When they came to Paris in the twelfth century, the Templars obtained leave to settle in the Marshes, whose baleful exhalations cost the town a plague or two every year. In no long time they had completely transformed that dismal and pestilential swamp. Herculean labours witnessed as their outcome oaks, elms, and beeches growing where the rotten ooze had bred but reeds and osiers. Vast buildings, too, arose as if by magic, with towers and turrets protecting them, drawbridges, battlemented walls, and trenches. The principal tower of the pile enclosed the treasure and arsenal of the Order, and four smaller towers or turrets served as a prison for those who had transgressed the stark monastic rules. On the broad terrace of the Temple three hundred men had space for exercise at cross-bow and halberd.

Philip III. bestowed a royal recompense on the laborious monks who had reclaimed those miasmatic marshes and given new means of defence to the capital; and towards the close of the thirteenth century the Templars had become an extraordinary power in France. In Paris they exercised large justiciary rights, and had their gallows standing without the Temple walls. They were concerned in all enterprises, civil, political, and military; their sovereignty was such that princes had to reckon with them, on pain of contact with the monkish steel. They had great monopolies of grain, and owned some of the richest lands in the kingdom; they touched the revenues of from eight to ten thousand manors. The Templars guarded at need the towns, treasures, and archives of royalty; and kings, popes, and nobles were their visitors and guests.

The fortress dwelling of the Temple which had sprung fairy-like from the foul marshes of Paris shone with a splendour above that of the royal residence. Twenty-four columns of silver, carved and chased, sustained the audience-chamber of the grand master; and the chapter-hall, paved in mosaic, and enriched with woodwork in cedar of Lebanon, contained sixty huge vases of solid gold and a veritable armoury of Arabian, Moorish, and Turkish weapons, chiselled, damascened, and crusted with precious stones. The private chamber of every knight of the Order was distinguished by some particular object of beauty; whilst the chambers of the officers and commanders were stored with riches "so that they were a wonder to behold."

How great a gulf separated the wealthy and powerful Templars of Paris from those "poor brothers of the Temple who rode two on one horse, lived frugally, without wives or children, had no goods of their own, and who, when they were not taking the field against the infidels, were employed in mending their weapons and the harness of their horses, or in pious exercises prescribed for them by their chief."

The first institution of the Order of the Temple dates from the year 1118, when "certain brave and devout gentlemen" obtained from King Baudouin III. "the noble favour of guarding the approaches to Jerusalem." The Council of Troyes, in 1128, confirmed the religious and military Order of the Templars. The knights clothed themselves in long white robes adorned with a red cross; and the standard of the Order, called the BeaucÈant, was white and black, for an emblem of life and death,—death for the infidels and life for the Christians of the Holy Land. Bravery in battle was almost an article of their faith; no Templar would fly from three opponents.

In the day of their military and political power, the Templars of France acknowledged none but the authority of the grand master of the Order, and treated with royalty as between power and power. Up to the reign of Philippe le Bel, the Kings of France were little more than courtiers of the Temple, Royalty knocked humbly at those august, defiant portals, for leave to deposit within them its treasures and its charters, or to solicit a loan from the golden coffers of the knights. Not so, however, Philippe le Bel.

This was the sovereign who, in 1307, broke the power of the Knights Templars of France. The act of accusation which he flung at the Order proscribed its members as "ravening wolves," "a perfidious and idolatrous society, whose works, nay, whose very words soil the earth and infect the air." The last grand master, Jacques de Molay, seized by the King's Inquisitor, passed through the torments of the torture chamber, and thence to the torments of the stake. The Knights of the Temple in their turn, loaded with chains, were led before the Inquisitor, Guillaume de Paris, to answer his charges of heresy and idolatry. The Templars were pursued through all the States of Europe, the Pope encouraging the hue and cry. Jacques de Molay, and his companion in misfortunes, Gui, Dauphin of Auvergne, were burned alive in Paris; and the persecution of the Templars lasted for six years. Their Order was abolished, and most of their wealth was bestowed by Philippe upon the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

The prison of the Temple became a prison of the State; and the Temple and the Louvre were the forerunners of the Bastille. The Dukes of Aquitaine and Brabant were confined in the Temple under Philippe V. and Philippe de Valois, the Counts of Dammartin and Flanders under King John. Four sovereigns, indeed, Charles VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., seemed to have forgotten the dungeon which the Templars had bequeathed them (they might well have done so, since MediÆval Paris had its prisons at every turn); and the cells and chambers in the great tower of the Temple remained closed,—to be opened no more until after the 10th of August, 1792.

But there were social passages of interest in the history of this famous fastness, and it was not unfitting that Francis I., the magnificent monarch of the Renaissance, should repair the palace of the Templars, restore those historic ruins, re-establish the spreading gardens, gild afresh those illustrious halls,—re-create, in a word, the once brilliant dwelling of the Chevaliers of the Cross: in 1540, the Temple became the sumptuous abode of the Grand Priors of France.

In the last years of the seventeenth century, Philippe de VendÔme, prince of the blood and knight of Malta, was named Grand Prior of the Temple. He would have his priory worthy of the gallant and graceful Court of the Palais-Royal; and the handsomest and most amiable of ladies, and the finest and gayest of wits were bidden to his historic suppers. The oaks that had shadowed the cross of Jacques de Molay lent their shelter now to "all the gods of Olympus," summoned within the green enclosure of the Temple by the lively invocations of La Fare and de Chaulieu.

In the eighteenth century, this same enclosure had a population of four thousand souls, divided into three distinct classes. There was first the house of the Grand Prior, the dignitaries of the Order, and certain nobles; then, a numerous body of workers of all grades; and lastly, a rather heterogeneous collection of debtors who were able to elude their creditors within these precincts, in virtue of a MediÆval prescript—which justice ceased to respect in 1779.

At this epoch, the Government of Louis XVI.—as if with a presentiment of what the Temple was shortly to become for the King of France—ordered the demolition of the old fortress of the Templars. But the destroyers of 1779 overthrew only a portion of the tower; the dungeon itself remained, to be witness of a royal agony.

See, then, at length, after the revolution of the 10th of August, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette prisoners in the prison of the Temple! Marie Antoinette, most imprudent and most amiable, most unfortunate and most calumniated of women; Louis XVI., poor honest gentleman, whose passive intelligence drew from Turgot this prophetic word: "Sire, a weak prince can make choice only between the musket of Charles IX. and the scaffold of Charles I." The King was without force and without prestige; the Queen was incapable either of giving or of receiving a lesson in royalty.

Taciturn, and subject to sudden fits of temper; as much embarrassed by his wife as by his crown, Louis divided his time between hunting and those little harmless hobbies which showed that, had the fates desired, he might have made an excellent artisan. As for Marie Antoinette, what rÔle was there for her, the victim of perpetual suspicion, in the midst of a tremendous political reaction? It was reproached against her, not without reason, that she could never fashion for herself the conscience of a queen. She felt herself a woman, young and beautiful; she forgot that she was also the partner of a throne. Full of personal charm, liking to toy with elegant pleasures, wedded to a man so little made for her, surrounded by gallant courtiers whom her beauty and graces intoxicated, Marie Antoinette had her share of ardent emotions, and more than once she was at last forgetful of her pride, cette pudeur des reines; but her position at the Court of France was so false and so complicated that, let her have done what she would, she might not have escaped the abyss towards which her own feet impelled her.

To the Temple, then, they were hurried, Louis and his family, on the 14th of August, 1792. The tower of the fortress was allotted to them, and a portion of the palace and all the adjacent buildings were levelled, so that the dungeon proper was completely isolated. The space of garden reserved for their daily exercise was enclosed between lofty walls. Louis occupied the first floor of the prison and his family the second. Every casement was protected by thick iron bars, and the outer windows were masked in such a manner that the prisoners obtained scarcely a glimpse of the world beyond their cage. Six wickets defended the staircase which led to the King's apartment; so low and narrow that it was necessary to squeeze through them in a stooping posture. Each door was of iron, heavily barred, and was kept locked at all hours. After Louis' imprisonment, a seventh wicket with a door of iron was constructed at the top of the stairs, which no one could open unassisted. The first door of Louis' chamber was also of iron; so here were eight solid barriers betwixt the King and his friends in freedom,—not counting the dungeon walls. A guard of some three hundred men watched night and day around the Temple.

These costly preparations on his Majesty's account (great sums, it is said, were spent on them) were not completed in a day, and in the meantime the Royal family inhabited that portion of the palace of the Temple which had been left standing. In his daily walks in the garden, King Louis looked on at the building of his last earthly mansion, and must have noticed the desperate haste with which the builders worked! In the middle of September, he passed into the shades of the dungeon.

Once locked in there, he was forbidden the use of pens, ink, and paper; no writing materials were allowed him until the national convention had commanded his appearance at the bar.

The large chamber assigned to the King was partitioned into four compartments; the first served as a dining-room, the second was Louis' bed-chamber, and his valet slept in the third; the fourth was a little cabinet contrived in a turret, to which the royal prisoner was fond of retiring. His bed-chamber was hung in yellow and decently furnished. A little clock on the chimney-piece bore on its pedestal the words "Lepante, Clockmaker for the King." When the convention had decreed France a republic, Louis' gaolers scratched out the last three words of the inscription. They hung in his dining-room the declaration of the rights of the Constitution of 1792, at the foot of which ran the legend: "First year of the Republic." This was their announcement to Louis that he had fallen from his king's estate.

Like a murderer of these days in the condemned hold, Louis had two guards with him night and day. They passed the day in his bed-chamber, following him to the dining-room when he took his meals; and in the dining-room they slept at night, after locking the doors of the apartments.

Their captivity was full of indignity for the illustrious unfortunates, whose guards were incessantly suspicious. If Louis addressed a question during the night to the valet who slept close to him, the answer must be spoken loudly. The members of the family were not allowed to whisper in their conversations, and if at dinner Louis, or his wife, or his sister chanced to speak low in asking anything of the servant who waited on them, one of the guards at the door cried, "Parlez plus haut!"

Apart from suspense as to the future, a terrible dreariness must have marked those days in the Temple. The early morning was given by the King to his private devotions, after which he read the office which the Chevaliers of the Order of the Saint-Esprit were accustomed to recite daily. His piety was not without its inconveniences to himself. The table was furnished with meat on Fridays, but Louis dipped a slice of bread in his wine glass with the remark: "voilÀ mon diner!" To the gentle suggestion that such extreme abstinence might be dispensed with, he replied: "I do not trouble your conscience; why trouble mine? You have your practices, and I have my own; let each hold to those which he believes the best."

His devotions engaged the King until nine o'clock, at which hour his family joined him in the dining-room,—that is to say, during the period in which it was still permitted him to communicate with them. He sat with them at breakfast, eating nothing himself; he had made it a rule in prison to fast until the dinner-hour. After breakfast the King took his son for lessons in Latin and geography, and whilst Marie Antoinette taught their daughter, sister Elizabeth plied her needle. The children had an hour's play at mid-day, and at one o'clock the family assembled for dinner. The table was always well supplied, but Louis ate little and drank less, and the Queen took nothing but water with her food.

After dinner the parents amused their children again as best they could, round games at the table being the favourite recreation. To these poor little pleasures succeeded reading and conversation, and at nine the prisoners supped. After supper, Louis took the boy to his bed-chamber, where a little bed was placed for him beside his own. He heard him recite his prayers, and saw him to bed. Then he returned to reading, and fell to his own prayers at eleven. When the doomed King, husband, and father was denied the solace of his family, the time that he had devoted to them was given almost wholly to his books. The Latins were his favourite authors, and a day seldom passed on which he had not conned afresh some pages of Tacitus, Livy, Seneca, Horace, Virgil, or Terence. In French he was especially fond of books of travel. He read the news of the day as long as he was supplied with it, but his not unnatural interest in the affairs of revolutionary France seemed to trouble his gaolers, and the newspapers were withdrawn from him. Thrown back upon his books, he studied more than ever, and on the eve of his death he summed up the volumes he had read through during the five months and seven days of his captivity in the Temple: the number was two hundred and fifty-seven.

Towards the end he suffered some brusque interruptions of his ignominious solitude. Three times he awoke to find a new valet in his bedroom. Chamilly's place in this capacity was taken by Hue, and Hue was succeeded by ClÉry, who was all but a stranger to the King. Chamilly and Hue barely came off with their lives in the prisons to which they were removed from the Temple. The abandoned King took shock upon shock with not a little fortitude. He was skimming his Tacitus one day when the cannibals of September stopped under his window to brandish on a pike the bleeding and disfigured head of the Princess Lamballe.

Severely as they had guarded him, his gaolers began to double their precautions. The concierge of the dungeon, the chief warder,—all, in a word, who were specially charged with the keeping of the King, were themselves constituted prisoners of the Temple. Did you wait on Louis, or were you suffered to approach him, your person was searched minutely at the governor's discretion. Not the commonest instrument of steel or iron was allowed to be carried by anyone who went near the King: ClÉry was deprived of his penknife. Every article of food passed into the prison for Louis' table was rigorously examined; and the prison cook had to taste every dish, under the eyes of the guard, before it was permitted to leave the kitchen. Never was suicide more strenuously denied to a man who had no thought of it.

The prisoners themselves were not spared the indignity of the search. Louis, his wife, and his sister had their cupboards, drawers, and closets ransacked; they were spoiled of knives, scissors, and curling-irons. Louis' pains were prolonged to the end. The courage he had mustered for death, and it was a very commendable portion, failed him a moment at the last. In his confessor's hands, on the morning of his death, whilst the carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard, he halted in his prayers. He had, as he thought, caught a note of tears on the other side of the partition, and he dreaded a second last embrace. His ear strained at the wall, whilst the priest's hand was on his head. But there was no weeping there, for Marie Antoinette was on her knees under her crucifix; and Louis went down to his carriage. There is no need to tell again the last scene of all....

Marie Antoinette was removed to the Conciergerie, which she quitted only for the scaffold. After the parents had passed under the knife, the young dauphin and his sister Marie ThÉrÈse continued in the prison of the Temple "the sorrowful Odyssey of the Royalty of France." The daughter of Marie Antoinette must quit the Temple to go into exile, the son of Louis XVI. must die wretchedly in the prison of his father. The "education" of the poor little dauphin was entrusted to Simon the shoemaker, whose wife, it is said, used to teach him ribald songs. He had a charming face and a crooked back, "as if life were already too heavy for him." In the hands of those singular preceptors he came to lose nearly all his moral faculties, and the sole sentiment which he cherished was that of gratitude, "not so much for the good that was done him—which was small—as for the ills that were spared him. Without uttering a word, he would precipitate himself before his guards, press their hands, and kiss the hems of their coats."^[13] After the retreat of Simon, who had not used his gentle captive over-tenderly, the dauphin's imprisonment was somewhat kinder, though he continued to be watched as closely as before. His gaoler one day asked him: "What would you do to Simon, little master, if you were to become king?" "I would have him punished as an example," answered the young Capet. He had had no news of Simon for two years, and did not know that the ungentle shoemaker had perished on the scaffold.^[14]

The little dauphin's own untimely death, while still a prisoner in the Temple, induced more than one audacious adventurer to seek to assume the mask of Louis XVI's son. Hervagaut, Mathurin Bruneau, and more recently the Duc de Normandie essayed in turn the rÔle of pretender, "draped in the shroud of Louis XVII." The first-named, condemned in 1802 to four years' imprisonment, died ten years later in BicÊtre. The second, tried at Rouen in 1818, received a sentence of seven years; and the Duc de Normandie ended his days in Holland.

The Convention seems to have given no political prisoners to the tower of the Temple, which was again a prison of State under the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire.

It was the Directory which consigned to the Temple the celebrated English Admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, M.P. for Rochester, who had defended Acre against Napoleon, and who was arrested at Havre "on the point of setting fire to the port." He was transferred to the Temple from the Abbey, the order of transfer bearing the signature of Barras.

On the 10th of May, 1798, certain friends of the Admiral, disguised in French uniform, presented to the concierge of the Temple a document purporting to be an order of the Minister of War for the removal of Sir Sidney to another prison. The concierge fell into the trap, and bade adieu to his prisoner, who, a few days later, found himself safe in London.

The mysterious conspiracy of the Camp de Grenelle furnished the Temple with a batch of one hundred and thirty-five prisoners; and the coup d'État which swept them in proscribed also the editors of twenty-two French journals. During the next eight years the most distinguished of the "enemies of the Republic" whose names were entered on the Temple register were Lavalette; Caraccioli, the Ambassador of the King of Naples to the Court of Louis XVI.; Hottinguer, the banker of the Rue de Provence; Hyde de Neuville; the journalist Bertin; Toussaint-Louverture, the hero of Saint-Domingue, who had written to Buonaparte: "Le premier homme des noirs au premier homme des blancs"; the two Polignacs, the Duc de RiviÈre, George Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru.

General Pichegru, arrested on the 28th of February, 1804, "for having forgotten in the interests of the English and the Royalists what he owed to the French Republic," was found dead in his cell on the 6th of April following, having strangled himself with a black silk cravat. Moreau, liberated by the First Consul, took service in the ranks of the enemy, and was slain by a French bullet before Dresden, in 1813.

Toussaint-Louverture's detention in the Temple is an episode which reflects little credit upon the military and political history of the Consulate. Certainly the expedition of Saint-Domingue, under the command of General Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law, makes a poor page in the annals of that period. After having received Toussaint-Louverture's submission, Leclerc, afraid of the great negro's influence, made him a prisoner by the merest trick, and despatched him to France. Confined at first in the Temple, he was afterwards removed to the fort of Joux, where he died in April, 1803.

Five years after this, in June, 1808, the prisoners of the Temple were transferred by FouchÉ's order to the Dungeon of Vincennes. Amongst them was General Malet, that bold conspirator who, in 1812, "devait porter la main sur la couronne de l'Empereur."

The tower of the Temple was demolished in 1811, and, four years later, Louis XVIII. instituted, on the ruins of the ancient dwelling of the Templars and the prison of Louis XVI., a congregation of nuns, who had for their Superior a daughter of Prince de CondÉ.