[1] The castle of Tours, 147 miles south-west of Paris, which Louis XI. made his favourite residence. See Scott’s Quentin Durward.—T.

[2] Jean Balue (1471-1491), chaplain to Louis XI. For traitorously divulging the king’s schemes to his enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, he was for eleven years shut up in the castle of Loches, in an iron-bound wooden cage.—T.

[3] A French author (1624-1693) who was involved in the fall of Louis XIV.’s dishonest finance minister, Fouquet, in 1661, and was imprisoned for five years in the Bastille, amusing himself with reading the Fathers of the Church and taming a spider. See Kitchin’s History of France, iii. 155-157.—T.

[4] Antoine de Caumont, duc de Lauzun (1633-1723), a courtier of Louis XIV., whose favours to the Duke made Louvois, the minister, his bitter enemy. He was twice imprisoned in the Bastille, the second time at the instance of Madame de Montespan. He commanded the French auxiliaries of James II. in Ireland. See Macaulay’s History, Chaps. IX., XII., XV.—T.

[5] A game played with a sort of box, in the top of which are cut holes of equal size, and with metal discs or balls, the object being to pitch the balls into the holes from a distance. A similar game may be seen at any English country fair.—T.

[6] The famous president of the Cour des Aides and Minister of the Interior, renowned for his consistent support of the people against oppression. He was banished in 1771 for remonstrating against the abuses of law; but returning to Paris to oppose the execution of Louis XVI., he was guillotined in 1794.—T.

[7] Antonio del Giudice, prince de Cellamare (1657-1733), the Spanish ambassador, was the instigator of a plot against the Regent in 1718. See Kitchin, ib. iii. 474.—T.

[8] The HÔtel des Invalides, residence of pensioned soldiers, &c. still a well-known building of Paris.—T.

[9] A chÂteau, four miles east of Paris, notable as the place where St. Louis, the royal lawgiver of France, dispensed justice. The donjon still exists, serving now as a soldier’s barracks.—T.

[10] One of the first prisons on the system of solitary confinement in cells erected in Paris. It dates from 1850.—T.

[11] The AbbÉ de Buquoy (1653-1740) owed his imprisonment originally to having been found in company with dealers in contraband salt when the gabelle, or salt-tax, compelled the French people to buy salt, whether they wanted it or not, at a price two thousand times its true value. He was a man of very eccentric views, one of which was that woman was man’s chief evil, and that was why, when the patriarch Job was stripped of children, flocks, herds, &c., his wife was left to him!—T.

[12] The madhouse, eight miles east of Paris.—T.

[13] A chÂteau originally outside Paris, now included in the city itself, once used as a hospital and jail, now a hospital for aged and indigent poor and for lunatics. The first experiments with the guillotine were tried there.—T.

[14] See infra, p. 83.

[15] The title rÔle in a comedy by Henri Mounier, entitled Grandeur et dÉcadence de M. Joseph Prudhomme (1852). He is a writing-master, very vain, given (like Mr. Micawber) to tall talk and long-winded periods. He has become typical of “much cry and little wool.” As an officer of the National Guard he says, “This sabre constitutes the finest day in my life! I accept it, and if ever I find myself at the head of your phalanxes, I shall know how to use it in defence of our institutions—and, if need arise, to fight for them!”—T.

[16] In the early days of the Revolution, Paris was divided into sections or wards, and as the pike had played a great part in the recent disturbances, one of the wards was known as the “Pike” section.—T.

[17] A disciple of the Marquis de Sade (see p. 35), a notorious debauchee, whose book Justine was a disgusting mixture of brutality and obscenity.—T.

[18] The pseudonym of Beffroy de Reigny (1757-1811), author of farces, and of a PrÉcis historique de la prise de la Bastille.—T.

[19] The name given to the constitutional struggles of the nobles and the Parlement of Paris against Mazarin and the royal power (1648-1654). The name is derived from fronde, a sling. A wit of the Parlement, one Bachaumont, “told the lawyers of that august body that they were like schoolboys playing in the town ditches with their slings, who run away directly the watchman appears, and begin again when his back is turned.” See Kitchin, iii. pp. 102-128.—T.

[20] See Monte-Cristo.—T.

[21] Delivered to the French Association for the Advancement of Science in 1893.

[22] The battle fought on August 10, 1557, in which Egmont with a combined force of Spaniards, Flemish, and English (sent by Queen Mary) routed Constable Montmorency and the finest chivalry of France. It was in commemoration of this victory that Philip II. built the palace of the Escurial, shaped like a gridiron because the battle was fought on St. Lawrence’s day.—T.

[23] The following unpublished letter from Pontchartrain to Bernaville, intimating his probable nomination as governor of the Bastille, shows exactly what Louis XIV.’s government demanded of the head of the great state prison:-

[24] The appellation of the eldest brother of the reigning king.—T.

[25] Under the ancien rÉgime, there being no Minister of the Interior (Home Secretary), each of the ministers (the War Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, &c.) had a part of France under his charge. The Minister of Paris was usually what we should call the Lord Chamberlain.—T.

[26] The court which up to the time of the Revolution was the seat of justice, presided over by the Provost of Paris. It held its sittings in the castle known as the ChÂtelet.—T.

[27] A judicial, not a legislative body. It was constantly in antagonism to the king.—T.

[28] The famous EncyclopÆdia edited by D’Alembert and Diderot. It occupied twenty years of the life of the latter, and went through many vicissitudes; its free criticism of existing institutions provoking the enmity of the government. Voltaire was one of its largest contributors.—T.

[29] This raised Linguet’s indignation. “The consideration of this enormous expense has given to some ministers, among others to M. Necker, a notion of reform; if this should come to anything, it would be very disgraceful to spring from no other cause. ‘Suppress the Bastille out of economy!’ said on this subject, a few days ago, one of the youngest and most eloquent orators of England.”

[30] The HÔtel Carnavalet, museum in Paris, where a large number of documents and books are preserved relating to the history of the city.—T.

[31] It may be noted that the different escapes contributed to the gradual tightening of the rules of the Bastille. After the escape of the Comte de Bucquoy, such ornaments as the prisoners could attach cords to were at once removed, and knives were taken from them; after the escape of AllÈgre and Latude, bars of iron were placed in the chimneys, and so forth.

[32] The second of the four principal officers of the Bastille. The officers were: (1) the governor; (2) the king’s lieutenant; (3) the major; (4) the adjutant. There was also a doctor, a surgeon, a confessor, &c. The garrison consisted of Invalides.—T.

[33] The most surprising instance is that of an Englishman, who returned spontaneously from England to become a prisoner in the Bastille. “On Thursday, May 22, 1693, at nightfall, M. de Jones, an Englishman, returned from England, having come back to prison for reasons concerning the king’s service. He was located outside the chÂteau, in a little room where M. de Besmaus keeps his library, above his office, and he is not to appear for some days for his examination, and is to be taken great care of.”—Du Junca’s Journal.

[34] This was not the Lauzun already mentioned, but his nephew, Armand Louis de Gontaut, duke de Biron (1747-1793), who was notorious throughout Europe for his gallantries.—T.

[35] An official of the royal council, whose function originally was to examine and report on petitions to the king. He became a sort of superior magistrate’s clerk.—T.

[36] “1751, March 2. I have received a letter from Dr. Duval (secretary to the lieutenant of police), in which he tells me that M. Berryer (lieutenant of police) is struck with the cost of the clothes supplied to the prisoners for some time past; but, as you know, I only supply things when ordered by M. Berryer, and I try to supply good clothes, so that they may last and give the prisoners satisfaction.”—Letter from Rochebrune, commissary to the Bastille, to Major Chevalier.

[37] These extracts are translated literally, in order to preserve the clumsy constructions of the unlettered official.—T.

[38] Step-sister of Louis XIV. The following extracts from her correspondence show how, even in circles that might have been expected to be well informed, the legend had already seized on people’s imaginations:—

“Marly, October 10, 1711. A man remained long years in the Bastille, and has died there, masked. At his side he had two musketeers ready to kill him if he took off his mask. He ate and slept masked. No doubt there was some reason for this, for otherwise he was well treated and lodged, and given everything he wished for. He went to communion masked; he was very devout and read continually. No one has ever been able to learn who he was.”

“Versailles, October 22, 1711. I have just learnt who the masked man was, who died in the Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to cruelty. He was an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of the Duke of Berwick (natural son of James II.) against King William. He died there so that the king might never know what became of him.”

[39] The insurgents who rose for the king against the Revolutionists in Brittany: see Balzac’s famous novel. The movement smouldered for a great many years.—T.

[40] The Gregorian calendar was abolished by the National Convention in 1793, who decreed that September 22, 1792, should be regarded as the first day of a new era. The year was divided into twelve months, with names derived from natural phenomena. Nivose (snowy) was the fourth of these months. Thus, the period mentioned in the text includes from December 21, 1800, to January 19, 1801.—T.

[41] Since M. Funck-Brentano’s book was published, his conclusions have been corroborated by Vicomte Maurice Boutry in a study published in the Revue des Etudes historiques (1899, p. 172). The Vicomte furnishes an additional proof. He says that the Duchess de CrÉquy, in the third book of her Souvenirs, gives a rÉsumÉ of a conversation on the Iron Mask between Marshal de Noailles, the Duchess de Luynes, and others, and adds: “The most considerable and best informed persons of my time always thought that the famous story had no other foundation than the capture and captivity of the Piedmontese Mattioli.”—T.

[42] “I have seen these ills, and I am not twenty yet.”

[43] These verses were, of course, in Latin.—T.

[44] Palissot was a dramatist and critic who in his comedy Les Philosophes had bitterly attacked Rousseau, Diderot, and the EncyclopÆdists generally.—T.

[45] The old prison of Paris. It was the debtors’ prison, famous also for the number of actors who were imprisoned there under the ancien rÉgime. It was demolished in 1780.—T.

[46]

“Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name give glory!

“Know our heart and search out our ways.”

[47] “The victory is won!”—T.

[48] Charenton was under the direction of a religious order known as the FrÈres de la CharitÉ, who undertook the care of sick and weak-minded poor.—T.

[49] This was Elizabeth Chudleigh (1720-1788), the notorious beauty who privately married the Hon. Augustus Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, separated from him after three years, and became the mistress of the second Duke of Kingston, whom she bigamously married. After his death she was tried by the House of Lords for bigamy, and fled to France to escape punishment. Her gallantries and eccentricities were the talk of Europe.—T.

[50] Instructed by his misfortunes and his captivity how to vanquish the efforts and the rage of tyrants, he taught the French how true courage can win liberty.

[51] Jocrisse is the stock French type of the booby, and as such is a character in many comedies. He breaks a plate, for instance; his master asks him how he managed to be so clumsy, and he instantly smashes another, saying, “Just like that!” His master asks him to be sure and wake him early in the morning; Jocrisse answers: “Right, sir, depend on me; but of course you’ll ring!”—T.

[52] The Girondists (so called from Gironde, a district of Bordeaux) were the more sober republican party in the Assembly, who were forced by circumstances to join the Jacobins against Louis XVI. With their fall from power in the early summer of 1792 the last hope of the monarchy disappeared.—T.

[53] Referring to the horrible massacres of September, 1792, when about 1400 victims perished.—T.

[54] The French Dick Turpin. Of good education, he formed when quite a youth a band of robbers, and became the terror of France. Like Turpin, he is the subject of dramas and stories.—T.

[55] A forest near Paris, on the line to Avricourt. It was a famous haunt of brigands. There is a well-known story of a dog which attacked and killed the murderer of its master there.—T.

[56] Literally “cut-top”: we have no equivalent in English.—T.

[57] A five-act comedy by Victorien Sardou.

[58] The nickname given to the Jacobins, the extreme revolutionists, who sat on the highest seats on the left in the National Assembly.—T.

[59] Which were the strict preserves of the aristocrats: to fish in them was as great a crime as to shoot a landlord’s rabbit was, a few years ago, in England.—T.