CHAPTER XII

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Reign of Louis XVI.—Enormous number of Lettres de Cachet issued in two reigns—William Debure the elder—Blaizot imprisoned for obeying the King—Pelisseri—Prisoners from St. Domingo—Linguet—Duvernet—The Count de Paradès—Marquis de Sade—Brissot—The Countess de la Motte—Cardinal de Rohan—Cagliostro—The affair of the Diamond Necklace—Reveillon takes shelter in the Bastile—Attack and capture of the Bastile by the Parisians—Conclusion.

The reign of Louis XV., which, as far as regarded himself, was every way inglorious, was protracted to the length of fifty-nine years; a duration which has rarely been equalled. Popular enthusiasm, or rather popular folly—the terms are often synonymous—at one time conferred on him the title of “the Well-beloved;” he lived to be sincerely hated, and he died unlamented, except by such of his flatterers and parasites as feared that they would be cast off by a new monarch. Of the enormous amount of private misery which, during the period of his sway, he must have inflicted, in exercising only one attribute of his despotism, some idea may be formed, from the circumstance of more than 150,000 _lettres de cachet_ having been issued while he occupied the throne; an annual average of more than 2500. How many wives, parents, children, must have been yearly driven to despair by this atrocious tyranny! Though it is certain that the prisoners were not all treated with the same brutality as Masers de Latude, the mass of suffering must, nevertheless, have been more than can be contemplated without a shudder by any one who is not dead to the feelings of humanity.

In 1774, Louis XVI. ascended the throne. He was a perfect contrast to his predecessor. In his manners there was little of the dignity of a sovereign, and he was deficient in firmness and penetration; but, pure in morals, kind in heart, and honest in principle, he was unfeignedly desirous to do justice to his people, and to contribute to their welfare. Yet, so difficult is it to uproot a long-established abuse, and such is the power of ministers and men in office, that, even under the government of this well-meaning king, no fewer than 14,000 _lettres de cachet_ are said to have been granted in the fifteen years which elapsed between the accession of Louis and the meeting of the States General.

The very first instances which I shall bring forward of the use made of _lettres de cachet_, in this reign, will afford proof of the unprincipled and arbitrary spirit of the men who held authority. We commence with William Debure the elder, one of the most eminent and intelligent of the Parisian booksellers. The family of the Debures carried on, from father to son, the same business in Paris, for nearly two centuries. The subject of this sketch was in habits of intimacy with the most distinguished literary characters. His catalogues of celebrated libraries, to the number of forty-three, are much esteemed. At the time of his decease, in 1820, when he was eighty-six, he was the oldest bookseller in France, and was considered as the patriarch of bibliography. It was in 1778 that he was sent to the Bastile. In 1777, the Council of State thought proper to issue an ordinance, decreeing that the term of copyright should not in future extend beyond the time which was required to defray the expense of publishing. The Council followed this up by another ordinance, authorizing the sale of pirated editions, on payment of a stamp duty. These acts, equally absurd and unjust, were, in fact, licenses to commit robbery upon authors and publishers, for the benefit of the treasury, which shared the spoil with the robbers. Debure then held in his company the place of syndic, which seems to be analogous to that of master in our stationers’ company. To him fell the task of stamping the pirated works. Well knowing that a great number of booksellers would inevitably be ruined by the new law, or rather violation of law, which the Council had promulgated, Debure declined to comply with it, and desired that he might be allowed to resign. His resignation was not accepted, and he was thrice summoned to proceed to the stamping of the spurious books; and in each instance the significant hint was thrown out, “Stamp, or if you do not——.” Debure remained immovable, and he was at length committed to the Bastile. The ministers, however, either became ashamed of their conduct, or, which is more probable, were overruled by the monarch; for, in the course of a few days, he recovered his liberty.

Another bookseller is said to have been punished in the same manner, for the extraordinary offence of executing, in the way of trade, an order which was given to him by his sovereign. Suspecting that his ministers kept him in ignorance of the sentiments and wishes of the people, Louis determined to obtain some knowledge of them from another quarter. To peruse the various political pamphlets of the day seemed to him the best mode of accomplishing his purpose. Accordingly, he directed a bookseller, named Blaizot, to send them regularly and secretly to a certain place, whence they were to be conveyed to him. This was done for about two months. Alarmed to find the king possessed of so much information, upon subjects with which they had believed him to be unacquainted, the ministers set to work to discover the source of it. Either Blaizot’s imprudence, or the activity of their spies, soon made them masters of the secret. The luckless bookseller was speedily taught that there was an influence behind the throne which was greater than the throne itself. The Bastile received him. This audacious act is attributed to the Baron de Breteuil; of whom, however, it is but justice to state, that he is said to have liberated many prisoners, and much ameliorated the prison discipline. But he was at times harsh and impetuous, and may, perhaps, on this occasion, have yielded to passion, or to the wish of his colleagues. Surprised by the customary supply of pamphlets being abruptly stopped, Louis inquired into the cause of it, and was equally astonished and indignant to find that Blaizot had been lodged in the Bastile, by virtue of one of those laconic billets which were signed Louis, and countersigned by a cabinet minister. Blaizot was instantly released, and the Baron de Breteuil was reprimanded, in the severest language, by his offended master.

That Breteuil, highly aristocratic in his principles, and believing the established order of things to be perfection itself, should consider it as a matter of course to silence all opponents by means of the Bastile, can excite no wonder; but, if a minister who sprang from the people, a republican by birth, and a professed friend of reform, could punish by imprisonment a man who ventured to criticise his measures, we must wonder indeed! Yet, if M. Linguet was not misinformed, such a case did actually happen. He tells us that, while he was in the Bastile, there was in the prison a captive named Pelisseri, who had been three years in confinement, and whose sole crime was that he had made some remarks on the financial operations of M. Necker. The story is not probable. With some important faults, the minister had many virtues, and certainly had nothing cruel in his nature. It is very likely that the captivity of Pelisseri was the work of some secret enemy, who hated both him and Necker, and doubly gratified his vindictive feelings, by incarcerating the one and calumniating the other.

The agents of the French government in the colonies seem not to have been backward in following the example of tyranny which was set to them by their superiors at home. In one instance, a governor of St. Domingo, who had quarrelled with all the members of a court of justice, adopted a summary mode of proceeding against them. He shipped the whole of them, and sent them off to France as criminals. On their arrival they were placed in the Bastile, and kept separate from each other; and in this painful situation they remained for eight months. They were at length pronounced innocent, and were conveyed back to St. Domingo; but they received not the slightest compensation for more than a year’s endurance of bodily and mental suffering.

The Bastile received, in September, 1780, a man whose talents were more worthy of praise than his temper. This was Simon Nicholas Henry Linguet, a native of Rheims, who was born in 1736. He was learned, acute, and eloquent both in speech and writing; but paradoxical, changeful, suspicious, violent, and wrong-headed. At the age of sixteen, he gained the three highest University prizes. After having visited Poland with the Duke of Deux Ponts, and Portugal with the Prince de Beauveau, he commenced his literary career by a History of the Times of Alexander the Great. Disappointed by D’Alembert, in his wish to obtain a seat in the French Academy, he became an inveterate enemy of D’Alembert, and the party which was called the philosophical. His works succeeded each other with uncommon rapidity: the most remarkable of those which he published at this period are, the History of the Revolutions of the Roman Empire, and the Theory of Civil Laws. Both these works, which in many respects have great merit, excited a loud clamour, especially the latter, by the leaning which they manifest towards despotism. Linguet had soon reason to change his opinion on this subject.

The literary labours of Linguet might seem sufficient to occupy all his time; but the fact was not so. He was all the while a barrister in extensive practice. In splendid eloquence, and in the successful management of causes, he had few if any rivals. He boasted that he never lost more than two causes, “and those,” said he, “I had a strong inclination to lose.” It was mainly by his efforts that the obnoxious Duke d’Aiguillon escaped from deserved punishment. The duke proved ungrateful, and his irritated counsellor wrote him word that he had “stolen him from the scaffold,” and that, if the peer did not do what was right with regard to his advocate, “he would keep him hanging for ten years at the point of his pen.” D’Aiguillon thought it prudent to yield, but he took care to avenge himself in the end. The lucrative career of Linguet, as a barrister, was suddenly brought to a close by his brethren of the bar, some of whom envied his superior gains, and all of whom had been irritated by his violent and sarcastic language. They refused to plead with him, and the parliament sanctioned this resolution, and expunged his name from the roll of counsellors.

Shut out from forensic honours and emoluments, Linguet devoted himself to literature and politics. He began to publish a journal in 1774, but, in 1776, it was suppressed by the minister Maurepas. Apprehensive for his liberty, he quitted France, and successively resided in Switzerland, Holland, and England. It was in 1777, while he was in exile, that he established his well-known work, the Political, Civil, and Literary Annals of the Eighteenth Century, which forms nineteen volumes. The Count de Vergennes gave him permission to return to France; but scarcely had he availed himself of it ere he was shut up in the Bastile, where he continued for above two years. On his release, he settled at Brussels, and gained the good-will of the emperor Joseph, which, however, he soon lost, by espousing the party of the Belgian revolutionists. In 1791, he returned to France. During the reign of terror, he withdrew into retirement. He was, however, unable to elude the vigilance of the Jacobins; he was sent by them before the revolutionary tribunal, which, without suffering him to make any defence, condemned him to death, and he was accordingly executed in the summer of 1794.

While Linguet was in the Bastile, one of his opponents was sharing the same fate, though for a much shorter term. Duvernet, an ecclesiastic, published a pamphlet, anonymously, in 1781, in which he indulged his wit at the expense of Linguet, D’Espremenil, and other well-known characters. This he might have done with impunity; but he also attacked the government; and the government, in return, sent him to the Bastile for three weeks, to learn prudence. The lesson was thrown away upon him; for, soon after his release, he ventured to animadvert upon the conduct of the Count de Maurepas, and was again lodged in the Bastile. His confinement lasted longer than in the first instance; and he availed himself of this compulsory leisure to write a life of Voltaire. The minister of police detained the manuscript; but the work, nevertheless, found its way into print in 1786, and had such an extensive sale, that the French bishops took the alarm, and commissioned the keeper of the seals to complain to the king. Louis XVI., however, replied, “I will not meddle with this affair; if Duvernet is wrong, let him be refuted,—that is the business of the bishops.” The author afterwards enlarged and remodelled his work; but he died in 1796, the year before the new edition was published.

Another prisoner, who was also contemporary with Linguet in the Bastile, was an individual of mysterious origin and conduct, who ought to have found a place in an English prison rather than in a French one. This was a person who assumed the title of the Count de Paradès. He himself claimed to be descended from an ancient Spanish family of the same name; some affirmed him to be the natural son of a Count de Paradès; but he was generally believed to be of far humbler origin, the offspring of a pastry-cook named Richard, who resided at Phalsburg. Of his early life nothing is known; it is at the age of twenty-five that we find him entering on his public career; and, by some means or other, he contrived to procure an extremely flattering reception at the French court. Fearing that he was too old to attain elevated rank in the military profession, he looked about for another road to fortune, and thought he had found it in adopting the perilous and undignified occupation of a spy. France was at that period secretly preparing for hostilities against England, the revolt of the British American colonies seeming to afford her a favourable opportunity of taking vengeance for the defeats and disgrace which she had suffered in the seven years’ war. Deeming this an excellent opportunity to bring himself forward, Paradès voluntarily visited England, where he gathered some valuable information relative to our arsenals, ports, and naval and military establishments. The memorial which, on his return, he presented to Sartine, the French minister of marine, was so much approved of, that he was despatched to procure further particulars. He was so successful in his inquiries, that he was regularly engaged as a spy by Sartine, and was profusely supplied with the means to purchase the services of British traitors. Paradès was not idle; he bribed highly, and, if his own assertion may be credited, he found no difficulty in corrupting many clerks and officers of an inferior class. Though he may have exaggerated in this respect, there can be no doubt that there were too many base-minded wretches who were willing to sell their country. This fact is established by the circumstances which came out on the trial of La Motte, his less fortunate successor. Paradès reconnoitred all the English and Irish ports. In a part of his journeys he was accompanied by an officer of engineers, and they were several times in the utmost danger of being discovered. For the purpose of keeping up an intercourse with the French ministry, he fitted out a vessel, and had a regular establishment of messengers; the vessel served the double purpose of trading and conveying his despatches. Many of the communications which he made were highly important; he complains, in his memoirs, that some of them, which would have enabled France to strike fatal blows, were unaccountably neglected. One of his projects was to set fire to the British fleet in the harbour of Portsmouth. His services were not unrewarded; he was pensioned, and appointed a colonel of cavalry. In the short time that he had been acting his part, he had also contrived to amass about £35,000 by speculations in commerce and the funds, and perhaps by pocketing a heavy per centage on the remittances from the French ministry. Nearly £30,000 was sent to him by his employers, and it is obvious that, as to the disbursement of it, they could have no check whatever upon him. It was with a scheme for seizing upon Plymouth that he closed his career as a spy. In that port he either had, or pretended to have emissaries, and to have corrupted a serjeant and several soldiers of the feeble garrison. It was in pursuance of this plan that D’Orvilliers, with the combined French and Spanish squadrons, consisting of sixty-five sail, entered the Channel. It is notorious that Plymouth was then in an extremely imperfect state of defence, and would have been much endangered by a vigorous attack. Fortunately, however, D’Orvilliers, in spite of the remonstrances of Paradès, declined to make an attempt upon the place. Paradès now visited France, and immediately received instructions to return to England; but, before he could depart, his adventurous occupation was brought to an abrupt close. He is said to have been suspected of playing the Janus-faced traitor, equally bribed by England and by France. The suspicion, though natural, was probably unjust, and may have been prompted by the friends of those officers whom he had accused of missing favourable opportunities. He was committed to the Bastile in April 1780, and was not liberated till April 1781. He was allowed to have what books he pleased, to carry on a free correspondence, and to be visited by his friends. The presumptions against him could not have been strong; if they had been so, he would have been rigorously treated, and permanently confined. For three years after he was set free, Paradès continued to press the government for the payment of £25,000, which he asserted to be due to him. The war, however, had exhausted the French treasury, and he consequently solicited in vain. In 1784 he sailed to St. Domingo, where he had purchased an estate, and he died there in the course of the following year.

He who appears next on the list of captives was a man—if indeed the name of man is not misapplied to him—whose crimes were of so dark a dye that to imprison him for them was unjust, solely because it was nothing less than assisting him to evade the punishment which justice would have inflicted on him. This abandoned individual has been correctly described, by a French writer, as “the profound villain named the Marquis de Sade, who, by his atrocious examples, and his equally horrible writings, proved himself to be the apostle of every crime,—of assassination, of poisoning,—and the enemy of all social order; this monster spent great part of his life in prison, and was twenty times saved from the scaffold by his title of marquis.”

The Marquis de Sade, who was descended from an ancient family of the Comtat Venaissin, was born at Paris, in 1740. He embraced the military profession, and served in all the German campaigns of the seven years’ war. In 1766, he married an amiable and virtuous woman, to whom he proved a perpetual source of wretchedness. A sense of duty induced her, for a considerable period, to aid in extricating him from the difficulties in which he involved himself, but she was finally obliged to give him up. In the same year that he was united to her, one of his infamous adventures caused him to be imprisoned and exiled; and no sooner was he allowed to return to Paris than he took an actress into keeping, carried her to Provence, and introduced her as his wife to the gentry around his mansion. These, however, were merely the venial offences of Sade. His criminality took a far higher flight. In 1778, he would have fallen a victim to the justice of his country, for horrible cruelty to a female, had he not been snatched from it by a _lettre de cachet_, which confined him for a time at Saumur, whence he was removed to Pierre-Encise.

This danger did not operate as a warning to him. At Marseilles, in 1772, in company with his valet, who was the companion of his debaucheries, he acted in such a manner that the parliament of Aix prosecuted him and his servant, and ultimately pronounced them guilty of unnatural acts and of poisoning; the persons poisoned are said to have been two loose women, to whom they administered stimulants of the most dangerous kind. Sade took flight, but was seized in Savoy by the king of Sardinia, and sent to the castle of Miolans. He made his escape from the castle, and concealed himself in Paris, where, in 1777, he was discovered, and sent to Vincennes. He escaped, was retaken, was lodged again at Vincennes, and was treated with great rigour for two years. In 1784, he was transferred to the Bastile.

At Vincennes and the Bastile he wrote the earliest of those works which alone would suffice to brand his name with indelible infamy. It is truly said of them, that “everything the most monstrous and revolting, that can be dreamt by the most frenzied, obscene, and sanguinary imagination, seems to be combined in these works, the mere conception of which ought to be looked upon as a crime against social order.” Sade was a voluminous writer, and produced many other works, plays, romances, verses, and miscellanies, which have never seen the light.

At the Bastile, but a short time before the attack on it, he quarrelled with the governor, and, by means of a sort of speaking trumpet, harangued the passengers in St. Anthony’s Street, and endeavoured to excite them to arms. For this he was sent off to Charenton. In 1790, the decree of the National Assembly, which liberated all the victims of _lettres des cachet_, put an end to his imprisonment, after it had continued for thirteen years. Sade was a partisan of the revolution, in its worst aspect; but even the revolutionists of 1793 shrank from contact with so foul a being. He was arrested by them, and for nearly a year was an inmate of various prisons. After this, he remained at large till the reins of government were assumed by Napoleon. The First Consul put a stop, in 1801, to the publication of Sade’s works, and sent him to St. Pelagie; from that prison he was removed to Charenton, in 1803, and there he spent his days till the close of his dishonoured existence in 1814, when he was seventy-five years of age. To the very last his detestable doctrines and habits experienced not the slightest change.

One of the most eminent of the French revolutionists, from whom a considerable party took its denomination, was among the latest prisoners of the Bastile. John Peter Brissot was born in 1754, at the village of Ouarville, near Chartres, where his father, who was a pastry-cook in Chartres, had a trifling property. It was from his native place, the name of which he anglicised, that he afterwards styled himself Brissot de Warville. He received a good education, and, as he also read with great avidity, he accumulated a large stock of miscellaneous but undigested knowledge. In the English language he acquired a proficiency which was unusual among Frenchmen at that period, and his study of it contributed powerfully to give his sentiments a republican tinge; for he dwelt with delight on the characters of the great men who withstood the tyranny of Charles the First. Brissot was placed in an attorney’s office at Paris; and it is a curious circumstance, that one of his fellow-clerks was Robespierre, who afterwards became his deadly political foe. In two years Brissot got tired of legal drudgery, and determined to look to literature for subsistence. His first essay was a satire, which he subsequently owned to contain much injustice, and for which he narrowly escaped being lodged in the Bastile. A pamphlet which he published attracted the notice of Swinton, an Englishman, a man utterly devoid of honourable feelings, who engaged him to superintend the reprinting of the Courrier de l’Europe, at Boulogne. This engagement was soon terminated; and Brissot, who had received two hundred pounds on his father’s death, purchased the necessary titles for practising at the bar. The money thus laid out was thrown away, he being soon compelled to resign all hope of succeeding as an advocate. His next scheme, of the success of which he did not allow himself to doubt, was to establish, in the British capital, a Lyceum, which was to serve as a point of union to literary men of all countries, and was to carry on a universal correspondence with them, and to issue a periodical work for the more wide diffusion of English literature. As might have been foreseen, this magnificent institution, of which he was of course to be the presiding genius, proved to be nothing more than an abortion. Instead of reaping fame and profit from the periodical, Brissot found that no one would buy it, and he was arrested and imprisoned by the printer. Having, however, contrived to get free, he returned penniless to France in 1784, where another prison was ready to receive him. Merely, it is said, because he had spoken lightly of the works of D’Aguesseau, he was sent to the Bastile. Others attribute his imprisonment to the malice of his inveterate and unprincipled enemy Morande, who accused him of having written a libel, entitled le Diable à Quatre, which was from the pen of the Marquis de Pelleport. Through the influence of Madame de Genlis, Brissot was released at the expiration of two months. This visit to the Bastile was not calculated to diminish his republican fervour. That fervour was no doubt much increased by his visit to the United States, whither he went early in 1788, and whence he returned in the following year.

Brissot, on his return, threw himself with all his heart and soul into the Revolution. His mind was heated by the reading of ancient and modern writers, who have held up republican heroes to our admiration, and it was irritated by wrongs which arbitrary power had inflicted; and he rashly and illogically concluded, that under a monarchy it was impossible for liberty to exist. Such was the case, also, with many of the talented, eloquent, and warm-hearted men who, acting in concert with him, were known by the title of Brissotins and Girondists. No one who has attentively perused the numerous documents relative to the French revolution can deny that, at a moment when, according to their own confession, there was not a handful of republicans in France, the Brissotins had determined to subvert the monarchical government and establish their favourite system. It is as certain, too, that they were not delicate in the choice of means, and that truth was not allowed to stand in the way of their designs. Believing a republican order of things to be the perfection of human wisdom, they seem to have thought that, “to do a great right, they might do a little wrong.” They were soon taught by woeful experience that the strict rule of right can never be violated without danger; and that, however good his intentions may be, he who does a little wrong opens the way for the commission of the worst of crimes.

Brissot was elected a member of the Parisian Common Council, an assembly which, in less than four years, became infamous for its ferocious and sanguinary proceedings. It must have been gratifying to his feelings, that one of the first acts which it fell to his lot to perform, was to receive the keys of the Bastile. He now established a newspaper called the French Patriot, in which he made daily violent attacks on the monarch, the ministers, and all the institutions of the state. It was he who, in conjunction with Laclos, after the flight of Louis XVI. to Varennes, drew up the petition which called on the Constituent Assembly to depose the king, and which gave rise to a riot that cost some blood. At the period when the election of members to the Legislative Assembly was going forward, the court exerted itself to prevent him from being chosen a representative. Its misdirected efforts, however, as was the case in many other instances, only produced a diametrically opposite effect to that which was intended; the attention of the electors was directed to Brissot, and he was unanimously returned as one of the Parisian members.

Brissot was nominated a member of the diplomatic committee, and its reports were almost uniformly drawn up by him. It was principally by his exertions that a war was brought about with Austria; his purpose in producing that war was to forward the dethroning of the king. In the Legislative Assembly he, for a while, enjoyed great popularity, and he availed himself of it to batter in breach the tottering fabric of the monarchy. But the Jacobins, meanwhile, with Robespierre at their head, all animated by a deadly hatred of Brissot and his friends, were gradually gaining influence; and, in proportion as they won over the populace and the most hot-headed of the legislators, the power of Brissot declined. For a moment he meditated making common cause with the constitutional royalists, in order to avert the disastrous consequences which he began to dread would ensue, in case the Jacobins should triumph. The plan, however, was abandoned. In the revolution of the 10th of August he did not participate; Danton was the prime mover in that transaction. The department of the Eure deputed Brissot to the convention; and thenceforth, with a few exceptions, his conduct was prudent and moderate. From the moment that he and his friends took their seats, they were daily and furiously assailed by the Jacobins. They maintained the contest for several months, but they were finally overthrown, and the majority of them perished on the scaffold. Brissot was put to death on the 31st of October, 1793, and met his fate as calmly as though he had only been ascending the tribune to read a report to his late colleagues. The few tears which he shed during his imprisonment were not for himself, they were wrung from him by the agonizing thought that he must leave a beloved wife and children in a state of destitution.

The last prisoners that remain to be noticed, owed their residence in the Bastile to an affair which excited the public attention in an extraordinary degree, and contributed greatly to render the Queen of France an object of suspicion and unpopularity. This was the affair of the diamond necklace, in which the principal part was played by the Countess de la Motte. The countess, and a brother and sister, were descendants of Henry de St. Remi, a natural son of Henry II., but her family had been reduced to beggary. The three children, two of whom she had found asking alms, were taken under the protection of the Marchioness of Boulainvilliers, who charitably brought them up at her own expense. D’Hozier, the eminent genealogist, having ascertained that they really sprang from the house of Valois, the Duke of Brancas presented to the queen a memorial in their favour, and a small pension was in consequence granted to each of them.

In 1780, Jane, the eldest, married the Count de la Motte, who was one of the guards of the Count d’Artois. Their united resources being exceedingly scanty, the Countess looked about for the means of improving them at the cost of some dupe. She had a prepossessing appearance, fluency of speech, and considerable talents for intrigue, masked by a semblance of openness and candour. The personage whom she selected to try her experiment on, was the Cardinal Prince de Rohan, Bishop of Strasburgh, who was then in his fiftieth year. Rohan, though a bishop and a cardinal, did not think it necessary to assume even the appearance of decorum and virtue. He was weak, vain, dissolute, presumptuous, and extravagant. For a long time he had been in great disfavour with Maria Antoinetta, the Queen of France. She, as well as her mother, the Empress Queen, had been disgusted by his unseemly conduct, some years before this, while he was ambassador at Vienna, and the queen’s disgust was heightened by his indiscreet language respecting her, and by the insulting manner in which he had spoken of her mother, in a letter to the Duke d’Aiguillon. She, however, did not interfere to prevent his obtaining several ill-deserved appointments from the government, but she manifested her resentment by refusing to admit him into her presence, and by expressing her unbounded contempt of him.

Rohan was in despair at not being admitted into the society of the queen. All that he enjoyed seemed worthless, while he was denied that privilege. It was on this egregious weakness that Madame de la Motte founded her hopes of success. The deceiver acted her part with much skill; she gradually led the besotted cardinal to believe that she had acquired the queen’s entire confidence, and could exercise great influence over her. She was, therefore, obviously the fittest person to bring about the reconciliation for which he was so eager. The countess readily undertook to be the mediator. Week after week she deluded him by tales of her pleadings to the queen, and of the slow but sure progress that she made in restoring him to the royal favour. At last he was told, that though the queen had forgiven him, there were reasons why she could not alter her behaviour towards him at court, and that all intercourse between them must be carried on through the medium of Madame de la Motte. Billets, forged by a M. Villette, now began to be addressed to him in her Majesty’s name; twice the writer requested a loan from Rohan, and the request was granted by the delighted dupe. To lure him on still further, he was informed, that Maria Antoinetta would admit him to an interview at night, in the Bois du Boulogne. To play this character, a lady of easy virtue, named d’Oliva, whose person and voice resembled the queen’s, was tutored by La Motte. The cardinal saw her for a moment, and was in raptures, but he had not time to express them before the nocturnal farce was put an end to, by a preconcerted interruption. This last fraud having raised the infatuation of the cardinal to the highest pitch, measures were taken to turn his folly to advantage. There was in the hands of Bœhmer and Bossange, the court jewellers, a splendid diamond necklace, valued at 1,800,000 francs, which the queen had recently declined to purchase, on the ground that it was too expensive. It was this rich prize which La Motte had in view. To get possession of it, she made Rohan her tool; she succeeded in making him believe—for his fund of credulity appears to have been inexhaustible—that the queen was extremely desirous to be mistress of the necklace; but that, as she did not choose to be seen in the affair, she wished him to negotiate for her, and to purchase it on his own credit. A forged authority, from Maria Antoinetta, was produced, in support of this fiction. Rohan rushed blindly into the snare; he bought the necklace, giving for it four bills, payable at intervals of six months, which the jewellers consented to receive, on his showing them the paper authorizing him to treat with them. Another forged document, bearing the queen’s signature, enabled Madame de la Motte to get the necklace into her own possession. Her husband is said to have been immediately sent off to London, to dispose of a part of the diamonds.

When the first bill became due, it was dishonoured, for Rohan had no money, and had relied upon receiving the amount from the queen. The alarmed jewellers hastened to the palace, to remonstrate with her majesty on the subject. The queen was indignant and astonished at the story which they told. Cardinal de Rohan, the Countess de la Motte, and some others, were arrested, and conveyed to the Bastile. The parliament was charged with the trial of the prisoners. The trial was not brought to a conclusion till the 31st of May, 1786. Rohan was acquitted, but Madame de la Motte was sentenced to make the _amende honorable_, to be branded on both shoulders, and publicly whipped, and be confined for the rest of her days in the prison of the Salpêtrière. Villette, the forger, and d’Etionville, his accomplice, were condemned to the galleys for life. After having undergone the ignominious part of her sentence, the countess contrived to escape, and joined her husband in London, where she died in 1791.

Rohan, though acquitted, was compelled by the king to resign the office of high almoner, and the Order of the Holy Ghost, and was exiled to one of his abbeys. In the early part of the Revolution, he for a short time seemed friendly to it; but, his aristocratic feelings soon getting the upper hand, he became one of its most inveterate enemies, and strained every nerve to forward the designs of the emigrants. He died in Germany, in 1803.

Besides La Motte and Rohan, there were committed to the Bastile some subordinate actors in the affair of the diamond necklace, and also a singular adventurer, who was known to the world under the title of Count Cagliostro. The count himself, while he threw a veil of mystery over his birth, appeared to claim an oriental and illustrious origin; but his enemies assert that his real name was Joseph Balsamo, and that he was the son of poor parents at Palermo, where he was born in 1743. They represent him, too, as a degraded being, sometimes living by the sale of chemical compositions, sometimes by swindling, and, still more frequently, by the prostitution of a handsome wife. Yet it is certain that, in his travels over the largest portion of Europe, he gained the esteem and confidence of many distinguished characters. That he was a man of talents is undeniable; his person and manners were attractive, he was acquainted with most of the European and Asiatic languages, his knowledge is said to have been extensive, and he had a powerful flow of eloquence. Where he procured the funds, by which he kept up the appearance of a man of distinction, it would not be easy to ascertain. He was intimate with Cardinal de Rohan, who had sought his friendship, and this intimacy was the cause of his being incarcerated, on suspicion of being an accomplice of the cardinal. He was acquitted by the parliament. Cagliostro subsequently spent two years in England, whence he passed into Italy. At Rome, his wanderings were brought to a close; he was arrested in 1791, and sent to the castle of St. Angelo, on a charge of having established a masonic lodge, and written a seditious, heretical, and blasphemous work, entitled Egyptian Masonry. He was condemned to death, but for this penalty the Pope substituted perpetual imprisonment. He is believed to have died in confinement in 1795.

The long catalogue of captives is now exhausted; ruin impends over the fortress in which they spent their solitary and mournful hours; but, before its doom is sealed, we must see it changing its character, and becoming, for the first time, a place of refuge to a persecuted individual. In April 1789, at a period when the minds of all Frenchmen were in a state of fermentation, and when, like the ground-swell, which announces a coming tempest, popular outbreaks were happening in various quarters, there occurred a riot of a very serious nature in the suburb of St. Antoine. Reveillon, a man of good character, who had himself risen from the working class, was the person against whom the fury of the mob was directed. He was a paper-hanging manufacturer, and employed three hundred men. The charge against him, which was calumniously made by an abbé, who was in his debt, was, that he had declared bread to be not yet dear enough, and expressed a hope that hunger would compel the workmen to labour for half their present wages. The thoughtless multitude, always too ready to credit such slanders, immediately determined to take summary vengeance on him; the first step of the rioters was to hang him in effigy. On the first day they were prevented from going further, but on the following day, they returned to the charge with increased numbers and means of offence. Reveillon’s house and manufactory were plundered of everything that was portable, and were then burned to the ground. It was not till the mischief was completed, that the troops arrived. They seem to have thought it necessary to atone for their extraordinary delay by extraordinary severity; a furious contest ensued, and between four and five hundred of the rioters are said to have been slaughtered on the spot. Each of the political parties accused its rival of having, for sinister purposes, been the planner of this sanguinary scene. In the midst of the confusion, Reveillon was so fortunate as to escape from the mob, and he sought for shelter in the Bastile, where, during a whole month, he deemed it prudent to remain.

In little more than three months after the destruction of Reveillon’s establishment, the storm of popular anger, which had long been gathering in the capital, burst forth with irresistible violence, and shook to its very basis the throne of France. Matters were, indeed, come to a crisis, between the royalist and the reforming parties. The court seemed resolved to commit the question to the decision of the sword; a formidable force, consisting chiefly of foreign troops, was accumulated around the metropolis; and the language held by some of the courtiers and ministers was of the most sanguinary kind. The Baron de Breteuil did not hesitate to say, “If it should be necessary to burn Paris, it shall be burned, and the inhabitants decimated: desperate diseases require desperate remedies.” To dissolve the National Assembly by force, and to consign to the scaffold its most distinguished members, were among the remedies which this political Sangrado designed to administer for the purpose of checking the disease.

As a preliminary to the projected operations, the ministry of M. Necker was abruptly broken up, and another was formed, composed of men notorious for their hostility to the rights of the people. It was a sufficient indication of what was intended, that Necker, Montmorin, De la Lezarne, De Puysegur, and De St. Priest, were replaced by Breteuil, Broglie, De la Vauguyon, and others of the same stamp. Necker was ordered to quit the kingdom, and to keep his departure a profound secret.

The dismissed minister obeyed the order so strictly that not even his daughter knew of his setting out; but the ridiculous silence which was required of him was of no avail. On the following day, which was Sunday, the 12th of July, it was known at Paris that the favourite of the people was expelled from office, and was leaving the country. All the citizens were instantly in alarm. Groups assembled in every street, and more than ten thousand persons were soon congregated at the Palais Royal. Every one was enraged, but no one knew what to propose, till Camille Desmoulins ascended a table, in the Palais Royal, and exhorted his hearers to take up arms; he then plucked a green leaf, which he put into his hat, as a rallying-sign, and the symbol of hope. His example was universally followed. The crowd now proceeded to a waxwork museum, took from it the busts of Necker and the Duke of Orleans, covered them with crape, carried them in procession through the streets, and compelled the passengers to take off their hats. Near the place Vendôme, they were assailed by a detachment of the Royal German regiment, and several persons were wounded. The Germans were, however, repulsed. At the place de Louis XV. there was another contest. They were charged by the dragoons of the Prince de Lambesc, who dispersed them, and killed a soldier of the French guards, and one of the bearers of the busts. The prince himself, a brutal character, followed some of them into the garden of the Tuileries, sabring indiscriminately the fugitives and those who were walking; among those who fell beneath his hand were a female and an aged man. The multitude rallied, and chairs, stones, and everything that could be converted into a weapon, was employed against the dragoons, who were finally compelled to fly. By this time the French guards, who were confined in their barracks, because they favoured the people, had learned the death of their comrade. It was impossible to restrain their rage; they broke out, fired on the Royal German regiment, and then took post to cover the multitude from further attack. Some of the Swiss regiments were ordered to reduce them to obedience, but they refused to obey; and it was thus rendered obvious, that the court had fatally miscalculated in relying upon the army for support.

During that night, and the whole of the succeeding day, Paris was like a hive about to send forth a swarm. In the course of the night, the most disorderly part of the populace burned the custom-houses at the barriers, and plundered the gunsmiths’ shops. Weapons of every kind, and of all ages and countries, were eagerly sought for and brought into use. In the morning, the electors met at the town-hall to decide upon the steps which ought to be taken. It was manifest that they had nothing to expect from the leniency of the court; it was, in fact, understood that Paris was to be attacked on seven points in the evening of the 14th, and it was therefore absolutely necessary to provide the means of defence. In a few hours a plan was matured and proclaimed, for arraying forty-eight thousand Parisian militia. The alarm-bells were kept incessantly ringing throughout Paris, and drums were beating in every street, to summon the inhabitants to their posts. The scanty supply of arms was the most serious obstacle which the citizens had to overcome. To remove it in part, pikes were fabricated, fifty thousand of which were distributed within six-and-thirty hours. Fortunately, it was discovered that there was a large quantity of arms at the Hôtel des Invalides; these were immediately seized upon, and thus 28,000 muskets, besides sabres and some cannon, were obtained. Sufficient powder was procured, and hundreds of men were occupied in casting balls.

The position of the Bastile, interrupting the communication between various parts of the capital, and commanding a considerable portion of the city, was a cause of much embarrassment to the citizens. M. de Launey had received instructions to defend his post to the last extremity. He was provided with ample means, as far as regarded ammunition and arms; for he had on the ramparts fifteen cannon, and twelve wall-pieces, each of which carried a ball of a pound and a half; he had also plenty of shot, 15,000 cartridges, and 31,000 pounds of powder. Besides these, there were, on the summit of the building, six cartloads of paving-stones, bars of iron, and other missiles, to hurl on an approaching enemy, when the cannon could no longer reach him. But, with unaccountable negligence, no magazine of provisions had been formed; there was not food enough in the place to last for twenty-four hours. The garrison consisted of 32 Swiss and 82 invalids.

It is certain that the Committee of Electors, sitting at the town-hall, did not entertain any idea of reducing the Bastile by arms. A sort of neutrality was the most for which they hoped. That this is the fact, is proved by their having twice sent a deputation to the governor, calling on him to admit a detachment of the Parisian militia, to act in conjunction with the garrison. The ground on which they claimed this admission was, that the city ought to have a control over any military force which was stationed within its limits. To such a proposal the governor could not accede without perilling his head.

A M. Thuriot was now sent, by the district of St. Louis de la Culture, to desire that the cannon might be removed from the towers. De Launey replied that this could not be done without the king’s orders, but that he would withdraw them from the embrasures to prevent their appearance from exciting alarm. Thuriot was permitted to ascend to the summit of the fortress, that he might be enabled to report to those who sent him the real state of things, and he availed himself of this permission to exhort the soldiers to surrender. This they refused to do, but they unanimously and solemnly promised that they would not be the first to fire.

But though the Committee of Electors was not disposed to engage in hostilities which seemed likely to be both fruitless and dangerous, there were others, who were more daring, and some, perhaps, who were aware that the garrison had no provisions, and little inclination to fight. From various parts, but especially from the suburb of St. Antoine, an enormous multitude, with every variety of weapon, hurried to the fortress, shouting “We will have the Bastile! down with the troops!” Two of them boldly ascended the roof of the guard-house, and with axes broke the chains of the great drawbridge. The throng then pressed into the court, and advanced towards the second bridge, firing all the while upon the garrison. The latter replied with such effect, that the assailants were driven back; but they placed themselves under shelter, whence they kept up an incessant discharge of musketry.

A despatch to the governor, informing him that succour was at hand, having been intercepted by the committee, that body sent a third deputation to prevail on him to admit the Parisian forces. It reached the outer court, and was invited to enter the place by some officers of the garrison; but either it mistook the meaning of the invitation, or was intimidated by the scene of carnage, for it retired without fulfilling its mission. The firing was recommenced by the people, and was answered with deadly effect by their antagonists. Three waggon-loads of straw were now brought in and set on fire, to burn the buildings near the fortress; but they were so unskilfully managed, that they proved obstacles to the besiegers, who were compelled to remove them. While they were thus employed, they received a discharge of grape-shot from the only cannon which the garrison fired during the conflict.

The French guards now arrived with four pieces of cannon, to take a part in the attack. The sight of this reinforcement entirely depressed the spirits of the besieged, which had already begun to sink. They called on their commander to capitulate. Anticipating, no doubt, the fate which was reserved for him, he is said to have seized a lighted match, intending to apply it to the powder-magazine. A large portion of the neighbourhood would have been destroyed with the Bastile, had not two non-commissioned officers repelled him with their bayonets from the dangerous spot. A white handkerchief was hoisted on one of the towers as a flag of truce, and a parley was beaten by the drums of the invalids. These signs were unnoticed for a considerable time by the besiegers, who continued their fire. At length, finding that all was silent in the Bastile, they advanced towards the last drawbridge, and called to the garrison to let it down. A Swiss officer looked through a loop-hole, and required that his comrades should be allowed to march out with the honours of war. That being refused, he declared that they were willing to submit, on condition of not being massacred. “Let down the bridge, and nothing shall happen to you,” was the reply. On this assurance, the governor gave up the key of the bridge, and the conquerors entered in triumph.

A vast majority of the assailants were undoubtedly brave and honourable men; but there were among them numbers of the most infamous of mankind; men who lent their aid in tumults only that they might gratify their love of plunder and blood. To these degraded wretches must be attributed the cruelties which sullied the victory. No sooner was the day won, than they began to gratify their diabolical propensities. Their first achievement was to attempt to throw into the flames a young girl, whom they found in a fainting fit, and supposed to be the governor’s daughter. She was, however, saved by one of the Parisian volunteers. Others were less happy. The unfortunate De Launey was massacred on his way to the town-hall, after having received innumerable sword and bayonet stabs from the savages around him. Five of his officers were put to death in an almost equally barbarous manner.

The loss of the besiegers was eighty-three killed on the spot, fifteen who died afterwards, thirteen crippled, and sixty wounded.

In the Bastile there were found only seven prisoners; four of them had forged bills to an immense amount, two were insane, and the last, the Count de Solange, had been confined at the request of his father for dissipated conduct.

The Bastile soon ceased to exist. It was demolished by order of the civic authorities of Paris; and, when the demolition was completed, a grand ball was given on the levelled space. The capture and downfall of this obnoxious fabric were hailed with delight by the friends of liberty in every part of the globe, and they long furnished a favourite and fertile theme for moralists, orators, and poets.

THE END.

LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

FOOTNOTES

[1] M. Linguet says, that each of these niches was but just large enough for one person, and had neither light nor air except at the moment when the door was opened.

[2] M. de Fratteaux was seized in England, and carried off, by the French officers of police. “His misfortunes seem to have been owing to an unnatural father, who being on terms of intimacy with the minister, obtained a _lettre de cachet_ to arrest and confine his son.”

[3] Prisoners who were not allowed to have a servant of their own, sometimes were indulged with an invalid soldier to attend them; but those who had neither, made their bed, lighted their fire, and swept their room, themselves.

[4] I have passed lightly over the life of Palissy, because I shall have occasion to dwell upon it, in another volume of the Family Library.

[5] Henry pointed his advice with a pun, which is not translatable. He recommended to Biron, “Qu’il l’otât d’auprès de lui, sinon que _La Fin l’affineroit_.” In English, if such a deceiver’s name were Cousin, we might similarly say, “If you do not get rid of that Cousin, he will cozen you.”

[6] Biographers and historians differ with respect to the circumstances which ensued on the pardon being announced. While some give the statement which I have adopted, others affirm that, when de Jars was taken back to prison, he remained for a long while speechless, and seemingly deprived of all consciousness. This is asserted by Madame de Motteville; and, as she was his intimate friend, her authority has considerable weight. But her assertion may be correct, and yet it is more than probable that de Jars may have made the reply which is attributed to him. I think the conduct ascribed to him in the text more consonant than any other with his intrepid character. Nature, however, can endure only to a certain point, and the effort that is made to bear up, and which, as long as danger is present, seldom fails with the honourable and brave, necessarily produces exhaustion when the struggle is over. It may therefore, easily be believed, that, though de Jars was capable of answering Laffemas with his wonted spirit—and the very sight of such a monster would stimulate that spirit—he might sink into insensibility on his return to prison.

[7] It has been conjectured, by some writers, that Richelieu was stimulated to this new attack upon the queen by the circumstance of her being pregnant, which induced him to dread that her influence would be greatly increased, if he did not find the means of rendering her an object of suspicion. But the conjecture is erroneous, as a comparison of dates will prove. The attack upon her was commenced in the summer of 1637 (La Porte was sent to the Bastile in August), and the queen was not brought to bed till September 1638, thirteen months afterwards.

[8] The mask is said to have been improperly described as being of iron; it being formed of black velvet. Only the frame work and the springs were of metal.

[9] This seems to be a quantity of linen so enormous as to stagger belief. But Latude is probably correct in his assertion. In some of the French provinces, families have an immense stock of linen; and it is necessary that they should, as the operation of washing is not performed more than twice or thrice a year.