But let us seek now to put the Bastille in its proper and exact place amongst the historic gaols of France. In recent years, one or two French writers of distinction, and others of no distinction whatever, have come forward as the apologists of this too famous keep, who would persuade us that it was not only a very tolerable sort of prison, but even, in cases, a rather desirable place of retirement, for meditation, and philosophical pursuits. M. Viollet-le-Duc has assured us, quite gravely, that the famed oubliettes (the bottoms of which were shaped like sugar loaves, so that prisoners might have no resting-place for their feet) were merely ice-houses! It is not denied that these cells existed, and those who care to believe that a Mediæval architect built them under the towers of the Bastille as store-chambers for ice to cool the governor's or the prisoners' wine, are entirely welcome to do so. These were amongst the places of torment in which Louis XI. kept the Armagnac princes, who were taken out twice a week to be scourged in the presence of Governor l'Huillier, and "every three months to have a tooth pulled out." The author of The Bastille Unveiled has attempted to explain away the iron cage in which the same King confined Cardinal Balue for eleven years, and which, I believe, is still in existence. An English apologist (whose work extends to two bulky volumes) says that "prisoners were less harshly treated in the Bastille than in other French and English prisons"; that "the accusations of prisoners having been tortured in the Bastille have no serious foundation"; that the majority of the chambers "were comfortable enough"; that one of the courtyards "resembled a college playground, in which prisoners received their friends, and indulged in all kinds of games." We hear of tables which were so sumptuously furnished (three bottles of wine a day, amongst other comforts) that the prisoners complained to the governor that he was feeding them too well. We are presented with printed rules to show how carefully the sick were to be attended to, and what were to be their ghostly ministrations in their final hours. We are told, without a smile, that it was really not so easy for people to get into the Bastille as the world in general has supposed; and that, once there, their situation was not too helpless, inasmuch as the governor must present to the minister every day a written report upon the conditions of the prison. Under the pen of this or the other indulgent writer, the horrors of the Bastille have vanished as by process of magic. Unfortunately, the horrors are, with quite unimportant exceptions, facts of history.
The government of the Bastille was precisely similar to the government of the other State prisons of France. Edicts notwithstanding, these prisons were practically the property of their successive governors. To this unwritten rule the Bastille was not an exception. The governor in possession at this or that epoch might or might not be the creature of the minister through whose interest he had bought his office at a sometimes exorbitant price; it was, at all events, understood that, whatever limits were set to his authority, he was fully entitled to get back his purchase money; and this, as had been shown, he could seldom do except by villainously ill-using his prisoners. There were governors who did not do this, and then indeed came a blessed period for the prisoners. Then food was good and plentiful, the faggots were not stinted in the fire-place, the beds were not rotten and lousy, the foul linen went to the wash, and the threadbare clothes were replaced, the cells were made proof against wind and rain, the governor was prompt in looking into grievances, and all went as well for the prisoner as it was possible that it should go in a gaol of old Paris. But when a new Pharaoh arose, who was avaricious, and a tyrant, and a bully, and who had bought his prison as a speculative investment, then the clouds gathered again, and the wind blew again from the east, and the old tribulations began afresh. Now, as the records of all the French prisons of history leave no doubt as to the fact the bad governors were many, and the good governors were few, and that within his prison walls the governor was only less than omnipotent, readers of these pages will not expect often to find prisoners of the Bastille regaling themselves with three bottles of wine a day, or asking to have their tables ordered more plainly, or receiving the free visits of their friends, or playing at "all kinds of games" in courtyards resembling college playgrounds. Sprigs of the nobility and young men of family, shut up for a time for making too free with their money, or for running away with a ballet-dancer, had perhaps not too much to complain of in the Bastille; there were certain prisoners of rank, too, who came off lightly; and now and again there were other prisoners who enjoyed what were called the "liberties of the Bastille," and who were allowed a restricted intercourse. But the general rules for the keeping and conduct of prisoners in the Bastille were of the severest description, and they were carried out for the most part with inflexible rigour. Privations and humiliations of all kinds were inflicted on them; and redress for injuries, or for insults, or for mean and illegal annoyances, the outcome of the governor's spleen, was not more easy to obtain in the Bastille than in the Dungeon of Vincennes.
The statement that "it was not so easy to enter into the Bastille" is from Ravaisson, the compiler of the Archives de la Bastille. He gives his reasons, which are sufficiently curious. Incarcerations, says Ravaisson, were accomplished with the utmost care, and the Government insisted upon the most stringent precautions, inasmuch as, "acting with absolute authority, it felt the danger of an uncontrolled responsibility." Sore indeed would be the task of proving by example that the absolute monarchy had many compunctions on this score, when tampering with the liberties of its subjects. "Extreme care was taken to avoid errors and abuses" in effecting incarcerations in the Bastille; and the great safeguard was that "each lettre de cachet was signed by the King himself, and countersigned by one of his ministers!" One need go no further than this. M. Ravaisson spent from fifteen to twenty years in studying and arranging the archives of the Bastille, and his knowledge of his subject must have been immense. Was this the writer from whom one would have expected the suggestion that the King and his minister, in signing a lettre de cachet, took care to assure themselves that no injustice was being done, and made themselves immediately and personally responsible for the guilt of the victim whom it was to consign to captivity in the Bastille? Leave aside the cases in which the document was used to imprison a person in order that charges or suspicions might afterwards be inquired into,—though there are countless instances to show, (1) that no proper investigation was held, and (2), that the clearest proofs of innocence were not always sufficient to procure the prisoner's liberation. But what shall be said of the cases, infinitely more numerous than these, in which no charge was ever formulated, and in which none could have been formulated, save some fictitious one inspired by private greed, hatred, or vengeance? Where in these cases was that "greatest care" which "was taken to prevent errors and abuses"? Kings and their ministers sent to the Bastille and other prisons many thousands of prisoners who had no justice, and who never expected justice. But these same "closed letters," duly signed and sealed, were the instruments of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of other persons—to whom life was sweet and liberty was dear—in whose affairs neither King nor minister had the most shadowy interest, and whose very names most probably they had never heard of. During the reign of one King, Louis XV., one hundred and fifty thousand lettres de cachet were issued. For how many of those was Louis himself responsible? They carried his signature, but is it necessary at this day to say that the King wrote his name upon the blank forms, which the minister distributed amongst his friends? The lieutenant-general of police also had his blank forms at hand, in which it was necessary only to insert the names of the victims. Wives obtained these forms against their husbands, husbands against their wives, fathers against their children, men-about-town against their rivals in love, debtors against their creditors, opera-dancers against the lovers who had slighted them. If one but had the ear of the King, or the King's mistress, or the King's minister, or the King's chief of police, or of a friend or a friend's friend of any of these potentates, there was no grudge, jealousy, or enmity which one might not satisfy by means of a lettre de cachet,—that instrument which was so sure a safegard against the "errors and abuses" of imprisonment, because it carried the signature of the King and his minister! And the cases in which these scraps of paper were used merely for the ruin, the torment, or the temporary defeat of a private enemy, often had the cruelest results. The enemy and the enmity were forgotten, but the lettre de cachet had not been cancelled, and the prisoner still bided his day. Persons who had never been convicted of crimes, and other persons who had never been guilty of crimes, lay for years in the Bastille, forgotten and uncared for. "There are prisoners who remain in the Bastille," said Linguet (who spent two years there), "not because anybody is particularly anxious that they should remain, but because they happen to be there and have been forgotten, and there is nobody to ask for their release." Captain Bingham, the English apologist of the Bastille, discussing the cases of certain criminals who were arbitrarily dealt with by lettres de cachet, says that in England at the present day they "would be prosecuted according to law, and most probably committed to prison." Very good! But is there no difference between the situation of the criminal who, after conviction in open court, is sent to prison for a fixed term of weeks, months, or years, and that of the "criminal" who goes to prison uncondemned and untried, and who cannot gauge the length of his imprisonment? Far enough from being "not so easy" to get into the Bastille, the passage across those two drawbridges and through those five massy gates was only too dreadfully simple for all who were furnished against their wills with the "open sesame" of the lettre de cachet.
The interior of the Bastille had nothing worse to show than has been discovered in the chapters on Vincennes, the Châtelet, and Bicêtre. There were, perhaps, uglier corners in the two last-named prisons than in either of the two more famous ones. The Bastille, however, has stood as the type, and the almost plutonic fame which it owes to romance seems likely to endure. Romance has not been guilty of much exaggeration, but this saving clause may be put in, that what has been written of the Bastille might have been written with equal truth of most other contemporary prisons. Its eight dark towers, its walls of a hundred feet, its drawbridges, its outer and its four great inner gates, its ditches, its high wooden gallery for the watch, and its ramparts bristling with cannon,—these external features have been of infinite service to romance, and romantic history. But within the walls of the Bastille there was nothing extraordinary. Lodging was provided for about fifty prisoners, and it was possible to accommodate twice that number.
The fifth and last gate opened into the Great Court, some hundred feet in length and seventy in breadth, with three towers on either side. The Well Court, about eighty feet by five and forty, lay beyond, with a tower in the right and a tower in the left angle. Each tower had its name; those in the Great Court were de la Comté, du Trésor, de la Chapelle, de la Bazanière, de la Bertaudière, and de la Liberté; those in the Well Court were the du Coin and the du Puits. The comely garden on the suburban side of the château was closed to all prisoners by order of De Launay, the last governor of the Bastille, who also forbade them the use of the fine airy platforms on the summit of the towers. The main court was then the only exercise ground, a dreary enclosure which Linguet describes as insufferably cold in winter ("the north-east wind rushes through it") and a veritable oven in summer.
The oubliettes have been mentioned. Besides these there were the dungeons, below the level of the soil; dens in which there was no protection from wind or rain, and where rats and toads abounded. The ordinary chambers of the prisoners were situated in the towers. The upper stories were the calottes (skull-caps), residence in which seems to have been regarded as only better than that belowground. "One can only walk upright in the middle." The windows, barred within and without, gave little light; there was a wretched stove in one corner (which had six pieces of wood for its daily allowance during the winter months), and one has no reason to doubt the statements of prisoners, that only an iron constitution could support the extremities of heat and cold in the calottes. In contrast to these, there were rooms which had fair views of Paris and the open country. The lower chambers looked only on the ditches; all the chambers (and the stairs) were shut in by double doors with double bolts; and all, with the exceptions of those which a few privileged persons were allowed to upholster at their own cost, were furnished in the most beggarly style. But in all of these respects, nothing was worse in the Bastille than elsewhere.
In principle, the dietary system here was the same as in other State prisons. The King paid a liberal sum for the board of every prisoner, but the governor contracted for the supplies, and might put into his pocket half or three-fourths of the amount which he drew from the royal treasury. In the Bastille, as in other prisons, there were periods when the prisoners were fed extremely well; and in all these prisons there were persons who, by favour of the Government or the governor, kept a much more luxurious table than was allowed to the rest. But one must take the scale of diet which was customary. Two meals a day were the rule. On flesh days, the dinner consisted of soup and the meat of which it had been made; and for supper there were "a slice of roast meat, a ragout, and a salad." Sunday's dinner was "some bad soup, a slice of a cow which they call beef, and four little pâtés"; supper, "a slice of roast veal or mutton, or a little plate of haricot, in which bones and turnips are most conspicuous, and a salad with rancid oil." On three holidays in the year, "every prisoner had an addition made to his rations of half a roast chicken, or a pigeon." Holy Monday was celebrated by "a tart extraordinary." There was always or usually dessert at dinner, which "consists of an apple, a biscuit, a few almonds and raisins, cherries, gooseberries, or plums." Each prisoner received a pound of bread a day, and a bottle of wine. De Launay's method of supplying his prisoners with wine was no doubt the usual one. He had the right of taking into his cellars about a hundred hogsheads, free of duty. "Well," says Linguet, "what does he do? He sells his privilege to one Joli, a Paris publican, who pays him £250 for it; and from Joli he receives in exchange, for the prisoners' use, the commonest wine that is sold,—mere vinegar, in fact."[[23]] A prisoner of the same period sums up the matter thus: "There is no eating-house in all France where they would not give you for a shilling a better dinner than is served in the Bastille."
[23]. Mémoires sur la Bastille.
Apart from all exceptional hardships and privations, the oppression of the first months of captivity in the Bastille must have been very terrible. The prisoner who was not certain of his fate, and who did not know to whom he owed his imprisonment, lay under a suspense which words are inadequate to describe. Mystery and doubt environed him; his day-long silence and utter isolation were relieved only by the regular visits of his gaoler. He was not allowed to see anyone from without, and could not get leave to write or receive a letter. Nothing could be done for him, he was told, until his examination had been concluded; and this was sometimes delayed for weeks or months. If he were a person of some consequence in the State, powerful enough to have enemies at Court, his examination in the council-chamber of the Bastille was conducted in a manner quite similar to (and probably borrowed from) that adopted by the Inquisition. He was asked his connection with plots or intrigues which he had never heard of; he was coaxed or menaced to denounce or betray persons with whom perhaps he had never associated; papers were held up before him which he was assured contained clear proofs of his guilt; and he might be told that the King had unfortunately been inflamed against him, and would not hear his name. If, mystified by threats, hints, and arguments which had no meaning for him, he asked to be confronted by an accuser or witnesses, his request was not allowed. These were the exact methods of the Inquisition. The lieutenant of police, or the commissioner from the Châtelet, who presided over the interrogation, would not hesitate to tell the accused that his life was at stake, and that if his answers were not complete and satisfactory he would be handed over forthwith to a commission extraordinaire. Every device was resorted to (says the author of the Remarques politiques sur le château de la Bastille) in order to draw from the prisoner some sort of admission or avowal which might compromise either himself or some other person or persons in whom the Government had a hostile interest. The examiner might say that he was authorised to promise the prisoner his freedom, but if he allowed himself to be taken by this ruse it was generally the worse for him; for, on the strength of the confession thus obtained, he was told that it would be impossible to release him at present, but every effort would be made, etc. If the ministry had reason to suspect that the prisoner was really a dangerous character, and involved in political intrigue, there was little hesitation in resorting to torture.
Ravaisson says that only two kinds of torture were applied in the Bastille; the "boot," and the torture by water. Well, these were sufficient; but it is to be remembered that the archives of the Bastille date only from about the middle of the seventeenth century, and it is improbable that the Salle de la Question of this prison was less horribly equipped than that of any other. The ordeal of the "boot" needs no description; for the torture by water, the victim was bound on a trestle, and water was poured down his throat by the gallon, until his sufferings became unendurable. Torture was practised in the Bastille as long as it was practised in any other French prison; a man named Alexis Danouilh underwent the Question there ("ordinary" and "extraordinary") in 1783—after the date at which Louis XVI. had forbidden and abolished it by royal edict. To so small an extent had the absolute sovereigns of France control over the administration of their own prisons of State!