The Dungeons of Old Paris - Being the Story and Romance of the most Celebrated Prisons of the Monarchy and the Revolution by Tighe Hopkins

Author:Tighe Hopkins [Hopkins, Tighe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-04-05T22:00:00+00:00

The story of governor Bouchotte, who had charge of Sainte-Pélagie at this terrible epoch, is a noble one. The September massacres had begun, and the red-bonnets in detachments were sharing the butchery at the prisons. The Abbaye, the Carmes, the Force, and the Conciergerie had given them prompt entrance; the turnkeys saluting the self-styled judges, say MM. Alhoy and Lurine, as the grave-digger salutes the hangman. Not so governor Bouchotte of Sainte-Pélagie. The mob swarmed at the doors, but to their clattering on the panels no answer was vouchsafed. Pikes, hammers, and axes resounded on the solid portals, but silence the most complete reigned behind them.

"Can citizen Bouchotte have been beforehand with us?— Le citoyen Bouchotte, nous aurait-il devancés? " cried one. "Not an aristocrat voice to be heard! Bouchotte has perhaps finished them off himself."

The neighbouring houses were ransacked for tools proper to effect an entrance, and the doors were burst open. The mob poured in; and there, bound hand and foot on the flags in the courtyard of the prison, they found the governor and his wife.

"Citizens," cried Bouchotte, "you arrive too late! My prisoners are gone. They got warning of your coming, and after binding my wife and myself as you see us, they made their escape."

Bouchotte was taken at his word, he and his wife were released from their cords, and the red-bonnets went off to wreak a double vengeance at Bicêtre. At the risk of his own and of his wife's life, the admirable Bouchotte had tricked the cut-throats. He had uncaged his birds and given them their liberty through a private postern, and had then ordered his warders to tie up his wife and himself. Honour to the brave memory of Bouchotte! The history of the French Revolution has few brighter passages than this.

Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-Pélagie under the bloody rule of Robespierre. [18] The prison itself he describes as "damp and unwholesome" ( humide et malsaine ). There were about three hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers.

18. Histoire des Prisons de Paris et des Départements.

To each prisoner was allotted a cell six feet square, "with a dirty bed and a mattress as hard as marble." The turnkey's first question to a new-comer was: "Have you any money?" If the answer was, Yes, he was supplied with "a basin and a water-jug and a few cracked plates, for which he paid triple their worth." If the prisoner entered with empty pockets, it was: "So much the worse for you; for the rule here is that nothing buys nothing" ( on n'a rien pour rien ). In this plight, says Nougaret, the prisoner was obliged to sell some poor personal effect in order to obtain the strictest necessaries of life. "A citizen who occupied, in the month of Floréal, cell number 10 in the corridor of the second story, sacrificed for twenty-five francs a gold ring worth about £20, to procure for himself those same necessities.

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