Legends of the Bastille
by Frantz Funck-Brentano · English · Gutenberg #43231 · 435,091 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Legends of the Bastille
Author: Frantz Funck-Brentano
Author of introduction, etc.: Victorien Sardou
Translator: George Maidment
Release date: July 16, 2013 [eBook #43231]
Most recently updated: November 27, 2024
Language: English
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LEGENDS OF THE BASTILLE
[Illustration: MODEL OF THE BASTILLE, CARVED IN ONE OF THE STONES OF THE
FORTRESS.
_One of these models, made by the instructions of the architect Palloy,
was sent to the chief-town of every department in France._]
Legends of
the Bastille
BY
FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VICTORIEN SARDOU_
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY
GEORGE MAIDMENT
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
DOWNEY & CO. LIMITED
1899
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_Legendes et Archives de la Bastille._ Paris: Hachette et Cie.,
1898; second edition, 1899. Crowned by the French Academy.
_Die Bastille in der Legende und nach historischen Documenten._
German translation by Oscar Marschall von Bieberstein. Breslau:
Schottlaender, 1899.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
In his own entertaining way, Mr. Andrew Lang has recently been taking
the scientific historian to task, and giving him a very admirable lesson
on "history as she ought to be wrote." But though the two professors to
whom he mainly addresses himself are Frenchmen, it would be doing an
injustice to France to infer that she is the _alma mater_ of the modern
dryasdust. The exact contrary is the case: France is rich in historical
writers like the Comte d'Haussonville, M. de Maulde la Clavière, M.
Gaston Boissier, to name only a few, who know how to be accurate without
being dull.
M. Funck-Brentano, whom I have the honour of introducing here to the
English public, belongs to the same class. Of literary parentage and
connections--his uncle is Professor Lujo Brentano, whose work on the
English trade gilds is a standard--he entered in his twentieth year the
École des Chartes, the famous institution which trains men in the
methods of historical research. At the end of his three years' course,
he was appointed to succeed François Ravaisson in the work of
classifying the archives of the Bastille in the Arsenal Library,--a work
which occupied him for more than ten years. One fruit of it is to be
seen in the huge catalogue of more than one thousand pages, printed
under official auspices and awarded the Prix Le Dissez de Penanrum by
the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. Another is the present
work, which has been crowned by the French Academy. Meanwhile M.
Funck-Brentano had been pursuing his studies at the Sorbonne and at
Nancy, and his French thesis for the doctorate in letters was a volume
on the origins of the Hundred Years' War, which obtained for him the
highest possible distinction for a work of erudition in France, the
Grand Prix Gobert. This volume he intends to follow up with two others,
completing a social rather than a military history of the war, and this
no doubt he regards as his _magnum opus_. He is known also as a lecturer
in Belgium and Alsace as well as in Paris, and being general secretary
of the Société des Etudes historiques and deputy professor of history at
the College of France as well as sub-librarian of the Arsenal Library,
he leads a busy life.
Trained in the rigorous methods of the École des Chartes and inspired by
the examples of Fustel de Coulanges and M. Paul Meyer, M. Funck-Brentano
has developed a most interesting and conscientious method of his own. He
depends on original sources, and subjects these to the most searching
critical tests; but this is a matter of course: his individuality
appears in regard to the publication of the results of his researches.
When he has discoveries of importance to communicate, he gives them to
the world first in the form of articles or studies in reviews of
standing, thus preparing public opinion, and at the same time affording
opportunities for the search-light of criticism to play on his work.
Some of the chapters of this book thus appeared in the various _revues_,
and have subsequently gone through a severe process of pruning and
amending. It is now eleven years since the first appearance, in the
pages of the _Revue des deux Mondes_, of the study of Latude which, in a
much altered shape, now forms one of the most interesting portions of
this book. The coming autumn will see the publication in France of a
striking work by M. Funck-Brentano on the amazing poison-dramas at Louis
XIV.'s court, and of this book also the several sections have been
appearing at intervals for several years past.
The present work, as I have already said, is the fruit of many years of
research. Its startling revelations, so well summarized in M. Victorien
Sardou's Introduction, have revolutionized public opinion in France, and
in particular the solution of the old problem of the identity of the Man
in the Iron Mask has been accepted as final by all competent critics.
The _Athenæum_, in reviewing the book in its French form the other day,
said that it must be taken cautiously as an ingenious bit of special
pleading, and that the Bastille appears in M. Funck-Brentano's pages in
altogether too roseate hues, suggesting further that no such results
could be obtained without prejudice from the same archives as those on
which Charpentier founded his _La Bastille dévoilée_ in 1789. This
criticism seems to me to ignore several important points. Charpentier's
book, written in the heat of the revolutionary struggle, is not a
history, but a political pamphlet, which, in the nature of the case, was
bound to represent the Bastille as a horror. Moreover, Charpentier could
only have depended superficially on the archives, which, as M.
Funck-Brentano shows, were thrown into utter disorder on the day of the
capture of the Bastille. The later writer, on the other hand, approached
the subject when the revolutionary ardours had quite burnt out, and with
the independent and dispassionate mind of a trained official. He spent
thirteen years in setting the rediscovered archives in order, after his
predecessor Ravaisson had already spent a considerable time at the same
work. He was able, further (as Charpentier certainly was not), to
complete and check the testimony of the archives by means of the memoirs
of prisoners--the Abbé Morellet, Marmontel, Renneville, Dumouriez, and a
host of others. In these circumstances it would be surprising if his
conclusions were not somewhat different from those of Charpentier a
hundred years ago.
The gravamen of the _Athenæun's_ objection is that M. Funck-Brentano's
description of the treatment of prisoners in the Bastille applies only
to the favoured few, the implication being that M. Funck-Brentano has
shut his eyes to the cases of the larger number. But surely the reviewer
must have read the book too rapidly. M. Funck-Brentano shows, by means
of existing and accessible documents, that the fact of being sent to the
Bastille at all was itself, in the eighteenth century at least, a mark
of favour. Once at the Bastille, the prisoner, whoever he might be, was
treated without severity, unless he misbehaved. Prisoners of no social
importance, such as Renneville, Latude (a servant's love-child),
Tavernier (son of a house-porter), were fed and clothed and cared for
much better than they would have been outside the prison walls. A young
man named Estival de Texas, who was being exiled to Canada because he
was a disgrace to his family, wrote to the minister of Paris on June 22,
1726, from the roadstead of La Rochelle: "Your lordship is sending me to
a wild country, huddled with mean wretches, and condemned to a fare very
different from what your lordship granted me in the Bastille." Here was
a friendless outcast looking back regretfully on his prison fare! On
February 6, 1724, one of the king's ministers wrote to the lieutenant
of police: "I have read to the duke of Bourbon the letter you sent me
about the speeches of M. Quéhéon, and his royal highness has instructed
me to send you an order and a _lettre de cachet_ authorizing his removal
to the Bastille. But as he thinks that this is _an honour the fellow
little deserves_, he wishes you to postpone the execution of the warrant
for three days, in order to see if Quéhéon will not take the hint and
leave Paris as he was commanded." It is on such documents as these,
which are to be seen in hundreds at the Arsenal Library in Paris, that
M. Funck-Brentano has founded his conclusions. Anyone who attacks him on
his own ground is likely to come badly off.
With M. Funck-Brentano's permission, I have omitted the greater part of
his footnotes, which are mainly references to documents inaccessible to
the English reader. On the other hand, I have ventured to supply a few
footnotes in explanation of such allusions as the Englishman not reading
French (and the translation is intended for no others) might not
understand. On the same principle I have attempted rhymed renderings of
two or three scraps of verse quoted from Regnier and Voltaire, to whom I
make my apologies. The proofs have had the advantage of revision by M.
Funck-Brentano, who is, however, in no way responsible for any
shortcomings. The Index appears in the English version alone.
The portrait of Latude and the views of the Bastille are reproduced from
photographs of the originals specially taken by M. A. Bresson, of 40 Rue
de Passy, Paris.
GEORGE MAIDMENT.
_August, 1899._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
THE ARCHIVES 47
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF THE BASTILLE 57
CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN THE BASTILLE 85
CHAPTER IV.
THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK 114
CHAPTER V.
MEN OF LETTERS IN THE BASTILLE 147
I. VOLTAIRE 148
II. LA BEAUMELLE 152
III. THE ABBÉ MORELLET 155
IV. MARMONTEL 158
V. LINGUET 163
VI. DIDEROT 165
VII. THE MARQUIS DE MIRABEAU 166
CHAPTER VI.
LATUDE 168
CHAPTER VII.
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY 238
INDEX 277
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Model of the Bastille _Frontispiece_
Facsimile of Du Junca's note regarding the
entry of the Iron Mask _Facing page_ 115
Facsimile of Du Junca's note regarding the
death of the Iron Mask " 116
Facsimile of the Iron Mask's burial certificate " 142
Facsimile of the cover of Latude's explosive box " 173
Facsimile of Latude's writing with blood on linen " 188
Portrait of Latude " 229
The Capture of the Bastille " 257
INTRODUCTION
At the great Exhibition of 1889 I visited, in company with some friends,
the reproduction of the Bastille, calculated to give all who saw it--and
the whole world must have seen it--an entirely false impression.
You had barely cleared the doorway when you saw, in the gloom, an old
man enveloped in a long white beard, lying on the "sodden straw" of
tradition, rattling his chains and uttering doleful cries. And the guide
said to you, not without emotion, "You see here the unfortunate Latude,
who remained in this position, with both arms thus chained behind his
back, for thirty-five years!"
This information I completed by adding in the same tone: "And it was in
this attitude that he so cleverly constructed the ladder, a hundred and
eighty feet long, which enabled him to escape."
The company looked at me with surprise, the guide with a scowl, and I
slipped away.
The same considerations that prompted my intervention have suggested to
M. Funck-Brentano this work on the Bastille, in which he has set the
facts in their true light, and confronted the legends which everyone
knows with the truth of which many are in ignorance.
For in spite of all that has been written on the subject by Ravaisson,
in the introduction to his _Archives of the Bastille_, by Victor
Fournel, in his _Men of the Fourteenth of July_, and by other writers,
the popular idea of the internal administration of the Bastille in 1789
holds by the description of Louis Blanc: "Iron cages, recalling
Plessis-les-Tours[1] and the tortures of Cardinal La Balue![2]--underground
dungeons, the loathsome haunts of toads, lizards, enormous rats,
spiders--the whole furniture consisting of one huge stone covered with a
little straw, where the prisoner breathed poison in the very air....
Enveloped in the shades of mystery, kept in absolute ignorance of the
crime with which he was charged, and the kind of punishment awaiting
him, he ceased to belong to the earth!"
If this Bastille of melodrama ever had any existence, the Bastille of
the eighteenth century bore the least possible resemblance to it. In
1789, these dungeons on the ground floor of the fortress, with windows
looking on the moats, were no longer reserved, as under Louis XV., for
prisoners condemned to death, dangerous madmen, or prisoners who had
been insolent, obstreperous, or violent; nor for warders guilty of
breaches of discipline. At the time of Necker's first ministry, the use
of these dungeons had been abolished altogether.
The prisoner, put through an interrogation in the early days of his
detention, was never left in ignorance of the "delinquency" with which
he was charged, and had no reason to be concerned about the kind of
punishment awaiting him; for there had been neither torture nor
punishment of any kind at the Bastille for a hundred years.
Instead of a dungeon or a cage of iron, every prisoner occupied a room
of fair size, its greatest defect being that it was rather poorly
lighted by a narrow window, secured by bars, some of them projecting
inwards. It was sufficiently furnished; and there was nothing to hinder
the prisoner from getting in more furniture from outside. Moreover, he
could procure whatever clothing and linen he desired, and if he had no
means to pay for them, money was supplied. Latude complained of
rheumatism, and furs were at once given him. He wanted a dressing-gown
of "red-striped calamanco"; the shops were ransacked to gratify him. A
certain Hugonnet complained that he had not received the shirts "with
embroidered ruffles" which he had asked for. A lady named Sauvé wanted a
dress of white silk spotted with green flowers. In all Paris there was
only a white dress with green stripes to be found, with which it was
hoped that she would be satisfied.
Every room was provided with a fireplace or a stove. Firewood was
supplied, and light; the prisoner could have as many candles as he
pleased. Paper, pens, and ink were at his disposal; though he was
deprived of them temporarily if he made bad use of them, like Latude,
who scribbled all day long only to heap insults in his letters on the
governor and the lieutenant of police. He could borrow books from the
library, and was at liberty to have books sent in from outside. La
Beaumelle had six hundred volumes in his room. He might breed birds,
cats, and dogs--by no means being reduced to taming the legendary spider
of Pellisson,[3] which figures also in the story of Lauzun,[4] and,
indeed, of all prisoners in every age. Instruments of music were
allowed. Renneville played the fiddle, and Latude the flute. There were
concerts in the prisoners' rooms and in the apartments of the governor.
Every prisoner could work at embroidery, at the turning lathe, or the
joiner's bench, at pleasure. All whose conduct was irreproachable were
allowed to come and go, to pay each other visits, to play at
backgammon, cards, or chess in their rooms; at skittles, bowls, or
_tonneau_[5] in the courtyard. La Rouërie asked for a billiard table for
himself and his friends, and he got it.
The prisoners were permitted to walk on the platform of the fortress,
from which they could see the people passing up and down the Rue
Saint-Antoine and the vicinity, and watch the animated crowds on the
boulevard at the hours when fashionable people were accustomed to take
their drives. By the aid of telescopes and big letters written on boards
they were able to communicate with the people of the neighbourhood, and,
like Latude, to keep up a secret correspondence with the grisettes of
the district. Michelet, with too obvious a design, declares that under
Louis XVI. the regulations of the prison were more severe than under
Louis XV., and that this promenade on the platform was done away with.
There is not a word of truth in it. The promenade was forbidden only to
those prisoners who, like the Marquis de Sade, took advantage of it to
stir up riots among the passers-by; and from the accession of Louis
XVI. and the visitation of Malesherbes,[6] the rule of the prison grew
milder day by day.
Certain of the prisoners were invited to dine with the governor, and to
walk in his gardens, in excellent company. Some were allowed to leave
the fortress, on condition of returning in the evening; others were even
allowed to remain out all night!
Those who had servants could have them in attendance if the servants
were willing to share their captivity. Or they had room-mates, as was
the case with Latude and Allègre.
In regard to food, the prisoners are unanimous in declaring that it was
abundant and good. "I had five dishes at dinner," says Dumouriez, "and
five at supper, without reckoning dessert." The Provost de Beaumont
declared that he had quitted the Bastille with regret, because there he
had been able to eat and drink to his heart's content. Poultier
d'Elmotte says: "M. de Launey had many a friendly chat with me, and
sent me what dishes I wished for." Baron Hennequin, a hypochondriac who
found fault with everything, confesses nevertheless that they gave him
more meat than he could eat. The Abbé de Buquoy affirms that he fared
sumptuously, and that it was the king's intention that the prisoners
should be well fed. The splenetic Linguet owns, in his pamphlet, that he
had three good meals a day, and that meat was supplied to him in such
quantities that his suspicions were aroused: "They meant to poison me!"
he says. But he omits to say that de Launey sent him every morning the
menu for the day, on which he marked down with his own hand the dishes
he fancied, "choosing always the most dainty, and in sufficient
quantities to have satisfied five or six epicures."
In Louis XIV.'s time, Renneville drew up the following list of dishes
served to him: "Oysters, prawns, fowls, capons, mutton, veal, young
pigeons; forcemeat pies and patties; asparagus, cauliflower, green peas,
artichokes; salmon, soles, pike, trout, every kind of fish whether
fresh-water or salt; pastry, and fruits in their season." We find Latude
complaining that the fowls given him were not stuffed! M.
Funck-Brentano tells the amusing story of Marmontel's eating by mistake
the dinner intended for his servant, and finding it excellent.
Mdlle. de Launay, afterwards Madame de Staal, who was imprisoned for
complicity in the Cellamare[7] plot, relates that on the first evening
of her sojourn in the Bastille, she and her maid were both terrified by
the strange and prolonged sound, beneath their feet, of a mysterious
machine, which conjured up visions of an instrument of torture. When
they came to inquire, they found that their room was over the kitchen,
and the terrible machine was the roasting-jack!
The prisoners were not only allowed to receive visits from their
relations and friends, but to keep them to dinner or to make up a
rubber. Thus Madame de Staal held receptions in the afternoon, and in
the evening there was high play. "And this time," she says, "was the
happiest in my life."
Bussy-Rabutin received the whole court, and all his friends--especially
those of the fair sex. M. de Bonrepos--an assumed name--was so
comfortable in the Bastille that when he was directed to retire to the
Invalides,[8] he could only be removed by force.
"I there spent six weeks," says Morellet, "so pleasantly, that I chuckle
to this day when I think of them." And when he left, he exclaimed: "God
rest those jolly tyrants!"
Voltaire remained there for twelve days, with a recommendation from the
lieutenant of police that he should be treated with all the
consideration "due to his genius."
The objection may be raised that these cases are all of great lords or
men of letters, towards whom the government of those days was
exceptionally lenient. (How delightful to find writers put on the same
footing with peers!) But the objection is groundless.
I have referred to Renneville and Latude, prisoners of very little
account. The one was a spy; the other a swindler. In the three-volume
narrative left us by Renneville, you hear of nothing but how he kept
open house and made merry with his companions. They gambled and smoked,
ate and drank, fuddled and fought, gossiped with their neighbours of
both sexes, and passed one another pastry and excellent wine through the
chimneys. How gladly the prisoners in our jails to-day would accommodate
themselves to such a life! Renneville, assuredly, was not treated with
the same consideration as Voltaire; but, frankly, would you have wished
it?
As to Latude--who was supplied with dressing-gowns to suit his
fancy--the reader will see from M. Funck-Brentano's narrative that no
one but himself was to blame if he did not dwell at Vincennes[9] or in
the Bastille on the best of terms--or even leave his prison at the
shortest notice, by the front gate, and with a well-lined pocket.
For that was one of the harsh measures of this horrible Bastille--to
send away the poor wretches, when their time was expired, with a few
hundred livres in their pockets, and to compensate such as were found to
be innocent! See what M. Funck-Brentano says of Subé, who, for a
detention of eighteen days, received 3000 livres (£240 to-day), or of
others, who, after an imprisonment of two years, were consoled with an
annual pension of 2400 francs of our reckoning. Voltaire spent twelve
days in the Bastille, and was assured of an annual pension of 1200
livres for life. What is to be said now of our contemporary justice,
which, after some months of imprisonment on suspicion, dismisses the
poor fellow, arrested by mistake, with no other indemnity than the
friendly admonition: "Go! and take care we don't catch you again!"
Some wag will be sure to say that I am making out the Bastille to have
been a palace of delight. We can spare him his little jest. A prison is
always a prison, however pleasant it may be; and the best of cheer is no
compensation for the loss of liberty. But there is a wide difference, it
will be granted, between the reality and the notion generally
held--between this "hotel for men of letters," as some one called it,
and the hideous black holes of our system of solitary confinement. I
once said that I should prefer three years in the Bastille to three
months at Mazas.[10] I do not retract.
* * * * *
Linguet and Latude, unquestionably, were the two men whose habit of
drawing the long bow has done most to propagate the fables about the
Bastille, the falsity of which is established by incontrovertible
documents. Party spirit has not failed to take seriously the interested
calumnies of Linguet, who used his spurious martyrdom to advertise
himself, and the lies of Latude, exploiting to good purpose a captivity
which he had made his career.
Let us leave Linguet, who, after having so earnestly urged the
demolition of the Bastille, had reason to regret it at the Conciergerie
at the moment of mounting the revolutionary tumbril, and speak a little
of the other, this captive who was as ingenious in escaping from prison,
when locked up, as in hugging his chains when offered the means of
release.
For the bulk of mankind, thirty-five years of captivity was the price
Latude paid for a mere practical joke: the sending to Madame de
Pompadour of a harmless powder that was taken for poison. The punishment
is regarded as terrific: I do not wonder at it. But if, instead of
relying on the gentleman's own fanfaronades, the reader will take the
trouble to look at the biography written by M. Funck-Brentano and amply
supported by documents, he will speedily see that if Latude remained in
prison for thirty-five years, it was entirely by his own choice; and
that his worst enemy, his most implacable persecutor, the author of all
his miseries was--himself.
If, after the piece of trickery which led to his arrest, he had followed
the advice of the excellent Berryer, who counselled patience and
promised his speedy liberation, he might have got off with a few months
of restraint at Vincennes, where his confinement was so rigorous that he
had only to push the garden gate to be free!
That was the first folly calculated to injure his cause, for the new
fault was more serious than the old. He was caught; he was locked in the
cells of the Bastille: but the kind-hearted Berryer soon removed him.
Instead of behaving himself quietly, however, our man begins to grow
restless, to harangue, to abuse everybody, and on the books lent him to
scribble insulting verses on the Pompadour. But they allow him an
apartment, then give him a servant, then a companion, Allègre. And then
comes the famous escape. One hardly knows which to wonder at the most:
the ingenuity of the two rogues, or the guileless management of this
prison which allows them to collect undisturbed a gimlet, a saw, a
compass, a pulley, fourteen hundred feet of rope, a rope ladder 180 feet
long, with 218 wooden rungs; to conceal all these between the floor and
the ceiling below, without anyone ever thinking to look there; and,
after having cut through a wall four and a half feet thick, to get clear
away without firing a shot!
They were not the first to get across those old walls. Renneville
mentions several escapes, the most famous being that of the Abbé de
Buquoy.[11] But little importance seems to have been attached to them.
With Allègre and Latude it was a different matter. The passers-by must
have seen, in the early morning, the ladder swinging from top to bottom
of the wall, and the escape was no longer a secret. The Bastille is
discredited. It is possible, then, to escape from it. The chagrined
police are on their mettle. There will be laughter at their expense. The
fugitives are both well known, too. They will take good care to spread
the story of their escape, with plenty of gibes against the governor,
the lieutenant of police, the ministry, the favourite, the king! This
scandal must be averted at any cost; the fugitives must be caught!
And we cannot help pitying these two wretches who, after a flight so
admirably contrived, got arrested so stupidly: Allègre at Brussels,
through an abusive letter written to the Pompadour; Latude in Holland,
through a letter begging help from his mother.
Latude is again under lock and key, and this time condemned to a
stricter confinement. And then the hubbub begins again: outcries,
demands, acts of violence, threats! He exasperates and daunts men who
had the best will in the world to help him. He is despatched to the
fortress of Vincennes, and promised his liberty if he will only keep
quiet. His liberation, on his own showing, was but a matter of days. He
is allowed to walk on the bank of the moat. He takes advantage of it to
escape again!
Captured once more, he is once more lodged at Vincennes, and the whole
business begins over again. But they are good enough to consider him a
little mad, and after a stay at Charenton,[12] where he was very well
treated, he at last gets his dismissal, with the recommendation to
betake himself to his own part of the country quietly. Ah, that would
not be like Latude! He scampers over Paris, railing against De Sartine,
De Marigny; hawking his pamphlets; claiming 150,000 livres as
damages!--and, finally, extorting money from a charitable lady by
menaces!
This is the last straw. Patience is exhausted, and he is clapped into
Bicêtre[13] as a dangerous lunatic. Imagine his fury and disgust!
Let us be just. Suppose, in our own days, a swindler, sentenced to a few
months' imprisonment, insulting the police, the magistrates, the court,
the president; sentenced on this account to a longer term, escaping
once, twice, a third time; always caught, put in jail again, sentenced
to still longer terms: then when at last released, after having done his
time, scattering broadcast insulting libels against the chief of police,
the ministers, the parliament, and insisting on the President of the
Republic paying him damages to the tune of 150,000 francs; to crown it
all, getting money out of some good woman by working on her fears! You
will agree with me that such a swaggering blade would not have much
difficulty in putting together thirty-five years in jail!
But these sentences would of course be public, and provide no soil for
the growth of those legends to which closed doors always give rise. Yet
in all that relates to the causes and the duration of the man's
imprisonment, his case would be precisely that of Latude--except that
for him there would be no furs, no promenading in the gardens, no
stuffed fowls for his lunch!
Besides some fifty autograph letters from Latude, addressed from Bicêtre
to his good angel, Madame Legros, in which he shows himself in his true
character, an intriguing, vain, insolent, bragging, insupportable
humbug, I have one, written to M. de Sartine, which Latude published as
a pendant to the pamphlet with which he hoped to move Madame de
Pompadour to pity, and in which every phrase is an insult. This letter
was put up at public auction, and these first lines of it were
reproduced in the catalogue:--
"I am supporting with patience the loss of my best years and of my
fortune. I am enduring my rheumatism, the weakness of my arm, and a ring
of iron around my body for the rest of my life!"
A journalist, one of those who learn their history from Louis Blanc, had
a vision of Latude for ever riveted by a ring of iron to a pillar in
some underground dungeon, and exclaimed with indignation: "A ring of
iron! How horrible!"
And it was only a linen band!
That fabulous iron collar is a type of the whole legend of the
unfortunate Latude!
* * * * *
Everything connected with the Bastille has assumed a fabulous character.
What glorious days were those of the 13th and 14th of July, as the
popular imagination conjures them up in reliance on Michelet, who, in a
vivid, impassioned, picturesque, dramatic, admirable style, has
written, not the history, but the romance of the French Revolution!
Look at his account of the 13th. He shows you all Paris in revolt
against Versailles, and with superb enthusiasm running to arms to try
issues with the royal army. It is fine as literature. Historically, it
is pure fiction.
The Parisians were assuredly devoted to the "new ideas," that is, the
suppression of the abuses and the privileges specified in the memorials
of the States General; in a word, to the reforms longed for by the whole
of France. But they had no conception of gaining them without the
concurrence of the monarchy, to which they were sincerely attached. That
crowd of scared men running to the Hôtel de Ville to demand arms, who
are represented by the revolutionary writers as exasperated by the
dismissal of Necker and ready to undermine the throne for the sake of
that Genevan, were much less alarmed at what was hatching at Versailles
than at what was going on in Paris. If they wished for arms, it was for
their own security. The dissolution of the National Assembly, which was
regarded as certain, was setting all minds in a ferment, and
ill-designing people took advantage of the general uneasiness and
agitation to drive matters to the worst extremities, creating disorder
everywhere. The police had disappeared; the streets were in the hands of
the mob. Bands of ruffians--among them those ill-favoured rascals who
since the month of May had been flocking, as at a word of command, into
Paris from heaven knows where, and who had already been seen at work,
pillaging Réveillon's[14] establishment--roamed in every direction,
insulting women, stripping wayfarers, looting the shops, opening the
prisons, burning the barriers. On July 13 the electors of Paris resolved
on the formation of a citizen militia for the protection of the town,
and the scheme was adopted on the same day by every district, with
articles of constitution, quoted by M. Funck-Brentano, which specify the
intentions of the signatories. It was expressly in self-defence against
the "Brigands," as they were called, that the citizen militia was
formed: "To protect the citizens," ran the minutes of the
Petit-Saint-Antoine district, "against the dangers which threaten them
each individually." "In a word," says M. Victor Fournel, "the
dominating sentiment was fear. Up till the 14th of July, the Parisian
middle-classes showed far more concern at the manifold excesses
committed by the populace after Necker's dismissal than at the schemes
of the court." And M. Jacques Charavay, who was the first to publish the
text of the minutes in question, says not a word too much when he draws
from them this conclusion: "The movement which next day swept away the
Bastille might possibly have been stifled by the National Guard, if its
organization had had greater stability."
All that was wanting to these good intentions was direction, a man at
the helm, and particularly the support of Besenval. But his conduct was
amazing! He left Versailles with 35,000 men and an order signed by the
king--obtained not without difficulty--authorizing him "to repel force
by force." Now let us see a summary of his military operations:--
On the 13th, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, a skirmish of the
German regiment on the Place Vendôme, where it came into collision with
the "demonstration"--as we should say to-day--which was displaying busts
of Necker and the Duke of Orleans, and dispersed it.
At six o'clock, a march of the same horse soldiers to the
swinging-bridge of the Tuileries, where they had five or six chairs
thrown at their head; and the massacre, by M. de Lambesc, of the
legendary grey-beard who, an hour after, was describing his tragic end
at the Palais-Royal!
At nine o'clock, a military promenade of the same regiment along the
boulevards. A volley from the Gardes Françaises slew two of their
number, and the regiment beat a retreat without returning fire, to the
great surprise of M. de Maleissye, officer of the Guards. For, by his
own confession, if the cavalry had charged, it would easily have routed
the Gardes Françaises "in the state of drunkenness in which they then
were."
And Besenval, terrified at such a resistance, assembled all his troops,
shut himself up with them in the Champ de Mars, and did not move another
step!
We ask ourselves, "Was he a fool? or was he a traitor?" He was a fool,
for he thought he had "three hundred thousand men" in front of him, took
every excited person for a rebel, and did not understand that out of
every hundred Parisians there were ninety who were relying on him to
bring the mutineers to reason.
He had no confidence in his troops, he said.
It was rather for them to have no confidence in him, and to lose heart
utterly at such a spectacle of cowardice. But he was slandering them.
One solitary regiment showed disloyalty. And if he had only given the
Swiss the word to march, their conduct on August 10 gives ample proof
that they could have been depended on.
"And then," says he again, "I was fearful of letting loose civil war!"
Indeed! And so a soldier going to suppress a revolt is not to run the
risk of fighting!
Last reason of all: "I requested orders from Versailles--and did not get
them!"
What, then, had he in his pocket?
Finally, after having sent word to Flesselles and De Launey to maintain
their position till he arrived, and after having allowed the arms of the
Invalides to be looted under his eyes without a single effort to save
them, he waited till the Bastille was taken before making up his mind to
leave the Champ de Mars, and to return quietly to Versailles with his
35,000 men, who had not fired a shot!
Ah! those were the days for rioting!
* * * * *
"On July 13," says Michelet, "Paris was defending herself." (Against
whom?) "On the 14th, she attacked! A voice wakened her and cried, 'On,
and take the Bastille!' And that day was the day of the entire People!"
Admirable poetry; but every word a lie!
Listen to Marat, who is not open to suspicion, and who saw things at
closer quarters. "The Bastille, badly defended, was captured by a
handful of soldiers and a gang of wretches for the most part Germans and
provincials. The Parisians, those everlasting star-gazers, came there
out of curiosity!"
In reality, Michelet's "entire people" reduces itself to a bare thousand
assailants, of whom three hundred at most took part in the fight: Gardes
Françaises and deserters of all arms, lawyers' clerks, and citizens who
had lost their heads: fine fellows who thought themselves engaged in
meritorious work in rushing on these inoffensive walls; bandits
attracted by the riot which promised them theft and murder with
impunity. And a number of mere spectators--spectators above all!
"I was present," says Chancellor Pasquier, "at the taking of the
Bastille. What is called the fight was not serious. The resistance was
absolutely nil. The truth is, that this grand fight did not cause an
instant's alarm to the spectators, who had flocked up to see the result.
Among them there were many ladies of the greatest elegance. In order to
get more easily to the front they had left their carriages at a
distance. By my side was Mdlle. Contat, of the Comédie Française. We
stayed to see the finish, and then I escorted her on my arm to her
carriage in the Place Royale."
"The Bastille was not taken; truth must be told, it surrendered." It is
Michelet himself who makes this statement, and he adds: "what ruined it
was its own evil conscience!"
It would be too simple to acknowledge that it was the incapacity of its
governor.
There is no connoisseur in old prints but is acquainted with those
last-century views which represent the taking of the Bastille. The
platform of the fortress bristles with cannon all firing together,
"belching forth death,"--without the slightest attention on the part of
the assailants, for all the balls from this artillery, passing over
their heads, would only kill inoffensive wayfarers without so much as
scratching a single one of the besiegers!
And the Bastille did not fire a single shot in self-defence!
In the morning, at the request of Thuriot de la Rozière, De Launey had
readily consented to the withdrawal of the fifteen cannon of the
platform from their embrasures, and had blocked up the embrasures with
planks. Of the three guns which later on he ranged batterywise before
the entrance gate, not one was effective, and the discharge attributed
to one of them came from a piece of ordnance on the wall.
He placed such absolute reliance on succour from Besenval that, on
evacuating the arsenal and getting the whole garrison together into the
Bastille--eighty-two Invalides and M. de Flue's thirty-two Swiss--he had
forgotten to increase his stock of provisions. Now, the Bastille had no
reserve of provisions. Every morning, like a good housewife, it received
the goods ordered the night before, brought by the different purveyors;
on this day, they were intercepted. So it happened that at three o'clock
in the afternoon the garrison was without its usual rations, and the
Invalides, who had been for a week past going in and out of all the inns
in the neighbourhood, and were disposed to open the doors to their good
friends of the suburbs, used the scantiness of their rations as a
pretext for mutiny, for refusing to fight, and for muddling the brains,
never very clear, of the unhappy De Launey.
"On the day of my arrival," says De Flue, "I was able to take this man's
measure from the absolutely imbecile preparations which he made for the
defence of his position. I saw clearly that we should be very poorly led
in case of attack. He was so struck with terror at the idea of it that,
when night came on, he took the shadows of trees for enemies! Incapable,
irresolute, devoting all his attention to trifles and neglecting
important duties--such was the man."
Abandoned by Besenval, instead of cowing his Invalides into obedience by
his energy, and maintaining his position to famishing point behind walls
over which the balls of the besiegers flew without killing more than
one man, De Launey lost his head, made a feint of firing the powder
magazine, capitulated, and opened his gates to men who, as Chateaubriand
says, "could never have cleared them if he had only kept them shut."
If this poor creature had done his duty, and Besenval had done his,
things would have had quite a different complexion. That is not to say
that the Revolution would have been averted--far from it! The Revolution
was legitimate, desirable, and, under the generous impulse of a whole
nation, irresistible. But it would have followed another bent, and would
have triumphed at a slighter cost, with less ruin and less bloodshed.
The consequences of the 14th of July were disastrous. The mere words,
"The Bastille is taken!" were the signal for the most frightful
disorders throughout France. It seemed as though those old walls were
dragging down with them in their fall all authority, all respect, all
discipline; as though the floodgates were being opened to every kind of
excess. Peasants went about in bands, ravaging, pillaging, firing the
châteaux, the burghers' houses, and burning alive those who fell into
their hands. The soldiers mutinied, insulted their chiefs, and fell to
carousing with the malefactors whom they set free. There was not a town
or village where the mob did not put on menacing airs, where decent
people were not molested by the brawlers of the clubs and the
street-corners. Such violence led to a rapid reaction, and there were
numerous defections--of men who, on the very eve of the outbreak, among
the magistracy, the army, the clergy, the nobility, though sympathizing
with the new ideas, abruptly cut themselves loose from the movement,
like the good Duke de la Rochefoucauld, who exclaimed, "Liberty is not
entered by such a door as this!" Hovering between the desire and the
fear of granting the promised reforms, urged on one side to resistance,
on the other to submission, and more than ever destitute of all
political acumen and all will power, the king went to Paris, and,
bending before the revolt, approved of the assassination of his most
faithful servants--and took, on that fatal day, his first step towards
the scaffold! Henceforth, under the pressure of the populace, to whom
its first success had shown the measure of its strength, and who became
every day more exacting, more threatening, the Revolution was to go on
in its perverse course, stumbling at every step, until it came to the
orgy of '93, which, properly speaking, was only the systematizing of
brigandage. Malouet was right indeed: what we symbolize in our festival
of the 14th of July is not the rising sun, the dawn of Liberty; it is
the first lurid lightning flash of the Terror!
Doctor Rigby, after having walked up and down the whole afternoon in the
Jardin Monceau without the least idea of what was going on in the Suburb
Saint-Antoine, returned in the evening to his house near the
Palais-Royal. He saw the mob reeling in drunkenness. Men and women were
laughing, crying, and embracing one another: "The Bastille is taken! At
last we are free!" And not the least enthusiastic were those very men of
the citizen militia who, ready yesterday to fight the insurrection, were
to-day hailing its triumph! The first sabre brandished by the first
national guard was in point of fact that of Joseph Prudhomme![15]
All at once this delirious crowd shudders, parts asunder with cries of
horror!
Down the Rue Saint-Honoré comes a yelling mob of wine-soaked
malefactors, bearing along, at the ends of two pikes, the still bleeding
heads of De Launey and De Flesselles!
And the silly folk, so madly rejoiced by the fall of an imaginary
tyranny which has not even the wits to defend itself, go their several
ways, struck dumb with consternation.
For here the Real is making its entrance!
* * * * *
Do not fancy that because the Bastille has opened its gates, the legends
which give it so cruel a name are going to vanish into thin air, like
the phantoms of an ancient château when light is let in.
While Michelet's "entire Paris" is making short work of the Invalides
who surrendered the place; cutting in pieces the man who prevented its
blowing up; slaughtering Major de Losme, the friend and benefactor of
the prisoners; torturing the hapless De Launey, who, from the Bastille
to the Hôtel de Ville, stabbed, slashed, hacked with sabres and pikes
and bayonets, is finally decapitated by the aid of a short knife--an
episode which Michelet skilfully slurs over--while all the criminals of
the district, crowding along in the wake of the combatants, are rushing
to the official buildings, looting, smashing, throwing into the moats
furniture, books, official papers, archives, the remnants of which will
be collected with such difficulty--some good people are saying to
themselves: "But come now, there are some prisoners! Suppose we go and
set them free?"
Here let us see what Louis Blanc has to say:--
"Meanwhile the doors of the cells" (he insists on the cells) "were burst
in with a mighty effort; the prisoners were free! Alas! for three of
them it was too late! The first, whose name was the Comte de Solages, a
victim for seven years of the incomprehensible vengeance of an
implacable father, found neither relatives who would consent to
acknowledge him, nor his property, which had become the prey of covetous
collateral heirs! The second was called Whyte. Of what crime was he
guilty, accused, of, at any rate, suspected? No one has ever known! The
man himself was questioned in vain. In the Bastille he had lost his
reason. The third, Tavernier, at the sight of his deliverers, fancied he
saw his executioners coming, and put himself on the defensive. Throwing
their arms round his neck they undeceived him; but next day he was met
roaming through the town, muttering wild and whirling words. He was
mad!"
As many wilful errors as there are words!
The Comte de Solages was an execrable libertine, confined at the request
of his family for "atrocious and notorious crimes." His relatives
nevertheless had the humanity to take him in after his deliverance, and
it was with them that he died in 1825.
Whyte and Tavernier did not go mad in the Bastille. They were in the
Bastille because they were mad; and the second was, further, implicated
in an assassination. Finding shelter with a perruquier of the
neighbourhood, he set about smashing all his host's belongings, which
necessitated his banishment to Charenton, where Whyte soon rejoined him.
It was not worth the trouble of changing their quarters!
Four other prisoners who were set free, Corrège, Béchade, Pujade, and
Laroche, were imprisoned for forgery. And so Louis Blanc is careful
silently to pass them over!
Ten days before, another victim of tyranny had been groaning in
irons--the Marquis de Sade, who, from the height of the platform, used
to provoke the passers-by with the aid of a speaking trumpet. De Launey
was compelled to transfer him to Vincennes, thus depriving the victors
of the glory of liberating the future author of _Justine_. The Republic
took its revenge in making him later secretary of the "Pike" ward,[16]
an office for which he was marked out by his virtues!
But of all these prisoners the most celebrated, the most popular, the
man whose misfortunes all Paris deplored, was the famous Comte de
Lorges, who, according to the biographical sketch devoted to him by the
unknown author of his deliverance, had been shut up for thirty-two
years. The story must be read in the pamphlet of Citizen Rousselet,
conqueror of the Bastille: "The tide of humanity penetrates into ways
narrowed by mistrust. An iron door opens: what does one see? Is this a
man? Good heavens! this old man loaded with irons! the splendour of his
brow, the whiteness of his beard hanging over his breast! What majesty!
the fire still flashing from his eyes seems to shed a gentle light in
this lugubrious abode!"
Surprised at seeing so many armed men, he asks them if Louis XV. is
still alive. They set him free, they lead him to the Hôtel de Ville.
For fifteen days all Paris went to visit the black dungeon in which this
unhappy wretch had been shut up for so many years without other light
than that which escaped "from his eyes"! A stone from that dungeon had a
place in the Curtius Museum. His portrait was published. A print
represents him at the moment when his chains were broken, seated on a
chair in his cell, a pitcher of water by his side!
And this hapless greybeard--he was never seen! He never existed!
In reality there were in the Bastille, on the 14th of July, only seven
prisoners--two madmen, a _Sadique_,[17] and four forgers. But about
their number and their right to imprisonment Michelet remains dumb: to
discuss that would spoil his epic! And he excels in making the most of
everything that can support his case, and in ignoring everything that
damages it. And so he contents himself with speaking of the two who had
"gone mad"!--a prevarication worthy of Louis Blanc, nay, unworthy even
of him!
The conquerors were somewhat surprised at the small number of victims,
more surprised still to find them comfortably installed in rooms, some
of which were furnished with arm-chairs in Utrecht velvet! The author of
_The Bastille Unmasked_ exclaims: "What! No corpses! No skeletons! No
men in chains!" "The taking of the Bastille," said "Cousin Jacques,"[18]
"has opened the eyes of the public on the kind of captivity experienced
there."
But in this he was greatly mistaken. Legends die hard! A Bastille
without cells, dungeons, cages of iron! Public opinion did not admit
that it could have been deceived on that point.
"Several prisoners," says the _History of Remarkable Events_, "were set
at liberty; but some, and perhaps the greater number, had already died
of hunger, because men could not find their way about this monstrous
prison. Some of these prisoners confined within four walls received food
only through holes cut in the wall. A party of prisoners was found
starved to death, because their cells were not discovered till several
days had elapsed!"
Another pamphlet on the underground cells discovered in the Bastille,
resuscitating an old fable which had already done duty for the Cardinal
de Richelieu, shows us a prisoner taken from his cell and led by the
governor into "a room which had nothing sinister in its appearance. It
was lit by more than fifty candles. Sweet-scented flowers filled it with
a delicious perfume. The tyrant chatted amicably with his prisoner....
Then he gave the horrible signal: a bascule let into the floor opened,
and the wretched man disappeared, falling upon a wheel stuck with razors
and set in motion by invisible hands." And the author winds up with this
magnificent reflection:--"Such a punishment, so basely contrived, is not
even credible--and yet it was at Paris, in that beautiful and
flourishing city, that this took place!"
Dorat-Cubières, who was one of the literary disgraces of the eighteenth
century, goes further! He saw, with his own eyes, one of those dens
where the captive, shut up with enough bread to last him a week, had
thereafter nothing else to subsist on but his own flesh. "In this den,"
he says, "we came upon a horrible skeleton, the sight of which made me
shrink back with horror!"
And the popular picture-mongers did not fail to propagate these
insanities. I have an engraving of the time nicely calculated to stir
sensitive hearts. Upon the steps of a gloomy cellar the conquerors are
dragging along a man whom his uniform shows to be one of the defenders
of the Bastille, and are pointing out to him an old man being carried
away, another being cut down from the ceiling where he is hanging by the
arms; yet others lying on a wheel furnished with iron teeth, chained to
it, twisted into horrible contortions by abominable machines; and in a
recess behind a grating appears the skeleton--which Dorat-Cubières never
saw!
The non-existence of these dungeons and holes with skeletons was too
great a shock to settled beliefs. This Bastille _must_ contain concealed
below ground some unknown cells where its victims were moaning! And
naturally enough, when one bent down the ear, one heard their despairing
appeals! But after having pierced through vaults, sunk pits, dug,
sounded everywhere, there was no help for it but to give up these
fancies, though--an agreeable thing to have to say!--with regret.
They fell back then on instruments of torture. For though the rack had
been abolished for a hundred years, how was it possible to conceive of
the Bastille without some slight instruments of torture?
They had no difficulty in finding them--"chains," says Louis Blanc,
"which the hands of many innocent men had perhaps worn, machines of
which no one could guess the use: an old iron corslet which seemed to
have been invented to reduce man to everlasting immobility!"
As a matter of fact, these chains belonged to two statuettes of
prisoners which stood on either side of the great clock in the
courtyard. The machines, the use of which no one could guess, were the
fragments of a clandestine printing-press that had been pulled to
pieces. And the iron corslet was a piece of fifteenth-century armour!
Skeletons, too, were missing, though indeed some bones were found in the
apartment of the surgeon of the fortress; but the utmost bad faith could
not but be compelled to acknowledge that these were anatomical
specimens. Happily for the legend, a more serious discovery was made:
"two skeletons, chained to a cannon-ball," as the register of the
district of Saint-Louis la Culture declared.
They both came to light in the rubbish dug out during the construction
of the bastion afterwards turned into a garden for the governor. "One,"
says the report of Fourcroy, Vicq-d'Azyr, and Sabatier, instructed to
examine them, "was found turned head downwards on the steps of a steep
staircase, entirely covered with earth, and appears to be that of a
workman who had fallen by accident down this dark staircase, where he
was not seen by the men working at the embankment. The other, carefully
buried in a sort of ditch, had evidently been laid there a long time
previously, before there was any idea of filling up the bastion."
As to the cannon-ball, it must have dated back to the Fronde.[19]
But skeletons were necessary! They had found some: they might as well
profit by them!
The demolisher of the Bastille, that charlatan Palloy, exhibited them to
the veneration of the faithful in a cellar by the light of a funereal
lamp, after which they were honoured with a magnificent funeral, with
drums, clergy, a procession of working men, between two lines of
National Guards, from the Bastille to the Church of St. Paul. And
finally, in the graveyard adjoining the church, they raised to them,
amid four poplars, a monument of which a contemporary print has
preserved the likeness.
After such a ceremony, dispute if you dare the authenticity of the
relics!
* * * * *
The memory of the Man in the Iron Mask is so closely bound up with the
story of the Bastille that M. Funck-Brentano could not neglect this
great enigma about which for two hundred years so much ink has been
spilt. He strips off this famous mask--which, by the way, was of
velvet--and shows us the face which the world has been so anxious to
see: the face of Mattioli, the confidant of the Duke of Mantua and the
betrayer of both Louis XIV. and his own master.
M. Funck-Brentano's demonstration is so convincing as to leave no room
for doubt. But one dare not hope that the good public will accept his
conclusions as final. To the public, mystery is ever more attractive
than the truth. There is a want of prestige about Mattioli; while about
a twin brother of Louis XIV.--ah, _there_ is something that appeals to
the imagination!
And then there are the guides, the showmen, to reckon with--those
faithful guardians of legends, whose propaganda is more aggressive than
that of scholars. When you reflect that every day, at the Isles of
Saint-Marguerite, the masked man's cell is shown to visitors by a good
woman who retails all the traditional fables about the luxurious life of
the prisoner, his lace, his plate, and the attentions shown him by M.
de Saint-Mars, you will agree that a struggle with this daily discourse
would be hopeless. And you would not come off with a whole skin!
I was visiting the Château d'If before the new buildings were erected.
The show-woman of the place, another worthy dame, pointed out to us the
ruined cells of the Abbé Faria and Edmond Dantès.[20] And the spectators
were musing on the story as they contemplated the ruins.
"It seems to me," I said, "that these cells are rather near one another,
but surely Alexandre Dumas put them a little farther apart!"
"Oh, well!" replied the good creature, withering me with a glance of
contempt, "if, when I'm relating gospel truth, the gentleman begins
quoting a novelist--!"
To come nearer home. Follow, one of these days, a batch of Cook's
tourists at Versailles, shown round by an English cicerone. You will see
him point out the window from which Louis XVI. issued, on a flying
bridge, to reach his scaffold, erected in the marble court! The guide is
no fool. He knows well enough that the Place de la Concorde would not
appeal to the imagination of his countrymen; while it is quite natural
to them to draw a parallel in their minds between the scaffold of Louis
XVI. at Versailles and that of Charles I. at Whitehall.
And the conclusion of the whole matter is this: that whatever may be
said or written, nothing will prevail against the popular beliefs that
the Bastille was "the hell of living men," and that it was taken by
storm. Legends are the history of the people, especially those which
flatter their instincts, prejudices, and passions. You will never
convince them of their falsity.
M. Funck-Brentano must also expect to be treated as a "reactionary," for
such is, to many people, any one who does not unreservedly decry the
_ancien régime_. It had, assuredly, its vices and abuses, which the
Revolution swept away--to replace them by others, much more tolerable,
to be sure; but that is no reason for slandering the past and painting
it blacker than it really was. The fanatical supporters of the
Revolution have founded in its honour a sort of cult whose intolerance
is often irritating. To hear them you would fancy that before its birth
there was nothing but darkness, ignorance, iniquity, and wretchedness!
And so we are to give it wholehearted admiration, and palliate its
errors and its crimes; even gilding, as Chateaubriand said, the iron of
its guillotine. These idolaters of the Revolution are very injudicious.
By endeavouring to compel admiration for all that it effected, good and
ill without distinction, they provoke the very unreasonable inclination
to regard its whole achievement with abhorrence. It could well dispense
with such a surplusage of zeal, for it is strong enough to bear the
truth; and its work, after all, is great enough to need no justification
or glorification by means of legends.
VICTORIEN SARDOU.
LEGENDS OF THE BASTILLE
CHAPTER I.
THE ARCHIVES.
"The Bastille," wrote Sainte-Foix, "is a castle which, without being
strong, is one of the most formidable in Europe, and about it I shall
say nothing." "Silence is safer than speech on that subject," was the
saying in Paris.
At the extremity of the Rue Saint-Antoine, as one entered the suburb,
appeared the eight lofty towers, sombre, massive, plunging their
moss-grown feet into pools of muddy water. Their walls were pierced at
intervals with narrow, iron-barred windows: they were crowned with
battlements. Situated not far from the Marais, the blithe and wealthy
quarter, and quite near to the Suburb Saint-Antoine, where industry
raised its perpetual hum, the Bastille, charged with gloom and silence,
formed an impressive contrast.
The common impression it made is conveyed by Restif de la Bretonne in
his _Nights of Paris_: "It was a nightmare, that awesome Bastille, on
which, as I passed each evening along the Rue Saint-Gilles, I never
dared to turn my eyes."
The towers had an air of mystery, harsh and melancholy, and the royal
government threw mystery like a cloud around them. At nightfall, when
the shutters were closed, a cab would cross the drawbridge, and from
time to time, in the blackness of night, funeral processions, vague
shadows which the light of a torch set flickering on the walls, would
make their silent exit. How many of those who had entered there had ever
been seen again? And if perchance one met a former prisoner, to the
first question he would reply that on leaving he had signed a promise to
reveal nothing of what he had seen. This former prisoner had, as a
matter of fact, never seen anything to speak of. Absolute silence was
imposed upon the warders. "There is no exchanging of confidences in this
place," writes Madame de Staal, "and the people you come across have all
such freezing physiognomies that you would think twice before asking the
most trifling question." "The first article of their code," says
Linguet, "is the impenetrable mystery which envelops all their
operations."
We know how legends are formed. Sometimes you see them open out like
flowers brilliant under the sun's bright beams, you see them blossom
under the glorious radiance that lights up the life of heroes. The man
himself has long gone down into the tomb; the legend survives; it
streams across the ages, like a meteor leaving its trail of light; it
grows, broadens out, with ever-increasing lustre and glow: in this light
we see Themistocles, Leonidas, Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon.
Or may be, on the contrary, the legend is born in some remote corner,
covered with shade and silence. There men have lived their lives, there
it has been their lot to suffer. Their moans have risen in solitude and
confinement, and the only ears that heard them were harder than their
stone walls. These moans, heard by no compassionate soul, the great
resounding soul of the people catches up, swelling them with all its
might. Soon, among the mass of the people, there passes a blast
irresistible in its strength, like the tempest that upheaves the
restless waves. Then is the sea loosed from its chains: the tumultuous
breakers dash upon the affrighted shore: the sea-walls are all swept
away!
In a letter written by Chevalier, the major of the Bastille, to Sartine,
the chief of the police, he spoke of the common gossip on the Bastille
that was going about. "Although utterly false," he said, "I think it
very dangerous on account of its dissemination through the kingdom, and
that has now been going on for several years." No attention was paid to
Chevalier's warning. Mystery continued to be the rule at the Bastille
and in all that related to it. "The mildness of manners and of the
government," writes La Harpe, "had caused needlessly harsh measures in
great part to disappear. They lived on in the imagination of the
people, augmented and strengthened by the tales which credulity and hate
seize upon." Ere long the _Memoirs_ of Latude and of Linguet appeared.
Latude concealed his grievous faults, to paint his long sufferings in
strokes of fire. Linguet, with his rare literary talent, made of the
Bastille a picture dark in the extreme, compressing the gist of his
pamphlet into the sentence: "Except perhaps in hell, there are no
tortures to approach those of the Bastille." At the same period, the
great Mirabeau was launching his powerful plea against _lettres de
cachet_, "arbitrary orders." These books produced a mighty
reverberation. The Revolution broke out like a clap of thunder. The
Bastille was disembowelled. The frowning towers crumbled stone by stone
under the picks of the demolishers, and, as if they had been the
pedestal of the _ancien régime_, that too toppled over with a crash.
One of the halls of the Bastille contained, in boxes carefully arranged,
the entire history of the celebrated fortress from the year 1659, at
which date the foundation of this precious store of archives had been
begun. There were collected the documents concerning, not only the
prisoners of the Bastille, but all the persons who had been lodged
there, either under sentence of exile, or simply arrested within the
limits of the generality of Paris in virtue of a _lettre de cachet_.
The documents in this store-room had been in charge of archivists, who
throughout the eighteenth century had laboured with zeal and
intelligence at putting in order papers which, on the eve of the
Revolution, were counted by hundreds of thousands. The whole mass was
now in perfect order, classified and docketed. The major of the château,
Chevalier, had even been commissioned to make these documents the basis
of a history of the prisoners.
The Bastille was taken. In the disorder, what was the fate of the
archives? The ransacking of the papers continued for two days, writes
Dusaulx, one of the commissioners elected by the Assembly for the
preservation of the archives of the Bastille. "When, on Thursday the
16th, my colleagues and myself went down into the sort of cellar where
the archives were, we found the boxes in very orderly arrangement on the
shelves, but they were already empty. The most important documents had
been carried off: the rest were strewn on the floor, scattered about the
courtyard, and even in the moats. However, the curious still found some
gleanings there." The testimony of Dusaulx is only too well confirmed.
"I went to see the siege of the Bastille," writes Restif de la Bretonne;
"when I arrived it was all over, the place was taken. Infuriated men
were throwing papers, documents of great historical value, from the top
of the towers into the moats." Among these papers, some had been burnt,
some torn, registers had been torn to shreds and trailed in the mud. The
mob had invaded the halls of the château: men of learning and mere
curiosity hunters strove eagerly to get possession of as many of these
documents as possible, in which they thought they were sure to find
startling revelations. "There is talk of the son of a celebrated
magistrate," writes Gabriel Brizard, "who went off with his carriage
full of them." Villenave, then twenty-seven years of age and already a
collector, gathered a rich harvest for his study, and Beaumarchais, in
the course of a patriotic ramble through the interior of the captured
fortress, was careful to get together a certain number of these papers.
The papers purloined from the archives on the day of the capture and the
day following became dispersed throughout France and Europe. A large
packet came into the hands of Pierre Lubrowski, an attaché in the
Russian embassy. Sold in 1805, with his whole collection, to the Emperor
Alexander, the papers were deposited in the Hermitage Palace. To-day
they are preserved in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg.
Fortunately, the custody of the captured fortress was entrusted on July
15 to the company of arquebusiers, which received orders to prevent the
removal of any more papers. On July 16 one of the members present at a
sitting of the Electoral Assembly, sprang forward to the table and
cried, "Ah, gentlemen, let us save the papers! It is said that the
papers of the Bastille are being plundered; let us hasten to collect the
remnants of these old title-deeds of an intolerable despotism, so that
we may inspire our latest posterity with their horror!" There was
rapturous applause. A committee was nominated, consisting of Dusaulx, De
Chamseru, Gorneau, and Cailleau. Let us follow the style of the period:
"Before the Bastille the commissioners received a triumphant reception.
Amid the cheers of the people, who had been informed of their mission,
ten distinguished men of letters besought them to lead the commissioners
into the heart of that famous fortress, so long detested." When they got
into the Bastille, the commissioners were not long in perceiving that
they were a little behind the fair: "Many boxes were empty, and there
was an immense heap of papers in complete disorder."
The question of the papers of the Bastille grew day by day
extraordinarily popular. The Electoral Assembly had just appointed
commissioners to collect them; La Fayette, commander of the National
Guards, imposed a similar duty on the St. Elizabeth district; Bailly,
the mayor of Paris, delegated Dusaulx to the same office. In the
Constituent Assembly, the Comte de Châtenay-Lanty proposed that the
municipality of Paris should be instructed to get together the papers
found at the Bastille, so that they might be arranged, and that extracts
from them might be printed and published, "in order to keep for ever
alive in the hearts of Frenchmen, by means of this reading, the
detestation of arbitrary orders and the love of liberty"! This book was
to be the preface to the constitution. Finally, the district of St. Roch
took the initiative in calling upon the electors to restore to the
nation the papers carried off from the Bastille by Beaumarchais.
In the sitting of July 24, the Electoral Assembly passed a resolution
enjoining such citizens as were in possession of papers from the
Bastille to bring them back to the Hôtel de Ville. The appeal was
responded to, and the restitutions were numerous.
When the pillage and destruction had been stopped and possession had
been regained of a part of the stolen documents, the papers were
consigned to three different depositories; but it was not long before
they were deposited all together in the convent of St. Louis la Culture.
At length, on November 2, 1791, the Commune of Paris resolved to have
the precious documents placed in the city library. The decision was so
much the more happy in that the transfer, while placing the papers under
the guardianship of trained men and genuine librarians, did not
necessitate removal, since the city library at that date occupied the
same quarters as the archives of the Bastille, namely, the convent of
St. Louis la Culture.
To the revolutionary period succeeded times of greater calm. The
archives of the Bastille, after being the object of so much discussion,
and having occupied the Constituent Assembly, the Electoral Assembly,
the Paris Commune, the press, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly, all Paris,
the whole of France, fell into absolute oblivion. They were lost from
sight; the very recollection of them was effaced. In 1840, a young
librarian named François Ravaisson discovered them in the Arsenal
library at the bottom of a veritable dungeon. How had they got stranded
there?
Ameilhon, the city librarian, had been elected on April 22, 1797, keeper
of the Arsenal library. Anxious to enrich the new depository of which he
had become the head, he obtained a decree handing over the papers of the
Bastille to the Arsenal library. The librarians recoiled in dismay
before this invasion of documents, more than 600,000 in number and in
the most admired disorder. Then, having put their heads together, they
had the papers crammed into a dusty back-room, putting off the sorting
of them from day to day. Forty years slipped away. And if it happened
that some old antiquary, curious and importunate, asked to be allowed to
consult the documents he had heard spoken of in his youth, he was
answered--no doubt in perfect good faith--that they did not know what he
was talking about.
In 1840 François Ravaisson had to get some repairs done in his kitchen
at the Arsenal library. The slabs of the flooring were raised, when
there came to view, in the yawning hole, a mass of old papers. It
happened by the merest chance that, as he drew a leaf out of the heap,
Ravaisson laid his hand on a _lettre de cachet_. He understood at once
that he had just discovered the lost treasure. Fifty years of laborious
effort have now restored the order which the victors of the 14th of July
and successive removals had destroyed. The archives of the Bastille
still constitute, at the present day, an imposing collection, in spite
of the gaps made by fire and pillage in 1789, for ever to be regretted.
The administration of the Arsenal library has acquired copies of the
documents coming from the Bastille which are preserved at St.
Petersburg. The archives of the Bastille are now open to inspection by
any visitor to the Arsenal library, in rooms specially fitted up for
them. Several registers had holes burnt in them on the day of the
capture of the Bastille, their binding is scorched black, their leaves
are yellow. In the boxes the documents are now numbered, and they are
daily consulted by men of letters. The catalogue has been compiled and
published recently, through the assiduity of the minister of public
instruction.
It is by the light of these documents, of undeniable genuineness and
authority, that the black shade which so long brooded over the Bastille
has at length been dispelled. The legends have melted away in the clear
light of history, as the thick cloak of mist with which night covers the
earth is dissipated by the morning sun; and enigmas which mankind,
wearied of fruitless investigations, had resigned itself to declare
insoluble, have now at last been solved.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF THE BASTILLE.
Julius Cæsar describes a structure three stories high which his
legionaries used rapidly to erect in front of towns they were besieging.
Such was the remote origin of the "bastides" or "bastilles," as these
movable fortresses were called in the Middle Ages. Froissart, speaking
of a place that was being invested, says that "bastides were stationed
on the roads and in the open country" in such a manner that the town
could get no food supplies. It was not long before the designation was
applied to the fixed towers erected on the ramparts for the defence of
the towns, and more particularly to those which were constructed at the
entrance gates.
In 1356, the chroniclers mention some important works that had been done
on the circumvallations of Paris. These were constructions interrupting
the wall at intervals, and so placed as to protect either an entrance
gate or the wall itself. The special designations of _eschiffles_,
_guérites_, or _barbacanes_ were applied to such of these buildings as
rose between two gates of the city, while the _bastilles_ or _bastides_
were those which defended the gates. The first stone of the edifice
which for more than four centuries was to remain famous under the name
of the Bastille was laid on April 22, 1370, by the mayor of Paris in
person, Hugh Aubriot, the object being to strengthen the defences of the
city against the English. To reproach the king, Charles V., with the
construction of a cruel prison would be almost as reasonable as to
reproach Louis-Philippe with the construction of the fortress of Mont
Valérien. We borrow these details from M. Fernand Bournon's excellent
work on the Bastille in the _Histoire générale de Paris_.
"The Bastille," writes M. Bournon, "at the time of its capture on July
14, 1789, was still identical, except in some trifling particulars, with
the work of the architects of the fourteenth century." The Place de la
Bastille of the present day does not correspond exactly to the site of
the fortress. Mentally to restore that site it is necessary to take away
the last houses of the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Boulevard Henri IV.;
the ground they occupy was then covered with the château and its glacis.
The round towers, however, must have extended considerably in advance of
the line of the houses and have encroached upon the pavement. The plan
reproducing the site exactly is to-day marked by lines of white stones,
by means of which all Parisians may get some notion of it if they go to
the Place de la Bastille.
M. Augé de Lassus, who drew so largely upon the works of M. Bournon and
ourselves for his lecture on the Bastille,[21] will permit us in our
turn to borrow from him the description he gave of the Bastille, so far
as its construction is concerned. Prints of the commonest kind which
have circulated in thousands, the more recent reconstruction which in
1889 gave Paris so much entertainment, have familiarized us with the
aspect of the Bastille, whose eight circular towers, connected by
curtains of equal height, give us the impression of a box all of a
piece, or, if you prefer it, an enormous sarcophagus. The eight towers
all had their names. There were the Corner, the Chapel, and the Well
towers, names readily accounted for by their position or by details of
their construction. Then came the Bertaudière and Bazinière towers,
baptized by the names of two former prisoners. The Treasure tower was so
called because it had received on many occasions, notably under Henri
IV., the custody of the public money. The excellent poet Mathurin
Regnier alludes to this fact in these oft-quoted lines:--
"Now mark these parsons, sons of ill-got gain,
Whose grasping sires for years have stolen amain,
Whose family coffers vaster wealth conceal,
Than fills that royal store-house, the Bastille."
The seventh tower was known as the County tower, owing its name, as M.
Bournon conjectures, to the feudal dignity called the County of Paris.
"The hypothesis," he adds, "derives the greater weight from the fact
that the mayors of Paris were called, up to the end of the _ancien
régime_, mayors of the town and viscounty of Paris." The eighth tower
bore a name which, for the tower of a prison, is very remarkable. It was
called the Tower of Liberty. This odd appellation had come to it from
the circumstance that it had been the part of the Bastille where
prisoners were lodged who enjoyed exceptionally favourable treatment,
those who had the "liberty" of walking during the day in the courtyards
of the château. These prisoners were said to be "in the liberty of the
court"; the officers of the château called them the "prisoners of the
liberty" in contradistinction to the prisoners "in durance"; and that
one of the eight towers in which they were lodged was thus, quite
naturally, called "the Tower of Liberty."
The towers of the Chapel and the Treasure, which were the oldest, had
flanked the original gateway, but this was soon walled up, leaving
however in the masonry the outline of its arch, and even the statues of
saints and crowned princes that had been the only ornaments of its bare
walls. "In accordance with custom," says M. Augé de Lassus, "the
entrance to the Bastille was single and double at the same time; the
gate for vehicles, defended by its drawbridge, was flanked by a smaller
gate reserved for foot passengers, and this, too, was only accessible
when a small drawbridge was lowered."
In the first of the two courtyards of the Bastille, D'Argenson had
placed a monumental clock held up by large sculptured figures
representing prisoners in chains. The heavy chains fell in graceful
curves around the clock-face, as a kind of ornamentation. D'Argenson and
his artists had a ferocious taste.
On the morrow of the defeat at St. Quentin,[22] the fear of invasion
decided Henri II., under the advice of Coligny, to strengthen the
Bastille. It was then, accordingly, that there was constructed, in front
of the Saint-Antoine gate, the bastion which was at a later date to be
adorned with a garden for the prisoners to walk in.
Around the massive and forbidding prison, in the course of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, quite a little town sprang up and
flourished, as in the Middle Ages happened around lofty and impressive
cathedrals. Barbers, cobblers, drink-sellers, poulterers, cheesemongers,
and general dealers had their shops there. These new buildings
encroached on the Rue Saint-Antoine, and extended as far as the convent
of the Visitation, the chapel of which, converted into a Protestant
place of worship, still exists.
"In its latter days," writes M. de Lassus, "the Bastille with its
appendages presented an appearance somewhat as follows:--On the Rue
Saint-Antoine, a gateway of considerable size, and, with its trophies of
arms, making some pretensions to a triumphal arch, gave access to a
first court skirted with shops, and open, at least during the day, to
all comers. People might pass through it freely, but were not allowed to
loiter there. Then appeared a second entrance, a double one for horse
and foot traffic, each gate defended by its drawbridge. Admittance
through this was more difficult, and the sentry's instructions more
rigorous; this was the outer guard. As soon as this entrance was passed,
one came to the court of the governor, who received the more or less
voluntary visitor. On the right stretched the quarters of the governor
and his staff, contiguous to the armoury. Then there were the moats,
originally supplied by the waters of the Seine--at that time people
frequently fell in and were drowned, the moats not being protected by
any railing--in later times they were for the most part dry. Then rose
the lofty towers of the citadel, encircled, nearly a hundred feet up, by
their crown of battlements; and then one found the last drawbridge, most
often raised, at any rate before the carriage gate, the door for foot
passengers alone remaining accessible, under still more rigorous
conditions."
These conditions, so rigorous for contemporaries--the Czar Peter the
Great himself found them inflexible--are removed for the historian:
thanks to the numerous memoirs left by prisoners, thanks to the
documents relating to the administration of the Bastille now in the
Arsenal library, and to the correspondence of the lieutenants of police,
we shall penetrate into the interior of these well-fenced precincts and
follow the life of the prisoners day by day.
In its early days, then, the Bastille was not a prison, though it became
such as early as the reign of Charles VI. Yet for two centuries it kept
its character as a military citadel. Sometimes the kings gave lodgment
there to great personages who were passing through Paris. Louis XI. and
Francis I. held brilliant fêtes there, of which the chroniclers speak
with admiration.
It is Richelieu who must be considered the founder of the Bastille--the
Bastille, that is, as a royal prison, the Bastille of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Before him, imprisonment in the old fortress
was merely casual; it is to him that we must trace the conception of the
state prison as an instrument of government. Here we shall be arrested
by the question, what is to be understood by a state prison? The term,
vague and open to discussion, is explained by M. Bournon. "By a state
prison--taking the Bastille as a particular instance--must be understood
a prison for those who have committed a crime or misdemeanour not
provided for by the common law; for those who, rightly or wrongly, have
appeared dangerous to the safety of the state, whether the nation itself
is concerned, or its head, or a body more or less considerable of
citizens, a body sometimes no larger than the family of the suspect. If
we add to this class of prisoners personages too conspicuous to be
punished for a crime at common law on equal terms with the ordinary
malefactor, and for whom it would appear inevitable that an exceptional
prison should be reserved, we shall have passed in review the different
kinds of delinquents who expiated their misdeeds at the Bastille from
the time of Richelieu to the Revolution."
The administration of the Bastille, which, up to the reign of Louis
XIII., was entrusted to great lords, dukes, constables, marshals of
France--the Marshal de Bassompierre, the Constable de Luynes, the
Marshal de Vitry, the Duke of Luxemburg, to mention only the last of
them--was placed by Richelieu in the hands of a real jailer, Leclerc du
Tremblay, brother of Père Joseph.[23]
Documents throwing any light on the Bastille at the time when the Red
Man, as Victor Hugo named Richelieu, was supreme, are however very
rare. An advocate, Maton de la Varenne, published in 1786, in his
_Revolutions of Paris_, a letter which ostensibly had been written on
December 1, 1642, to Richelieu, at that time ill. In it we read: "I,
whom you are causing to rot in the Bastille for having disobeyed your
commandment, which would have brought upon my soul condemnation to
eternal hell, and would have made me appear in eternity with hands
stained with blood----" It is impossible to guarantee the authenticity
of this document. To us it appears suspicious, the text having been
published at a time when many apocryphal documents were produced as
coming from the archives of the Bastille. More worthy of arresting our
attention is the "return of the prisoners who are in the château of the
Bastille," a document of Richelieu's time which M. Bournon discovered in
the archives of the Foreign Office. This catalogue, containing
fifty-three names, is the oldest list of prisoners of the Bastille known
up to the present time. Among the prisoners several are suspected or
convicted of evil designs against "Monsieur le cardinal," some are
accused of an intention to "complot," that is, to conspire against the
throne, or of being spies. There is an "extravagant" priest, a monk who
had "opposed Cluni's election," three hermits, three coiners, the
Marquis d'Assigny, condemned to death, but whose punishment had been
commuted to perpetual imprisonment, a score or so of lords designated as
"madmen, vile scoundrels, evil wretches," or accused of some definite
crime, theft or murder; finally, those whose name is followed by the
simple note, "Queen-mother," or "Monsieur,"[24] whence we may conclude
that the clerk had no exact information about the prisoners of the
cardinal. We shall give later the list of the prisoners in the Bastille
on the day of its capture, July 14, 1789; and the comparison between the
two lists at the two periods, the remotest and the most recent that we
could select, will be instructive. We have also, to assist us in forming
a judgment of the Bastille in Richelieu's time, the memoirs of
Bassompierre and of Laporte, which transport us into a state prison,
elegant, we might almost say luxurious, reserved for prisoners of birth
and breeding, where they lived observing all social usages in their
mutual relations, paying and returning calls. But the Bastille preserved
its military character for many more years, and among the prisoners we
find especially a number of officers punished for breaches of
discipline. Prisoners of war were confined there, and foreign personages
of high rank arrested by way of reprisal, secret agents and spies
employed in France by hostile nations; finally, powerful lords who had
incurred the king's displeasure. The court intrigues under Richelieu and
Mazarin contributed to the diversion of the Bastille from its original
intention: they began to incarcerate there _valets de chambre_ who had
somehow become mixed up in the plots of sovereigns.
Religious persecution was revived by the government of Louis XIV., and
ere long a whole world of gazetteers and "novelists," the journalists of
the period, were seen swarming like flies in the sun. Louis XIV. was not
precisely a stickler for the liberty of the press, but on the other hand
he shrank from cooping up men of letters, Jansenists and Protestants
convinced of the truth of their beliefs, pell-mell with the vagabonds
and thiefs confined at Bicêtre, Saint-Lazare, and the other prisons of
Paris. He threw open to them, too generously no doubt, the portals of
his château in the Suburb Saint-Antoine, where they mixed with young men
of family undergoing a mild course of the Bastille at the request of
their parents, and with quarrelsome nobles whom the marshals of France,
anxious to avoid duels, used to send there to forget their animosities.
Further, the reign of Louis XIV. was marked by some great trials which
produced a strange and appalling impression, and threw around the
accused a halo of mystery--trials for magic and sorcery, cases of
poisoning and base coining. The accused parties in these cases were
confined in the Bastille. And here we encounter a fresh departure from
the primitive character of the old fortress; prisoners were sent there
whose cases were tried by the regularly constituted judges. Henceforth
prisoners who appeared before the court of the Arsenal were divided
between the Bastille and the fortress of Vincennes.
This is the grand epoch in the history of the Bastille: it is now a
veritable prison of state. Writers can speak of its "nobleness." It
shows itself to us in colours at once charming and awe-inspiring,
brilliant, majestic, now filled with sounds of merriment, now veiled
with an appalling silence. From the gloomy regions within the massive
walls there come to us the sounds of song and laughter mingled with
cries of despair, with sobs and tears. This is the period of the Iron
Mask: the period when the governor receives mysterious letters from the
court. "I beg you, sir, to see that, if anyone comes to ask for news of
the prisoner whom Desgrez conducted to the Bastille this morning by
order of the king, nothing be said about him, and that, if possible, in
accordance with the intention of His Majesty and the accompanying
instructions, no one may get to know him or even his name." "M. de
Bernaville (the name of one of the governors of the Bastille), having
given orders for the conveyance of an important prisoner to the prison
of my château of the Bastille, I send this letter to inform you of my
intention that you receive him there and keep him closely guarded until
further orders, warning you not to permit him, under any pretext
whatever, to hold communication with any person, either by word of mouth
or in writing." The prisoners surrounded with so absolute a silence
almost all belonged to the same category, namely, distinguished spies,
who seem to have been rather numerous in France at the full tide of
Louis XIV.'s wars, and who were hunted down with an eagerness which grew
in proportion as fortune frowned on the royal armies. We read in the
Journal kept by the King's lieutenant, Du Junca: "On Wednesday,
December 22, about ten o'clock in the morning, M. de la Coste, provost
of the King's armies, came here, bringing and leaving in our custody a
prisoner whom for greater secrecy he caused to enter by our new gate,
which allows us to pass into or out of the garden of the Arsenal at all
hours--the which prisoner, M. d'Estingen by name, a German, but married
in England, was received by the governor by order of the King sent by
the hand of the Marquis de Barbezieux, with explicit instructions to
keep the prisoner's presence a secret and to prevent him from holding
communication with anyone, in speech or writing: the which prisoner is a
widower, without children, a man of intelligence, and doing a brisk
trade in news of what is happening in France, sending his information to
Germany, England, and Holland: a gentlemanly spy." On February 10, 1710,
Pontchartrain wrote to Bernaville, governor of the Bastille: "I cannot
refrain from telling you that you and the Chevalier de la Croix speak a
good deal too much and too openly about the foreign prisoners you have.
Secrecy and mystery is one of your first duties, as I must ask you to
remember. Neither D'Argenson nor any other than those I have apprized
you of should see these prisoners. Give explicit warning to the Abbé
Renaudot and to de la Croix of the necessity of maintaining an
inviolable and impenetrable secrecy."
It happened also at that period that a prisoner remained in complete
ignorance of the reason of his incarceration: "The prisoner at the
Bastille named J. J. du Vacquay," writes Louvois to the governor, "has
complained to the King that he has been kept there for thirteen years
without knowing the reason: be good enough to let me know what minister
signed the warrant under which he is detained, so that I may report to
His Majesty."
As the greater part of the papers relating to the arrest were destroyed
as soon as the incarceration was effected, it sometimes happened that in
certain cases the reasons were not known even in the offices of the
ministers. Thus Seignelay writes to the governor, M. de Besmaus: "The
King has commanded me to write and ask you who is a certain prisoner
named Dumesnil, how long he has been at the Bastille, and for what
reason he was placed there." "The demoiselle de Mirail, a prisoner at
the Bastille, having demanded her liberty of the King, His Majesty has
instructed me to write and ask you the reason of her detention; if you
know it, be good enough to inform me at your earliest convenience."
Again, we find Louvois writing to the same effect: "I am sending you a
letter from M. Coquet, in regard to which the King has commanded me to
ask who signed the warrant under which he was sent to the Bastille, and
whether you know the reason of his being sent there." "Sir, I am writing
a line merely to ask you to let me know who is Piat de la Fontaine, who
has been five years at the Bastille, and whether you do not remember why
he was placed there."
Letters of this kind are, it is true, very rare; yet if one compares the
state of things they disclose with the extraordinary comfort and luxury
with which the prisoners were surrounded, they help to characterize the
celebrated prison at this epoch of its history, namely, the seventeenth
century.
In 1667 the office of lieutenant of police had been created. The first
to hold the title was Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, a man of the
greatest worth. It is very important to note that under the _ancien
régime_ the lieutenant of police had a double function, being at the
same time a subordinate of the minister of Paris[25] and a member of the
Châtelet.[26] His duties were thus of a twofold nature, administrative
and judicial. Now the Bastille, as a state prison, was more especially
an administrative institution; but gradually, owing to the character of
the persons brought there as prisoners, it became difficult to avoid
turning it also into a judicial institution, and the minister of Paris
became accustomed to delegate his subordinate, the lieutenant of police,
to conduct the examination of the prisoners at the Bastille. Though La
Reynie took practically the whole responsibility of the administration
of the Bastille, his visits to the prison itself were nevertheless
relatively rare, and on every occasion a permit signed by Louis XIV. or
by Colbert was necessary.
La Reynie was succeeded by D'Argenson. Under him the powers of the
lieutenant of police were very largely extended, and the Bastille was
comprised within his jurisdiction. Henceforth the lieutenant of police
will enter the state prison whenever it seems good to him, as lord and
master, accompanied by his subordinates at the Châtelet, clerks and
inspectors of police; the prisoners will be in direct and constant
communication with him, and he will make an inspection of all the
chambers at least once a year. We find that at every change in the
lieutenancy of police, it sufficed for the minister of Paris to send the
name of the new officer to the governor. Dating from this period, the
prison in the Suburb Saint-Antoine remained under the authority of a
magistrate.
The Regency was a transition period between the reigns of Louis XIV. and
Louis XV., and there was a corresponding transition period in the
history of the Bastille. The incarcerations were less numerous and less
rigorous, but the rule of the prison lost something of that aristocratic
air which had characterized it. The most important episode in the
history of the Bastille during the Regency was the incarceration of
those who were accused of complicity in the Cellamare conspiracy. Among
these was Mdlle de Launay, later to be known as Madame de Staal. She
has left some charming pages about her imprisonment, in which we find,
related with a fluent and subtle pen, the little romance which we
proceed to outline.
Mdlle de Launay was secretary to the Duchess of Maine. She had had some
part in drawing up the scheme of the Cellamare conspiracy, which, if it
had succeeded, would have placed the king of Spain on the throne of
France. On December 10, 1718, the Regent sent her, with several of her
accomplices, to the Bastille, less with the idea of punishing her for
machinations against the state than to obtain from her details of the
conspiracy. At that period of her life she was of but moderate fortune
and rank, and it would not have been strange if she had been treated
with rigour. She found at the Bastille, on the contrary, unexpected
comfort and consideration. In her _Memoirs_, she writes that her sojourn
at the Bastille was the pleasantest time of her life. Her maid, Rondel,
was permitted to live with her. She was installed in a veritable suite
of rooms. She complained of the mice there, and a cat was given her, to
drive out the mice and provide some amusement. By and by there were
kittens, and the sportive tricks of the numerous little family cheered
her wonderfully, she said. Mdlle de Launay was regularly invited to dine
with the governor; she spent her days in writing and card-playing. The
king's lieutenant, Maisonrouge, a man well on in years, who held, after
the governor, the first place in the administration of the château,
conceived a profound and pathetic passion for the fair prisoner. He
declared that nothing would give him greater happiness than to make her
his wife. His apartments happened to be near those of Mdlle de Launay.
Unhappily for the king's lieutenant, there was in the neighbourhood a
third suite, occupied by a young and brilliant nobleman, the Chevalier
de Ménil, who also was implicated in the Cellamare affair. The fair
prisoner was not acquainted with him. Maisonrouge impresses us as a man
of great dignity, and rare nobility of character. He spoke to the two
young prisoners about each other, hoping, by bringing them into
communication, to provide them with fresh distractions, more
particularly the lady, whom he loved. The Chevalier de Ménil and Mdlle
de Launay could not see each other; they had never met. They began by
exchanging epistles in verse. Like everything that came from her pen,
the verses of Mdlle de Launay were full of animation and charm. The good
Maisonrouge played post between them, happy to see his little friend's
delight in the diversion she owed to him. It was not long before the
verses carried from one room to the other by Maisonrouge began to speak
of love, and this love--surprising as it may seem, but not difficult to
understand in the sequestered life of the Bastille--ere long became real
in the consciousness of the young people, who saw each other in
imagination under the most charming colours. Maisonrouge was soon
induced to contrive an interview between them. It is a delightful
moment. The two captives had never seen each other, yet loved each
other passionately: what will their mutual impressions be? Mdlle de
Launay's impression, when she saw the gay chevalier, was of unmixed
enthusiasm; the chevalier's, maybe, was more subdued; but if it is true,
as someone has said, that to nuns the gardener represents mankind, to a
prisoner every young woman must be an exquisite creature. The interviews
continued under the benevolent eye of Maisonrouge, who watched the
development of Mdlle de Launay's love for Ménil--the love of the girl
whom he himself loved intensely, but whose happiness he preferred to his
own. There are delightful details which may be found delightfully
described in Mdlle de Launay's _Memoirs_. It is M. Bournon's opinion
that, according to the testimony of Mdlle de Launay herself, this idyll
of the Bastille had "the dénouement that might have been foretold." We
have caught no hint of the sort in the _Memoirs_ of Madame de Staal, but
then, M. Bournon is no doubt the better psychologist. At any rate, the
governor of the Bastille got wind of the diversions of the lovers. He
put his foot down. Ménil was transferred to a distant tower, Mdlle de
Launay shed tears, and, incredible as it seems, Maisonrouge, while
redoubling his efforts to please her, sympathized with her lot to the
point of arranging fresh and more difficult interviews with the sparkish
chevalier. Mdlle de Launay left the prison in the spring of 1720, after
having sent to the Regent a detailed statement of the facts of the
conspiracy, which hitherto she had refused to furnish. Once at liberty,
she vainly implored the Chevalier de Ménil to fulfil his pledges and
make her his wife. Maisonrouge died in the following year, of
disappointment, says the gay coquette, at his failure to get from her,
during her imprisonment, the promise of marriage which now she would
have been glad enough to fulfil.
It seems as though under the Regency everything at the Bastille turned
on love--a reflection of the epoch itself. The young Duke de Richelieu
was locked up there because he did not love his wife. The brilliant
nobleman was kept under lock and key for several weeks, "in solitude and
gloom," he says, when suddenly the door of his room flew open and Madame
de Richelieu appeared, a wonder of grace, brightness and charm: "The
fair angel," writes the duke, "who flew from heaven to earth to set
Peter free was not so radiant."
We have seen how the Bastille had been transformed from a military
citadel into a prison of state. We shall now witness, under the
government of the Duke of Orleans, another transformation, betokened by
an event which is of little apparent importance. The Duke de Richelieu
was imprisoned in the Bastille a second time as the result of a duel: a
judge of the Parlement went there to question him and the Parlement
tried his case. The Parlement[27] at the Bastille, in the prison of the
king! From that moment the fortress continued year by year to grow more
like our modern prisons. "Under the Cardinal de Fleury," writes La
Harpe, "this famous château was inhabited by hardly any but Jansenist
writers: it then became the enforced residence of champions of
philosophy and authors of clandestine satires, and acted as a foil to
their obscurity and shame." It became increasingly the practice to
confine there accused persons whose cases were regularly tried at the
Châtelet or even before the Parlement. By the second half of the
eighteenth century accused persons had come to be incarcerated in the
Bastille by direct order of the Châtelet, which would have seemed
incredible to a contemporary of Louis XIV. The summoning officer would
post himself before the towers, and there, while the prisoner pressed
his head close against the bars of the window, the officer would shout
the terms of the writ at him across the moat. The advocates defending
the accused obtained permission to go and consult their clients, and
they were the only persons who were permitted to interview the prisoners
in private. On the appointed day the prisoner was transferred to the law
courts quietly and by night to avoid the curiosity of the crowd.
Under Louis XVI. the judges of the Parlement visited the Bastille as
they visited the other prisons; at length the minister Breteuil sent
instructions to the officials informing them that no more _lettres de
cachet_ would be issued without stating the duration of the penalty to
which the guilty person was condemned and the grounds for his
punishment. The Bastille was now merely a prison like the others,
except that the prisoners were better treated there.
In 1713 Voysin, the Secretary of State, wrote to D'Argenson:
"Beaumanielle is not sufficiently deserving of consideration to warrant
his removal from the Châtelet to the Bastille." La Harpe has well
described the transformation which from this time came over the great
state prison by saying that, from the beginning of the century, none of
the prisoners who had been placed there "had merited the honour." His
remark receives corroboration from Linguet: "It is not, in these latter
days especially, for criminals of state that the Bastille is reserved:
it has become in some sort the antichambre of the conciergerie."
If the glories of the Bastille paled as it grew older, on the other hand
torture, which, it is true, had never been applied except by order of
the courts, had completely disappeared. From the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the cells and chains were merely a temporary
punishment reserved for insubordinate prisoners: from the accession of
Louis XVI. they had fallen into disuse. Breteuil forbade any person
whatever to be placed in the cells, which were the rooms on the lowest
floor of each tower, a sort of damp and gloomy vaults. On September 11,
1775, Malesherbes writes: "No prisoner should be refused material for
reading and writing. The abuse it is pretended that they may make of it
cannot be dangerous, confined so closely as they are. Nor should any
refusal be made to the desire of such as may wish to devote themselves
to other occupations, provided they do not require you to leave in their
hands tools of which they might avail themselves to effect their escape.
If any of them should wish to write to his family and his friends, he
must be permitted to receive replies, and to send replies to their
letters after having read them. In all this you must be guided by your
prudence and your humanity." The reading of the gazettes, formerly
rigidly forbidden, was now authorised.
It must further be remarked that the number of prisoners confined in the
Bastille was not so large as might be thought. During the whole reign of
Louis XVI. the Bastille received no more than two hundred and forty
prisoners, an average of sixteen a year; while it had room for forty-two
in separate apartments.
Under Louis XIV., at the period when the government was most liberal in
dispensing its _lettres de cachet_, an average of only thirty prisoners
a year entered the château, and their captivity was for the most part of
short duration. Dumouriez informs us in his _Memoirs_ that during his
detention he had never more than eighteen fellow prisoners, and that
more than once he had only six. M. Alfred Bégis has drawn up a list of
the prisoners detained in the Bastille from 1781 to 1789. In May, 1788,
it contained twenty-seven prisoners, the highest figure reached during
these eight year; in September, 1782, it contained ten; in April, 1783,
seven; in June of the same year, seven; in December, 1788, nine; in
February, 1789, nine; at the time of its capture, July 14, 1789, there
were seven.
True, not only men were locked up in the Bastille, but also books when
they appeared dangerous. The royal warrant under which they were
incarcerated was even drawn up on the model of the _lettres de cachet_.
M. Bournon has published a specimen of these. The books were shut up in
a closet between the towers of the Treasure and the County, over an old
passage communicating with the bastion. In 1733 the lieutenant of police
instructed the governor of the Bastille to receive at the château "all
the apparatus of a clandestine printing-press which had been seized in a
chamber of the Saint-Victor abbey: the which you will be good enough to
have placed in the store room of the Bastille." When the books ceased to
appear dangerous, they were set at liberty. In this way the
_Encyclopædia_[28] was liberated after a detention of some years.
We have just seen that during the reign of Louis XVI. the Bastille did
not receive more than sixteen prisoners a year, on an average. Several
of these were only detained for a few days. From 1783 to 1789 the
Bastille remained almost empty, and would have been absolutely empty if
it had not been decided to place there prisoners who should properly
have been elsewhere. As early as February, 1784, the fortress of
Vincennes, which served as a sort of overflow pipe to the Bastille, had
been shut for lack of prisoners. The system of _lettres de cachet_ was
slipping away into the past. On the other hand, the Bastille was a
source of great expense to the King. The governor alone received 60,000
livres annually. When you add the salaries and board of the officers of
the garrison, the turnkeys, the physicians, the surgeon, the apothecary,
the chaplains; when you add the food--this alone in 1774 came to 67,000
livres--and the clothing of the prisoners, and the upkeep of the
buildings, the total will appear outrageous, for the figures given above
must be tripled to represent the value of the present day. So Necker,
seeing that the Bastille was of no further utility, thought of
suppressing it "for economy's sake,"[29] and he was not the only one in
high places to speak of this suppression. The Carnavalet[30] museum
possesses a scheme drawn up in 1784 by Corbet, the superintending
architect to the city of Paris, whence the project has an official
character: it is a scheme for a "Place Louis XVI." to be opened up on
the site of the old fortress. We learn from Millin that other artists
"were occupied with a scheme for erecting a monument on the site of the
Bastille." One of these schemes deserves special mention. Seven of the
eight towers were to be destroyed, the eighth to remain standing, but in
a significant state of dilapidation: on the site of the demolished
towers a monument was to be erected to the glory of Louis XVI. This
monument was to consist of a pedestal formed by piling up chains and
bolts taken from the state prison, above which would rise a statue of
the king, one hand extended towards the ruined tower with the gesture of
a deliverer. It is to be regretted, if not for the beauty, at least, for
the picturesqueness of Paris, that this scheme was never put into
execution. Davy de Chavigné, king's counsellor and auditor to the
treasury, was allowed to present to the Royal Academy of Architecture,
at its sitting on June 8, 1789, "a plan for a monument on the site of
the Bastille, to be decreed by the States General to Louis XVI. as the
restorer of the public liberty." On this subject the famous sculptor
Houdon wrote to Chavigné: "I am very anxious for the plan to be adopted.
The idea of erecting a monument to liberty on the very spot where
slavery has reigned up to the present, appears to me particularly well
conceived, and well calculated to inspire genius. I shall think myself
only too fortunate to be among the artists who will celebrate the epoch
of the regeneration of France."
We have seen prints, long anterior to 1789--one of them the frontispiece
of the edition of Linguet's _Memoirs_ that appeared in 1783--representing
Louis XVI. extending his hand towards the lofty towers, which workmen
are in the act of demolishing.
Among the archives of the Bastille are preserved two reports drawn up in
1788 by the king's lieutenant, Puget, the most important personage in
the fortress after the governor. He proposes the suppression of the
state prison, the demolition of the old château, and the sale of the
ground for the benefit of the crown. It may be said of these schemes, as
of the plan of the architect Corbet, that they would not have been
propounded if they had not been approved in high places.
Further, in the year 1784, an ardent supporter of the old state of
things cried: "Oh! if our young monarch ever committed a fault so great,
if he so far belied the most ancient usages of this government, if it
were possible that one day he could be tempted to destroy you" (the
author is apostrophizing the Bastille) "to raise on your ruins a
monument to the liberator-king...." The demolition of the Bastille was
decided on; and it would have been accomplished as a government
undertaking but for the outbreak of the Revolution.
From January 1 to July 14, 1789, that is to say for more than six
months, only one solitary prisoner entered the Bastille; and what a
prisoner!--Réveillon, the paper manufacturer of the Suburb
Saint-Antoine, who was shut up on May 1 at his own request, in order to
escape the fury of the mob. The same year, the lieutenant of police, de
Crosne, made an inspection of the Bastille, accompanied by a judge of
the Parlement; their object was to arrange officially about the
destruction of the state prison.
Thus, on the eve of the Revolution, the Bastille no longer existed,
though its towers were still standing.
The victors of the 14th of July set free seven prisoners: four forgers
whose arrest had been ordered by the Châtelet, whose case had been
regularly tried, and whose proper place was an ordinary prison; two
madmen who ought to have been at Charenton; and the Comte de Solages, a
young nobleman who had been guilty of a monstrous crime over which it
was desired to throw a veil out of regard for his family; he was
maintained on a pension paid by his father. The conquerors of the
Bastille destroyed an old fortified castle: the state prison no longer
existed. They "broke in an open door." That was said of them even in
1789.
CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN THE BASTILLE.
Having sketched rapidly and with bold strokes the outlines of the
history of the Bastille from its foundation to its fall, we intend to
show how the rule to which prisoners in the fortress of the Suburb
Saint-Antoine were submitted underwent its own process of
transformation, parallel with the transformation of the prison itself.
To understand the facts which follow, and which are of a kind to astound
the mind of everyone in these days, it is necessary to remember what we
have already said as to the character of the Bastille. It was the prison
of luxury, the aristocratic prison of the _ancien régime_, the _prison
de luxe_ at a period when it was no dishonour, as we shall see later, to
be confined there. We must remember the phrase of the minister of Paris
writing to D'Argenson, in regard to a personage of but modest rank, that
this individual did not deserve "consideration" enough to be put in the
Bastille. Let us reflect on this observation of Mercier in his excellent
_Pictures of Paris_: "The people fear the Châtelet more than the
Bastille. Of the latter they have no dread, because it is almost unknown
to them."
We have shown how the Bastille, originally a military citadel, had
become a prison of state; then, little by little, had approximated to
the ordinary prisons, until the day when it died a natural death ere it
could be assassinated. The same transformation took place in the
treatment of the prisoners. Midway in the seventeenth century, the
Bastille had none of the characteristics of a prison, but was simply a
château in which the king caused certain of his subjects to sojourn, for
one cause or another. They lived there just as they thought proper,
furnishing their rooms according to their fancy with their own
furniture, indulging their tastes in regard to food at their own
expense, and waited on by their own servants. When a prisoner was rich
he could live at the Bastille in princely style; when he was poor, he
lived there very wretchedly. When the prisoner had no property at all,
the king did not for that reason give him furniture or food; but he gave
him money which he might use as seemed good to him in providing himself
with furniture and food: money of which he could retain a part--a number
of prisoners did not fail to do so--these savings becoming his own
property. This system, the character of which it is important to
recognize, underwent gradual modification during the course of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximating, without ever
becoming identical with, the system of our modern prisons. Thus the
king, instead of granting pensions individually to the poorest of the
prisoners, came to endow the Bastille with a certain fixed number of
pensions for the less fortunate prisoners. The recipients of these
pensions continued to enjoy them for long years, and if they did not
wish the whole of the money to be expended on their support, the balance
was handed over to them. So we see certain individuals getting little
fortunes together by the mere fact of their having been prisoners in the
Bastille--a circumstance which has so much surprised historians because
they have not sought its cause. It even happened that prisoners, when
their liberation was announced to them, asked to remain a little longer
in order to swell their savings, a favour which was sometimes granted
them. In the course of the eighteenth century the money destined to the
maintenance of the prisoners at the Bastille could not be diverted from
its purpose; the prisoners were no longer able to appropriate a part;
the whole sum had to be expended.
It was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that the king
had some rooms at the Bastille furnished for such prisoners as were
without means of procuring furniture themselves. And it is very
interesting to note that it was only at the extreme end of the century,
under the administration of Saint-Mars, that certain apartments of the
Bastille were arranged in the prison style with bars and bolts. Until
then they had been simply the rooms of a stronghold.[31]
Let us follow the prisoner from his entrance to his exit.
When the _lettre de cachet_ had been signed, it was usually a sort of
sheriff's officer who effected the arrest. He appeared in company with
five or six men-at-arms, and signified the arrest by touching his quarry
with a white staff. A coach was in waiting. The police officer politely
begged the person he was instructed to secure to step into the coach,
and took his place beside him. And, according to the testimony of
various memoirs, while the vehicle was rolling along with lowered
blinds, there was a pleasant conversational exchange of courtesies up to
the moment of the prisoner's finding himself within the walls of the
Bastille. A certain Lafort was living in furnished apartments with a
young and pretty Englishwoman whom he had abducted, when one evening,
about sunset, a police officer arrived. The coach was at the door.
Preliminaries were settled on both sides with as much politeness as if a
visit or an evening party had been the topic of discussion. They all got
into the vehicle, even the young man's lackey who, beguiled by
appearances, mounted behind. Arrived at the Bastille, the lackey lost no
time in descending to open the door: there was general astonishment,
especially on the part of the poor servant, when he learnt that since he
had entered the Bastille along with his master, he must stay with him.
Most often the officer and his companions surprised their quarry early
in the morning, on rising from bed. Imagine then the coach with the
prisoner and the police officer inside, arriving before the Bastille, in
the first court in front of the castle keep. "Who goes there?" cries the
sentinel. "The king's writ!" replies the officer. At this, the shops we
have seen attached to the flanks of the château are bound at once to be
shut. The soldiers on guard have to turn their faces to the wall, or
perhaps to pull their hats over their eyes. The coach passes the
outpost, a bell sounds. "Advance!" cries the officer on duty. The
drawbridge is lowered and the coach rattles over the stout iron-clamped
boards. For greater secrecy, spies and prisoners of war were taken in by
a private door leading to the gardens of the Arsenal.
Officers and noblemen presented themselves before the Bastille alone,
unless they were accompanied by relatives or friends. "It is my
intention," the king had written to them, "that you betake yourselves to
my château of the Bastille." And no one dreamt of declining the royal
invitation. Further, when the governor desired to transfer one of them
from one prison to another, he contented himself with telling him so. We
find in the Journal of Du Junca, king's lieutenant[32] at the Bastille,
several notes like the following: "Monday, December 26, 1695, about ten
o'clock in the morning, M. de Villars, lieutenant-colonel of the
regiment of Vosges infantry, came and reported himself a prisoner, as
ordered by M. Barbezieux, though he was a prisoner in the citadel of
Grenoble, whence he came direct without being brought by anyone."[33] On
the arrival of the prisoner, the king's lieutenant, accompanied by the
captain of the gates, came to receive him as he got out of his carriage.
The officers of the château at once led the new-comer into the presence
of the governor, who received him civilly, invited him to sit down, and
after having endorsed the _lettre de cachet_ conversed with him for some
time. Under Louis XIV. the governor in most cases even kept his new
guest, as well as the persons who had accompanied him, to lunch or
dinner. Meanwhile his quarters had been got ready. We read in Du Junca's
Journal that on January 26, 1695, a certain De Courlandon, a colonel of
cavalry, presented himself for incarceration at the Bastille. There
being no room ready to receive him, the governor asked him to go and
pass the night in a neighbouring inn, at the sign of the _Crown_, and
to return next day. "Whereupon M. de Courlandon did not fail to return
about eleven o'clock in the morning, having dined with M. de Besmaus
(the governor), and in the afternoon he entered the château."
The reader will not be surprised at learning that the prospect of
incarceration at the Bastille did not always strike the future prisoner
with terror. We read in the _Memoirs_ of the Duke de Lauzun:[34]
"Scolded for two hours on end by everybody who fancied himself entitled
to do so, I thought I could not do better than go to Paris and await
developments. A few hours after my arrival, I received a letter from my
father telling me that it had been decided to put us all in the
Bastille, and that I should probably be arrested during the night. I
determined at least to finish gaily, so I invited some pretty girls from
the Opera to supper, so that I might await the officer without
impatience. Seeing that he did not arrive, I determined on the bold move
of going to Fontainebleau and joining the king's hunt. He did not speak
to me once during the chase, which was such a confirmation of our
disgrace that on our return no one gave us the customary salute. But I
did not lose heart; in the evening I was in attendance, and the king
came to me. 'You are all,' he said, 'hotheaded rips, but funny dogs all
the same; come along and have supper, and bring M. de Guéméné and the
Chevalier de Luxembourg.'"
Before the new arrival was installed in the chamber prepared for him, he
was taken to the great council hall, where he was requested to empty his
pockets. Only notorious rogues were searched. If the prisoner had upon
him money, jewels, or other articles such as knives and scissors, the
use of which was not allowed by the regulations, they were done up in a
parcel which he himself sealed, with his own seal if he had one; if not,
with the seal of the Bastille. Finally, he was conducted to the room
reserved for him.
Each of the eight towers of the Bastille contained four or five stories
of rooms or cells. The worst of these rooms were on the lowest floor,
and these were what were called the "cells,"--octagonal vaults, cold and
damp, partly under ground; the walls, grey with mould, were bare from
floor to ceiling, the latter a groined arch. A bench and a bed of straw
covered with a paltry coverlet, formed the whole appointments. Daylight
feebly flickered through the vent-hole opening on to the moat. When the
Seine was in flood, the water came through the walls and swamped the
cells; and then any prisoners who might happen to be in them were
removed. During the reign of Louis XIV. the cells were sometimes
occupied by prisoners of the lowest class and criminals condemned to
death. Later, under Louis XV., the cells ceased to be used except as a
place of punishment for insubordinate prisoners who assaulted their
guardians or fellow-prisoners, or for turnkeys and sentinels of the
château who had committed breaches of discipline. They stayed in the
cells for a short time in irons. The cells had fallen into disuse by
the time the Revolution broke out; since the first ministry of Necker,
it had been forbidden to confine in them any one whatever, and none of
the warders questioned on July 18 remembered having seen any one placed
in them. The two prisoners, Tavernier and Béchade, whom the conquerors
of the 14th of July found in one of these dungeons, had been placed
there, at the moment of the attack, by the officers of the château, for
fear lest amid the rain of bullets some harm should befall them.
The worst rooms after the cells were the _calottes_, the rooms on the
floor above. In summer the heat was extreme in them, and in winter the
cold, in spite of the stoves. They were octagons whose ceilings, as the
name implies, were shaped like a skull-cap. High enough in the centre,
they gradually diminished in height towards the sides. It was impossible
to stand upright except in the middle of the room.
The prisoners were only placed in the cells and _calottes_ under
exceptional circumstances. Every tower had two or three floors of lofty
and airy chambers, and in these the prisoners lived. They were octagons
from fifteen to sixteen feet in diameter and from fifteen to twenty feet
high. Light entered through large windows approached by three steps. We
have said that it was only towards the end of Louis XIV.'s reign that
these rooms were arranged like prison cells with bars and bolts. They
were warmed with open fireplaces or stoves. The ceiling was whitewashed,
the floor of brick. On the walls the prisoners had chalked verses,
mottoes, and designs.
One artistic prisoner amused himself by decorating the bare walls with
paintings. The governor, delighted at seeing him thus find relaxation,
moved him from room to room; when he had finished filling one with his
designs and arabesques, he was placed in another. Some of these rooms
were decorated with portraits of Louis XIV. placed above the
chimney-piece, a characteristic detail which helps to show what the
Bastille was at this period: the château of the king, where the king
received a certain number of his subjects as his willing or unwilling
guests.
The best rooms in the Bastille were those that were fitted up in the
eighteenth century for the accommodation of the staff. These were what
were called the "suites." In these were placed invalids and prisoners of
distinction.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the furniture of these
apartments was still extremely simple: they were absolutely empty. The
reason of this we have indicated above. "I arrived," says Madame de
Staal, "at a room where there was nothing but four walls, very filthy,
and daubed all over by my predecessors for want of something better to
do. It was so destitute of furniture that someone went and got a little
straw chair for me to sit on, and two stones to support a lighted
faggot, and a little candle-end was neatly stuck on the wall to give me
light."
The prisoners sent to their own homes for a table, bed, and chair, or
they hired these from the upholsterer of the Bastille. When they had
nothing to bless themselves with, the government, as we have already
said, did not provide them with furniture. It gave them money, sometimes
considerable sums, which permitted them to adorn their rooms after their
own fancy. This was the case in regard to all prisoners up to 1684. At
this date the king ordered the administration to supply furniture to
those of the prisoners whose detention was to be kept secret, for, by
getting in bedding from their own houses or the houses of friends, they
made known their arrest. D'Argenson had half a dozen of the rooms
permanently furnished, others were furnished under Louis XV.; under
Louis XVI., almost all were furnished. The appointments were very
modest: a bed of green baize with curtains, one or two tables, several
chairs, fire-dogs, a shovel, and a small pair of tongs. But after having
undergone examination, the prisoner retained the right of getting in
furniture from outside. And in this way the rooms of the prisoners were
sometimes adorned with great elegance. Madame de Staal relates that she
had hers hung with tapestry; the Marquis de Sade covered the bare walls
with long and brilliant hangings: other prisoners ornamented their rooms
with family portraits: they procured chests of drawers, desks, round
tables, dressing-cases, armchairs, cushions in Utrecht velvet; the
inventories of articles belonging to the prisoners show that they
managed to secure everything they thought necessary. The Abbé Brigault,
who was imprisoned at the same time as Madame de Staal and for the same
affair, brought into the Bastille five arm-chairs, two pieces of
tapestry, eleven serge hangings, eight chairs, a bureau, a small table,
three pictures, &c. The list of effects taken out of the Bastille by the
Comte de Belle-Isle when he was set at liberty includes a library
consisting of 333 volumes and ten atlases, a complete service of fine
linen and plate for the table, a bed furnished with gold-bordered red
damask, four pieces of tapestry on antique subjects, two mirrors, a
screen of gold-bordered red damask matching the bed, two folding
screens, two armchairs with cushions, an armchair in leather, three
chairs in tapestry, an overmantel of gilt copper, tables, drawers,
stands, candlestick of plated copper, &c. We might multiply examples,
even from among prisoners of middle station.
It was the rule that prisoners newly arrived at the Bastille should be
examined within twenty-four hours. It sometimes happened, however, that
one or another remained for two or three weeks before appearing before
the magistrate. The Châtelet commissioner, specially delegated to the
Bastille for these examinations, founded his questions on notes supplied
him by the lieutenant of police, who, indeed, often went in person to
see the prisoners. A special commission was appointed for affairs of
importance. Dumouriez says that he was examined after nine hours of
detention by three commissioners: "The president was an old councillor
of state named Marville, a man of intelligence, but coarse and
sarcastic. The second was M. de Sartine, lieutenant of police and
councillor of state, a man of polish and refinement. The third was a
_maître des requêtes_[35] named Villevaux, a very insincere and
disputatious fellow. The clerk, who had more intelligence than any of
them, was an advocate named Beaumont."
We have found many instances of prisoners who spoke in high terms of
their judges. And it cannot be said that prisoners at the Bastille
escaped judgment. A Châtelet commissioner examined them and sent the
official report of his examination, with a statement of his opinion, to
the lieutenant of police. He decided whether the arrest should be
sustained. Moreover, it would be a mistake to compare the lieutenant of
police under the _ancien régime_ with the prefect of police of to-day;
the lieutenants of police, selected from former _maîtres des requêtes_,
had a judicial character: the documents of the period call them
"magistrates"; they issued decrees without appeal and pronounced penal
sentences, even condemning to the galleys; they were at the same time
justices of the peace with an extensive jurisdiction. In addition to the
examination held on the entrance of a prisoner, the lieutenants of
police, in the course of their frequent visits, addressed to the
ministers of Paris reports on the prisoners,--reports in which they
discussed the evidence, and which constituted veritable judgments.
When the prisoner was recognized as innocent, a new _lettre de cachet_
soon set him at liberty. The verdict of "no true bill" often supervened
with a rapidity which the decisions of our police magistrates would do
well to emulate. A certain Barbier, who entered the Bastille on February
15, 1753, was found not guilty and set at liberty the next day. Of the
279 persons imprisoned in the Bastille during the last fifteen years of
the _ancien régime_, thirty-eight benefited by the dropping of the
indictment.
Finally--and here is a point on which the new method might well model
itself on that of the Bastille--when a detention was recognized as
unjust, the victim was indemnified. A great number of examples might be
mentioned. An advocate named Subé left the Bastille on June 18, 1767,
after a detention of eighteen days; he had been falsely accused of the
authorship of a book against the king, and received compensation to the
tune of 3000 livres, more than £240 of our money. A certain Pereyra,
imprisoned in the Bastille from November 7, 1771, to April 12, 1772, and
then from July 1 to September 26, 1774, having been found to be
innocent, was reinstated in all his property, and received from the king
a life pension of 1200 livres, more than £100 to-day. A certain number
of those accused in the Canada case, when the charge was withdrawn,
received a life pension on leaving the Bastille. At other times, the
detention of an individual might throw his family into want. He was kept
in the Bastille, if it was thought he deserved it, but his people were
assisted. Under date September 3, 1763, the Duke de Choiseul writes to
the lieutenant of police: "I have received the letter you did me the
honour of writing to me in favour of the children of the Sieur
Joncaire-Chabert. I have the pleasure to inform you that I have got for
them a second subsidy of 300 livres (nearly £30 to-day) in consideration
of the sad condition you informed me they were in." Louis XIV.
guaranteed to Pellisson, at his liberation, a pension of 2000 crowns.
The Regent granted to Voltaire, when he left the Bastille, a pension of
1200 livres. Louis XVI. awarded to Latude an annuity of 400 livres, and
to La Rocheguérault an annuity of 400 crowns. The minister Breteuil
pensioned all the prisoners whom he set at liberty. Brun de Condamine,
confined from 1779 to 1783, received on leaving a sum of 600 livres.
Renneville speaks of a prisoner to whom Seignelay gave an important
situation in compensation for his detention at the Bastille. We hear of
one, Toussaint Socquart, a commissioner of the Châtelet and of police
whose offices were restored to him when he came out of the Bastille. In
fact, contrary to detention in our modern prisons, incarceration in the
Bastille did not cast the slightest slur on the prisoner's character,
even in the eyes of those to whom his arrest was due, and instances have
been known of men who, on their release from the Bastille, not only
were reinstated in public offices, but reached the highest positions.
Until his examinations were quite completed, the prisoner was kept in
close confinement. None but the officers of the château were allowed to
communicate with him. And during this time he lived in solitude, unless
he had brought a servant with him. The administration readily permitted
the prisoners to avail themselves of the services of their valets, who
were boarded at the king's expense. It even happened that the government
sometimes gave their prisoners valets, paying not only for their board,
but also their wages at the rate of 900 livres a year. One might cite
prisoners of inferior rank who thus had servants to wait on them. Two or
three prisoners were sometimes put together in one room. Prison life has
no greater terror than solitude. In absolute solitude many of the
prisoners became mad. In company, the hours of captivity seemed less
tedious and oppressive. Father and son, mother and daughter, aunt and
niece, lived together. Many might be named. On September 7, 1693, a lady
named De la Fontaine was taken to the Bastille for the second time. The
first time, she had been imprisoned quite alone; but this new detention
evoked the compassion of the lieutenant of police, who, to please the
poor lady, sent her husband to the Bastille, locked him up with her, and
gave them a lackey to wait on them.
The examinations being ended, the prisoners enjoyed a greater liberty.
They could then enter into communication with the people of the town.
They obtained permission to see their relatives and friends. These
sometimes paid them visits in their rooms; but as a rule the interviews
took place in the council-hall, in presence of one of the officers of
the château. They were usually permitted to discuss only family affairs
and business matters. All conversation on the Bastille and the reasons
for their imprisonment was forbidden. The rules of the prison increased
in severity as time went on. Towards the end of Louis XV.'s reign the
lieutenant of police went so far as to prescribe the subjects of
conversation which would alone be permitted in the course of the visits
the prisoners received. "They may talk to the prisoner about the harvest
his vineyards will yield this year, about cancelling a lease, about a
match for his niece, about the health of his parents." But it is
necessary to read the _Memoirs_ of Gourville, Fontaine, Bussy-Rabutin,
Hennequin, Madame de Staal, the Duke de Richelieu, to form a general
idea of life at the Bastille under Louis XIV. and under the Regent.
Several prisoners were free to move about through the château wherever
it seemed good to them; they entered the rooms of their fellow-prisoners
at all hours of the day. The governor contented himself with locking
them in their own rooms at night. The prisoners who had the "liberty of
the court" organized games of bowls or _tonneau_, and hobnobbed with the
officers of the garrison. Fontaine relates that they might have been
seen from the top of the towers, collected fifty at a time in the inner
court Bussy-Rabutin's room was open to all comers: his wife and friends
visited him; he gave dinners to persons from court, plotted love
intrigues there, and corresponded freely with his friends and relatives.
Several prisoners even had permission to take a walk into the town on
condition of their returning to the château in the evening. Two brothers
were placed in the Bastille together. They went out when they pleased,
taking turns; it was sufficient for one or other to be always at the
château. The officers of the staff gossiped with the prisoners and gave
them advice as to the best means of obtaining their liberty.
This animated, courtly, and elegant life is described with infinite
charm by Madame de Staal, whom we have already cited. "We all used to
spend a part of the day with the governor. We dined with him, and after
dinner I enjoyed a rubber of ombre with Messieurs de Pompadour and de
Boisdavis, Ménil advising me. When it was over we returned to our own
apartments. The company met again in my rooms before supper, for which
we returned to the governor's, and after that we all went to bed."
As to the manner in which the prisoners were fed and looked after, that
is surprising indeed, and what we shall say about it, though rigidly
accurate, will perhaps be regarded as an exaggeration. The governor drew
three livres a day for the maintenance of a man of inferior rank; five
livres for the maintenance of a tradesman; ten livres for a banker, a
magistrate, or a man of letters; fifteen livres for a judge of the
Parlement; thirty-six livres for a marshal of France. The Cardinal de
Rohan had 120 francs a day spent on him. The Prince de Courlande, during
a stay of five months at the Bastille, spent 22,000 francs. These
figures must be doubled and trebled to give the value they would
represent to-day.
We read, too, with the greatest astonishment the description of the
meals the prisoners made. Renneville, whose evidence is the more
important in that his book is a pamphlet against the administration of
the Bastille, speaks in these terms of his first meal: "The turnkey put
one of my serviettes on the table and placed my dinner on it, which
consisted of pea soup garnished with lettuce, well simmered and
appetizing to look at, with a quarter of fowl to follow; in one dish
there was a juicy beef-steak, with plenty of gravy and a sprinkling of
parsley, in another a quarter of forcemeat pie well stuffed with
sweetbreads, cock's combs, asparagus, mushrooms, and truffles; and in a
third a ragoût of sheep's tongue, the whole excellently cooked; for
dessert, a biscuit and two pippins. The turnkey insisted on pouring out
my wine. This was good burgundy, and the bread was excellent. I asked
him to drink, but he declared it was not permitted. I asked if I should
pay for my food, or whether I was indebted to the king for it. He told
me that I had only to ask freely for whatever would give me pleasure,
that they would try to satisfy me, and that His Majesty paid for it
all." The "most Christian" king desired that his guests should fast on
Fridays and in Lent, but he did not treat them any the worse on that
account. "I had," says Renneville, "six dishes, and an admirable prawn
soup. Among the fish there was a very fine weever, a large fried sole,
and a perch, all very well seasoned, with three other dishes." At this
period Renneville's board cost ten francs a day; later he was reduced to
the rate of the prisoners of a lower class. "They much reduced my usual
fare," he says; "I had, however, a good soup with fried bread crumbs, a
passable piece of beef, a ragoût of sheep's tongue, and two custards for
dessert. I was treated in pretty much the same manner the whole time I
was in this gloomy place; sometimes they gave me, after my soup, a wing
or leg of fowl, sometimes they put two little patties on the edge of the
dish."
Towards the end of Louis XV.'s reign, Dumouriez eulogizes the cookery of
the Bastille in almost the same terms. On the day of his entrance,
noticing that they were serving a fish dinner, he asked for a fowl to be
got from a neighbouring eating-house. "A fowl!" said the major, "don't
you know that to-day is Friday?" "Your business is to look after me and
not my conscience. I am an invalid, for the Bastille itself is a
disease," replied the prisoner. In an hour's time the fowl was on the
table. Subsequently he asked for his dinner and supper to be served at
the same time, between three and four o'clock. His valet, a good cook,
used to make him stews. "You fared very well at the Bastille; there
were always five dishes at dinner and three at supper, without the
dessert, and the whole being put on the table at once, appeared
magnificent." There is a letter from the major of the Bastille addressed
in 1764 to the lieutenant of police, discussing a prisoner named Vieilh,
who never ate butcher's meat; so they had to feed him exclusively on
game and poultry. Things were much the same under Louis XVI., as
Poultier d'Elmotte testifies: "De Launey, the governor, used to come and
have a friendly chat with me; he got them to consult my taste as regards
food, and to supply me with anything I wished for." The bookseller
Hardy, transferred in 1766 to the Bastille with the members of the
Breton deputation, declares frankly that they were all treated in the
best possible way. Finally, Linguet himself, in spite of his desire to
paint the lot of the victims of the Bastille in the most sombre colours,
is obliged to confess that food was supplied in abundance. Every morning
the cook sent up to him a menu on which he marked the dishes he fancied.
The account books of the Bastille confirm the testimony of former
prisoners. The following, according to these documents, are the meals
that La Bourdonnais enjoyed during July, 1750. Every day the menu
contains soup, beef, veal, beans, French beans, two eggs, bread,
strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, oranges, two bottles of red wine,
and two bottles of beer. In addition to this regular bill of fare we
note on July 2, a fowl and a bottle of Muscat; on the 4th, a bottle of
Muscat; on the 7th, tea; on the 12th, a bottle of brandy; on the 13th,
some flowers; on the 14th, some quails; on the 15th, a turkey; on the
16th, a melon; on the 17th, a fowl; on the 18th, a young rabbit; on the
19th, a bottle of brandy; on the 20th, a chicken and ham sausage and two
melons; and so on.
Tavernier was a prisoner of mean station, son of a doorkeeper of Paris
de Montmartel. He was implicated in a plot against the King's life, and
was one of the seven prisoners set free on the 14th of July. He was
found out of his mind in his cell. After he had been led in triumph
through the streets of Paris, he was shut up at Charenton. He was a
martyr, people exclaimed. He was certainly not so well off in his new
abode as he had been at the Bastille. We have an account of what was
supplied to him at the Bastille in addition to the ordinary meals, in
November, 1788, in March and May, 1789, three of the last months of his
imprisonment. In November we find: tobacco, four bottles of brandy,
sixty bottles of wine, thirty bottles of beer, two pounds of coffee,
three pounds of sugar, a turkey, oysters, chestnuts, apples, and pears;
in March: tobacco, four bottles of brandy, forty-four bottles of wine,
sixty bottles of beer, coffee, sugar, fowls, cheese; in May: tobacco,
four bottles of brandy, sixty-two bottles of wine, thirty-one bottles of
beer, pigeons, coffee, sugar, cheese, &c. We have the menus of the
Marquis de Sade for January, 1789: chocolate cream, a fat chicken
stuffed with chestnuts, pullets with truffles, potted ham, apricot
marmalade, &c.
The facts we are describing were the rule. The prisoners who were
treated with the least consideration fed very well. Only those who were
sent down to the cells were sometimes put on bread and water, but that
was only a temporary punishment.
When a complaint was formulated by any prisoner in regard to his food, a
reprimand to the governor soon followed. Then the lieutenant of police
inquired of the person concerned if he was better treated than formerly.
"His Majesty tells me," writes Pontchartrain to De Launey, "that
complaints have been raised about the bad food of the prisoners; he
instructs me to write to you to give the matter great attention." And
Sartine wrote jokingly to Major de Losmes: "I am quite willing for you
to get the clothes of Sieur Dubois enlarged, and I hope all your
prisoners may enjoy as excellent health."
Further, the king clothed those of the prisoners who were too poor to
buy their own clothes. He did not give them a prison uniform, but
dressing-gowns padded or lined with rabbit skin, breeches of coloured
stuff, vests lined with silk plush and fancy coats.[36] The commissary
at the Bastille appointed to look after the supplies took the prisoners'
measure, and inquired about their tastes, and the colours and styles
that suited them best. A lady prisoner named Sauvé asked to have made
for her a dress of white silk, dotted with green flowers. The wife of
commissary Rochebrune spent several days in going the round of the Paris
shops, and then wrote in despair that no dressmaker had such a material,
the nearest approach to it being a white silk with green stripes: if
Madame Sauvé would be satisfied with that, they would send to take her
measure. "Monsieur le major," writes a prisoner named Hugonnet, "the
shirts they brought me yesterday are not a bit what I asked for, for I
remember having written 'fine, and with embroidered ruffles'; instead of
which these things are coarse, made of wretched linen, and with ruffles
at best only fit for a turnkey; and so I shall be glad if you will send
them back to the commissary; and let him keep them, for I declare I
won't have them."
The governor also saw that the prisoners had some means of diversion.
The poorest he provided with pocket-money and tobacco.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, a Neapolitan named
Vinache died at the Bastille, after founding a library there for the use
of his fellow-prisoners. This library was gradually augmented by
donations from the governors, by gifts from various prisoners, and even
by the generosity of a citizen of Paris whose compassion had been
excited for the lot of the prisoners. The books consisted of romances,
works of science and philosophy, and religious books, light literature
predominating. The lieutenant of police, Berryer, struck out of the
list of books that were being sent one day to the binder a "poem on the
greatness of God," as being on "too melancholy a subject for prisoners."
The prisoners also procured books from outside. We have mentioned the
Comte de Belle-Isle, who had more than three hundred books and atlases
at the Bastille. La Beaumelle collected a library of more than 600
volumes. The administration, moreover, never refused to get for the
prisoners, out of the royal funds and sometimes at considerable expense,
such works as they said were necessary to their studies. The works of
Voltaire and Puffendorf were readily placed in their hands. Finally,
under Louis XVI., they were allowed to read the gazettes.
After the permission to have books and to write, the most coveted favour
was that of walking exercise. Refusal of this was rare. The prisoners
might walk, either on the towers of the Bastille, or in the inner
courts, or lastly along the bastion, which was transformed into a
garden. To fresh invigorating air the platform of the towers added the
attraction of the finest view. Fontaine relates that Sacy went to the
top of the towers every day after dinner. He there walked about in
company with the officers, who gave him news of the town and the
prisoners.
In their rooms the prisoners amused themselves with feeding cats and
birds and animals of all kinds: they taught dogs tricks. Some were
allowed to have a violin or a clavecin. Pellisson was shut up with a
Basque who used to play to him on the musette. The Duke de Richelieu
boasts of the operatic airs he sang in parts with his neighbours in the
Bastille, Mdlle. de Launay among them, with her head at the bars of her
window; "we got up choruses of a sort, with fine effect."
Other prisoners killed time with embroidery, weaving or knitting; some
made ornaments for the chapel of the château. Some devoted themselves to
carpentry, turned wood, made small articles of furniture. Artists
painted and sketched. "The occupation of M. de Villeroi was somewhat
singular: he had very fine clothes, which he was for ever unpicking and
sewing together again with much cleverness." The prisoners who lived
several in one room played at cards, chess, and backgammon. In 1788, at
the time of the troubles in Brittany, a dozen noblemen of that country
were shut up in the Bastille. They lived together, and asked for a
billiard table to amuse themselves; the table was set up in the
apartments of the major, and there these gentlemen went for their games.
The prisoners who died in the Bastille were interred in the graveyard of
St. Paul's; the funeral service was held in the church of St. Paul, and
the burial certificate, bearing the family name of the deceased, was
drawn up in the vestry. It is not true that the names of the deceased
were wrongly stated in the register in order that their identity might
be concealed from the public. The Man in the Iron Mask was inscribed on
the register of St. Paul's under his real name. Jews, Protestants, and
suicides were buried in the garden of the château, the prejudices of the
period not allowing their remains to be laid in consecrated ground.
Those who were liberated had a happier fate. Their dismissal was ordered
by a _lettre de cachet_, as their incarceration had been. These orders
for their liberation, so anxiously expected, were brought by the court
"distributors of packets" or by the ordinary post; sometimes relatives
and friends themselves brought the sealed envelope, in order to have the
joy of taking away at once those whose deliverance they came to effect.
The governor, or, in his absence, the king's lieutenant, came into the
prisoner's chamber and announced that he was free. The papers and other
effects which had been taken from him on entrance were restored to him,
the major getting a receipt for them; then he signed a promise to reveal
nothing of what he had seen at the château. Many of the prisoners
refused to submit to this formality, and were liberated notwithstanding;
others, after having signed, retailed everywhere all they knew about the
prison, and were not interfered with. When the prisoner only recovered
his freedom under certain conditions, he was required to give an
undertaking to submit to the king's pleasure.
All these formalities having been completed, the governor, with that
feeling for good form which characterized the men of the _ancien
régime_, had the man who had been his guest served for the last time
with an excellent dinner. If the prisoner was a man of good society,
the governor would even go so far as to invite him to his own table, and
then, the meal over and the good-byes said, he placed his own carriage
at the prisoner's disposal, and often entered it himself to accompany
him to his destination.
More than one prisoner thus restored to the world must have felt greatly
embarrassed before a day was past, and have been at a loss what to do or
where to go. The administration of the Bastille sometimes gave money to
one and another to enable them to get along for a time. In December,
1783, a certain Dubu de la Tagnerette, after being set at liberty, was
lodged in the governor's house for a fortnight until he had found
apartments that would suit him. Moreover, many of the prisoners were
actually annoyed at being dismissed: we could cite examples of persons
who sought to get themselves sent to the Bastille; others refused to
accept their liberty, and others did their best to get their detention
prolonged.
"Many come out," says Renneville, "very sad at having to leave." Le
Maistre de Sacy and Fontaine affirm that the years spent at the Bastille
were the best years in their lives. "The innocent life we lived," says
Renneville again, "Messieurs Hamilton, Schrader, and myself, seemed so
pleasant to M. Hamilton that he begged me to write a description of it
in verse." The _Memoirs_ of Madame de Staal represent her years at the
Bastille as the happiest she ever knew. "In my heart of hearts, I was
very far from desiring my liberty." "I stayed at the Bastille for six
weeks," observes the Abbé Morellet, "which sped away--I chuckle still as
I think of them--very pleasantly for me." And later, Dumouriez declares
that at the Bastille he was happy and never felt dull.
Such was the rule of the celebrated state prison. In the last century
there was no place of detention in Europe where the prisoners were
surrounded with so many comforts and attentions: there is no such place
in these days.
But in spite of these very real alleviations, it would be absurd to
pretend that the prisoners were in general reconciled to their
incarceration. Nothing is a consolation for the loss of liberty. How
many poor wretches, in their despair, have dashed their heads against
the thick walls while wife and children and concerns of the utmost
gravity were summoning them from without! The Bastille was the cause of
ruin to many; within its walls were shed tears which were never dried.
An eighteenth-century writer thus defined the state prison: "A bastille
is any house solidly built, hermetically sealed, and diligently guarded,
where any person, of whatever rank, age, or sex, may enter without
knowing why, remain without knowing how long, hoping to leave it, but
not knowing how." These lines, written by an apologist for the old state
prison, contain its condemnation, without appeal, before the modern
mind.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.
For two centuries no question has excited public opinion more than that
of the Man in the Iron Mask. The books written on the subject would fill
a library. People despaired of ever lifting the veil. "The story of the
Iron Mask," says Michelet, "will probably remain for ever obscure," and
Henri Martin adds: "History has no right to pronounce judgment on what
will never leave the domain of conjecture." To-day, the doubt no longer
exists. The problem is solved. Before disclosing the solution which
criticism has unanimously declared correct, we propose to transcribe the
scanty authentic documents that we possess on the masked man, and then
to state the principal solutions which have been proposed, before
arriving at the true solution.
1. THE DOCUMENTS.
_The Register of the Bastille._--To begin with, let us quote the text
which is the origin and foundation of all the works published on the
question of the Iron Mask.
[Illustration: Note in Du Junca's Journal regarding the entrance to the
Bastille (September 18, 1698) of the Man in the Iron Mask.]
Etienne du Junca, king's lieutenant at the Bastille, in a journal
which he began to keep on October 2, 1690, when he entered upon his
office--a sort of register in which he recorded day by day the details
concerning the arrival of the prisoners--writes, under date September
18, 1698, these lines,[37] which the popular legend has rendered
memorable:--
"Thursday, September 18 (1698), at three o'clock in the afternoon, M. de
Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastille, made his first
appearance, coming from his governorship of the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite-Honorat, bringing with him, in his conveyance, a
prisoner he had formerly at Pignerol, whom he caused to be always
masked, whose name is not mentioned; directly he got out of the carriage
he put him in the first room of the Bazinière tower, waiting till night
for me to take him, at nine o'clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges,
one of the sergeants brought by the governor, alone in the third room of
the Bertaudière tower, which I had had furnished with all necessaries
some days before his arrival, having received orders to that effect from
M. de Saint-Mars: the which prisoner will be looked after and waited on
by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the governor."
In a second register, supplementary to the first, in which du Junca
records details of the liberation or the death of the prisoners, we
read, under date November 19, 1703:--
"On the same day, November 19, 1703, the unknown prisoner, always masked
with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de Saint-Mars, the governor,
brought with him on coming from the Isles de Sainte-Marguerite, whom he
had kept for a long time, the which happening to be a little ill
yesterday on coming from mass, he died to-day, about ten o'clock at
night, without having had a serious illness; it could not have been
slighter. M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday, is surprised
at his death. He did not receive the sacrament, and our chaplain
exhorted him a moment before he died. And this unknown prisoner, kept
here for so long, was buried on Tuesday at four o'clock p.m., November
20, in the graveyard of St. Paul, our parish; on the register of burial
he was given a name also unknown. M. de Rosarges, major, and Arreil,
surgeon, signed the register."
And in the margin:--
"I have since learnt that they called him M. de Marchiel on the
register, and that forty livres was the cost of the funeral."
The registers of du Junca were preserved among the ancient archives of
the Bastille, whence they passed to the Arsenal library, where they are
now kept. They are drawn up in the clumsy handwriting of a soldier, with
little skill in penmanship. The spelling is bad. But the facts are
stated with precision, and have always proved accurate when checked.
[Illustration: Notice in Du Junca's Journal of the death of the masked
prisoner in the Bastille (November 19, 1703).]
The extract from the second register shows that the mysterious
prisoner wore, not a mask of iron, but one of black velvet.
Further, the entry on the register of St. Paul's church has been
discovered. It reads:--
"On the 19th, Marchioly, aged 45 years or thereabouts, died in the
Bastille, whose body was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, his
parish, the 20th of the present month, in the presence of M. Rosage
(_sic_), major of the Bastille, and of M. Reglhe (_sic_), surgeon major
of the Bastille, who signed.--(Signed) ROSARGES, REILHE."
Such are the fundamental documents for the story of the Iron Mask; we
shall see by and by that they are sufficient to establish the truth.
_The Letter of the Governor of Sainte-Marguerite._--We have just seen,
from the register of du Junca, that the masked man had been at the Isles
of Sainte-Marguerite under the charge of Saint-Mars, who, on being
appointed governor of the Bastille, had brought the prisoner with him.
In the correspondence exchanged between Saint-Mars and the minister
Barbezieux, occurs the following letter, dated January 6, 1696, in which
Saint-Mars describes his method of dealing with the prisoners, and the
masked man is referred to under the appellation "my ancient prisoner."
"MY LORD,--You command me to tell you what is the practice, when I
am absent or ill, as to the visits made and precautions taken daily
in regard to the prisoners committed to my charge. My two
lieutenants serve the meals at the regular hours, just as they
have seen me do, and as I still do very often when I am well. The
first of my lieutenants, who takes the keys of the prison of _my
ancient prisoner_, with whom we commence, opens the three doors and
enters the chamber of the prisoner, who politely hands him the
plates and dishes, put one on top of another, to give them into the
hands of the lieutenant, who has only to go through two doors to
hand them to one of my sergeants, who takes them and places them on
a table two steps away, where is the second lieutenant, who
examines everything that enters and leaves the prison, and sees
that there is nothing written on the plate; and after they have
given him the utensil, they examine his bed inside and out, and
then the gratings and windows of his room, and very often the man
himself: after having asked him very politely if he wants anything
else, they lock the doors and proceed to similar business with the
other prisoners."
_The Letter of M. de Palteau._--On June 19, 1768, M. de Formanoir de
Palteau addressed from the château of Palteau, near Villeneuve-le-Roi,
to the celebrated Fréron, editor of the _Année Littéraire_, a letter
which was inserted in the number for June 30, 1768. The author of this
letter was the grand-nephew of Saint-Mars. At the time when the latter
was appointed governor of the Bastille, the château of Palteau belonged
to him, and he halted there with his prisoner on the way from the Isles
of Sainte-Marguerite to Paris.
"In 1698," writes M. de Palteau, "M. de Saint-Mars passed from the
governorship of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastille.
On his way to take up his duties, he stayed with his prisoner on his
estate at Palteau. The masked man arrived in a conveyance which preceded
that of M. de Saint-Mars; they were accompanied by several horsemen. The
peasants went to meet their lord: M. de Saint-Mars ate with his
prisoner, who had his back turned to the windows of the dining-hall
looking on the courtyard. The peasants whom I have questioned could not
see whether he ate with his mask on; but they observed very well that M.
de Saint-Mars, who was opposite him at table, had two pistols beside his
plate. They had only one footman to wait on them, and he fetched the
dishes from an ante-room where they were brought him, carefully shutting
the door of the dining-hall behind him. When the prisoner crossed the
courtyard, he always had his black mask over his face; the peasants
noticed that his lips and teeth were not covered, that he was tall and
had white hair. M. de Saint-Mars slept in a bed that was put up for him
near that of the masked man."
This account is marked throughout with the stamp of truth. M. de
Palteau, the writer, makes no attempt to draw inferences from it. He
declares for none of the hypotheses then under discussion in regard to
the identity of the mysterious unknown. He is content to report the
testimony of those of his peasants who saw the masked man when he passed
through their lord's estates. The only detail in the story which we are
able to check--a characteristic detail, it is true--is that of the black
mask of which M. de Palteau speaks: it corresponds exactly to the mask
of black velvet mentioned in du Junca's register.
The château of Palteau is still in existence. In his work on
Superintendent Fouquet, M. Jules Lair gives a description of it. "The
château of Palteau, situated on an eminence among woods and vines,
presented at that time, as it does to-day, the aspect of a great lordly
mansion in the style of the time of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. First
there is a wide courtyard, then two wings; within, the principal
building and the chapel. The lower story is supported on arches, and its
lofty windows go right up into the roof, and light the place from floor
to attic." Since the eighteenth century, however, the château has
undergone some modifications. The room in which Saint-Mars dined with
his prisoner is now used as a kitchen.
_The Notes of Major Chevalier._--In addition to the entries in du
Junca's Journal which we have transcribed, scholars are accustomed to
invoke, as equally worthy of credence though later in date, the
testimony of Father Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille, and that of Major
Chevalier.
The extracts from du Junca quoted above were published for the first
time in 1769 by Father Griffet, who added the following comments: "The
memory of the masked prisoner was still preserved among the officers,
soldiers, and servants of the Bastille, when M. de Launey, who has long
been the governor, came to occupy a place on the staff of the garrison.
Those who had seen him with his mask, when he crossed the courtyard on
his way to attend mass, said that after his death the order was given to
burn everything he had used, such as linen, clothes, cushions,
counterpanes, &c.: that the very walls of the room he had occupied had
to be scraped and whitewashed again, and that all the tiles of the
flooring were taken up and replaced by others, because they were so
afraid that he had found the means to conceal some notes or some mark,
the discovery of which would have revealed his name."
The testimony of Father Griffet happens to be confirmed by some notes
from the pen of a major of the Bastille named Chevalier. The major was
not a personage of the highest rank in the administration of the
Bastille, since above him were the governor and the king's lieutenant:
but he was the most important personage. The whole internal
administration, so far as the prisoners were concerned, was entrusted to
him. Chevalier fulfilled these duties for nearly thirty-eight years,
from 1749 to 1787. M. Fernand Bournon's estimate of him is as follows:
"Chevalier is a type of the devoted hard-working official who has no
ambition to rise above a rather subordinate rank. It would be impossible
to say how much the administration of the Bastille owed to his zeal and
to his perfect familiarity with a service of extraordinary difficulty."
Among notes put together with a view to a history of the Bastille,
Chevalier gives in condensed form the information furnished by du
Junca's register, and adds: "This is the famous masked man whom no one
has ever known. He was treated with great distinction by the governor,
and was seen only by M. de Rosarges, major of the said château, who had
sole charge of him; he was not ill except for a few hours, and died
rather suddenly: interred at St. Paul's, on Tuesday, November 20, 1703,
at 4 o'clock p.m., under the name of Marchiergues. He was buried in a
new white shroud, given by the governor, and practically everything in
his room was burnt, such as his bed, chairs, tables, and other bits of
furniture, or else melted down, and the whole was thrown into the
privies."
These notes of Father Griffet and Major Chevalier have derived great
force, in the eyes of historians, from their exact agreement; but a
close examination shows that the testimony of Chevalier was the source
of Father Griffet's information; in fact, Chevalier was major of the
Bastille when the Jesuit compiled his work, and it is doubtless upon his
authority that the latter depended.
Documents recently published in the _Revue Bleue_ upset these
assertions, which appeared to be based on the firmest foundations.
In the Journal of du Junca, which we have already mentioned, we read
under date April 30, 1701: "Sunday, April 30, about 9 o'clock in the
evening, M. Aumont the younger came, bringing and handing over to us a
prisoner named M. Maranville, alias Ricarville, who was an officer in
the army, a malcontent, too free with his tongue, a worthless fellow:
whom I received in obedience to the king's orders sent through the Count
of Pontchartrain: whom I have had put along with the man Tirmon, in the
second room of the Bertaudière tower, with the _ancient prisoner_, both
being well locked in."
The "ancient prisoner" here referred to is no other than the masked man.
When he entered the Bastille, as we have seen, on September 18, 1698, he
was placed in the third room of the Bertaudière tower. In 1701, the
Bastille happened to be crowded with prisoners, and they had to put
several together in one and the same room; so the man in the mask was
placed with two companions. One of them, Jean-Alexandre de Ricarville,
also called Maranville, had been denounced as a "retailer of ill speech
against the State, finding fault with the policy of France and lauding
that of foreigners, especially that of the Dutch." The police reports
depict him as a beggarly fellow, poorly dressed, and about sixty years
old. He had formerly been, as du Junca says, an officer in the royal
troops. Maranville left the Bastille on October 19, 1708. He was
transferred to Charenton, where he died in February, 1709. It must be
pointed out that Charenton was then an "open" prison, where the
prisoners associated with one another and had numerous relations with
the outside world.
The second of the fellow-prisoners of the man in the mask,
Dominique-François Tirmont, was a servant. When he was placed in the
Bastille, on July 30, 1700, he was nineteen years old. He was accused of
sorcery and of debauching young girls. He was put in the second room of
the Bertaudière tower, where he was joined by Maranville and the man in
the mask. On December 14, 1701, he was transferred to Bicêtre. He lost
his reason in 1703 and died in 1708.
The man in the mask was taken out of the third room of the Bertaudière
tower, in which he had been placed on his entrance to the Bastille, on
March 6, 1701, in order to make room for a woman named Anne Randon, a
"witch and fortune-teller," who was shut up alone in it. The masked
prisoner was then placed in the "second Bertaudière" with Tirmont, who
had been there, as we have just seen, since July 30, 1700. Maranville
joined them on April 30, 1701. Not long after, the masked man was
transferred to another room, with or without Maranville. Tirmont had
been taken to Bicêtre in 1701. We find that on February 26, 1703, the
Abbé Gonzel, a priest of Franche-Comté, accused of being a spy, was shut
up alone in the "second Bertaudière."
These facts are of undeniable authenticity, and one sees at a glance the
consequences springing from them. At the time when the masked prisoner
shared the same room with fellow-captives, other prisoners at the
Bastille were kept rigorously isolated, in spite of the crowded state of
the prison, so much more important did the reasons for their
incarceration seem! The man in the mask was associated with persons of
the lowest class, who were soon afterwards to leave and take their
places with the ruck of prisoners at Charenton and Bicêtre. We read in a
report of D'Argenson that there was even some talk of enlisting one of
them, Tirmont, in the army. Such, then, was this strange personage, the
repository of a terrible secret of which Madame Palatine[38] was already
speaking in mysterious terms, the man who puzzled kings, Louis XV.,
Louis XVI., who puzzled the very officers of the Bastille, and caused
them to write stories as remote as possible from the reality!
2. THE LEGEND.
If the very officers of the Bastille indulged such wild freaks of
imagination, what flights into dreamland might not the thoughts of the
public be expected to take? The movement is a very curious one to
follow. To begin with, we have the light Venetian mask transforming
itself into an iron mask with steel articulations which the prisoner
was never without. The consideration--imaginary, as we have seen--with
which the prisoner is supposed to have been treated, and which is
referred to in the notes of Major Chevalier, becomes transformed into
marks of a boundless deference shown by the jailers towards their
captive. The story was that Saint-Mars, the governor, a knight of St.
Louis, never spoke to the prisoner except standing, with bared head,
that he served him at table with his own hands and on silver plate, and
that he supplied him with the most luxurious raiment his fancy could
devise. Chevalier says that after his death his room at the Bastille was
done up like new, to prevent his successor from discovering any
tell-tale evidence in some corner. Speaking of the time when the masked
man was at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, Voltaire relates: "One day
the prisoner wrote with a knife on a silver dish, and threw the dish out
of the window towards a boat moored on the shore, almost at the foot of
the tower. A fisherman, to whom the boat belonged, picked up the dish
and carried it to the governor. Astonished, he asked the fisherman,
'Have you read what is written on this dish, and has anyone seen it in
your hands?' 'I cannot read,' replied the fisher, 'I have only just
found it, and no one has seen it.' The poor man was detained until the
governor was assured he could not read and that no one had seen the
dish. 'Go,' he said, 'it is lucky for you that you can't read!'"
In Father Papon's _History of Provence_, linen takes the place of the
dish. The upshot is more tragic: "I found in the citadel an officer of
the Free Company, aged 79 years. He told me several times that a barber
of that company saw one day, under the prisoner's window, something
white floating on the water; he went and picked it up and carried it to
M. de Saint-Mars. It was a shirt of fine linen, folded with no apparent
care, and covered with the prisoner's writing. M. de Saint-Mars, after
unfolding it and reading a few lines, asked the barber, with an air of
great embarrassment, if he had not had the curiosity to read what was on
it. The barber protested over and over again that he had read nothing;
but, two days after, he was found dead in his bed."
And the fact that Saint-Mars had had the body of the prisoner buried in
a white cloth struck the imagination, and was developed in its turn into
an extraordinary taste on the part of the prisoner for linen of the
finest quality and for costly lace--all which was taken to prove that
the masked man was a son of Anne of Austria, who had a very special
love, it was declared, for valuable lace and fine linen.
_A Brother of Louis XIV._--We are able to fix with precision, we
believe, the origin of the legend which made the Iron Mask a brother of
Louis XIV. Moreover, it was due to this suggestion, which was hinted at
from the first, that the story of the prisoner made so great a noise.
The glory of it belongs to the most famous writer of the eighteenth
century. With a boldness of imagination for which to-day he would be
envied by the cleverest journalistic inventor of sensational paragraphs,
Voltaire started this monstrous hoax on its vigorous flight.
In 1745 there had just appeared a sort of romance entitled _Notes
towards the History of Persia_, which was attributed, not without some
reason, to Madame de Vieux-Maisons. The book contained a story within a
story, in which the mysterious prisoner, who was beginning to be talked
about everywhere, was identified with the Duke de Vermandois, and to
this fact was due the sensation which the book caused. Voltaire
immediately saw how he could turn the circumstance to account. He had
himself at one time been confined in the Bastille, which was one reason
for speaking of it; but he did not dare put in circulation suddenly,
without some preparation, the terrible story he had just conceived, and,
with a very delicate sensitiveness to public opinion, he contented
himself with printing the following paragraph in the first edition of
his _Age of Louis XIV._: "A few months after the death of Mazarin there
occurred an event which is unexampled in history, and, what is not less
strange, has been passed over in silence by all the historians. There
was sent with the utmost secrecy to the château of the Isle of
Sainte-Marguerite, in the Sea of Provence, an unknown prisoner, of more
than ordinary height, young, and with features of rare nobility and
beauty. On the way, this prisoner wore a mask the chinpiece of which was
fitted with springs of steel, which allowed him to eat freely with the
mask covering his face. The order had been given to kill him if he
uncovered. He remained in the island until an officer in whom great
confidence was placed, named Saint-Mars, governor of Pignerol, having
been made governor of the Bastille, came to the Isle of
Sainte-Marguerite to fetch him, and conducted him to the Bastille,
always masked. The Marquis de Louvois saw him in the island before his
removal, and remained standing while he spoke to him, with a
consideration savouring of respect." Voltaire, however, does not say who
this extraordinary prisoner was. He observed the impression produced on
the public by his story. Then he ventured more boldly, and in the first
edition of his _Questions on the Encyclopædia_ insinuated that the
motive for covering the prisoner's face with a mask was fear lest some
too striking likeness should be recognized. He still refrained from
giving his name, but already everyone was on tip-toe with the
expectation of startling news. At last, in the second edition of
_Questions on the Encyclopædia_, Voltaire intrepidly added that the man
in the mask was a uterine brother of Louis XIV., a son of Mazarin and
Anne of Austria, and older than the king. We know what incomparable
agitators of public opinion the Encyclopædists were.
Once hatched, the story was not long in producing a numerous progeny,
which grew in their turn and became a monstrous brood.
We read in the _Memoirs_ of the Duke de Richelieu, compiled by his
secretary the Abbé Soulavie, that Mdlle. de Valois, the Regent's
daughter and at this date the mistress of Richelieu, consented, at the
instigation of the latter, to prostitute herself to her
father--tradition has it that the Regent was enamoured of his
daughter--in order to get sight of an account of the Iron Mask drawn up
by Saint-Mars. According to this story, which the author of the
_Memoirs_ prints in its entirety, Louis XIV. was born at noon, and at
half-past eight in the evening, while the king was at supper, the queen
was brought to bed of a second son, who was put out of sight so as to
avoid subsequent dissensions in the state.
The Baron de Gleichen goes still farther. He is at the pains to prove
that it was the true heir to the throne who was put out of sight, to the
profit of a child of the queen and the cardinal. Having became masters
of the situation at the death of the king, they substituted their son
for the Dauphin, the substitution being facilitated by a strong likeness
between the children. One sees at a glance the consequences of this
theory, which nullifies the legitimacy of the last Bourbons.
But the career of imagination was not yet to be checked. The legend came
into full bloom under the first empire. Pamphlets then appeared in which
the version of Baron de Gleichen was revived. Louis XIV. had been only a
bastard, the son of foreigners; the lawful heir had been imprisoned at
the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, where he had married the daughter of one
of his keepers. Of this marriage was born a child who, as soon as he was
weaned, was sent to Corsica, and entrusted to a reliable person, as a
child coming of "good stock," in Italian, _Buona-parte_. Of that child
the Emperor was the direct descendant. The right of Napoleon I. to the
throne of France established by the Iron Mask!--there is a discovery
which the great Dumas missed. But, incredible as it seems, there were
men who actually took these fables seriously. In a Vendéan manifesto
circulated among the Chouans,[39] in Nivose of the year IX,[40] we read:
"It is not wise for the Royalist party to rely on the assurances given
by some emissaries of Napoleon, that he seized the throne only to
restore the Bourbons; everything proves that he only awaits the general
pacification to declare himself, and that he means to base his right on
the birth of the children of the Iron Mask!"
We shall not stay to refute the hypothesis which makes the Iron Mask a
brother of Louis XIV. Marius Topin has already done so in the clearest
possible manner. The notion, moreover, has long been abandoned. The last
writers who adhered to it date from the revolutionary period.
_The Successive Incarnations of the Iron Mask._--"Never has an Indian
deity," says Paul de Saint-Victor, speaking of the Iron Mask, "undergone
so many metempsychoses and so many avatars." It would take too long
merely to enumerate all the individuals with whom it has been attempted
to identify the Iron Mask: even women have not escaped. We shall cite
rapidly the theories which have found most credence amongst the public,
or those which have been defended in the most serious works, in order to
arrive finally at the identification--as will be seen, it is one of
those proposed long ago--which is beyond doubt the true one.
The hypothesis which, after that of a brother of Louis XIV., has most
powerfully excited public opinion, is that which made the mysterious
unknown Louis, Comte de Vermandois, admiral of France, and son of the
charming Louise de la Vallière. This was indeed the belief of Father
Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille, and even of the officers of the
staff. But the conjecture is disproved in a single line: "The Comte de
Vermandois died at Courtrai, on November 18, 1683." A precisely similar
fact refutes the theory identifying the Iron Mask with the Duke of
Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters. Monmouth
perished on the scaffold in 1683. Lagrange-Chancel throws much ardour
and talent into a defence of the theory which made the Iron Mask Francis
of Vendôme, Duke de Beaufort, who, under the Fronde, was called "King of
the Markets." The Duke de Beaufort died at the siege of Candia, June 25,
1669.
To Lagrange-Chancel succeeds the Chevalier de Taulès. "I have discovered
the Man in the Mask," he cries, "and it is my duty to impart my
discovery to Europe and posterity!" This discovery brings forward one
Avedick, an Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem,
kidnapped in the East at the instigation of the Jesuits, and transported
to France. Vergennes, on entering the ministry for foreign affairs, set
investigations on foot. They confirmed the statement that Avedick had
actually been arrested in the circumstances indicated, but after 1706;
and so he could not be identified with the Iron Mask.
Such were the theories of the eighteenth century. We come now to those
of our own time. Since mystery and sinister machinations were involved,
the Jesuits could not be long left out of the business. We have just
seen them at their tricks with the Armenian patriarch. People dreamt of
an innocent youth thrown into a dungeon at their instigation for having
written a couple of verses against them. But even this fancy was
completely cast into the shade in a work published in 1885 under the
pseudonym of "Ubalde," the author of which was unquestionably M. Anatole
Loquin. This is his conclusion: "The more I reflect, the more I believe
I recognize in the Man in the Iron Mask, without any elaborate theory,
without prejudice on my part, no other than J. B. Poquelin de Molière."
The Jesuits have got their revenge for _Tartufe_!
Let us come now to the conjectures which have almost hit the truth and
have been defended by genuine scholars.
Superintendent Fouquet is the solution of the bibliophile Jacob (Paul
Lacroix). M. Lair has shown that Fouquet died at Pignerol, of a sort of
apoplexy, on March 23, 1680, at the very moment when there was an idea
at court of sending him to the waters at Bourbon, as a first step
towards his final liberation.
François Ravaisson, the learned and charming keeper of the Arsenal
library, whose work in classifying the archives of the Bastille we have
had the honour to continue, believed for a moment that the celebrated
prisoner might have been the young Count de Kéroualze who had fought at
Candia under the orders of Admiral de Beaufort. Ravaisson put forth his
theory with much hesitation, and as, in the sequel, he was himself led
to abandon it, we need not dwell any longer upon it.
M. Loiseleur, in the course of his brilliant controversy with Marius
Topin, suggested "an obscure spy arrested by Catinat in 1681," and his
opponent refuted him in the most piquant manner by discovering Catinat
in the very prisoner he was said to have arrested!
General Jung published a large volume in support of the claims of a
certain Oldendorf, a native of Lorraine, a spy and poisoner, arrested on
March 29, 1673, in a trap laid for him at one of the passages of the
Somme. The theory was refuted by M. Loiseleur. As M. Lair pointed out,
General Jung did not even succeed in proving that his nominee entered
Pignerol, an essential condition to his being the Man in the Mask.
Baron Carutti urged the claims of a mad Jacobin, a prisoner at Pignerol
whose name remains unknown; but this Jacobin died at Pignerol towards
the close of 1693.'
The recent work of M. Emile Burgaud, written in collaboration with
Commandant Bazeries, made a great sensation. He fixes on General Vivien
Labbé de Bulonde, whom Louvois arrested for having shown dereliction of
a general's duty before Coni. M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison published in
the _Univers_ of January 9, 1895, two receipts signed by General de
Bulonde, one in 1699, when the masked man was in rigorous isolation at
the Bastille, the other in 1705, when he had been dead for two years.
We come at last to the hypothesis which is the most probable of
all--after the true hypothesis, of course. Eustache Dauger, whom M. Lair
identifies with the masked prisoner, was a valet, who had been put into
jail at Pignerol on July 28, 1669. But it must be noted that the masked
prisoner was kept guarded in rigorous secrecy in the early days of his
detention, as long as he was at Pignerol and the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite. Now, when Dauger went to Pignerol, his case seemed of
such slight importance that Saint-Mars thought of making him into a
servant for the other prisoners, and in fact, in 1675, Louvois gave him
as a valet to Fouquet, who for some time past had seen the rigour of his
confinement sensibly mitigated, receiving visits, walking freely in the
courts and purlieus of the fortress, Dauger accompanying him. Further,
we know that the masked man was transferred direct from Pignerol to the
Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, whilst Dauger was transferred in 1681 to
Exiles, whence he only went to the Isles in 1687.
We now come to the correct solution.
3. MATTIOLI.
To Baron Heiss, once captain in the Alsace regiment, and one of the most
distinguished bibliophiles of his time, belongs the honour of being the
first, in a letter dated from Phalsbourg, June 28, 1770, and published
by the _Journal encyclopédique_, to identify the masked prisoner with
Count Mattioli, secretary of state to the Duke of Mantua. After him,
Dutens, in 1783, in his _Intercepted Correspondence_; Baron de
Chambrier, in 1795, in a Memoir presented to the Academy of Berlin;
Roux-Fazillac, member of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, in
a remarkable work printed in 1801; then successively, Reth, Delort,
Ellis, Carlo Botta, Armand Baschet, Marius Topin, Paul de Saint-Victor,
and M. Gallien, in a series of publications more or less important,
endeavoured to prove that the Man in the Mask was the Duke of Mantua's
secretary of state. The scholars most intimate with the history of Louis
XIV.'s government, Depping, Chéruel, Camille Rousset, have not hesitated
to pronounce in favour of the same view; while against them,
singlehanded like his D'Artagnan, Alexandre Dumas resisted the efforts
of twenty scholars, and the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_--giving a new lease
of life to the legend about the brother of Louis XIV., put in
circulation by Voltaire, and reinforced by the Revolution--drove back
into their dust among the archives the documents which students had
exhumed.
We have no longer to deal with so formidable an adversary, and we hope
that the following pages will not leave the shadow of a doubt.
We know how, under the influence of Louvois, the able and insinuating
policy directed first by Mazarin, then by Lionne, gave way to a military
diplomacy, blunt and aggressive. Louis XIV. was master of Pignerol,
acquired in 1632. He was induced by Louvois to cast covetous glances at
Casal. In possession of these two places, the French armies could not
but dominate Upper Italy, and hold the court of Turin directly at their
mercy. The throne of Mantua was then occupied by a young duke, Charles
IV. of Gonzago, frivolous, happy-go-lucky, dissipating his wealth at
Venice in fêtes and pleasures. In 1677 he had pledged to the Jews the
crown revenues for several years. Charles IV. was also Marquis of
Montferrat, of which Casal was the capital. Noting with watchful eye the
frivolity and financial straits of the young prince, the court of
Versailles conceived the bold scheme of buying Casal for hard cash.
At this date, one of the principal personages in Mantua was Count
Hercules Antony Mattioli. He was born at Bologna on December 1, 1640, of
a distinguished family. A brilliant student, he had barely passed his
twentieth year when he was elected a professor at the University of
Bologna. Afterwards he established himself at Mantua, where Charles
III., whose confidence he had won, made him his secretary of state.
Charles IV., continuing the favour of his father, not only maintained
Mattioli in his office as minister of state, but appointed him an
honorary senator, a dignity which was enhanced by the title of Count.
Louis XIV. was employing at the capital of the Venetian republic a
keen-witted and enterprising ambassador, the Abbé d'Estrades. He saw
through the ambitious and intriguing nature of Mattioli, and, towards
the end of 1677, succeeded in winning over his support for the designs
of the French court on Casal.
On January 12, 1678, Louis XIV. with his own hand wrote expressing his
thanks to Mattioli, who by-and-by came to Paris. On December 8, the
contract was signed, the Duke of Mantua receiving in exchange for Casal
100,000 crowns. In a private audience, Louis XIV. presented Mattioli
with a costly diamond and paid him the sum of a hundred double louis.
Scarcely two months after Mattioli's journey to France, the courts of
Vienna, Madrid, Turin, and the Venetian Republic were simultaneously
informed of all that had taken place. In order to reap a double harvest
of gold, Mattioli had cynically betrayed both his master Charles IV. and
the King of France. Like a thunderbolt there came to Versailles the news
of the arrest of Baron d'Asfeld, the envoy appointed by Louis XIV. to
exchange ratifications with Mattioli. The governor of Milan had caused
him to be seized and handed over to the Spaniards. The rage of Louis
XIV. and of Louvois, who had urged the opening of negotiations, taken
an active part in them, and begun preparations for the occupation of
Casal, may well be imagined. The Abbé d'Estrades, not less irritated,
conceived a scheme of the most daring kind, proposing to Versailles
nothing less than the abduction of the Mantuan minister. But Louis XIV.
was determined to have no scandal. Catinat was charged with carrying out
the scheme in person. The Abbé d'Estrades, in his dealings with
Mattioli, feigned ignorance of the double game the Count was playing. He
led him to believe, on the contrary, that the balance of the sums
promised at Versailles was about to be paid. A meeting was fixed for May
2, 1679. On that day d'Estrades and Mattioli got into a carriage, the
passing of which was awaited by Catinat accompanied by some dozen men.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, Mattioli was in the fortress of
Pignerol, in the hands of jailer Saint-Mars. When we remember the rank
held by the Italian minister, we are confronted with one of the most
audacious violations of international law of which history has preserved
a record.
Early in the year 1694, Mattioli was transferred to the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite; we have seen that he entered the Bastille on
September 18, 1698, and died there on November 19, 1703.
The details that we possess of the imprisonment of Mattioli at Pignerol
and afterwards at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite show that he was at the
outset treated with the consideration due to his rank and to the
position he occupied at the time of his arrest. Eventually the respect
which the prisoner had at first inspired gradually diminished: as years
went on the attentions shown him grew less and less until the day when,
at the Bastille, he was given a room in common with persons of the
basest class. On the other hand, the rigour of his confinement, so far
as the secrecy in which he was kept was concerned, was more and more
relaxed; what it was material to conceal was the circumstances under
which Mattioli had been arrested, and with the lapse of time this secret
continually diminished in importance. As to the mask of black velvet
which Mattioli had among his possessions when he was arrested, and which
he put on, without a doubt, only for the occasion, this in reality
constituted a relief to his captivity, for it permitted the prisoner to
leave his room, while the other state prisoners were rigorously mewed up
in theirs.
* * * * *
It remains to prove that the masked prisoner was really Mattioli.
1. In the despatch sent by Louis XIV. to the Abbé d'Estrades five days
before the arrest, the king approves the scheme of his ambassador and
authorizes him to secure Mattioli, "since you believe you can get him
carried off without the affair giving rise to any scandal." The prisoner
is to be conducted to Pignerol, where "instructions are being sent to
receive him and keep him there without anybody having knowledge of it."
The king's orders close with these words: "You must see to it that no
one knows what becomes of this man." The capture effected, Catinat wrote
on his part to Louvois: "It came off without any violence, and no one
knows the name of the knave, not even the officers who helped to arrest
him." Finally, we have a very curious pamphlet entitled _La Prudenza
triomfante di Casale_, written in 1682, that is, little more than two
years after the event, and--this slight detail is of capital
importance--thirty years before there was any talk of the Man in the
Mask. In this we read: "The secretary (Mattioli) was surrounded by ten
or twelve horsemen, who seized him, disguised him, _masked_ him, and
conducted him to Pignerol"--a fact, moreover, confirmed by a tradition
which in the eighteenth century was still rife in the district, where
scholars succeeded in culling it.
Is there any need to insist on the strength of the proofs afforded by
these three documents, taken in connection one with another?
2. We know, from du Junca's register, that the masked man was shut up at
Pignerol under the charge of Saint-Mars. In 1681, Saint-Mars gave up the
governorship of Pignerol for that of Exiles. We can determine with
absolute precision the number of prisoners Saint-Mars had then in his
keeping. It was exactly five. A dispatch from Louvois, dated June 9, is
very clear. In the first paragraph, he orders "the two prisoners in the
lower tower" to be removed; in the second, he adds: "The rest of the
prisone
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