Editing Bastille (section)

===Reign of Louis XIV and the Regency (1661–1723)===
[[File:Bastille 1715.jpg|thumb|350px|The Bastille and Porte Saint-Antoine from the north-east, 1715–19]]

The area around the Bastille was transformed in the reign of Louis XIV. Paris' growing population reached 400,000 during the period, causing the city to spill out past the Bastille and the old city into the arable farmland beyond, forming more thinly populated ''[[faubourg]]s'', or suburbs.<ref>Trout, p. 12.</ref> Influenced by the events of the Fronde, Louis XIV rebuilt the area around the Bastille, erecting a new archway at the Porte Saint-Antoine in 1660, and then ten years later pulling down the city walls and their supporting fortifications to replace them with an avenue of trees, later called Louis XIV's boulevard, which passed around the Bastille.<ref>Coueret, p. 37; Hazan, pp. 14–5; ''[http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf La Bastille ou « l’Enfer des vivants »?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514183208/http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf |date=14 May 2011 }}'', [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]], accessed 8 August 2011.</ref> The Bastille's bastion survived the redevelopment, becoming a garden for the use of the prisoners.<ref>Funck-Brentano, p. 61.</ref>

Louis XIV made extensive use of the Bastille as a prison, with 2,320 individuals being detained there during his reign, approximately 43 a year.<ref name=BNF1>''[http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf La Bastille ou « l’Enfer des vivants »?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514183208/http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf |date=14 May 2011 }}'', [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]], accessed 8 August 2011.</ref> Louis used the Bastille to hold not just suspected rebels or plotters but also those who had simply irritated him in some way, such as differing with him on matters of religion.<ref>Lüsebrink and Reichardt, p. 6.</ref> The typical offences that inmates were accused of were espionage, counterfeiting and embezzlement from the state; a number of financial officials were detained in this way under Louis, most famously including [[Nicolas Fouquet]], his supporters [[Henry de Guénegaud]], Jeannin and [[Lorenzo de Tonti]].<ref>Trout, pp. 140–1.</ref> In 1685 Louis [[Edict of Fontainebleau|revoked the Edict of Nantes]], which had previously granted various rights to French Protestants; the subsequent royal crackdown was driven by the king's strongly anti-Protestant views.<ref>Collins, p. 103.</ref> The Bastille was used to investigate and break up Protestant networks by imprisoning and questioning the more recalcitrant members of the community, in particular upper-class [[Calvinist]]s; some 254 Protestants were imprisoned in the Bastille during Louis's reign.<ref>Cottret, p. 73; Trout, p. 142.</ref>

By Louis's reign, Bastille prisoners were detained using a ''[[lettre de cachet]]'', a letter under royal seal, issued by the king and countersigned by a minister, ordering a named person to be held.<ref name=TroutP142>Trout, p. 142.</ref> Louis, closely involved in this aspect of government, personally decided who should be imprisoned at the Bastille.<ref name=BNF1/> The arrest itself involved an element of ceremony: the individual would be tapped on the shoulder with a white baton and formally detained in the name of the king.<ref name=TroutP143>Trout, p. 143.</ref> Detention in the Bastille was typically ordered for an indefinite period and there was considerable secrecy over who had been detained and why: the legend of the "[[Man in the Iron Mask]]", a mysterious prisoner who finally died in 1703, symbolises this period of the Bastille.<ref>Trout, p. 141; Bély, pp. 124–5, citing Petitfils (2003).</ref> Although in practice many were held at the Bastille as a form of punishment, legally a prisoner in the Bastille was only being detained for preventative or investigative reasons: the prison was not officially supposed to be a punitive measure in its own right.<ref name=TroutP141>Trout, p. 141.</ref> The average length of imprisonment in the Bastille under Louis XIV was approximately three years.<ref name="LusebrinkP51"/>

[[File:Bastille, 1734.jpg|thumb|250px|left|The Bastille in 1734, showing the Louis XIV boulevard and the growing "[[faubourg]]" beyond the Porte Saint-Antoine]]

Under Louis, only between 20 and 50 prisoners were usually held at the Bastille at any one time, although as many as 111 were held for a short period in 1703.<ref name=TroutP142/> These prisoners were mainly from the upper classes, and those who could afford to pay for additional luxuries lived in good conditions, wearing their own clothes, living in rooms decorated with tapestries and carpets or taking exercise around the castle garden and along the walls.<ref name=TroutP141/> By the late 17th century, there was a rather disorganised library for the use of inmates in the Bastille, although its origins remain unclear.<ref>Lefévre, p. 156.</ref>{{refn|Andrew Trout suggests that the castle's library was originally a gift from [[Louis XIV]]; Martine Lefévre notes early records of the books of dead prisoners being lent out by the staff as a possible origin for the library, or alternatively that the library originated as a gift from Vinache, a rich [[Naples|Neapolitan]].<ref>Trout, p. 141, Lefévre, p. 156.</ref>|group=upper-alpha}}

Louis reformed the administrative structure of the Bastille, creating the post of governor, although this post was still often referred to as the captain-governor.<ref>Bournon, pp. 49, 52.</ref> During Louis's reign the policing of marginal groups in Paris was greatly increased: the wider criminal justice system was reformed, controls over printing and publishing extended, new criminal codes were issued and the post of the Parisian [[Prefecture of Police|lieutenant general of police]] was created in 1667, all of which would enable the Bastille's later role in support of the Parisian police during the 18th century.<ref>Dutray-Lecoin (2010b), p. 24; Collins, p. 149; McLeod, p. 5.</ref> By 1711, a 60-strong French military garrison had been established at the Bastille.<ref>Bournon, p. 53.</ref> It continued to be an expensive institution to run, particularly when the prison was full, such as during 1691 when numbers were inflated by the campaign against French Protestants and the annual cost of running the Bastille rose to 232,818 livres.<ref>Bournon, pp. 50–1.</ref>{{refn|Converting 17th century financial sums into modern equivalents is extremely challenging; for comparison, 232,818 livres was around 1,000 times the annual wages of a typical labourer of the period.<ref>Andrews, p. 66.</ref>|group=upper-alpha}}

Between 1715 – the year of Louis's death – and 1723, power transferred to the ''[[Régence]]''; the regent, [[Philippe II, Duke of Orléans|Philippe d'Orléans]], maintained the prison but the absolutist rigour of Louis XIV's system began to weaken somewhat.<ref>Funck-Brentano, pp. 72–3.</ref> Although Protestants ceased to be kept in the Bastille, the political uncertainties and plots of the period kept the prison busy and 1,459 were imprisoned there under the Regency, an average of around 182 a year.<ref>''[http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf La Bastille ou « l’Enfer des vivants »?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514183208/http://classes.bnf.fr/classes/pages/pdf/Bastille1.pdf |date=14 May 2011 }}'', [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]], accessed 8 August 2011; Schama, p. 331.</ref> During the [[Cellamare conspiracy]], the alleged enemies of the Regency were imprisoned in the Bastille, including [[Marguerite de Launay, baronne de Staal|Marguerite De Launay]].<ref name=FunckP73>Funck-Brentano, p. 73.</ref> While in the Bastille, de Launay fell in love with a fellow prisoner, the Chevalier de Ménil; she also infamously received an invitation of marriage from the Chevalier de Maisonrouge, the governor's deputy, who had fallen in love with her himself.<ref name=FunckP73/>