“Monseigneur and most reverent patron,” he writes to Colbert from the Bastile under date of the 8th of November, 1661, “I supplicate you most humbly to accord this poor, unfortunate being his liberty. Your lordship will most undoubtedly be rewarded for so merciful a deed as the release of a wretched creature who has languished here for nine years devoid of hope.” In a second petition, reiterating his prayer for clemency, he adds, “It is now impossible for me to leave the room in which I am lodged as I am almost naked. Do send me a little money so that I may procure a coat and a few shirts.” Again, “May I beseech you to remember that I have been incarcerated for eleven years and eight months and have endured the worst hardships ever inflicted on a man for the want of covering against the bitter cold.... Monseigneur, I am seventy-eight years of age, a prey to all manner of bodily infirmities; I do not possess a single friend in the world, and worse still, I am not worth one sou and am sunk in an abyss of wretchedness. I swear to you, Monseigneur, that I am compelled to go to bed in the dark because I cannot buy a farthing candle; I have worn the same shirt without removing or changing it for seven whole months.”
This appeal is endorsed with a brief minute signed by Colbert. “Let him have clothes.” The year following a new petition is rendered. “Your Excellency will forgive me if I entreat him to remember that thirteen months ago he granted me 400 francs to relieve my miseries. But I am once more in the same or even worse condition and I again beg humbly for help. I have been quite unable to pay the hire of the furniture in my chamber and the upholsterer threatens to remove the goods and I shall soon be compelled to lie on the bare floor. I have neither light nor fuel and am almost without clothes. You, Monseigneur, are my only refuge and I beseech your charitable help or I shall be found dead of cold in my cell. For the love of God, entreat the King to give me my liberty after the thirteen years spent here.”
This last appeal is dated November 28th, 1665, but there is no record of his ultimate disposal. It is stated in an earlier document that Cardinal Mazarin had been willing to grant a pardon to this prisoner if he would agree to be conveyed to the frontier under escort and sent across it as a common criminal, but the Count had refused to accept this dishonoring condition which he pleaded would cast a stigma upon his family name. He offered, however, to leave France directly he was released and seek any domicile suggested to him where he might be safe from further oppression. Cardinal Mazarin seems to have been mercifully inclined, but died before he could extend clemency to this unhappy victim of arbitrary power.
The Bastile was used sometimes as a sanctuary to withdraw an offender who had outraged the law and could not otherwise be saved from reprisal. A notable case was that of René de l’Hopital, Marquis de Choisy, who lived on his estates like a savage tyrant. In 1659 he was denounced by a curé to the ecclesiastical authorities for his crimes. The marquis with a couple of attendants waylaid the priest on the high road and attacked the curé whom he grievously wounded. The priest commended himself to God and was presently stunned by a murderous blow on the jaw from the butt end of a musket. Then the Marquis, to make sure his victim was really dead, rode his horse over the recumbent body and then stabbed it several times with his sword. But help came and the curé was rescued still alive, and strange to say, recovered, although it was said he had received a hundred and twenty wounds.
The entire religious hierarchy in France espoused the priest’s cause. The Marquis was haled before several provincial courts of justice. He would undoubtedly have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death, for Louis XIV would seldom spare the murderer of a priest, but the l’Hopital family had great influence at Court and won a pardon for the criminal. The Parliament of Paris or High Court of Justice boldly resisted the royal decree and the marquis would still have been executed had he not been consigned for safety to the “King’s Castle,” the Bastile. He passed subsequently to the prison of For-l’Évêque, from which he was released with others on the entry of the King to Paris, at his marriage. Still the vindictive Parliament pursued him and he would hardly have escaped the scaffold had he not fled the country.
In an age when so much respect was exacted for religious forms and ceremonies, imprisonment in the Bastile was promptly inflicted upon all guilty of blasphemous conduct or who openly ridiculed sacred things. The records are full of cases in which prisoners have been committed to gaol for impiety, profane swearing at their ill luck with the dice or at hoca. A number of the Prince de Condé’s officers were sent to the Bastile for acting a disgraceful parody of the procession of the Host, in which a besom was made to represent a cross, a bucket was filled at a neighboring pump and called holy water, and the sham priests chanted the De Profundis as they went through the streets to administer the last sacrament to a pretended moribund.
A very small offense gained the pain of imprisonment. One foolish person was committed because he was dissatisfied with his name Cardon (thistle), and changed it to Cardone, prefixing the particle “de” which signifies nobility, claiming that he was a member of the illustrious family of De Cardone. It appears from the record, however, that he also spoke evil of M. de Maurepas, a minister of State.
Still another class found themselves committed to the Bastile. The parental Louis, as he grew more sober and staid, insisted more and more on external decorum and dealt sharply with immoral conduct among his courtiers. The Bastile was used very much as a police station or a reformatory. Young noblemen were sent there for riotous conduct in the streets, for an affray with the watch and the maltreatment of peaceful citizens. The Duc d’Estrées and the Duc de Mortemart were imprisoned as wastrels who bet and gambled with sharpers. “The police officers cannot help complaining that the education of these young dukes had been sadly neglected,” reads the report. So the Royal Castle was turned for the nonce into a school, and a master of mathematics, a drawing master and a Jesuit professor of history were admitted to instruct the neglected youths. The same Duc d’Estrées paid a second visit for quarrelling with the Comte d’Harcourt and protesting against the interference of the marshals to prevent a duel.
The King nowadays set his face against all loose living. The Comte de Montgomery, for leading a debauched and scandalous life on his estates, was committed to the Bastile, where he presently died. He was a Protestant and the question of his burial came up before the Ministry, who wrote the governor that, “His Majesty is very indifferent whether he (Montgomery) be buried in one place rather than another and still more in what manner the ceremony is performed.”