Bastille

“ Through your dear eyes, I love all who love, who suffer, who are happy, who live, and who die. I love! I feel the sacred flame within me! It colors the eastern sky above the Bastille. The last shadows are gone, and this will go, too, this nightmare-shadow! [The Bastille, monstrous and black, stands forth against the bright red sky. The voice of the cannon suddenly rends the silence, and reverberates above the confusion of the people in the distance, the fusillade, the bells, and the roll of the drums. Camille smiles, and faces the Bastille, putting his finger to his nose.] The wolf howls, ha! ”

“ There is no connoisseur in old prints but is acquainted with those last-century views which represent the taking of the Bastille. The platform of the fortress bristles with cannon all firing together, “belching forth death,”—without the slightest attention on the part of the assailants, for all the balls from this artillery, passing over their heads, would only kill inoffensive wayfarers without so much as scratching a single one of the besiegers! ”

“ At once the sinister shadow of the Bastille seemed to fall before the poor lover; instead of the charming image that he had retained of the marquise and her smile, he saw dungeons, cells, black bread, questionable water; he knew the story of Latude, thirty years an inmate of the Bastille. Little by little his hope seemed to be taking to itself wings.
“And yet,” he again said to himself, “I am doing no harm, nor the King either. I protest against an injustice; but I never wrote or sang scurrilous songs. I was so well received at Versailles yesterday, and the lackeys were so polite! ”

“ Men are led by imagination, and the Bastille was the symbol of centuries of oppression. Within its gloomy dungeons hundreds of innocent men had perished in solitary misery, without indictment or trial, consigned to death-in-life by the arbitrary order of irresponsible power. Men of the most eminent intellect and character had suffered within its precincts for the crime of teaching new truth or exposing old superstitions. ”

“ So it was, certainly, with the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was not a reform; it was something more important than a reform. It was an iconoclasm; it was the breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking at them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a fly, an accident, in the thing he has himself made. ”

“ These moans, heard by no compassionate soul, the great resounding soul of the people catches up, swelling them with all its might. Soon, among the mass of the people, there passes a blast irresistible in its strength, like the tempest that upheaves the restless waves. Then is the sea loosed from its chains: the tumultuous breakers dash upon the affrighted shore: the sea-walls are all swept away!
In a letter written by Chevalier, the major of the Bastille, to Sartine, the chief of the police, he spoke of the common gossip on the Bastille that was going about. ”

“ Sunday July 12th, News that Necker is dismissed, and gone homewards overnight: panic terror of Paris, kindling into hot frenzy;—ends in besieging the Bastille; and in taking it, chiefly by infinite noise, the Gardes Françaises at length mutely assisting in the rear. Bastille falls, 'like the City of Jericho, by sound,' Tuesday July 14th, 1789. Kind of 'fire-baptism' to the Revolution; which continues insuppressible thenceforth, and beyond hope of suppression. All France, 'as National Guards, to suppress Brigands and enemies to the making of the Constitution,' takes arms. ”

“ Men of high rank and great wealth were frequently sent to the Bastille; but no such mistake has ever been made by the more business administration of the workhouse. Over the most capricious operations of the lettres de cachet there still hovered some hazy traditional idea that a man is put in prison to punish him for something. It was the discovery of a later social science that men who cannot be punished can still be imprisoned. But the deepest and most decisive difference lies in the better fortune of the New Bastille; for no mob has ever dared to storm it, and it never fell. ”

“ JULIE [leaning far out of the window, but kept from falling by her mother,—shouting at the top of her voice] . To the Bastille!
THE PEOPLE. To the Bastille! [The Crowd is at the highest pitch of excitement. They gather into little groups—workingmen, bourgeois, students, and women.] The Bastille! The Bastille! Break the yoke! At last! Down with that stupid mass! Monument of our defeat and degradation! The tomb, of those who dare speak the truth!—Voltaire's prison!—Mirabeau's prison!—The prison of Liberty! Let's breathe!—Monster, you will fall! We'll pull down every stone of you! ”

“ That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of. I am not undertaking the detail of the attack, but bringing into view the conspiracy against the nation which provoked it, and which fell with the Bastille. The prison to which the new ministry were dooming the National Assembly, in addition to its being the high altar and castle of despotism, became the proper object to begin with. ”

“ The Revolution broke out. If the epoch of Louis XVI., with its mildness and fellow-feeling, had been favourable to our hero, the Revolution seems to have been ordained on purpose for him. The people rose against the tyranny of kings: the towers of the Bastille were overthrown. Latude, the victim of kings, the victim of the Bastille and arbitrary warrants, was about to appear in all his glory. ”

“ The general showed us a key from the Bastille. These keys, as I have already said, were rather silly toys which passed from hand to hand at that time. The consigners of locksmiths' wares might, three years later, have sent to the President of the United States the bolt of the prison of the monarch who bestowed liberty upon France and America. If Washington had seen the "victors of the Bastille" disporting themselves in the gutters of Paris, he would have felt less respect for his relic. The seriousness and strength of the Revolution did not spring from those blood-stained orgies. ”

“ We have also, to assist us in forming a judgment of the Bastille in Richelieu’s time, the memoirs of Bassompierre and of Laporte, which transport us into a state prison, elegant, we might almost say luxurious, reserved for prisoners of birth and breeding, where they lived observing all social usages in their mutual relations, paying and returning calls. But the Bastille preserved its military character for many more years, and among the prisoners we find especially a number of officers punished for breaches of discipline. ”

“ MEN OF LETTERS IN THE BASTILLE. SPEAKING of men of letters in France under the ancien régime, Michelet calls them “the martyrs of thought”; he adds: “The world thinks, France speaks. And that is precisely why the Bastille of France, the Bastille of Paris—I would rather say, the prison-house of thought—was, among all bastilles, execrable, infamous, and accursed.” ”

“ Who are its occupiers? What is their number? What are their crimes? These are questions which naturally intrude themselves on the mind, when one surveys the turrets of this new Bastille—for, whether a place of confinement for state-prisoners be called La Bastille or Le Temple, nevertheless it is a state-prison, and reminds one of slavery, which, as Sterne says, is, in any disguise, a bitter draught; and though thousands, in all ages, have been made to drink of it, still it is not, on that account, less bitter.
LETTER LXXVII Paris, March 8, 1802. ”

“ Ravenous, hoarse, dark-menacing as Fate,.........
—Till a great cry goes crashing heavenward,
And the Bastille is won!
Then, as the sun-forsaken drowsy air
Welcometh night, beneficent, dreamy-starred,
No hand may rest till stone be torn from stone,
Each infamy laid bare,
And tyranny's ancient stronghold overthrown.
Freedom is gained! The exultant paeans rise,
Noise of great ruining, and a sudden glare,
As fire victorious storms the trembling skies. ”

“ At last a rumor reached the Palais Royal, and from there ran through the streets like an electric current, that the king's soldiers were marching upon the Assembly to disperse it. Mad with wine and excitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royal tyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, and moat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented more tragic human experiences than any structure in France. ”

“ By next day there was quite another story. The Bastille had been “stormed” in a formidable and heroic assault lasting a quarter of an hour. The guns of the assailants had made a breach in its walls. These, it is true, were still standing intact; but that did not signify, the guns had made a breach, unquestionably! The seven prisoners who had been set free had been a disappointment, for the best will in the world could not make them anything but scoundrels and lunatics; some one invented an eighth, the celebrated Comte de Lorges, the white-headed hero and martyr. ”

“ The same transformation took place in the treatment of the prisoners. Midway in the seventeenth century, the Bastille had none of the characteristics of a prison, but was simply a château in which the king caused certain of his subjects to sojourn, for one cause or another. They lived there just as they thought proper, furnishing their rooms according to their fancy with their own furniture, indulging their tastes in regard to food at their own expense, and waited on by their own servants. When a prisoner was rich he could live at the Bastille in princely style ”

“ On the one hand, a horde of nameless vagabonds, those whom the contemporary documents invariably style the “brigands”; and, on the other hand, the respectable citizens—these certainly formed the minority—who desired arms for the equipment of the civil guard. The sole motive impelling this band to the Bastille was the wish to procure arms. On this point all documents of any value and all the historians who have studied the matter closely are in agreement. There was no question of liberty or of tyranny, of setting free the prisoners or of protesting against the royal authority. ”

“ The author of The Bastille Unmasked exclaims: “What! No corpses! No skeletons! No men in chains!” “The taking of the Bastille,” said “Cousin Jacques,” [18] “has opened the eyes of the public on the kind of captivity experienced there.”
But in this he was greatly mistaken. Legends die hard! A Bastille without cells, dungeons, cages of iron! Public opinion did not admit that it could have been deceived on that point.
“Several prisoners,” says the History of Remarkable Events, “were set at liberty ”

“ Fortunately, the custody of the captured fortress was entrusted on July 15 to the company of arquebusiers, which received orders to prevent the removal of any more papers. On July 16 one of the members present at a sitting of the Electoral Assembly, sprang forward to the table and cried, “Ah, gentlemen, let us save the papers! It is said that the papers of the Bastille are being plundered; let us hasten to collect the remnants of these old title-deeds of an intolerable despotism, so that we may inspire our latest posterity with their horror!” ”

“ He saw the mob reeling in drunkenness. Men and women were laughing, crying, and embracing one another: “The Bastille is taken! At last we are free!” And not the least enthusiastic were those very men of the citizen militia who, ready yesterday to fight the insurrection, were to-day hailing its triumph! The first sabre brandished by the first national guard was in point of fact that of Joseph Prudhomme! [15]
All at once this delirious crowd shudders, parts asunder with cries of horror! ”

“ He marked, nevertheless, on the menu for the day, which was sent up every morning by the Bastille cook, the dishes he fancied; and later on he had his room furnished after his own heart. He still enjoyed, moreover, enough liberty to write during his imprisonment a work entitled, The Trials of Three Kings, Louis XVI., Charles III., and George III., which appeared in London in 1781. Let us recall once more the famous saying of Linguet to the wig-maker of the Bastille on the first day that he presented himself to trim the prisoner’s beard: “To whom have I the honour of speaking?” ”

“ The cells of the Bastille were constantly filled, during the syren reign of la Pompadour over the gloomy affections of Lewis the XVth.
The overthrow of this dungeon has not rendered state prisons out of fashion in the republic, although it has mitigated the severity of their internal government. The towers of the Temple, look down upon the prostrate ruins of the Bastille. ”

“ A satirical pamphlet, published in 1779, just ten years before the Bastille was torn down in Paris, drew an imaginary picture of a Bastille which ten years later was to stand in New York, and, with still further license of fantasy, portrayed Samuel Adams in the garb of a Dominican friar. Such nonsense is of course no index to the sentiments or the beliefs of the patriotic American people, but the mere fact that it could occur to anybody shows how hard it was for people to realize how competent America was to take care of herself. ”