THE BASTILLE.
"... if once it were left in the power of any, the highest,
magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers
thought proper (as in France is daily practised by the
Crown), there would soon be an end of all other rights and
immunities."—BLACKSTONE.
After enduring for centuries an oppression as rigorous and as cruel as
any nation had ever been subjected to, this idea dawned, almost in an
hour, upon the mind of France. It did not matter that the King who
occupied the throne at this time was, if not at all a wise one, at least
one of the most humane, and distinctly the best intentioned, and the
only French sovereign who had ever really cared to soften the lot of his
prisoners. He did not soften their lot in the least, because he was weak
and indolent, and in the hands of the least honest of his ministers; but
his predecessors, almost without exception, had lent their efforts or
their sanction to the support of that old malignant policy, descended
from the feudal times, that prison was properly a place of torment. The
quick aspiration of liberty, born at last of a wretchedness that was
past enduring, inflamed the heart of the whole nation. It took Paris, as
it were, by the throat. What thing in Paris opposed itself most visibly
to the "natural rights" and liberty of man? Paris said: The Bastille! Up
then, and let the Bastille go down. They went there, a very ordinary
crowd of rioters, and overturned it. The Bastille, which the
superstitious fears of ages had thought impregnable, fell like an old
ruined house (which it was) in a midsummer gust. But the fall of it
shook Europe to its foundations, and before the dust had vanished, it
was seen that the Bastille had carried with it the throne of France, and
every shred and vestige of the system which that throne represented.
This then must have been the most terrible prison in Europe? Not at all.
It was the most renowned; and, as a prison, no other name is ever likely
to be greater than, or as great as, the Bastille; but at the time of its
destruction it was no more than the shadow of its ancient self, and at
no period of its existence was it a worse place than any other of the
old State prisons of France. Vincennes was quite as cruel a hold as the
Bastille had ever been; there were, I think, uglier dens in the Châtelet
and in Bicêtre; and the torture chamber of the Conciergerie had perhaps
witnessed more inhuman spectacles than any other prison in Paris.
[Illustration: THE BASTILLE.]
But when, in July, 1789, a prison was to be destroyed, as the chief
symbol of the tyranny of kings, it was upon the Bastille that Paris
marched, as by instinct. Why was this prison abhorred above all the
rest? Mainly because what had once been a fact had survived as a
tradition,—that the master of the Bastille was the master of France; and
the master of the Bastille was, of course, the King. In its beginnings,
the Bastille was merely a gate of Paris, as Newgate was originally
nothing more than the New Gate of London. It came next to be a very
common little fort, for the defence of the Seine against the English and
other pirates. But it grew by-and-bye to be a stout castle and prison,
over against the royal residence of Vincennes; and when, on the approach
of an insurgent force, the King could signal from his window at
Vincennes to his commandant in the Bastille, just opposite, and the guns
of both places could be primed in time, the plain between them was
secure. The Bastille came thus to hold a place quite distinct from that
of any other prison in Paris, and one which threatened in a much higher
degree the liberties of the citizens. It was considered impossible of
capture; and while the King's standard shook over the great towers of
the Bastille, Paris and France were secure to him; and, in the popular
imagination, his principal stronghold was also his principal prison. In
this point of view, and it was the popular point of view, the Bastille
was a double menace to Paris. It was the King's best means of keeping
importunate subjects at arm's length, and it was also the most
redoubtable of the prisons he could shut them in. Both ideas were to
some extent erroneous. The Bastille, considered as a fort, was never as
formidable as its name; and, as a prison, the Kings of France seldom
favoured it above the Dungeon of Vincennes.
But let us seek now to put the Bastille in its proper and exact place
amongst the historic gaols of France. In recent years, one or two French
writers of distinction, and others of no distinction whatever, have come
forward as the apologists of this too famous keep, who would persuade us
that it was not only a very tolerable sort of prison, but even, in
cases, a rather desirable place of retirement, for meditation, and
philosophical pursuits. M. Viollet-le-Duc has assured us, quite gravely,
that the famed _oubliettes_ (the bottoms of which were shaped like sugar
loaves, so that prisoners might have no resting-place for their feet)
were merely ice-houses! It is not denied that these cells existed, and
those who care to believe that a Mediæval architect built them under the
towers of the Bastille as store-chambers for ice to cool the governor's
or the prisoners' wine, are entirely welcome to do so. These were
amongst the places of torment in which Louis XI. kept the Armagnac
princes, who were taken out twice a week to be scourged in the presence
of Governor l'Huillier, and "every three months to have a tooth pulled
out." The author of _The Bastille Unveiled_ has attempted to explain
away the iron cage in which the same King confined Cardinal Balue for
eleven years, and which, I believe, is still in existence. An English
apologist (whose work extends to two bulky volumes) says that "prisoners
were less harshly treated in the Bastille than in other French and
English prisons"; that "the accusations of prisoners having been
tortured in the Bastille have no serious foundation"; that the majority
of the chambers "were comfortable enough"; that one of the courtyards
"resembled a college playground, in which prisoners received their
friends, and indulged in all kinds of games." We hear of tables which
were so sumptuously furnished (three bottles of wine a day, amongst
other comforts) that the prisoners complained to the governor that he
was feeding them too well. We are presented with printed rules to show
how carefully the sick were to be attended to, and what were to be their
ghostly ministrations in their final hours. We are told, without a
smile, that it was really not so easy for people to get into the
Bastille as the world in general has supposed; and that, once there,
their situation was not too helpless, inasmuch as the governor must
present to the minister every day a written report upon the conditions
of the prison. Under the pen of this or the other indulgent writer, the
horrors of the Bastille have vanished as by process of magic.
Unfortunately, the horrors are, with quite unimportant exceptions, facts
of history.
The government of the Bastille was precisely similar to the government
of the other State prisons of France. Edicts notwithstanding, these
prisons were practically the _property_ of their successive governors.
To this unwritten rule the Bastille was not an exception. The governor
in possession at this or that epoch might or might not be the creature
of the minister through whose interest he had bought his office at a
sometimes exorbitant price; it was, at all events, understood that,
whatever limits were set to his authority, he was fully entitled to get
back his purchase money; and this, as had been shown, he could seldom do
except by villainously ill-using his prisoners. There were governors who
did not do this, and then indeed came a blessed period for the
prisoners. Then food was good and plentiful, the faggots were not
stinted in the fire-place, the beds were not rotten and lousy, the foul
linen went to the wash, and the threadbare clothes were replaced, the
cells were made proof against wind and rain, the governor was prompt in
looking into grievances, and all went as well for the prisoner as it was
possible that it should go in a gaol of old Paris. But when a new
Pharaoh arose, who was avaricious, and a tyrant, and a bully, and who
had bought his prison as a speculative investment, then the clouds
gathered again, and the wind blew again from the east, and the old
tribulations began afresh. Now, as the records of all the French prisons
of history leave no doubt as to the fact the bad governors were many,
and the good governors were few, and that within his prison walls the
governor was only less than omnipotent, readers of these pages will not
expect often to find prisoners of the Bastille regaling themselves with
three bottles of wine a day, or asking to have their tables ordered more
plainly, or receiving the free visits of their friends, or playing at
"all kinds of games" in courtyards resembling college playgrounds.
Sprigs of the nobility and young men of family, shut up for a time for
making too free with their money, or for running away with a
ballet-dancer, had perhaps not too much to complain of in the Bastille;
there were certain prisoners of rank, too, who came off lightly; and now
and again there were other prisoners who enjoyed what were called the
"liberties of the Bastille," and who were allowed a restricted
intercourse. But the general rules for the keeping and conduct of
prisoners in the Bastille were of the severest description, and they
were carried out for the most part with inflexible rigour. Privations
and humiliations of all kinds were inflicted on them; and redress for
injuries, or for insults, or for mean and illegal annoyances, the
outcome of the governor's spleen, was not more easy to obtain in the
Bastille than in the Dungeon of Vincennes.
The statement that "it was not so easy to enter into the Bastille" is
from Ravaisson, the compiler of the _Archives de la Bastille_. He gives
his reasons, which are sufficiently curious. Incarcerations, says
Ravaisson, were accomplished with the utmost care, and the Government
insisted upon the most stringent precautions, inasmuch as, "acting with
absolute authority, it felt the danger of an uncontrolled
responsibility." Sore indeed would be the task of proving by example
that the absolute monarchy had many compunctions on this score, when
tampering with the liberties of its subjects. "Extreme care was taken to
avoid errors and abuses" in effecting incarcerations in the Bastille;
and the great safeguard was that "each _lettre de cachet_ was signed by
the King himself, and countersigned by one of his ministers!" One need
go no further than this. M. Ravaisson spent from fifteen to twenty years
in studying and arranging the archives of the Bastille, and his
knowledge of his subject must have been immense. Was this the writer
from whom one would have expected the suggestion that the King and his
minister, in signing a _lettre de cachet_, took care to assure
themselves that no injustice was being done, and made themselves
immediately and personally responsible for the guilt of the victim whom
it was to consign to captivity in the Bastille? Leave aside the cases in
which the document was used to imprison a person in order that charges
or suspicions might afterwards be inquired into,—though there are
countless instances to show, (1) that no proper investigation was held,
and (2), that the clearest proofs of innocence were not always
sufficient to procure the prisoner's liberation. But what shall be said
of the cases, infinitely more numerous than these, in which no charge
was ever formulated, and in which none could have been formulated, save
some fictitious one inspired by private greed, hatred, or vengeance?
Where in these cases was that "greatest care" which "was taken to
prevent errors and abuses"? Kings and their ministers sent to the
Bastille and other prisons many thousands of prisoners who had no
justice, and who never expected justice. But these same "closed
letters," duly signed and sealed, were the instruments of imprisoning
hundreds of thousands of other persons—to whom life was sweet and
liberty was dear—in whose affairs neither King nor minister had the most
shadowy interest, and whose very names most probably they had never
heard of. During the reign of one King, Louis XV., one hundred and fifty
thousand _lettres de cachet_ were issued. For how many of those was
Louis himself responsible? They carried his signature, but is it
necessary at this day to say that the King wrote his name upon the blank
forms, which the minister distributed amongst his friends? The
lieutenant-general of police also had his blank forms at hand, in which
it was necessary only to insert the names of the victims. Wives obtained
these forms against their husbands, husbands against their wives,
fathers against their children, men-about-town against their rivals in
love, debtors against their creditors, opera-dancers against the lovers
who had slighted them. If one but had the ear of the King, or the King's
mistress, or the King's minister, or the King's chief of police, or of a
friend or a friend's friend of any of these potentates, there was no
grudge, jealousy, or enmity which one might not satisfy by means of a
_lettre de cachet_,—that instrument which was so sure a safegard against
the "errors and abuses" of imprisonment, because it carried the
signature of the King and his minister! And the cases in which these
scraps of paper were used merely for the ruin, the torment, or the
temporary defeat of a private enemy, often had the cruelest results. The
enemy and the enmity were forgotten, but the _lettre de cachet_ had not
been cancelled, and the prisoner still bided his day. Persons who had
never been convicted of crimes, and other persons who had never been
guilty of crimes, lay for years in the Bastille, forgotten and uncared
for. "There are prisoners who remain in the Bastille," said Linguet (who
spent two years there), "not because anybody is particularly anxious
that they should remain, but because they happen to be there and have
been forgotten, and there is nobody to ask for their release." Captain
Bingham, the English apologist of the Bastille, discussing the cases of
certain criminals who were arbitrarily dealt with by _lettres de
cachet_, says that in England at the present day they "would be
prosecuted according to law, and most probably committed to prison."
Very good! But is there no difference between the situation of the
criminal who, after conviction in open court, is sent to prison for a
fixed term of weeks, months, or years, and that of the "criminal" who
goes to prison uncondemned and untried, and who cannot gauge the length
of his imprisonment? Far enough from being "not so easy" to get into the
Bastille, the passage across those two drawbridges and through those
five massy gates was only too dreadfully simple for all who were
furnished against their wills with the "open sesame" of the _lettre de
cachet_.
The interior of the Bastille had nothing worse to show than has been
discovered in the chapters on Vincennes, the Châtelet, and Bicêtre.
There were, perhaps, uglier corners in the two last-named prisons than
in either of the two more famous ones. The Bastille, however, has stood
as the type, and the almost plutonic fame which it owes to romance seems
likely to endure. Romance has not been guilty of much exaggeration, but
this saving clause may be put in, that what has been written of the
Bastille might have been written with equal truth of most other
contemporary prisons. Its eight dark towers, its walls of a hundred
feet, its drawbridges, its outer and its four great inner gates, its
ditches, its high wooden gallery for the watch, and its ramparts
bristling with cannon,—these external features have been of infinite
service to romance, and romantic history. But within the walls of the
Bastille there was nothing extraordinary. Lodging was provided for about
fifty prisoners, and it was possible to accommodate twice that number.
The fifth and last gate opened into the Great Court, some hundred feet
in length and seventy in breadth, with three towers on either side. The
Well Court, about eighty feet by five and forty, lay beyond, with a
tower in the right and a tower in the left angle. Each tower had its
name; those in the Great Court were _de la Comté_, _du Trésor_, _de la
Chapelle_, _de la Bazanière_, _de la Bertaudière_, and _de la Liberté_;
those in the Well Court were the _du Coin_ and the _du Puits_. The
comely garden on the suburban side of the château was closed to all
prisoners by order of De Launay, the last governor of the Bastille, who
also forbade them the use of the fine airy platforms on the summit of
the towers. The main court was then the only exercise ground, a dreary
enclosure which Linguet describes as insufferably cold in winter ("the
north-east wind rushes through it") and a veritable oven in summer.
The _oubliettes_ have been mentioned. Besides these there were the
dungeons, below the level of the soil; dens in which there was no
protection from wind or rain, and where rats and toads abounded. The
ordinary chambers of the prisoners were situated in the towers. The
upper stories were the _calottes_ (skull-caps), residence in which seems
to have been regarded as only better than that belowground. "One can
only walk upright in the middle." The windows, barred within and
without, gave little light; there was a wretched stove in one corner
(which had six pieces of wood for its daily allowance during the winter
months), and one has no reason to doubt the statements of prisoners,
that only an iron constitution could support the extremities of heat and
cold in the _calottes_. In contrast to these, there were rooms which had
fair views of Paris and the open country. The lower chambers looked only
on the ditches; all the chambers (and the stairs) were shut in by double
doors with double bolts; and all, with the exceptions of those which a
few privileged persons were allowed to upholster at their own cost, were
furnished in the most beggarly style. But in all of these respects,
nothing was worse in the Bastille than elsewhere.
In principle, the dietary system here was the same as in other State
prisons. The King paid a liberal sum for the board of every prisoner,
but the governor contracted for the supplies, and might put into his
pocket half or three-fourths of the amount which he drew from the royal
treasury. In the Bastille, as in other prisons, there were periods when
the prisoners were fed extremely well; and in all these prisons there
were persons who, by favour of the Government or the governor, kept a
much more luxurious table than was allowed to the rest. But one must
take the scale of diet which was customary. Two meals a day were the
rule. On flesh days, the dinner consisted of soup and the meat of which
it had been made; and for supper there were "a slice of roast meat, a
ragout, and a salad." Sunday's dinner was "some bad soup, a slice of a
cow which they call beef, and four little pâtés"; supper, "a slice of
roast veal or mutton, or a little plate of haricot, in which bones and
turnips are most conspicuous, and a salad with rancid oil." On three
holidays in the year, "every prisoner had an addition made to his
rations of half a roast chicken, or a pigeon." Holy Monday was
celebrated by "a tart extraordinary." There was always or usually
dessert at dinner, which "consists of an apple, a biscuit, a few almonds
and raisins, cherries, gooseberries, or plums." Each prisoner received a
pound of bread a day, and a bottle of wine. De Launay's method of
supplying his prisoners with wine was no doubt the usual one. He had the
right of taking into his cellars about a hundred hogsheads, free of
duty. "Well," says Linguet, "what does he do? He sells his privilege to
one Joli, a Paris publican, who pays him £250 for it; and from Joli he
receives in exchange, for the prisoners' use, the commonest wine that is
sold,—mere vinegar, in fact."[23] A prisoner of the same period sums up
the matter thus: "There is no eating-house in all France where they
would not give you for a shilling a better dinner than is served in the
Bastille."
Footnote 23:
_Mémoires sur la Bastille._
Apart from all exceptional hardships and privations, the oppression of
the first months of captivity in the Bastille must have been very
terrible. The prisoner who was not certain of his fate, and who did not
know to whom he owed his imprisonment, lay under a suspense which words
are inadequate to describe. Mystery and doubt environed him; his
day-long silence and utter isolation were relieved only by the regular
visits of his gaoler. He was not allowed to see anyone from without, and
could not get leave to write or receive a letter. Nothing could be done
for him, he was told, until his examination had been concluded; and this
was sometimes delayed for weeks or months. If he were a person of some
consequence in the State, powerful enough to have enemies at Court, his
examination in the council-chamber of the Bastille was conducted in a
manner quite similar to (and probably borrowed from) that adopted by the
Inquisition. He was asked his connection with plots or intrigues which
he had never heard of; he was coaxed or menaced to denounce or betray
persons with whom perhaps he had never associated; papers were held up
before him which he was assured contained clear proofs of his guilt; and
he might be told that the King had unfortunately been inflamed against
him, and would not hear his name. If, mystified by threats, hints, and
arguments which had no meaning for him, he asked to be confronted by an
accuser or witnesses, his request was not allowed. These were the exact
methods of the Inquisition. The lieutenant of police, or the
commissioner from the Châtelet, who presided over the interrogation,
would not hesitate to tell the accused that his life was at stake, and
that if his answers were not complete and satisfactory he would be
handed over forthwith to a _commission extraordinaire_. Every device was
resorted to (says the author of the _Remarques politiques sur le château
de la Bastille_) in order to draw from the prisoner some sort of
admission or avowal which might compromise either himself or some other
person or persons in whom the Government had a hostile interest. The
examiner might say that he was authorised to promise the prisoner his
freedom, but if he allowed himself to be taken by this ruse it was
generally the worse for him; for, on the strength of the confession thus
obtained, he was told that it would be impossible to release him at
present, but every effort would be made, etc. If the ministry had reason
to suspect that the prisoner was really a dangerous character, and
involved in political intrigue, there was little hesitation in resorting
to torture.
Ravaisson says that only two kinds of torture were applied in the
Bastille; the "boot," and the torture by water. Well, these were
sufficient; but it is to be remembered that the archives of the Bastille
date only from about the middle of the seventeenth century, and it is
improbable that the _Salle de la Question_ of this prison was less
horribly equipped than that of any other. The ordeal of the "boot" needs
no description; for the torture by water, the victim was bound on a
trestle, and water was poured down his throat by the gallon, until his
sufferings became unendurable. Torture was practised in the Bastille as
long as it was practised in any other French prison; a man named Alexis
Danouilh underwent the Question there ("ordinary" and "extraordinary")
in 1783—after the date at which Louis XVI. had forbidden and abolished
it by royal edict. To so small an extent had the absolute sovereigns of
France control over the administration of their own prisons of State!
At no point in the existence of an ordinary captive of the Bastille is
there any occasion to exaggerate his pains. Such as they were, they were
very real; and scant reason is there to wonder at the bitterness, the
vehemence, and even the violence of tone which characterises the memoirs
or narratives of those who had endured them. The apologists of the
Bastille will beg us to believe that the histories of Linguet and
certain others are mendacious, have been refuted, and so forth. The
gifted, caustic Linguet, who is one of their particular bugbears, was
not the most upright man, nor the most scrupulous writer, in the France
of his day; but the essential parts of his narrative are confirmed by
the statements of a host of others. It is not because Linguet has said
that the Bastille walls, which were from seven to twelve feet thick,
were from thirty to forty feet thick (which he might quite possibly have
supposed) that we are to discredit his account, highly wrought as it is,
of the general conditions of life within the prison. It is not more
highly wrought than the accounts of other prisoners of the Bastille, the
accuracy of which has not been questioned. These other histories are
plentiful, and we are under no necessity of resting upon the
better-known narratives which, for their qualities of style or their
greater picturesqueness, have been so often reproduced. Far on into the
eighteenth century—indeed until within a few years of our own—there lay
in the Bastille victims of public or private injustice, whose
complainings, stifled in its vaulted ceilings, have sent us down a faint
but faithful echo. What of Bertin de Frateaux, who was walled in there
from 1752 until his death in 1782? What of Tavernier, who, imprisoned in
1759 (after a previous ten years' sojourn in another gaol), was
liberated only by the wreckers of the Bastille, on the 14th of July,
1789? Here, too, in 1784, lies the Genoese, Pellissery, imprisoned, in
1777, for publishing a pamphlet on the finances of Necker. Dishonourable
terms of release are offered him which he will not accept, although
"rheumatic in every joint, scorbutic, and spitting blood for fifteen
months, owing to the atrocious treatment I have had here during seven
years." Here, two years later, is Brun de la Condamine, the inventor of
an explosive bomb, which he has importuned the ministry to make test of.
After a captivity of four years and a half, enraged at the indignities
he receives, he makes a wild attempt to escape. Here, at the same
period, is Guillaume Debure, the oldest and most respected bookseller in
France, lodged in the Bastille for refusing to stamp the pirated copies
of works issued by his brethren in the trade; treated apparently like a
common malefactor, and released only on the indignant representations of
the whole bookselling fraternity of Paris. Thus lightly was the liberty
of the subject held, even while the Revolution was fermenting.
The prisoner who was released never knew until then the full bitterness
of the treatment he had endured. It was perhaps the acutest part of his
sufferings, that the letters he had written to family and friends, the
entreaties he had addressed to ministers, magistrates, and chiefs of
police, brought him never a word in answer. It was thus that was
produced in so many cases that sense of utter desolation and abandonment
by the whole world which resulted in the madness of very many prisoners.
Those who were restored to liberty with their reason unimpaired learned
that their letters and petitions had never been received. They had
never, in fact, passed out of the Bastille. It was well to have the
truth of this at any time; but we are to remember the prisoners who died
in the belief that their dearest ones had denied them one kind or
sympathetic word. When the Bastille was sacked, piles of letters were
found which had never passed beyond the governor's hands. Amongst them
was one which (considering the circumstances of the writer, and the fact
that no line was ever vouchsafed him in response) may be regarded as
perhaps the very saddest ever penned: "If for my consolation," wrote the
prisoner to the lieutenant of police, "Monseigneur would have the
goodness, in the name of the God above us both, to give me but one word
of my dear wife, her name only on a card, that I might know she still
lives, I would pray for Monseigneur to the last day of my life." This
letter was signed "Queret Démery," a name known to nobody, but which
will be remembered while the Bastille is remembered. One does not choose
to ask, were there even a chance of an answer, how many other letters
not less piteous than this were read and drily docketed by governors of
the Bastille.
This inveterate and almost inviolable secrecy in which the government of
the Bastille enwrapped the majority of its prisoners seems on the whole
to have been the most cruel feature of its policy. After reading some
fifty volumes of cells with rats in them, and dungeons frozen or fiery,
and torture rooms, and filthy beds, and food not enough to keep life on,
one is shocked to find that the due and natural poignancy of sympathy
with human suffering begins insensibly to weaken. But this refinement of
pain, inflicted as a part of the routine, upon the common prisoners of
the Bastille, revives the sense of pity. It was the habit to pretend
that prisoners who were dungeoned there were not in there at all. Asked
as to the fate of this prisoner or the other, ministers would respond
with a blank look, assure the questioner that they had never heard the
prisoner's name, and that, wherever he might be, he was certainly not in
the Bastille. The governor and chief officers of the prison, who saw the
prisoner every day, would say that he was not in their keeping, and that
no such person was known to them. The common practice of imprisoning men
in the Bastille under names other than their own made these denials
easy. At other times, when it was desired to prejudice his friends or
society against a prisoner, the answer would be, that the less said
about him the better. The nominal cause of his imprisonment, his friends
were told, was not the real one; the Government had their information,
and if it could possibly be published the prisoner would be known in his
true character. The prisoner himself was often told that his friends had
ceased to believe in his innocence, or that they thought him dead, or
that they had given up all hope of procuring his release. The Bastille
and the Inquisition were singularly alike in their methods.
Dreary beyond expression must have been the daily round for all but the
privileged few. "Every hour was struck on a bell which was heard all
through the Faubourg St. Antoine." The sentries on the rampart
challenged one another ceaselessly throughout the night. There were
prisoners in solitary confinement to whom no other sounds than these
ever penetrated, except the grating of the key in the lock which
announced the daily visits of the gaoler. This was the life of such
prisoners as the Iron Mask, and of Tavernier, who told his liberators
that, during the thirty years of his captivity, he had passed nineteen
consecutive ones without crossing the threshold of his cell. Exercise in
the yard, for those who enjoyed this favour, was limited to an hour a
day, and this period might be reduced to a few minutes if there were
many prisoners to be exercised in turn,—for, in general, the utmost care
was taken to prevent them from meeting one another. If a stranger were
shewn into the yard, the prisoner who was taking his mouthful of air had
to retreat to a cabinet in the wall. These walks were solitary, except
for the presence of a dumb sentinel; and, unless the prisoner were now
and then permitted or compelled to share his chamber with a
fellow-captive, not less solitary was his whole existence. The most
stringent rules were in force respecting the admission of friends or
relatives. "Strangers cannot enter the Bastille," ran the official
injunction, "without very precise orders from the governor"; and such
rare interviews as were permitted took place in the council-chamber, in
the presence of this officer or his deputy. The length of the interview
was always fixed in the letter which the visitor bore from the
lieutenant of police, and nothing might be said relative to the cause of
the prisoner's detention.
A certain Mme. de Montazau, visiting her husband in the Bastille, took
with her a little dog, and, while pretending to caress it in her own
Portuguese tongue, was trying to tell Montazau what efforts she was
making for his release. "Madame," interrupted De Launay, his gaoler's
instinct aroused, "if your dog does not understand French you cannot
bring him here." Even such poor barren visits as these were of the
rarest possible occurrence.
But, M. Ravaisson will tell us, prisoners were frequently visited by the
lieutenant of the King or some other high personage. It would be more to
the point to say that such visits were occasionally inflicted, for the
comfort that prisoners derived from them was slender. Abbé Duvernet
receives the visit of the minister Amelot, who tells him that he can
have nothing to complain of, since he has had access to the prison
library. The Bastille library, by the way, seems to have been founded
not by the Government, but by a prisoner who was confined there early in
the eighteenth century. Abbé Duvernet had made a catalogue of the
collection. "I have catalogued your library," he replied to the
minister, "and there are not ten volumes in it which a man of ordinary
education would trouble himself to read. Library, indeed! Listen,
monsieur: when a man has had the hardihood to expose one of the blunders
of you ministers, you will spend any quantity of money to be avenged on
him. You will hunt him to Holland, England, or the heart of Germany, if
it costs the State two thousand pounds. But to afford a little solace to
the poor devils in your Bastille, by buying a few books for them to
read—no! I dare be sworn that Government has not spent ten pounds on
books for this place since the Bastille was built!"
"Well, monsieur l'Abbé," said Amelot, "may I ask why you are here?"
"Why am I here! Because you yourself gave some one a _lettre de cachet_,
which had your own name and the King's attached to it. I am very sure
that his Majesty knows nothing of my detention, or the motive of it; but
_you_ can scarcely pretend to the same ignorance. Or, will you have me
believe that you set your signature to these _lettres_ without knowing
what it is that you are signing?" Then, turning to Lenoir, the
Lieutenant of Police, the Abbé asked: "Do _you_, sir, demand _lettres de
cachet_ of M. Amelot without giving him a reason? Come, as you are both
here together, perhaps one of you will be good enough to tell me what is
the excuse for my imprisonment." I have condensed this interview from
_Les Prisons de Paris_. It is not likely that ministers and chiefs of
police were often faced in this style by prisoners of the Bastille, but
it is probable enough that most interviews of the kind ended with the
same fruitless inquiry on the part of the prisoner.
It may be inferred from this how much protection was afforded to
prisoners by the daily reports of the governor or the major to the
minister, who was nominally responsible for the Bastille. These reports,
in fact, seem to have been merely a part of the system of espionage
which was regularly practised there. The governor writes:
"I have the honour to inform you that the sieur Billard was engaged
with the sieur Perrin yesterday, from six to nine in the evening.
"This morning M. de la Monnoye saw and spoke with Abbé Grisel a good
half-hour.
"M. Moncarré had an interview with his wife in the afternoon, in
accordance with your instructions.
"In obedience to your instructions of the 28th of this month, I have
handed letters to Abbé Grisel and M. Ponce de Lèon.—I am, etc."
[Illustration:
1. Tour du Puit.
2. Tour de la Liberté.
3. Tour de la Bertaudière.
4. Tour de la Basinière.
5. Tour de la Comté.
6. Tour du Trésor.
7. Tour de la Chapelle.
8. Tour du Coin.
A. Entry from Street St. Antony.
B. First Enclosure, Called Passage Court.
C. Governor's House.
D. Court before Governor's House.
E. F. Drawbridge and Gate of Castle.
G. Guard Room.
H. Great Court of Castle.
K. Council-Chamber.
L. Well Court.
O. Bastion.
P. Woods and Grounds.
Q. Gate of the Cour de l'Orme.
PLAN OF THE BASTILLE.]
The library which Abbé Duvernet dismissed with contempt was not at the
disposal of every prisoner. Both books and writing materials were in
the nature of indulgences, and doled out sparingly. The rule was
terribly precise on the subject of relaxations of any kind. It stated,
in so many words, that: "As regards a prisoner, the governor and the
officers of the château cannot be too severe and firm in preventing
the least relaxation in the discipline of the Bastille; they cannot
pay too much attention to this, nor punish too severely any act of
insubordination." How often was that rule interpreted in favour of a
sojourn in the dungeon or the "ice-chamber"?
Not only the governor and his immediate subordinates, but every
turnkey, sentinel, guard of the watch, and invalid soldier on the
staff was a gaoler and spy in himself. The inferior attendants of the
Bastille were encouraged and sometimes directly charged to feign
sympathy with a political prisoner, in order to lure him into some
indiscreet avowal; but in the discharge of their ordinary duties they
were enjoined to be watchful and mute. Amongst their orders were the
following:
"The sentinels will arrest immediately anyone of whom they have the
slightest suspicion, and will send for a staff-officer to settle the
matter.
"The sentinel will not let out of his sight, on any pretext,
prisoners who are exercising in the court. He will watch carefully
to see whether a prisoner drops any paper, note, or packet. He will
be careful to prevent prisoners from writing on the walls, and will
report upon everything he may have remarked whilst on duty.
"When the corporal of the guard or any inferior officer is ordered
to accompany a prisoner who may have leave to walk in the garden or
on the towers, it is expressly forbidden him to hold any
conversation with the prisoner. The officer is there solely to guard
the prisoner, and to prevent him from signalling to anyone outside
the walls."
Prisoners of a devout character must have been shocked by the studiously
cynical mode of worship in the Bastille. The chapel was a dingy den on
the ground floor of the prison, which Howard describes as containing
"five niches or closets; three are hollowed out of the wall, the
others are only in the wainscot. In these, prisoners are put one by
one to hear mass. They can neither see nor be seen. The doors of
these niches are secured on the outside by a lock and two bolts;
within, they are iron-grated, and have glass windows towards the
chapel, with curtains, which are drawn at the _Sanctus_, and closed
again at the concluding prayer."
As not more than five prisoners were present at each mass, only ten
could hear it each day. "If there is a greater number in the castle,
either they do not go to mass at all (which is generally the case with
the ecclesiastics, prisoners for life, and those who do not desire to
go) or they attend alternately: because there are almost always some who
have permission to go constantly."
If a prisoner, sick and at the point of death, asked that masses might
be said for his soul, he was told that it was not customary for masses
to be said in the Bastille, either for the living or for the dead. "No
prayers are offered up in the Castle," ran the word, "except for the
King and the Royal Family." If it were promised him that he should be
prayed for in a church outside the prison, he was sent out of captivity
with a lie in his ear; for information of his death was withheld from
his family. He was buried by night and in secrecy in the graveyard of
St. Paul's, and the record of his name and rank in the parish register
"were fictitious, that all trace of him might be obliterated." The
register of the Bastille, in which his real name and station were
recorded, was a volume closed to the world. That false book of the dead,
which a turnkey edits by his lantern's glimmer in the sacristy of St.
Paul's, adds a mountain's weight to the sins of the keepers of the
Bastille. There is no reason why its memory should not increase in
detestation.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]