Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/443

 410

from there they saw the Rue St. Antoine. The regimen of the prison was, in fact, very lenient under Louis XV and Louis XVI; whatever the Bastille may have been in earlier times, it had become a prison chiefly for gentlemen who were imprisoned, without any preliminary trial, by kttre de caehet. This is probably what made the name of the Bastille synonymous with the abuses of the old regime; it was the prison of the arbitraire of the bon plaisir. The downfall of the Bas tille was the signal of a renovation, of a rev olution." M. Funck-Brentano gives us the text of a passage in the register of Du Junca, lieuten ant of the king, at the Bastille, in these terms: "On Thursday, September 18, 1698, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the chateau of the Bastille, arrived, from his government of the islands Sainte-Marguerite and SainteHonorat, bringing with him, in his litter, a prisoner whom he had at Pignerol, whom he keeps always masked, and whose name is not revealed." This prisoner is treated with much care, and a second report says that he died on November 19, 1703, "with out having had any great malady." In the register of the church of Saint Paul, the dead prisoner, buried in the cemetery of that church, is entered as Marchioly, aged forty-five years. The new Bastille, with a portion of the Faubourg St. Antoine, constructed of wood and canvas, was run up in a few months. The old Bastille (not nearly as old as the Tower of London) took twelve years build ing, from 1370 to 1382, the architect being one Hughes Aubriot, who was the first prisoner confined in its walls. It consisted of eight towers, seventy feet high, connected by curtains ten feet thick; then there was an outer wall and two moats, one of which was twenty-five feet deep, and was filled with water when the Seine overflowed its banks. Within the wall were numerous buildings, such as the governor's house, the council chamber, the library and the kitchen; there

were also courtyards where the prisoners were allowed to walk or play and to receive their friends. The cells were spacious, with the exception of those on the fourth, or top story, but as the Bastille was originally meant for a fortress — to protect Paris from English pirates coming down the Seine — the windows were narrow and the prisoners had to put up with a short allowance of light and air. The Bastille was capable of holding one hundred prisoners, but in general it con tained only half that number, and some times it was nearly empty. For example, in 1764, there were only four captives. There were certainly dungeons below ground which at times were flooded, but these were only used for punishment when prisoners were recalcitrant and gave trouble. Beneath the foundation of each tower was a small conical chamber in which a prisoner would have been unable to sit, to lie down or to stand upright. But there is nothing to show that the prisoners were confined in these ter rible oubliettes. According to M. Viollet-leDuc, the celebrated architect, these oubliettes were simply ice-houses, such as existed in several castles. Only two forms of torture appear to have been practiced in the Bas tille, those of water and the boot, and Charpentier, in his " Bastille Unveiled," admits that when the prison fell into the hands of the mob neither instruments of torture, nor skeletons, nor men in chains were discovered there. Barriere, too, mentions that citizens, when the gates of the Bastille were thrown open, were indignant at not finding cells filled with racks. One citizen did find what he thought was some terrible instrument of tor ture, but it turned out merely a printing press which had been seized by the authori ties in the time of Louis XV. The Bastille was several times taken before it finally succumbed in 1789. In 1411, dur ing the reign of Charles VI, twenty thousand Parisians rushed against it and vainly en deavored to carry it by assault. They then