Vincennes, till the palace of the Tuileries could be prepared for him.
In 1731, the trees in the forest of Vincennes being decayed with age,
were felled, and acorns were sown in a regular manner through the park,
from which have sprung the oaks which now form one of the most shady and
agreeable woods in the neighbourhood of Paris.

Vincennes, though no longer a royal residence, continued to be a
state-prison. Here the celebrated Mirabeau was confined from 1777
to 1780; and wrote, during that time, besides other works, his _Lettres
à Sophie_. This prison having become nearly useless, during the reign
of the unfortunate Louis XVI., it was thrown open to the public in 1784.
During the early stages of the revolution, Vincennes was used as a place
of confinement for disorderly women.

Under Bonaparte, it again became a state prison; and a more horrible
despotism appears to have been exercised within its walls than at any
former period. The unfortunate Duke d'Enghien, who was arrested in
Germany on the 15th of March, 1804, having been conducted to Vincennes
on the 20th, at five in the evening, was condemned to death the same
night by a military commission, and shot at half-past four on the
following morning, in one of the ditches of the castle. His body was
interred on the spot where he fell. On the 20th of March, 1816, the
eve of the anniversary of his death, a search having been made for his
remains, by order of Louis XVIII., they were discovered, and placed with
religious care in a coffin, which was transported into the same room of
the chateau in which the council of war condemned him to death, where it
remained till the Gothic chapel was repaired and a monument erected to
receive it. On the coffin is this inscription.--_Ici est le corps du
très-haut, très-puissant prince, Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc
d'Enghien, Prince du Sang, Pair de France. Mort à Vincennes, le 21 Mars,