bad, if not worse. But in France wealth
and intelligence had made great advances, while in central and northern
Europe the enslaved people were so debased by ignorance that they had
no consciousness of the rights of which they were defrauded.
The court demanded of a rich man, M. Massat, six hundred thousand
livres ($120,000). Stunned by the ruinous demand, he ventured to
remonstrate. He was dragged to the Bastille, where the vermin of his
dungeon could alone hear his murmurs. M. Catalan, another man of
wealth, after experiencing the horrors of such an imprisonment for
several months, was glad to purchase his ransom for six millions of
livres ($1,200,000).[37]
The money thus extorted was squandered in the most shameless
profligacy. The king sometimes expended two hundred thousand dollars
for a single night's entertainment at Versailles. The terrors of the
Bastille frowned down all remonstrances. A "stone doublet" was the
robe which the courtiers facetiously remarked they had prepared for
murmurers.
On the 1st of May, 1749, a gentleman of the name of Latude was arrested
by one of these _lettres de cachet_, and thrown into the Bastille. He
was then but twenty years of age, and had given offense to Madame de
Pompadour, by pretending that a conspiracy had been formed against
her life. For thirty-five years he remained in prison enduring
inconceivable horrors. In 1784, several years after the death of both
the mistress and her subject king, he was liberated and wrote an
account of his captivity. It was a tale of horror which thrilled the
ear of Europe. Eloquently, in view of the letters of Latude, Michelet
represents the people as exclaiming,
"Holy, holy Revolution, how slowly dost thou come! I, who have been
waiting for thee a thousand years in the furrows of the Middle Ages,
what! must I wait still longer? Oh, how slowly time passes! Oh, how
have I counted the hours! Wilt thou never arrive?"
A young man, in a Jesuit College, in a thoughtless hour, composed
a satirical Latin distich, making merry with the foibles of the
professors and of the king. A _lettre de cachet_ was immediately served
upon him, and for _thirty-one years_, until youth and manhood were
giving place to old age, he remained moaning in living burial in one of
the dungeons of the Bastille. One of the first acts of the Revolution
was to batter down these execrable walls and to plow up their very
foundations.
In view of the facts here revealed one can not but be amazed at the
manner in which many have spoken of the French Revolution, as if it
were merely an outburst of human depravity. "Burke had no idea," writes
De Tocqueville, "of the state in which the monarchy, he so deeply
regretted, had left us." Michelet, glowing with the indignation which
inflamed the bosoms of his fathers, exclaims, "Our fathers shivered
that Bastille to pieces, tore away its stones with bleeding hands,
and flung them afar. Afterward they seized them again, and, having
hewn them into a different form, in order that they might be trampled
under foot by the people forever, built with them the Bridge of
Revolution."[38]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 35: Historical View of French Revolution, by J. Michelet, i.,
66.]
[Footnote 36: History of the Bastille, Chambers' Miscellany.]
[Footnote 37: Old Régime, p. 191.]