Transcriber’s Note: This book uses the spelling “Bastile” throughout (rather than “Bastille” as is more common in modern times). THE HISTORY OF THE BASTILE. THE HISTORY OF THE BASTILE, AND OF ITS PRINCIPAL CAPTIVES. BY R. A. DAVENPORT. AUTHOR OF THE “NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY,” ETC. ETC. Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats, Old or of later date, by sea or land, Her house of bondage, worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh—the Bastile.—COWPER. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THOMAS TEGG AND SON, 73, CHEAPSIDE. 1838. LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. ADVERTISEMENT. The execution of a plan so frequently falls immeasurably short of the author’s original conception, that some wit, of whom I have forgotten the name, has likened them to the cry of an oriental fruit-hawker: “In the name of the Prophet—figs!” I can bear witness how much what is purposed goes beyond what is accomplished. I began loftily, and perhaps the reader will say, that I have ended with—figs. At the outset I designed to link, in some measure, the history of the Bastile with that of France, and to trace the rise and progress of those parties, factions, and sects, which furnished inmates to the prisons of state. But I soon discovered that the contracted limits of a single volume would not admit of my plan being carried into execution. By much enlarging the page, and by making, at no small cost, a very considerable addition to the number of pages, the publisher has liberally endeavoured to give me the means of rendering the work less imperfect than it would otherwise have been; but I have, nevertheless, been exceedingly cramped by the want of adequate space. But, though I have not done all that I wished to do, I am by no means disposed to disparage my labours. I have consulted every document that was accessible, and have conscientiously tried to be strictly just, and to combine information with amusement. I indulge a hope that the volume will tend not only to keep up an abhorrence of arbitrary power, but also to inspire affection for governments which hold it to be a duty to promote the happiness of the people. Whatever may be its defects, it is the only work in the English language that has even the slightest pretension to be denominated a History of the Bastile. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I.