It is unnecessary to state that in barbarous times the cruel and pitiless feeling which induced legislators to increase the horrors of tortures, also contributed to the aggravation of the fate of prisoners. Each administrator of the law had his private gaol, which was entirely under his will and control ([Fig. 353]). Law or custom did not prescribe any fixed rules for the internal government of prisons. There can be little doubt, however, that these prisons were as small as they were unhealthy, if we may judge from that in the Rue de la Tannerie, which was the property of the provost, the merchants, and the aldermen of Paris in 1383. Although this dungeon was only eleven feet long by seven feet wide, from ten to twenty prisoners were often immured in it at the same time.

[Fig. 352.]--Empalement.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.

Paris alone contained twenty-five or thirty special prisons, without counting the vade in pace of the various religious communities. The most important were the Grand Châtelet, the Petit Châtelet, the Bastille, the Conciergerie, and the For-l'Evêque, the ancient seat of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Nearly all these places of confinement contained subterranean cells, which were almost entirely deprived of air and light. As examples of these may be mentioned the Chartres basses of the Petit Châtelet, where, under the reign of Charles VI., it was proved that no man could pass an entire day without being suffocated; and the fearful cells excavated thirty feet below the surface of the earth, in the gaol of the Abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, the roof of which was so low that a man of middle height could not stand up in them, and where the straw of the prisoners' beds floated upon the stagnant water which had oozed through the walls.

[Fig. 353.]--The Provost's Prison.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in J. Damhoudère's "Praxis Rerum Civilium."

The Grand Châtelet was one of the most ancient prisons of Paris, and probably the one which held the greatest number of prisoners. By a curious and arbitrary custom, prisoners were compelled to pay a gaol fee on entering and going out of this prison, which varied according to their rank, and which was established by a law of the year 1425. We learn from this enactment the names by which the various places of confinement composing this spacious municipal prison were known. A prisoner who was confined in the Beauvoir, La Mate or La Salle, had the right of "having a bed brought from his own house," and only had to pay the droit de place to the gaoler; any one who was placed in the Boucherie, in the Beaumont, or in the Griseche, "which are closed prisons," had to pay four deniers "pour place;" any one who was confined in the Beauvais, "lies on mats or on layers of rushes or straw" (gist sur nates ou sur couche de feurre ou de paille); if he preferred, he might be placed au Puis, in the Gourdaine, in the Bercueil, or in the Oubliette, where he did not pay more than in the Fosse. For this, no doubt, the smallest charge was made. Sometimes, however, the prisoner was left between two doors ("entre deux huis"), and he then paid much less than he would in the Barbarie or in the Gloriette. The exact meaning of these curious names is no longer intelligible to us, notwithstanding the terror which they formerly created, but their very strangeness gives us reason to suppose that the prison system was at that time subjected to the most odious refinement of the basest cruelty.

From various reliable sources we learn that there was a place in the Grand Châtelet, called the Chausse d'Hypocras, in which the prisoners had their feet continually in water, and where they could neither stand up nor lie down; and a cell, called Fin d'aise, which was a horrible receptacle of filth, vermin, and reptiles; as to the Fosse, no staircase being attached to it, the prisoners were lowered down into it by means of a rope and pulley.

By the law of 1425, the gaoler was not permitted to put more than two or three persons in the same bed. He was bound to give "bread and water" to the poor prisoners who had no means of subsistence; and, lastly, he was enjoined "to keep the large stone basin, which was on the pavement, full of water, so that prisoners might get it whenever they wished." In order to defray his expenses, he levied on the prisoners various charges for attendance and for bedding, and he was authorised to detain in prison any person who failed to pay him. The power of compelling payment of these charges continued even after a judge's order for the release of a prisoner had been issued.

[Fig. 354.]--The Bastille.--From an ancient Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.

The subterranean cells of the Bastille ([Fig. 354]) did not differ much from those of the Châtelet. There were several, the bottoms of which were formed like a sugar-loaf upside down, thus neither allowing the prisoner to stand up, nor even to adopt a tolerable position sitting or lying down. It was in these that King Louis XI., who seemed to have a partiality for filthy dungeons, placed the two young sons of the Duke de Nemours (beheaded in 1477), ordering, besides, that they should be taken out twice a week and beaten with birch rods, and, as a supreme measure of atrocity, he had one of their teeth extracted every three months. It was Louis XI., too, who, in 1476, ordered the famous iron cage, to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, was incarcerated for fourteen years.

The Château de Loches also possessed one of these cages, which received the name of Cage de Balue, because the Cardinal Jean de la Balue was imprisoned in it. Philippe de Commines, in his "Mémoires," declares that he himself had a taste of it for eight months. Before the invention of cages, Louis XI. ordered very heavy chains to be made, which were fastened to the feet of the prisoners, and attached to large iron balls, called, according to Commines, the King's little daughters (les fillettes du roy).