The Place de la Bastille

By Augustus J. C. Hare


[Footnote: From "Walks in Paris." By arrangement with the publisher, David
McKay. Copyright, 1880.]



The south end of the Rue des Tournelles falls into the Place de la
Bastille, containing Le Colonne de Juillet, surmounted by a statue of
Liberty, and erected 1831-1840. This marks the site of the famous castle-
prison of the Bastille, which for four centuries and a half terrified
Paris, and which has left a name to the quarter it frowned upon. Hugues
Ambriot, Mayor of Paris, built it under Charles V. to defend the suburb
which contained the royal palace of St. Paul. Unpopular from the excess of
his devotion to his royal master, Aubriot was the first prisoner in his
own prison.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the long list of after captives were the
Connetable de St. Pol and Jacques d'Armagnac, Due de Nemours, taken thence
for execution to the Place de Greve under Louis XI., Charles de Gontaut,
Due de Biron, executed within the walls of the fortress under Henri IV.,
and the "Man with the Iron Mask," brought hither mysteriously, September
18, 1698, and who died in the Bastille, November 19, 1703.

A thousand engravings show us the Bastille as it was--as a "fort-bastide"
--built on the line of the city walls just to the south of the Porte St.
Antoine, surrounded by its own moat. It consisted of eight round towers,