Prisons were to be met with throughout the length and breadth of France. The capital had many; every provincial city possessed one or more. In Paris the principal prisons were the two Châtelets, the gaols and, as we should say to-day, the police headquarters of the Provost or chief magistrate of the city. For-l’Évêque was the Bishops’ court; the Conciergerie, the guardroom of the King’s palace, kept by the concierge, porter or janitor, really the mayor and custodian of the royal residence; in the Temple the powerful and arrogant military order of the Knights Templars had its seat.
The reigning sovereign relied upon the Bastile, at first merely a rampart against invasion and rebellion, but presently exalted into the King’s prison-house, the royal gaol and penitentiary. He had also the donjon of Vincennes, which was first a place of defensive usefulness and next a place of restraint and coercion for State offenders. Other prisons came into existence later: the Madelonnettes, St. Pélagie, Bicêtre, the Salpêtrière and St. Lazare.
All these have historic interest more or less pronounced and notable. All in their time were the scenes of strange, often terrible episodes and events. All serve to illustrate various curious epochs of the world’s history, but mark more especially the rise, progress, aggrandisement and decadence and final fall of the French monarchy.
[CONTENTS]
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| [Introduction] | 5 | |
| [I.] | Origins and Early History | 13 |
| [II.] | Struggle with the Sovereign | 35 |
| [III.] | Vincennes and the Bastile | 57 |
| [IV.] | The Rise of Richelieu | 90 |
| [V.] | The People and the Bastile | 121 |
| [VI.] | The Man with the Iron Mask | 148 |
| [VII.] | The Power of the Bastile | 187 |
| [VIII.] | The Terror of Poison | 210 |
| [IX.] | The Horrors of the Galleys | 232 |
| [X.] | The Dawn of Revolution | 263 |
| [XI.] | Last Days of the Bastile | 287 |