Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

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.