Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

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.