THE GREAT AND LITTLE CHÂTELET, AND THE FORT-L'ÉVÊQUE.
Louis VI., called le Gros, whose reign was from 1108 to 1137, did much
to enlarge and to embellish the mean and narrow Paris of his day. He
built churches and schools both in the Cité and beyond the river, and
thanks to the lectures of Abelard his schools were famous. He built a
wall around the suburbs, and for the further defence of the Cité he set
up the two fortresses called Le Grand and Le Petit Châtelet, "at the
extremities of the bridge which united the Cité with the opposite bank."
Here was established the court of municipal justice, and here the
Provost of Paris had his residence. The prison of the Châtelet became
one of the most celebrated in Paris, and prison and fortress were not
completely demolished until 1802.
The functions of the Châtelet—_cette justice royale ordinaire à
Paris_—were great and various. It was charged in effect, says
Desmaze,[11] with the maintenance of public safety in the capital, with
the settlement of divers causes, with the repression of popular
agitations, with the ordering of corporations and trades, with the
verification of weights and measures. It punished commercial frauds,
defended "minors and married women," and kept in check the turbulent
scholars of the University. Its magistrates were fifty-six in number; it
had its four King's Counsel and its King's Procurator; its
clerk-in-chief and his host of subordinates; its receivers, bailiffs,
and ushers; its gaolers and its sworn tormentor; its "sixty special
experts"; its surgeon and his assistants, including a _sage-femme_ or
mid-wife; and its two hundred and twenty _sergents à cheval_.
Footnote 11:
_Le Châtelet de Paris._
All in all, the Châtelet was one of the most formidable powers in Paris.
The court of the Châtelet comprised four divisions, administered by
councillors who sat in rotation. The four sections were distinguished as
the _parc civil_, the _présidial_, the _chambre du conseil_, and the
_chambre criminelle_.
But the Prison of the Châtelet is our principal concern. Although, says
Desmaze, the prison was instituted for the safe-keeping and not for the
maltreatment of the accused, the law's design was too often eluded or
ignored. Much the same might be said in respect of any other prison in
Europe at that epoch. Antique papers cited by Desmaze show,
nevertheless, that Parliaments of Paris sought by successive decrees to
modify the rigour of the prisoner's lot, to restrain the cupidity of his
gaolers, and to maintain decent order within the prison. There were
provisions against gambling with dice, rules for the distribution of
alms amongst the prisoners, and penalties for those who absented
themselves from chapel. In 1425, a new _ordonnance_ fixed the scale of
fees (_geôlage_) which prisoners were to pay to the governor or head
gaoler on reception. (This ironic jest of compelling persons to pay for
the privilege of going to prison obtained for centuries in Newgate.) A
count or countess was charged ten livres, a knight banneret (_chevalier
banneret_) passed in for ten sols, a Jew or a Jewess for half that sum;
and so on to the end of the scale. There were particular injunctions as
to the registering of prisoners, and as to the mode of keeping the
prison books. The bread served out was ordered to be _de bonne qualitè_,
and not less than a pound and a half a day for each prisoner: in 1739,
the baker who supplied the Châtelet was condemned to a fine of 2000
livres for adulterating the prisoners' bread. A special ration of bread
and meat was distributed at the Châtelet on the day of the annual feast
of the confraternity of drapers, and the goldsmiths of Paris gave a
dinner on Easter Day to such of the prisoners as would accept their
bounty.
The deputies of the _Procureur Général_ were instructed to visit the
prison once a week, to examine and receive in private the requests and
complaints of the prisoners, and to see that the doctors did their duty
by the sick. The first Presidents of the Paris Parliament seem to have
visited the Châtelet frequently from the end of the fourteenth to the
middle of the sixteenth century.
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But there was one circumstance which, in Mediæval Paris and in the Paris
of a much later date, must have gone far to nullify all good intentions
and humane precautions of kings and parliaments alike. Under an
_ordonnance_ of July, 1319, Philippe le Long decreed that the
governorships of gaols should be sold at auction. The purchasers were,
of course, to be "respectable persons" (_bonnes gens_), who should
pledge their word to deal humanely by (_de bien traiter_) the prisoners;
but of what use were such provisos? In no circumstances, indeed, could a
saving clause of any description ensure the proper administration of a
prison the governor of which had bought the right to make private gain
out of his prisoners. For this was what the selling of gaolerships came
to. Having paid for his office (having bought it, moreover, over the
heads of other bidders), the governor recouped himself by fleecing his
wealthy prisoners and by stinting or starving his poorer ones. It was no
worse in France than elsewhere; until Howard demanded reform, prisoners
in Newgate were plundered right and left under a similar system, and
those who could not pay the illegal fees of the governor and his
subordinates were lodged in stinking holds, and fed themselves as they
could.
We shall see what the prisons of the Châtelet and the Fort-l'Évêque were
like amid the luxuries and refinements which surrounded them in the
eighteenth century. An _ordonnance_ of 1670 had enjoined that the
prisons should be kept in a wholesome state, and so administered that
the prisoners should suffer nothing in their health. Never, says
Desmaze, was a decree so miserably neglected.
What are the facts? He quotes from an "anonymous eighteenth-century
manuscript" ("by a magistrate") entitled: _Projet concernant
l'établissement_ _de nouvelles Prisons dans la Capitale_. The
Fort-l'Évêque and the Châtelet are turned inside out for such an
inspection as Howard would have made with a gust.
In the court or principal yard of Fort-l'Évêque, thirty feet long by
eighteen wide, from four to five hundred prisoners were confined. The
prison walls were so high that no air could circulate in the yard; the
prisoners were "choked by their own miasma." The cells "were more like
holes than lodgings"; and there were some under the steps of the
staircase, six feet square, into which five prisoners were thrust. Other
cells, in which it was barely possible to stand upright, received no
light but from the general yard. The cells in which certain prisoners
were kept at their private charge were scarcely better. Worst of all
were the dens belowground. These were on a level with the river, water
filtered in through the arches the whole year round, and even in the
height of summer the sole means of ventilation was a slit above the door
three inches in width. Passing before one of the subterranean cells, it
was as though one were smitten by fire (_on est frappé comme d'un coup
de feu_). They gave only on to the dark and narrow galleries which
surrounded them. The whole prison was in a state of dilapidation,
threatening an immediate ruin.
The Châtelet was "even more horrible and pestilential." The prison
buildings, having no external opening, received air only from above;
there was thus "no current, but only, as it were, a stationary column of
air, which barely allowed the prisoners to breathe." This is far from a
realisation of the _ordonnance_ of 1670! Like the Fort-l'Évêque, the
Châtelet had its horrors of the pit. Dulaure[12] has a curious passage
on the subject. It appears, says one of the best of the historians of
Paris, that prisoners were let down into a dungeon called _la fosse_, as
a bucket is lowered into a well; here they sat with their feet in water,
unable to stand or to lie, "and seldom lived beyond fifteen days."
Another of these pits, known as _fin d'aise_ (a name more bodeful than
the Little Ease of old Newgate), was "full of filth and reptiles"; and
Dulaure adds that the mere names of most of the Châtelet cells were
"frightfully significant."
Footnote 12:
_Histoire de Paris._
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The Provost of Paris, rendering justice in the King's name, took
cognisance of all ordinary causes, of capital crimes, and of petty
offences. His officers arrested and imprisoned "all manner of criminals,
vagabonds, and disturbers of the public peace." In the reign of
Philippe-Auguste, he was charged with the duty of "bringing to justice
the Jews" who at that epoch were "accused of seeking to convert
Christians to Judaism, of taking usurious interest, and of profaning the
sacred vessels which the churches gave them in pledge." After the King,
said Pasquier, the Provost of Paris was the most powerful man in the
kingdom.
The headsman of Paris depended on the jurisdiction of the Châtelet.
There was a small chamber in the prison called the _réduit aux
gehennes_, where, when an execution was to take place, Monsieur de Paris
received the Provost's warrant. In 1418, the headsman Capeluche was
himself sentenced to be beheaded, and in the _réduit aux gehennes_ he
put the new Monsieur de Paris through his facings with the axe.
[Illustration: THE GREAT CHÂTELET.]
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An account of the sentences decreed by the Châtelet would be little less
than a history of punishment in France. The Châtelet gave reasons for
its sentences, a practice not followed by the superior courts. Terrible
were the pains and penalties decreed sometimes from beneath the
Provost's dais. Torture wrung some avowal from the frothy lips of the
accused, and then he was shrived and carried to the place of execution.
The fierce canonical law lent its ingenuity in punishment to the judges
of the Châtelet; but many of the penalties, such as hanging, beheading,
burning, whipping, mutilation, and the pillory, are found on our own
criminal registers of the same period. Coiners and forgers were boiled
alive; there is an entry of twelve livres for the purchase of a cauldron
in which to boil to death a _faux monnoyeur_. In 1390, a young female
servant, convicted of stealing silver spoons from her master, was
exposed in the pillory, suffered the loss of an ear, and was banished
from Paris and its environs, "not to return under penalty of being
buried alive." For the crime of marrying two wives, one Robert Bonneau
was sentenced to be "hanged and strangled." Geoffroy Vallée was burned,
in 1573, for the publication of a pamphlet entitled _The Heavenly
Felicity of the Christians, or the Scourge of the Faith_; and, in 1645,
a bookseller was sent to the galleys "for having printed a libel against
the Government."
Some of the old registers of the Châtelet examined by Desmaze showed
entries of charges of pocket-picking and card-sharping at public
processions, fairs, and spectacles. Little thieves defended themselves
before the magistrates in the style familiar at Bow Street to-day,—a lad
of fifteen charged with stealing handkerchiefs from pedestrians said he
had "picked up one in the street."
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The Châtelet, or rather the Little Châtelet, was the Provost's residence
until the end of the sixteenth century. In 1564, the Provost was Hugues
de Bourgueil, "distinguished for the possession of a terrific hump and a
beautiful wife." One day Parliament consigned to the cells of the Little
Châtelet a young Italian, accused of having set up in Paris a
"gambling-house and fencing-saloon," where he corrupted the morals of
the young nobility, "teaching them a thousand things unworthy of
Christians and Frenchmen."
In his quality of Italian, the prisoner, Gonsalvi by name, invoked the
protection of Catherine de Médicis. The Queen-Mother, while respecting
the decree of Parliament, recommended the young compatriot to the
Provost's particular care. De Bourgueil accordingly lodged him in his
own house, where Gonsalvi was soon on intimate terms with the family.
One night he eloped with the Provost's wife. Madame had contrived to
possess herself of the keys of the prison, thinking that if she let
loose the whole three hundred prisoners, M. le Prévôt would have a good
night's work on hand, and the course would be clear for her lover and
herself. And so it resulted; for the Provost, faithful to his duty,
despatched horse and foot after his three hundred fugitives, and let
Madame and Gonsalvi take their way.
The next day, an errant wife was missing from the Little Châtelet, but
at night the keys were turned as usual on the full contingent of three
hundred prisoners. It was the scandal of this affair, say MM. Alhoy and
Lurine, which decided the King to shift the Provost's residence from the
Châtelet to the Hôtel d'Hercule, wherein was presently installed
Nantouillet, "successeur de ce pauvre diable de Bourgueil."
Nantouillet was not too well off, it would seem, in the Hôtel d'Hercule.
No sooner was he established there than he was bidden to prepare for the
visit of three Kings,—France, Poland, and Navarre,—who would do
themselves the pleasure of lunching with him. Nantouillet, who had just
declined to marry a cast-off mistress of the King of Poland, suspected
some scheme of vengeance on their Majesties' part; he could not,
however, refuse to spread his board for them. He spread it, and the
Kings came down and swept it bare. They swooped upon Nantouillet's
silver plate and sacked his coffers of fifty thousand francs. There was
a fierce fight in the Hôtel, but the Kings got away with the plunder. On
the following day, the First President of Parliament waited upon Charles
IX. and said that all Paris was shocked; and his Majesty in reply bade
him "not trouble himself about that." This _tableau moral_ of the period
is presented by several historians.
With such examples in the seats of Royalty, one can feel little surprise
at the charges of venality, and worse, which were brought from time to
time against the Provosts. In the reign of Philippe le Long, a certain
wealthy citizen lay under sentence of death in the Châtelet. The Provost
Henri Caperel made him a private proposal of ransom, a bargain was
struck. Dives was set free, and the Provost hanged some obscure prisoner
in his stead. Provost Hugues de Cruzy is said to have trafficked openly
at the Châtelet in much the same way, Royalty itself sharing the booty
with him. Now and again, justice took her revenge; and both Henri
Caperel and Hugues de Cruzy finished on the gallows. The noble brigand,
highwayman, and cut-throat, Jourdain de Lisle, who led a numerous band
in the fourteenth century, bought the interest of the Provost of Paris;
and the Châtelet "refused to take cognisance of his eighteen crimes, the
least of which would have brought to an ignominious death any other
criminal." A new Provost had to be appointed before Jourdain de Lisle,
tied to the tail of a horse, could be dragged through the streets of
Paris to the public gallows. He had married a niece of Pope Jean XXII.,
and when justice had been done, the curé of the church of Saint-Merri
wrote to Rome: "Scarcely had your Holiness's nephew been hanged, when,
with much pomp, we fetched him from the gibbet to our church, and there
buried him _honorablement et gratis_."
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Ordinarily, the Châtelet relied for its defence upon the archers of the
Provost's guard, a reedy support when the mob turned out in force. It
was seized in 1320 by the _Pastoureaux_, a swarm of peasants who had
united themselves under two apostate priests, and who said they were
"going across the sea to combat the enemies of the faith and conquer the
Holy Land." To rescue some of their number who had been arrested and
thrown into the Châtelet, they marched on that place, broke open the
gaol, and effected a general delivery of the prisoners, as Madame de
Bourgueil was to do some two centuries later.
Between the conflicting powers of the Châtelet, as represented by the
Provost of Paris, and the University, which was accountable only to the
ecclesiastical tribunals, and intensely jealous of any interference by
the secular arm, a long and bitter struggle was sustained. In 1308,
Provost Pierre Jumel hanged a young man for theft on the highway.
Unfortunately for Jumel, this was a scholar of the University, and the
clergy of Paris went in procession to the Châtelet and briefly harangued
the Provost: "Come out of that, Satan, accursed one! Acknowledge thy
sin, and seek pardon at the holy altar, or expect the fate of Dathan and
Abiram, whom the earth swallowed." While they were thus engaged, a
messenger came from the Louvre with the announcement that the King had
sacrificed his chief magistrate to the wrathful demands of the clergy
and University. For a like encroachment on the sacred privileges of the
University, Guillaume de Thignonville was degraded from his office of
Provost, led to the gallows, and there compelled to take down and kiss
the corpses of two students whom he had hanged for robbery.
In 1330, Hugues Aubriot, in his capacity of Provost, lent the shelter of
the Châtelet to a party of Jews flying for their lives before the mob.
This service to the causes of humanity and public order renewed against
the Provost an ancient enmity of the clerics and University, by whom, in
the words of MM. Alhoy and Lurine, "it was determined that Aubriot
should be ruined." Condemned by the ecclesiastical tribunal "for the
crime of impiety and heresy," he was ordered to be "preached against and
publicly mitred in front of Notre-Dame." On his knees, he demanded
absolution of the bishop, and promised an offering of candles for his
iniquity in befriending the Jews. "His crimes were read aloud by the
Inquisitor of the Faith, and the bishop consigned him to perpetual
imprisonment, with the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, as
an abettor of the Jewish infidelity, and a contemner of the Christian
faith." From that, the Provost descended to an _oubliette_ of the
Fort-l'Évêque.
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The Fort-l'Évêque, in the Rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was one of the
two prisons of the Bishop of Paris. Its _oubliettes_ were subterranean
dungeons, separated from one another by stout timbers. The prisoners,
attached to a common chain, were fastened to the wall by iron rings, in
such a manner that they could not approach one another. They never saw
their gaolers, and their meagre rations were handed in through a narrow
wicket in the door. Hugues Aubriot occupied his _oubliette_ for many
years. In the insurrection of the _Maillotins_ he was discovered by the
rioters and set free. In 1674, the Bishop's jurisdiction was reunited
with that of the Châtelet, but the prison of the Fort-l'Évêque was in
existence until 1780.
Dulaure says that the penalties imposed by the episcopal court were
inflicted in various places, according to the gravity of the offence.
Sentences of hanging or burning were carried out beyond the precincts of
Paris; but if it were "a mere bagatelle of cutting off the culprit's
ears," justice was done at the Place du Trahoir.
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In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Fort-l'Évêque was the
prison for "debtors and refractory comedians"; and about a hundred years
later, in 1765, it received the entire company of the Comédie-Française.
The episode is one of the oddest in the history of the House of Molière.
A second-rate member of the famous troupe, named Dubois, who had been
under medical treatment for some malady, refused to pay the doctor's
bill. Mademoiselle Clairon, the tragic actress, delicate on the point of
honour, summoned the rest of the company, and it was resolved to appeal
to M. de Richelieu, _gentilhomme de la chambre_. This functionary
treated it as "an affair of vagabonds," and told the company to settle
it amongst themselves. Dubois, accordingly, was put out of the troupe.
His daughter carried her father's grievance and her own charms (_elle
met en œuvre tous ses charmes_) to the Duc de Fronsac, through whose
intervention she succeeded in forcing for Dubois the doors of the
Comédie-Française. But the company were resolved not to act with him
again, and put a sudden stop to the performances of that very successful
piece, the _Siège de Calais_. De Sartines, of the police, now came
forward in the pretended interests of the public, and ordered the arrest
of Dauberval, Lekain, Molé, Brisard, Mademoiselle Clairon, and others of
the company. The public, however, were on the side of the players, and
Mademoiselle Clairon and her fellows had a semi-royal progress to the
Fort-l'Évêque; roses and rhetoric were showered on them, and _les plus
nobles dames de Paris_ disputed the honour of attending the tragédienne
to the threshold of the prison. Their captivity lasted, nevertheless,
for five and twenty days; but the final victory was with the players,
for Dubois was dismissed with a pension, and appeared no more on the
stage of the Théâtre Français.
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Fêted every day in her chamber in the ecclesiastical prison—for there
was scarcely question of an _oubliette_ in her case,—receiving the
visits of noblemen and dames of fashion, artists, wits, and poets,
Mademoiselle Clairon had small leisure to bethink her that, under the
litter of flowers pressed by her dainty feet, lay the bones of whole
generations of victims of the church's tyranny; victims of those too
familiar charges of magic, heresy, and sacrilege.
Yet (I quote again from MM. Alhoy and Lurine) had she in the still night
lent a listening ear to those grey walls, the wailing murmurs of the
phantoms of Fort-l'Évêque might have chilled her heart:—
"We expiated in the _oubliettes_ of the Fort-l'Évêque, under the
reign of Francis I., the wrong of believing in God without believing
also in the infallibility of the Pope. Look ... there is blood on
our shrouds!"
"We are two poor Augustine monks. They accused us, in Charles VI.'s
time, of being idolaters, invokers of evil spirits, utterers of
profane words. They accused us of making a pact with the powers
below; our only crime was believing that our science might heal the
madness of the King. Look ... there is blood on our shrouds!"
"I am the sorcerer of the château of Landon. I promised an Abbé of
Citeaux to find, by magic, a sum of money that had been stolen from
him. Alas! it was a dear jest for me; torture, and death on the
Place de Grève. Look ... there is blood upon my shroud!"
"I am a poor madman. I thought that heaven had given me the glorious
mission of sustaining on earth the servants of Jesus Christ. I went
humbly to the bishop and said: The envoy of God salutes you! They
brought me here to an _oubliette_, and I left it only with the
headsman. Look ... there is blood on my shroud!"
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The factions of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons cost Paris a river of
blood in the early years of the fifteenth century, and the massacre of
the Armagnacs in May-August, 1418, was a terrible affair. On the first
day, five hundred and twenty-two were put to the sword by the
Bourguignons in the streets of the capital. Every Armagnac, or suspected
Armagnac, was laid hold of, and the prisons overflowed with the
captives. The Bourguignons assailed the Châtelet, "and the threshold of
the prison became the scaffold of fifteen hundred unfortunates." The
attack upon the Châtelet was renewed by the Bourguignons in August; and
the Provost of Paris, powerless to check or even to stem their fury,
bade them at length "Do what they would": _Mes amis, faites_ _ce qu'il
vous plaira_. This time the prisoners organised a defence, and a regular
siege began. On the north side of the fortress was a lofty terrace,
crowning the wall, so to say, and running the length of the prison. Here
the imprisoned Armagnacs threw up barricades, but the Bourguignons
reared scaling-ladders, and made light of climbing the walls, sixty feet
in height. The attack on the one side and the defence on the other were
long, bloody, and desperate; but the advantage was with the assailants.
Foiled at this point and that, they fired the prison; and where the
flames did not penetrate, they hacked their way in, and drove their game
to take refuge on the heights. As the fire soared upwards, the Armagnacs
flung themselves over the walls, and were caught upon the pikes of the
Burgundians, "who finished them with axe and sword."
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The name of Louis XI., which is writ large in the histories of the
Bastille and the Dungeon of Vincennes, attaches to one curious episode
in the history of the Châtelet. In 1477, on the day of the festival of
Saint Denis, Louis "took the singular fancy of giving their liberty" to
the prisoners of the Great and Little Châtelet. A chronicler of this
fact, evidently puzzled, "hastens to add" that at that epoch the two
Châtelets "held merely robbers, assassins, and vagabonds. Not even to
honour the memory of Saint Denis could Louis bring himself to liberate
his political prisoners in Vincennes and the Bastille." It was in Louis
XI.'s reign that one Chariot Tonnelier, a hosier turned brigand, lying
in the Châtelet on a score of charges, and dreading lest the Question
should weaken him into betrayal of his companions, snatched a knife from
a guard at the door of the torture chamber, and deliberately cut his
tongue out.
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The Fort-l'Évêque and the Little Châtelet were suppressed in 1780, in
virtue of an _ordonnance_ of Louis XVI., countersigned by Necker; and
the prisoners were transferred to La Force. The buildings, which were
even then in a state of ruin, were thrown down two years later. The
Great Châtelet existed as a prison for another decade, and the fortress
itself was not demolished until 1802-4. A triumphal column replaced the
ancient dungeon of the Provosts of Paris.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]