During the reign of Charles VII. in 1422, Henry VI. of England died in this castle. From this time Vincennes became a royal residence, until the reign of Louis XIV. when that monarch fixed himself at Versailles, from which period it has never been used but as a prison[13].

[Footnote 13: Monstrelet relates a curious anecdote, during the residence at the Castle of Vincennes of Isabeau de Bavière, strongly illustrative of the barbarous manners of those times. "Lewis de Bourbon, who was handsome and well made, and had signalized himself upon various occasions, and amongst others at the battle of Agincourt, going one night, as was customary, to visit the Queen, Isabeau de Bavière, at the Castle of Vincennes, met the King (Charles VI.); he saluted him, without either stopping or alighting from his horse, but continued galloping on. The King having recollected him, ordered Tangui du Chatel, prévost of Paris, to pursue, and to confine him in prison. At night the question was applied, and he was afterwards tied up in a sack and cast into the Seine, with this inscription upon the sack, 'Let the King's justice take place.'">[

Dulaure, a French writer, in speaking of the persons who were confined here, observes, it would be difficult to enumerate the number of individuals that have been shut up in this prison within these few years. "We will merely notice," he says, "the celebrated Count Mirabeau, who was confined from 1777 to 1780; here it was that he translated his Tibulle, and Joannes Secundus, and wrote his 'Lettres originales' to his mistress, Madame Lemonnier, which abound with passages as affecting as the letters of Héloïse."

This prison was thrown open during the reign of the unfortunate Louis XVI. by the Baron de Breteuil, Minister of the Department of Paris in 1784. In going over it, every one was penetrated with horror; and feelings of the most melancholy interest were excited by reading the various inscriptions on the walls, indicative of the hopeless misery that had been experienced within them! Many were expressive of piety and resignation at the approach of death!--others complaining of the cruel oppression which had immured them! On one wall was written, "Il faut mourir, mon frere; mon frere il faut mourir, quand il plaira à Dieu." On the door of another prison were, "Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum." On the same spot were, "Carcer Socratis, templum honoris."

This Donjon remained unoccupied until 1791. At this period, the prisons of the capital being filled with criminals, Government ordered it to be prepared for the reception of that class of prisoners; but on the massacres that followed, the mob either murdered or released them all, after a bloody contest, and it remained again without prisoners until the Imperial Government under Buonaparte. It was then garrisoned by a detachment of the Imperial Guard, and multitudes of victims were transferred there whose fate remains, and probably ever will remain, unknown.

It was to this place that the Duke D'Enghien, who was arrested the 15th March, 1804, at Ettenheim, in the Electorate of Baden, was conducted the 20th of the same month, at five in the evening, and condemned to death the night following, by a military commission, at which Murat presided. He was accordingly shot on the 21st, at half past four in the evening, in the ditch of the castle which looks towards the forest, on the north side, and his body thrown into a grave, ready dug to receive it, where he fell. The details of this cruel and wanton act of barbarity are too well known to need any repetition here.

This spot is now marked by a wooden cross, enclosed by an iron railing. The remains of the Prince were dug out on the 20th March, 1816, by order of Louis XVIII. and deposited with solemn funeral ceremony in a coffin which is placed in the same apartment where the council of war condemned him to suffer! since transformed info a chapel. Under a cenotaph, covered with a cloth of gold, is placed the coffin, with a prodigious large stone lying on it, the same that was found lying on his head, and which from its weight had crushed his skull!

The apartment is hung with black cloth, and remains continually lighted, with a guard placed over it. Mass is daily performed for the repose of his soul, agreeable to the Catholic religion.

On the lid of the coffin is the following inscription:

Ici est Le Corps
De Très-Haut, Très-Puissant Prince
Louis-Antoine-Henri De Bourbon
Duc D'Enghien, Prince du Sang
Pair de France
Mort A Vincennes, Le 21 Mars 1804
A L'age de XXXI Ans VII mois XVIII Jours.