[CHAPTER III]
VINCENNES AND THE BASTILE
Vincennes and the Bastile—Vincennes described—Castle and woods—Torture—Methods and implements—Amende Honorable—Flagellation and mutilations—Notable inmates—Prince de Condé—Origin of the Bastile—Earliest records—Hugues d’Aubriot—Last English garrison—Sir John Falstaff—Frequented by Louis XI and Anne of Beaujeau—Charles VIII—Francis I—Persecution of the Huguenots—Henry II, Diane de Poitiers, and Catherine de Medicis—Her murderous oppressions—Bastile her favorite prison.
We come now to the two great metropolitan prisons that played so large a part in the vexed and stormy annals of France. Vincennes and Bastile may be said to epitomise Parisian history. They were ever closely associated with startling episodes and notable personages, the best and worst Frenchmen in all ages, and were incessantly the centres of rebellions, dissensions, contentions and strife. They were both State prisons, differing but little in character and quality. Vincennes was essentially a place of durance for people of rank and consequence. The Bastile took the nobility also, but with them the whole crowd of ordinary criminals great and small. These prisons were the two weapons forged by autocratic authority and freely used by it alike for the oppression of the weak and down trodden, and the openly turbulent but vainly recalcitrant. The royal relatives that dared oppose the king, the stalwart nobles that conspired or raised the standard of revolt, the great soldiers who dabbled in civil war, found themselves committed to Vincennes. The same classes of offenders, but generally of lesser degree, were thrown into the Bastile. The courtier who forgot his manners or dared to be independent in thought or action, the bitter poetaster and too fluent penman of scurrilous pamphlets, were certain of a lodging at the gloomy citadel of Saint Antoine.
The castle of Vincennes was used primarily as a royal palace and has been called the Windsor of the House of Valois. Philip IV, the first king of that family, kept high festival there in a splendid and luxurious court. The great edifice was of noble dimensions—both a pleasure house and a prison, with towers and drawbridges for defense and suites of stately apartments. It stood in the centre of a magnificent forest, the famous Bois de Vincennes, the name often used to describe the residence; and the crowned heads and royal guests who constantly visited the French sovereigns hunted the deer in the woods around, or diverted themselves with tilts or tournaments in the courtyard of the castle. The first to use Vincennes largely as a prison was that famous gaoler Louis XI. He did not live there much, preferring as a residence his impregnable fortified palace at Plessis-lez-Tours. Not satisfied with Loches, he utilised Vincennes and kept it constantly filled. Some account of his principal victims will be found in the narrative of succeeding reigns and the extensive use of the various prisons made by succeeding kings.
The prison fortress of Vincennes in its palmiest days consisted of nine great towers; and a tenth, loftier and more solid, was the Donjon, or central keep, commonly called the Royal Domain. Two drawbridges must be passed before entrance was gained by a steep ascent. This was barred by three heavy doors. The last of these communicated directly with the Donjon, being so ponderous that it could only be moved by the combined efforts of the warder within and the sergeant of the guard without. A steep staircase led to the cells above. The four towers had each four stories and each story a hall forty feet long, with a cell at each corner having three doors apiece. These doors acted one on the other. The second barred the first and the third barred the second, and none could be opened without knowledge of secret machinery.
The torture chamber, with all its abominable paraphernalia of “boots,” rack, “stools” and other implements for inflicting torture, was on the first floor. Every French prison of the olden times had its “question” chamber to carry out the penalties and savage processes of the French judicial code. The barbarous treatment administered in it was not peculiar to France alone, but was practised in prisons throughout the so-called civilised world. Torture was in general use in French prisons till a late date and really survived till abolished by the ill-fated Louis XVI in 1780. It may be traced back to the ancient judicial ordeals when an accused was allowed to prove his innocence by withstanding combat or personal attack. It was also known as the “question” because the judge stood by during its infliction and called upon the prisoner to answer the interrogations put to him, when his replies, if any, were written down. The process is described by La Bruyère as a marvellous but futile invention “quite likely to force the physically weak to confess crimes they never committed and yet quite as certain to favor the escape of the really guilty, strong enough to support the application.” The “question” was of two distinct categories: one, the “preparatory” or “ordinary,” an unfair means of obtaining avowals for the still legally innocent; the other, “preliminary” or “extraordinary,” reserved for those actually condemned to death but believed to know more than had yet been elicited. There were many terrible varieties of torture exhibiting unlimited cruel invention. We are familiar enough with the “rack,” the “wheel,” the “thumb screw” and the “boot.” Other less known forms were the “veglia” introduced into France by the popes when the Holy See came to Avignon. The “veglia” consisted of a small wooden stool so constructed that when the accused sat upon it his whole weight rested on the extremity of his spine. His sufferings soon became acute. He groaned, he shrieked and then fainted, whereupon the punishment ceased until he came to and was again placed on the stool. It was usual to hold a looking glass before his eyes that his distorted features might frighten him into confession. The “estrapade,” like the “veglia,” was borrowed from Italy. By this the torture was applied with a rope and pulley by which the patient was suspended over a slow fire and slowly roasted, being alternately lifted and let down so as to prolong his sufferings. Elsewhere in France fire was applied to the soles of the feet or a blade was introduced between the nail and the flesh of finger or toe. Sometimes sulphur matches or tow was inserted between the fingers and ignited.
In the chief French prisons the “question” was generally limited to the two best known tortures: swallowing great quantities of water and the insertion of the legs within a casing or “boot” of wood or iron. For the first, the accused was chained to the floor and filled with water poured down his throat by means of a funnel. In the “ordinary question” four “cans”—pints, presumably—of water were administered, and for the “extraordinary” eight cans. From a report of the proceedings in the case of a priest accused of sacrilege, who had been already sentenced to death but whose punishment was accentuated by torture, it is possible to realise the sufferings endured. After the first can the victim cried “May God have mercy on me;” at the second he declared, “I know nothing and I am ready to die;” at the third he was silent, but at the fourth he declared he could support it no longer and that if they would release him he would tell the truth. Then he changed his mind and refused to speak, declaring that he had told all he knew and was forthwith subjected to the “extraordinary question.” At the fifth can he called upon God twice. At the sixth he said, “I am dying, I can hold out no longer, I have told all.” At the seventh he said nothing. At the eighth he screamed out that he was dying and lapsed into complete silence. Now the surgeon interfered, saying that further treatment would endanger his life, and he was unbound and placed on a mattress near the fire. He appears to have made no revelations and was in due course borne off to the place of execution.
The torture of the “boot” was applied by inserting the legs in an iron apparatus which fitted closely but was gradually tightened by the introduction of wedges driven home within the fastenings. The pain was intense and became intolerable as the wedge was driven farther and farther down between the knee and the iron casing by repeated blows of the mallet. The “boot” was better known in France as the brodequin or buskin. In England some modification of it was introduced by one Skeffington, a keeper in the Tower, and this gave it the nickname of “Skeffington’s gyves” which was corrupted into the words “scavenger’s daughters.”
It was sometimes shown that the torture had been applied to perfectly innocent people. The operation was performed with a certain amount of care. One of the master surgeons of the prison was always present to watch the effect upon the patient and to offer him advice. The “questioner” was a sworn official who was paid a regular salary, about one hundred francs a year.