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Table of Contents

The Feudal System—Early prisons—Classes of inmates—Alike in aspect, similar in discipline—Variety of penalties—Chief prisons of Paris in the Middle Ages—Great and Little Châtelets—History and inmates—The Conciergerie still standing—For-l’Évêque, the Bishop’s prison—The Temple, prison of the Knights Templars—Bicêtre—Notable prisoners—Salomon de Caus, steam inventor—St. Pélagie—St. Lazare.

Let us consider the prisons of Old France in the order of their antiquity, their size and their general importance in French history.

First of all the two Châtelets, the greater and less, Le Grand and Le Petit Châtelet, of which the last named was probably the earliest in date of erection. Antiquarians refer the Petit Châtelet to the Roman period and state that its original use was to guard the entrance to Paris when the city was limited to that small island in the Seine which was the nucleus of the great capital of France. This fortress and bridge-head was besieged and destroyed by the Normans but was subsequently rebuilt; and it is mentioned in a deed dated 1222 in which the king, Philip Augustus, took over the rights of justice, at a price, from the Bishop of Paris. It stood then on the south bank of the Seine at the far end of the bridge long afterwards known as the Petit Pont. Both bridge and castle were swept away in 1296 by an inundation and half a century elapsed before they were restored on such a firm basis as to resist any future overflowing of the Seine. At this date its rôle as a fortress appears to have ceased and it was appropriated by Charles V of France to serve as a prison and to overawe the students of the Quartier Latin. Hugues Aubriot, the same Provost of Paris who built the Bastile, constructed several cells between the pillars supporting the Petit Châtelet and employed them for the confinement of turbulent scholars of the university.

The Grand Châtelet was situated on the opposite, or northern bank of the river, facing that side of the island of the Cité, or the far end of the Pont au Change on the same site as the present Place du Châtelet. Like its smaller namesake it was also thought to have been a bridge-head or river-gate, although this is based on no authentic record. The first definite mention of the Grand Châtelet is in the reign of Philip Augustus after he created the courts of justice and headquarters of the municipality of Paris.

The Chapel and Confraternity of Notaries was established here in 1270. The jurisdiction of the Provost of Paris embraced all the functions of the police of later days. He was responsible for the good order and security of the city; he checked disturbances and called the riotous and disorderly to strict account. He was all powerful; all manner of offenders were haled before the tribunals over which he presided with fifty-six associate judges and assistants. The Châtelet owned a King’s Procurator and four King’s Counsellors, a chief clerk, many receivers, bailiffs, ushers, gaolers and sixty sworn special experts, a surgeon and his assistants, including a mid-wife or accoucheuse, and 220 sergents à cheval, or outdoor officers and patrols, over whom the Procurator’s authority was supreme. The Procurator was also the guardian and champion of the helpless and oppressed, of deserted and neglected children and ill-used wives; he regulated the markets and supervised the guilds and corporations of trades and their operations, exposed frauds in buying and selling and saw that accurate weights and measures were employed in merchandising.

The prisons of the two Châtelets were dark, gruesome receptacles. Contemporary prints preserve the grim features of the Petit Châtelet, a square, massive building of stone pierced with a few loopholes in its towers, a drawbridge with a portcullis giving access to the bridge. The Grand Châtelet was of more imposing architecture, with an elevated façade capped by a flat roof and having many “pepper pot” towers at the angles. The cells and chambers within were dark, dirty, ill-ventilated dens. Air was admitted only from above and in such insufficient quantity that the prisoners were in constant danger of suffocation, while the space was far too limited to accommodate the numbers confined. The titles given to various parts of the interior of the Grand Châtelet will serve to illustrate the character of the accommodation.

There was the Berceau or cradle, so called from its arched roof; the Boucherie, with obvious derivation; the chaîne room, otherwise chêne, from the fetters used or the oak beams built into it; the Fin d’Aise or “end of ease,” akin to the “Little Ease” of old London’s Newgate, a horrible and putrescent pigsty, described as full of filth and over-run with reptiles and with air so poisonous that a candle would not remain alight in it. A chamber especially appropriated to females was styled La Grieche, an old French epithet for a shrew or vixen; other cells are known as La Gloriette, La Barbarie, La Barcane or Barbacane, lighted by a small grating in the roof. The Châtelet had its deep-down, underground dungeon, the familiar oubliettes of every mediæval castle and monastery, called also in pace because the hapless inmates were thrown into them to be forgotten and left to perish of hunger and anguish, but “in peace.” The worst of these at the Châtelet must have been La Fosse, the bottom of which was knee deep in water, so that the prisoner was constantly soaked and it was necessary to stand erect to escape drowning; here death soon brought relief, for “none survived La Fosse for more than fifteen days.”

Monstrous as it must appear, rent on a fixed scale was extorted for residence in these several apartments. These were in the so-called “honest” prisons. The Chaîne room, mentioned above, La Beauvoir, La Motte and La Salle cost each individual four deniers (the twelfth part of a sou) for the room and two for a bed. In La Boucherie and Grieche it was two deniers for the room, but only one denier for a bed of straw or reeds. Even in La Fosse and the oubliettes payment was exacted, presumably in advance. Some light is thrown by the ancient chronicles upon the prison system that obtained within the Châtelet. The first principle was recognised that it was a place of detention only and not for the maltreatment of its involuntary guests. Rules were made by the parliaments, the chief juridical authorities of Paris, to soften the lot of the prisoners, to keep order amongst them and protect them from the cupidity of their gaolers. The governor was permitted to charge gaol fees, but the scale was strictly regulated and depended upon the status and condition of the individuals committed. Thus a count or countess paid ten livres (about fifty francs), a knight banneret was charged twenty sous, a Jew or Jewess half that amount. Prisoners who lay on the straw paid one sou. For half a bed the price was three sous and for the privilege of sleeping alone, five sous. The latest arrivals were obliged to sweep the floors and keep the prison rooms clean. It was ordered that the officials should see that the bread issued was of good quality and of the proper weight, a full pound and a half per head. The officials were to visit the prisons at least once a week and receive the complaints made by prisoners out of hearing of their gaolers. The hospitals were to be regularly visited and attention given to the sick. Various charities existed to improve the prison diet: the drapers on their fête day issued bread, meat and wine; the watchmakers gave a dinner on Easter day when food was seized and forfeited and a portion was issued to the pauper prisoners.

In all this the little Châtelet served as an annex to the larger prison. During their lengthened existence both prisons witnessed many atrocities and were disgraced by many dark deeds. One of the most frightful episodes was that following the blood-thirsty feuds between the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons in the early years of the fifteenth century. These two political parties fought for supreme authority in the city of Paris, which was long torn by their dissensions. The Armagnacs held the Bastile but were dispossessed of it by the Bourguignons, who were guilty of the most terrible excesses. They slaughtered five hundred and twenty of their foes and swept the survivors wholesale into the Châtelet and the “threshold of the prison became the scaffold of 1,500 unfortunate victims.” The Bourguignons were not satisfied and besieged the place in due form; for the imprisoned Armagnacs organised a defense and threw up a barricade upon the north side of the fortress, where they held out stoutly. The assailants at last made a determined attack with scaling ladders, by which they surmounted the walls sixty feet high, and a fierce and prolonged conflict ensued. When the attack was failing the Bourguignons set fire to the prison and fought their way in, driving the besieged before them. Many of the Armagnacs sought to escape the flames by flinging themselves over the walls and were caught upon the pikes of the Bourguignons “who finished them with axe and sword.” Among the victims were many persons of quality, two cardinals, several bishops, officers of rank, magistrates and respectable citizens.

The garrison of the Châtelet in those early days was entrusted to the archers of the provost’s guard, the little Châtelet being the provost’s official residence. The guard was frequently defied by the turbulent population and especially by the scholars of the University of Paris, an institution under the ecclesiastical authority and very jealous of interference by the secular arm. One provost in the fourteenth century, having caught a scholar in the act of stealing upon the highway, forthwith hanged him, whereupon the clergy of Paris went in procession to the Châtelet and denounced the provost. The King sided with them and the chief magistrate of the city was sacrificed to their clamor. Another provost, who hanged two scholars for robbery, was degraded from his office, led to the gallows and compelled to take down and kiss the corpses of the men he had executed. The provosts themselves were sometimes unfaithful to their trust. One of them in the reign of Philip the Long, by name Henri Chaperel, made a bargain with a wealthy citizen who was in custody under sentence of death. The condemned man was allowed to escape and a friendless and obscure prisoner hanged in his place. It is interesting to note, however, that this Henri Chaperel finished on the gallows as did another provost, Hugues de Cruzy, who was caught in dishonest traffic with his prisoners. Here the King himself had his share in the proceeds. A famous brigand and highwayman of noble birth, Jourdain de Lisle, the chief of a great band of robbers, bought the protection of the provost, and the Châtelet refused to take cognizance of his eight crimes—any one of which deserved an ignominious death. It was necessary to appoint a new provost before justice could be meted out to Jourdain de Lisle, who was at last tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the streets of Paris to the public gallows.

In the constant warfare between the provost and the people the latter did not hesitate to attack the prison fortress of the Châtelet. In 1320 a body of insurgents collected under the leadership of two apostate priests who promised to meet them across the seas and conquer the Holy Land. When some of their number were arrested and thrown into the Châtelet, the rest marched upon the prison, bent on rescue, and, breaking in, effected a general gaol delivery. This was not the only occasion in which the Châtelet lost those committed to its safe-keeping. In the latter end of the sixteenth century the provost was one Hugues de Bourgueil, a hunch-back with a beautiful wife. Among his prisoners was a young Italian, named Gonsalvi, who, on the strength of his nationality, gained the goodwill of Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. The Queen commended him to the provost, who lodged him in his own house, and Gonsalvi repaid this kindness by running away with de Bourgueil’s wife. Madame de Bourgueil, on the eve of her elopement, gained possession of the prison keys and released the whole of the three hundred prisoners in custody, thus diverting the attention from her own escapade. The provost, preferring his duty to his wife, turned out with horse and foot, and pursued and recaptured the fugitive prisoners, while Madame de Bourgueil and her lover were allowed to go their own way. After this affair the King moved the provost’s residence from the Châtelet to the Hôtel de Hercule.

References are found in the earlier records of the various prisoners confined in the Châtelet. One of the earliest is a list of Jews imprisoned for reasons not given. But protection was also afforded to this much wronged race, and once, towards the end of the fourteenth century, when the populace rose to rob and slaughter the Jews, asylum was given to the unfortunates by opening to them the gates of the Châtelet. About the same time a Spanish Jew and an habitual thief, one Salmon of Barcelona, were taken to the Châtelet and condemned to be hanged by the heels between two large dogs. Salmon, to save himself, offered to turn Christian, and was duly baptised, the gaoler’s wife being his godmother. Nevertheless, within a week he was hanged “like a Christian” (chrétiennement), under his baptismal name of Nicholas.

The Jews themselves resented the apostasy of a co-religionist and it is recorded that four were detained in the Châtelet for having attacked and maltreated Salmon for espousing Christianity. For this they were condemned to be flogged at all the street corners on four successive Sundays; but when a part of the punishment had been inflicted they were allowed to buy off the rest by a payment of 18,000 francs in gold. The money was applied to the rebuilding of the Petit Pont. Prisoners of war were confined there. Eleven gentlemen accused of assassination were “long detained” in the Châtelet and in the end executed. It continually received sorcerers and magicians in the days when many were accused of commerce with the Devil. Idle vagabonds who would not work were lodged in it.

At this period Paris and the provinces were terrorised by bands of brigands. Some of the chief leaders were captured and carried to the Châtelet, where they suffered the extreme penalty. The crime of poisoning, always so much in evidence in French criminal annals, was early recorded at the Châtelet. In 1390 payment was authorised for three mounted sergeants of police who escorted from the prison at Angers and Le Mans to the Châtelet, two priests charged with having thrown poison into the wells, fountains and rivers of the neighborhood. One Honoré Paulard, a bourgeois of Paris, was in 1402 thrown into the Fin d’Aise dungeon of the Châtelet for having poisoned his father, mother, two sisters and three other persons in order to succeed to their inheritance. Out of consideration for his family connections he was not publicly executed but left to the tender mercies of the Fin d’Aise, where he died at the end of a month. The procureur of parliament was condemned to death with his wife Ysabelete, a prisoner in the Châtelet, whose former husband, also a procureur, they were suspected of having poisoned. On no better evidence than suspicion they were both sentenced to death—the husband to be hanged and the wife burned alive. Offenders of other categories were brought to the Châtelet. A superintendent of finances, prototype of Fouquet, arrested by the Provost Pierre des Fessarts, and convicted of embezzlement, met his fate in the Châtelet. Strange to say, Des Fessarts himself was arrested four years later and suffered on the same charge. Great numbers of robbers taken red-handed were imprisoned—at one time two hundred thieves, murderers and highwaymen (épieurs de grand chemin). An auditor of the Palace was condemned to make the amende honorable in effigy; a figure of his body in wax being shown at the door of the chapel and then dragged to the pillory to be publicly exposed. Clement Marot, the renowned poet, was committed to the Châtelet at the instance of the beautiful Diane de Poitiers for continually inditing fulsome verses in her praise. Weary at last of her contemptuous silence he penned a bitter satire which Diane resented by accusing him of Lutheranism and of eating bacon in Lent. Marot’s confinement in the Châtelet inspired his famous poem L’Enfer, wherein he compared the Châtelet to the infernal regions and cursed the whole French penal system—prisoners, judges, lawyers and the cruelties of the “question.”

Never from the advent of the Reformation did Protestants find much favor in France. In 1557 four hundred Huguenots assembled for service in a house of the Rue St. Jacques and were attacked on leaving it by a number of the neighbors. They fought in self-defense and many made good their escape, but the remainder—one hundred and twenty persons, several among them being ladies of the Court—were arrested by the lieutenant criminel and carried to the Châtelet. They were accused of infamous conduct and although they complained to the King they were sent to trial, and within a fortnight nearly all the number were burnt at the stake. Another story runs that the lieutenant criminel forced his way into a house in the Marais where a number of Huguenots were at table. They fled, but the hotel keeper was arrested and charged with having supplied meat in the daily bill of fare on a Friday. For this he was conducted to the Châtelet with his wife and children, a larded capon being carried before them to hold them up to the derision of the bystanders. The incident ended seriously, for the wretched inn-keeper was thrown into a dungeon and died there in misery.

Precedence has been given to the two Châtelets in the list of ancient prisons in Paris, but no doubt the Conciergerie runs them close in point of date and was equally formidable. It originally was part of the Royal Palace of the old Kings of France and still preserves as to site, and in some respects as to form, in the Palais de Justice one of the most interesting monuments in modern Paris. “There survives a sense of suffocation in these buildings,” writes Philarète Chasles. “Here are the oldest dungeons of France. Paris had scarcely begun when they were first opened.” “These towers,” says another Frenchman, “the courtyard and the dim passage along which prisoners are still admitted, have tears in their very aspect.” One of the greatest tragedies in history was played out in the Conciergerie almost in our own days, thus bringing down the sad record of bitter sufferings inflicted by man upon man from the Dark Ages to the day of our much vaunted enlightenment. The Conciergerie was the last resting place, before execution, of the hapless Queen Marie Antoinette.

When Louis IX, commonly called Saint Louis, rebuilt his palace in the thirteenth century he constructed also his dungeons hard by. The concierge was trusted by the kings with the safe-keeping of their enemies and was the governor of the royal prison. In 1348 he took the title of bailli and the office lasted, with its wide powers often sadly abused, until the collapse of the monarchical régime. A portion of the original Conciergerie as built in the garden of Concierge is still extant. Three of the five old towers, circular in shape and with pepper pot roofs, are standing. Of the first, that of Queen Blanche was pulled down in 1853 and that of the Inquisition in 1871. The three now remaining are Cæsar’s Tower, where the reception ward is situated on the very spot where Damiens, the attempted regicide of Louis XV, was interrogated while strapped to the floor; the tower of Silver, the actual residence of “Reine Blanche” and the visiting room where legal advisers confer with their clients among the accused prisoners; and lastly the Bon Bec tower, once the torture chamber and now the hospital and dispensary of the prison.

The cells and dungeons of the Conciergerie, some of which might be seen and inspected as late as 1835, were horrible beyond belief. Clement Marot said of it in his verse that it was impossible to conceive a place that more nearly approached a hell upon earth. The loathsomeness of its underground receptacles was inconceivable. It contained some of the worst specimens of the ill-famed oubliettes. An attempt has been made by some modern writers to deny the existence of these oubliettes, but all doubt was removed by discoveries revealed when opening the foundations of the Bon Bec tower. Two subterranean pits were found below the ordinary level of the river Seine and the remains of sharpened iron points protruded from their walls obviously intended to catch the bodies and tear the flesh of those flung into these cavernous depths. Certain of these dungeons were close to the royal kitchens and were long preserved. They are still remembered by the quaint name of the mousetraps (or souricières) in which the inmates were caught and kept au secret, entirely separate and unable to communicate with a single soul but their immediate guardians and gaolers.

The torture chamber and the whole paraphernalia for inflicting the “question” were part and parcel of every ancient prison. But the most complete and perfect methods were to be found in the Conciergerie. As a rule, therefore, in the most heinous cases, when the most shocking crimes were under investigation, the accused was relegated to the Conciergerie to undergo treatment by torture. It was so in the case of Ravaillac who murdered Henry IV; also the Marchioness of Brinvilliers and the poisoners; and yet again, of Damiens who attempted the life of Louis XV, and many more: to whom detailed references will be found in later pages.

The For-l’Évêque, the Bishop’s prison, was situated in the rue St. Germain-l’Auxerrois, and is described in similar terms as the foregoing: “dark, unwholesome and over-crowded.” In the court or principal yard, thirty feet long by eighteen feet wide, some four or five hundred prisoners were constantly confined. The outer walls were of such a height as to forbid the circulation of fresh air and there was not enough to breathe. The cells were more dog-holes than human habitations. In some only six feet square, five prisoners were often lodged at one and the same time. Others were too low in the ceiling for a man to stand upright and few had anything but borrowed light from the yard. Many cells were below the ground level and that of the river bed, so that water filtered in through the arches all the year round, and even in the height of summer the only ventilation was by a slight slit in the door three inches wide. “To pass by an open cell door one felt as if smitten by fire from within,” says a contemporary writer. Access to these cells was by dark, narrow galleries. For long years the whole prison was in such a state of dilapidation that ruin and collapse were imminent.

Later For-l’Évêque received insolvent debtors—those against whom lettres de cachet were issued, and actors who were evil livers. It was the curious custom to set these last free for a few hours nightly in order to play their parts at the theatres; but they were still in the custody of the officer of the watch and were returned to gaol after the performance. Many minor offenders guilty of small infractions of the law, found lodging in the For-l’Évêque. Side by side with thieves and roysterers were dishonest usurers who lent trifling sums. All jurisdictions, all authorities could commit to the For-l’Évêque, the judges of inferior tribunals, ministers of state, auditors, grand seigneurs. The prison régime varied for this various population, but poor fare and poorer lodgings were the fate of the larger number. Those who could pay found chambers more comfortable, decently furnished, and palatable food. Order was not always maintained. More than once mutinies broke out, generally on account of the villainous ration of bread issued, and it was often found necessary to fire upon the prisoners to subdue them.

When the Knights Templars received permission to settle in Paris in the twelfth century, they gradually consolidated their power in the Marais, the marshy ground to the eastward of the Seine, and there laid the foundations of a great stronghold on which the Temple prison was a prominent feature. The knights wielded sovereign power with the rights of high justice and the very kings of France themselves bent before them. At length the arrogance of the order brought it the bitter hostility of Philippe le Bel who, in 1307, broke the power of the order in France. They were pursued and persecuted. Their Grand Master was tortured and executed while the King administered their estate. The prison of the Temple with its great towers and wide encircling walls became a state prison, the forerunner of Vincennes and the Bastile. It received, as a rule, the most illustrious prisoners only, dukes and counts and sovereign lords, and in the Revolutionary period it gained baleful distinction as the condemned cell, so to speak, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The prison of Bicêtre, originally a bishop’s residence and then successively a house of detention for sturdy beggars and a lunatic asylum, was first built at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It was owned by John, Bishop of Winchester in England, and its name was a corruption of the word Winchester—“Vinchester” and so “Bichestre” and, eventually, “Bicêtre.” It was confiscated to the King in the fourteenth century and Charles VI dated his letters from that castle. It fell into a ruinous state in the following years and nothing was done to it until it was rebuilt by Louis XIII as a hospital for invalid soldiers and became, with the Salpêtrière, the abode of the paupers who so largely infested Paris. The hospital branch of the prison was used for the treatment of certain discreditable disorders, sufferers from which were regularly flogged at the time of their treatment by the surgeons. An old writer stigmatised the prison as a terrible ulcer that no one dared look at and which poisoned the air for four hundred yards around. Bicêtre was the home for all vagabonds and masterless men, the sturdy beggars who demanded alms sword in hand, and soldiers who, when their pay was in arrears, robbed upon the highway. Epileptics and the supposed mentally diseased, whether they were actually proved so or not, were committed to Bicêtre and after reception soon degenerated into imbeciles and raging lunatics. The terrors of underground Bicêtre have been graphically described by Masers-Latude, who had personal experience of them. This man, Danry or Latude, has been called a fictitious character, but the memoirs attributed to him are full of realism and cannot be entirely neglected. He says of Bicêtre:

“In wet weather or when it thawed in winter, water streamed from all parts of our cell. I was crippled with rheumatism and the pains were such that I was sometimes whole weeks without getting up. The window-sill guarded by an iron grating gave on to a corridor, the wall of which was placed exactly opposite at a height of ten feet. A glimmer of light came through this aperture and was accompanied by snow and rain. I had neither fire nor artificial light and prison rags were my only clothing. To quench my thirst I sucked morsels of ice broken off with the heel of my wooden shoe. If I stopped up the window I was nearly choked by the effluvium from the cellars. Insects stung me in the eyes. I had always a bad taste in my mouth and my lungs were horribly oppressed. I was detained in that cell for thirty-eight months enduring the pangs of hunger, cold and damp. I was attacked by scurvy and was presently unable to sit or rise. In ten days my legs and thighs were swollen to twice their ordinary size. My body turned black. My teeth loosened in their sockets and I could no longer masticate. I could not speak and was thought to be dead. Then the surgeon came, and seeing my state ordered me to be removed to the infirmary.”

An early victim of Bicêtre was the Protestant Frenchman, Salomon de Caus, who had lived much in England and Germany and had already, at the age of twenty, gained repute as an architect, painter and engineer. One of his inventions was an apparatus for forcing up water by a steam fountain; and that eminent scientist, Arago, declares that De Caus preceded Watt as an inventor of steam mechanisms. It was De Caus’s misfortune to fall desperately in love with the notorious Marion Delorme. When his attentions became too demonstrative this fiendish creature applied for a lettre de cachet from Richelieu. De Caus was invited to call upon the Cardinal, whom he startled with his marvellous schemes. Richelieu thought himself in the presence of a madman and forthwith ordered De Caus to Bicêtre. Two years later Marion Delorme visited Bicêtre and was recognised by De Caus as she passed his cell. He called upon her piteously by name, and her companion, the English Marquis of Worcester, asked if she knew him, but she repudiated the acquaintance. Lord Worcester was, however, attracted by the man and his inventions, and afterwards privately visited him, giving his opinion later that a great genius had run to waste in this mad-house.

Bicêtre was subsequently associated with the galleys and was starting point of the chain of convicts directed upon the arsenals of Toulon, Rochefort, Lorient and Brest. A full account of these modern prisons is reserved for a later chapter.

The prison of Sainte Pélagie was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century by a charitable lady, Marie l’Hermite, in the faubourg Sainte Marcel, as a refuge for ill-conducted women, those who came voluntarily and those who were committed by dissatisfied fathers or husbands. It became, subsequently, a debtors’ prison. The Madelonnettes were established about the same time and for the same purpose, by a wine merchant, Robert Montri, devoted to good works. The prison of St. Lazare, to-day the great female prison of Paris, appears to have been originally a hospital for lepers, and was at that time governed by the ecclesiastical authority. It was the home of various communities, till in 1630 the lepers disappeared, and it became a kind of seminary or place of detention for weak-minded persons and youthful members of good position whose families desired to subject them to discipline and restraint. The distinction between St. Lazare and the Bastile was well described by a writer who said, “If I had been a prisoner in the Bastile I should on release have taken my place among genres de bien (persons of good social position) but on leaving Lazare I should have ranked with the mauvais sujets (ne’er do weels).” A good deal remains to be said about St. Lazare in its modern aspects.