A gentleman named George Charles, who wrote an accurate history of the rebellion, also says: "Vast numbers of the common people's houses or huts were likewise laid in ashes; all the cattle, sheep, and goats were carried off; and several poor people, especially women and children, were found dead on the hills, supposed to be starved. Even places of worship were not exempt from the ravages of the unprincipled soldiery; several mass-houses about Strathbogie were pulled down by them; some non-jurant Episcopal meetinghouses were likewise burnt and destroyed, and they were generally shut up all over the kingdom. The commander-in-chief was at this time amusing himself and his staff with foot and horse races."
[NOTE D]. The Bastille.
In presenting the Bastille to the readers of these pages exactly as it was according to every authority on the subject--although in considerable opposition to the usually accepted and melodramatic and transpontine ideas on the fortress--I do not feel that I have robbed Romance of any of her charms. The true Bastille offers the fictionist quite as much opportunity for his powers as the fusty, tawdry thing which, under its name, has heretofore done duty in its place.
The Bastille was never the place of indescribable horrors which fictionists and dramatists have contrived--"out of their own heads," as the children say--to represent it; indeed, I may truthfully assert that I have never read a description yet of the place in fiction, nor seen a representation of the place in drama, which could by any possibility have approached very near accuracy. And this is the more extraordinary, because there are something like forty authorities who may be referred to on the subject, including among them such men as the Duc de Richelieu and Voltaire, both of whom had in their time been prisoners in it.
In truth, the Bastille was more a house of detention than anything else, and in many cases was regarded as a shelter or harbour of refuge from outside storms. Instances are frequent of men petitioning to be sent there to escape their enemies, and of others refusing to come out and be forced to meet their enemies. Moreover, if a young man of fashion contracted debts or low amours, or gambled, or was too intimate with undesirable women--as was the case with the Duc d'Estrées, the Duc de Mortemart, the Comte d'Harcourt, and others--nothing was more common than for his father to pack him off to the Bastille, accompanied by his tutor and his valet. Also, the Bastille was often regarded by the Parisians as a suitable object for poking fun at. Voltaire, after having been incarcerated there for objecting to being thrashed by the Chevalier de Rohan for being a poet, told Louis XV, when he promised to provide for him, that "he trusted his Majesty's provision would not again include board and lodging." Another poet, referring to the moat round the fortress, delivered himself of the lines:
Que vois-je dans ce marécage
Digne de curiosité,
Se tenir sur sa gravité
En citadel de village?
A quoi sert ce vieux mur dans l'eau?
Est-ce un aqueduc, un caveau?
Est-ce un reservoir de grenouilles?
And Langlet du Frosnoy (an abbé and a most prolific writer, who passed half his life in various prisons, and died at eighty by tumbling into the fire while reading a book) used to take his papers, his snuff, and his nightgown off to the Bastille when rearrested, and calmly go on with his work there on being once more locked up. As regards the surrender of the Bastille (for, as Marmontel truthfully says, it was only threatened with siege and never really besieged) in 1789, and the release of the "unhappy prisoners," it may be mentioned that there were but seven of them there, and that one was an imbecile Englishman named Whyte, whose friends had had him shut up to keep him out of harm's way. Four of the others were common forgers awaiting trial; the sixth was the Comte de Solages, detained at the request of his family and on their paying his expenses; and the seventh was Tavernier, a man who had conspired against the late King. No record of torture being practised in the Bastille--after the middle ages--can be found; while, as for food, the Kings allowed so fair a sum to each prisoner--generally one hundred sols, or five francs, a day--that often the latter petitioned that, instead of so many meals, they might be allowed some of the money for other things. In the case of a prince of the blood, fifty livres a day were allowed; for the Cardinal de Rohan one hundred and twenty were granted. Discipline had, however, to be maintained, and where the "guests" were too obstreperous they were sometimes confined alone in dark, solitary cells, instead of being in rooms with others for companions. Latude, who has been regarded as a martyr, was frequently punished for swearing, roaring so that people outside could hear him, and "playing the devil," to use the words of the officials; yet he was allowed tobacco, seeds for the birds he was permitted to keep, new clothes when he asked for them, fur gloves to keep his hands warm, and almost whatever food he desired. Allègre, who escaped from the Bastille with him and was retaken, was also a troublesome man; he broke all the windows, china, and pottery in his room daily, and tore up his mattresses and shirts, "which cost the King twenty francs each," and his pocket-handkerchiefs. He died mad at last at Charenton, did not know Latude, who went to see him, and told everyone that he was God.
The instrument of torture found in the Bastille on its fall turned out, when regarded by intelligent people, to be a small printing press left behind by one François Lenormand, who had been permitted to have it in his room for occupation; also a billiard table was discovered which was provided, the year before the Bastille surrendered, for the amusement of the "prisoners"! The "awful cells" which have furnished so much matter for powerful writing, were "the ice houses" in which wine, meat, and fish were stored. In truth, the "King's furnished apartments" seem to have been far from unpleasant abode to many, as the Abbé de Mehégan acknowledged when his mother implored the King to keep him there as long as possible, because he was so dissolute and extravagant and such a terror to all the girls in his parish.
Of course, in the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV some prisoners were detained for long periods, and one there was who was detained the same length of time--forty-four years--as I have accorded to De Chevagny. Falmy's case was also possible in Louis XV's reign. But in Louis XVI's first year the Bastille was cleared of all but Tavernier and some others whose trial was close at hand, and even the revolutionists acknowledged that no "court" victim had been incarcerated during that unhappy King's reign. The last man to enter the Bastille was one Reveillon, a furniture dealer, and he did so at his own request, and with a demand for the rights of "sanctuary," as his fellow-workmen were destroying his house in the Faubourg St. Antoine because he had used defamatory language against them! and he was afraid for his life.
Terrible, therefore, as the Bastille was, as a place in which one might be detained for an indefinite period, it was not what it has hitherto been represented; yet, as I have said, it formed a sufficiently gloomy abode in which to secrete such characters as Bertie Elphinston and Fordingbridge when such secretion was rendered necessary in the interests of my narrative.