The Real Bastille, Up Close and Personal -- An 18th Century Journalist Tells All

As France prepares to celebrate Bastille Day, how many know what the real Bastille was like? A book by an 18th century French journalist, a prisoner there for twenty months, gives modern readers the real scoop.

North Hollywood, CA (PRWEB) July 10, 2006 -- Did a book bring down the Bastille? In 1780, nine years before the fall of France’s most infamous prison, the French Royal government arrested a quarrelsome, controversial and yet very popular journalist: Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet. Twenty months later they made a mistake; they released him.

They saw no reason to worry; Linguet, like all released prisoners, had signed the standard release form, which included these words: "being freed, I promise, in accordance with the king's orders, to not speak to anyone at all, in any manner whatsoever, of the prisoners, nor anything else concerning the castle of the Bastille, of which I might have knowledge."

He lied.

Having immediately (and wisely) fled to London, Linguet not only wrote in detail of his experience, but published it in the most popular periodical of the time - which, conveniently enough, he ran. His "Memoirs of the Bastille" at once became a runaway bestseller, not only in French, but in English and other languages. Other such memoirs, though rare, had appeared over the years, but Linguet’s came just as the American colonists had thrown off English rule and as the Enlightenment was stirring new ideas of liberty. Despotism was going out of style.

Every Parisian knew the Bastille's large, grim profile, which loomed over Paris from the end of the Rue St. Antoine. But what was it really that bad inside? Linguet confirmed that it was every bit as unpleasant as it looked: "These cells are all contained in towers of which the walls are at least twelve, and at the bottom thirty or forty feet thick. Each has a vent-hole made in the wall; but crossed by three grates of iron, one within, another in the middle, and a third on the outside. The bars cross each other, and are an inch in thickness.... In winter these dungeons are perfect ice-houses, because they are lofty enough for the frost to penetrate; in summer they are moist suffocating stoves, the walls being too thick for the heat to dry them."

And how were these miracles of discomfort furnished? "Two mattresses half eaten by the worms, a matted elbow chair, the bottom of which was kept together by pack-thread, a tottering table, a water pitcher, two pots of Dutch ware, one of which served to drink out of, and two flagstones to support the fire, composed the inventory of mine."

It helped that Linguet was a fiery, indignant writer. "The express institution of this prison," he wrote, was "to distract the mind, and to render life itself miserable." . He described how prisoners were held incommunicado, how their very presence in the prison was denied: "When some of my faithful friends solicited of the Minister who presides over these dungeons permission to visit me, he asked, as it were with astonishment, how they could suppose me to be in the Bastille?" Not only were prisoners’ letters not passed on, but, he claimed, the jailers delighted in withholding them: "The doleful lamentations of the captives afford no small amusement to the persons appointed to inspect them: they divert themselves for a short time with the various notes of the different birds they have in their cage, and then tie up carefully in a bundle together the several epistolary productions of the day;...and neither the persons who wrote them, nor those to whom they are addressed ever see them or hear of them afterwards." And in fact, when the Bastille was taken, many such unsent letters were found.

Ironically, he describes this most undemocratic of institutions as a great leveller: "The Bastille, like death, brings to an equality all whom it swallows up: the sacrilegious villain, who has plotted the destruction of his Country; the undaunted Patriot, guilty of no other crime but that of maintaining her rights with too much ardour; the Wretch, who has betrayed for gold the secrets of the cabinet, and he who has dared to speak truths to Ministers, useful to the State, but repugnant to their interest: as well he who is confined lest he should become a dishonour to his family, as he who is only obnoxious on account of his talents, are all overwhelmed alike in uniform darkness." Again, his indignant catalogue was not exaggerated - the same prison held true and hardened criminals but also those who had offended the powerful (Linguet was one) and those whose behavior embarrassed their families. (Many modern readers will be surprised to know that parents sometimes sought their own son's arrest.)

Linguet’s indignation was catching, and, combined with the intentionally mysterious nature of the institution (which in fact was no worse and was probably in many ways better than other Old Regime prisons), fed popular anger at the impenetrable stone fortress on the edge of Paris. By the time other changes in France had made the population bolder, said one writer, "Linguet...accustomed people to the idea of overthrowing the Bastille. It was already conquered and destroyed in public opinion when the 14th of July arrived."

For those who would like to read more of Linguet’s burning, detailed account of his stay in the Bastille, a new edition of his "Memoirs of the Bastille" is available on Amazon, containing numerous notes - many from other former prisoners -, as well as a look at the (surprisingly good) food at the castle and images showing the names of the towers and other buildings, and the neighboring streets. For more information about the book, visit http://www.chezjim.com/books/Linguet. For more about the Bastille, visit http://www.chezjim.com/bastille/.

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