What It Was Actually Like To Be A Prisoner In The Bastille

Hugues Aubriot was appointed Provost of Paris by King Charles V during the mid-14th century. Aubriot oversaw construction of the first sewer system in Paris as well as the building of the Bastille. The Bastille was originally a fortification to prevent the English from entering the city.

Aubriot enjoyed the favor of Charles V, but made numerous enemies along the way. Aubriot was taken into custody after Charles V's death in 1380 CE for antagonizing the University of Paris and the Church. Accused of heresy, excessive drinking, and sympathy toward Jews, Aubriot was held at the Bastille while he underwent the Inquisition. 

Aubriot was so defiant during his interrogation that he was sentenced to be burned at the stake. He was granted clemency and sentenced to life in prison on bread and water instead. During the upheaval in Paris in 1382, a mob released him from the Bastille and he fled Paris for good. 

When it was built, eight towers made up the Bastille:

In each tower, was a winding staircase, which descended to a dungeon, below, and led to the rooms above it… Those dungeons were arched, paved, and lined with stone, Most of them had a slit towards the ditch, that let in air, and a very small degree of light… It is said they were intended as places of temporary punishment for prisoners who attempted to make their escape… 

The idea that the Bastille wasn't a permanent prison held true on and off, and it continued to be used as a fortress, too. 

During the mid-15th century reign of Louis XI,  the Bastille held defiant princes and other enemies of the king as a prison, expanding its use. 

One of the prisoners held at the Bastille by Louis XI was Jacques d'Armagnac, Duke of Neumours. Neumours was involved in a rebellion against the king and, when he was taken into custody, “his wife, who foresaw what would happen, died of fright.” Neumours was later transported to the Bastille where, according to Louis XI, he was not to be,

allowed to stir from his cage, let him never be taken out but to be tortured. 

While his treatment may have been overstated over time, Neumours was purportedly executed two years later with his children placed under the scaffold where their father died:

His three children were… bareheaded, clothed, in white robes, and with their hands bound behind them, that the blood of their beheaded father might drop upon them.

Afterwards, the children spent five more years in prison.

Before the 17th century, the Bastille never housed a large number of prisoners. Cardinal Richelieu, the French churchman and chief minister to King Louis XIII, is considered the man who essentially turned the Bastille into a state prison after he confined enemies of the state and the church alike at the prison.

When prisoners arrived at the Bastille, they were given names based on the cell that held them. With everyone a potential prisoner - Richelieu effectively issued writs without oversight - the threat of being placed in the Bastille was often enough to deter wrongdoing. 

This wasn't always the case, as demonstrated by Dessault, a man who refused to carry out an order from Richelieu. In response,

At midnight a band of soldiers entered his chamber, tore him from his bed, and dragged him through the dark streets to the Bastille, and there consigned him to a living burial in one of its cold damp tombs of iron and stone. 

He spent 11 years there before Richelieu died, begging the Cardinal on his deathbed to grant him mercy. Richelieu didn't, and Dessault was there for another 50 years.  

Prisoners were kept in “cells,” “calottes,” or “suites” at the Bastille. The poorest prisoners were kept in cells. Cells were essentially dungeons, partially below ground and were “cold and damp… [with] walls, grey with mold.” Water entered the cells when the River Seine flooded and “daylight feebly flickered through the vent-hole.”

One level up were the calottes. Described as extremely hot in the summer and cold in the winter, they were octagonal in shape with windows and whitewashed walls. Prisoners wrote or drew on the walls but “it was impossible to stand upright except in the middle of the room.”

Suites were at the top of the Bastille and were where both the staff and the “prisoners of distinction" were kept. Modest at first, prisoners brought in their own decorations and furniture to make them more hospitable. 

During the reigns of Kings Louis XIV and XV during the 18th century, the Bastille as a prison reached new levels in the number of prisoners it held. 

That said, being a prisoner at the Bastille wasn't always a discomfort. Prisoners in the “suites” sent for furniture, clothing and other creature comforts to improve upon the standard table, bed, and pot already present:

Prisoners ornamented their rooms with family portraits; they procured chests of drawers, desks, round tables, dressing-cases, armchairs, cushions in Utrecht velvet; the inventories of articles belonging to the prisoners show that they managed to secure everything that they thought necessary. [One prisoner] brought into the Bastille five armchairs, two pieces of tapestry, eleven serge hangings, eight chairs, a bureau, a small table, three pictures; [another prisoner had] a library consisting of 333 volumes and ten atlases, a complete service of fine linen and plate for the table, a bed furnished with gold-bordered red damask, four pieces of tapestry on antique subjects, two mirrors, a screen of gold-bordered red damask matching the bed, two folding screens, two armchairs with cushions, an armchair in leather, three chairs in tapestry, an overmantel of gilt copper, tables, drawers, stands, candlestick of plated copper.