Inside the Bastille: The Prison So Many Feared and a Few Enjoyed

The Bastille, Paris. It’s one of those names in French history we’ve all heard, usually followed by talk of revolution, guillotines, and a certain July day in 1789. But before it became the headline act of the French Revolution, it had already had a checkered past, full of royal secrets and high-profile prisoners

The Bastille was a fortress. It started life as a military stronghold and slowly morphed into a symbol of royal power. Over the centuries, it held everyone from political enemies to unlucky publishers, and it wasn’t always the bleak, grim place we’re led to believe. Some inmates had private libraries. Others brought their own furniture.

I’m diving into the history books of France and pulling back the curtain on the Bastille. Not just the day it was stormed, but how it got there, who built it, and who passed through its iron gates. It’s the stories that rarely make it into history class, and by the end of the lesson, you’ll see why this fortress-turned-prison captured the imagination of generations long after it was reduced to rubble.

The Birth of a Fortress: 14th Century Beginnings

To understand the Bastille, you’ve got to turn back the clock to the 1300s, and a time when Paris didn’t yet have its beautiful boulevards or romantic image. It was muddy and crowded, and it was constantly bracing for attack. In 1356, the English were on the move during the Hundred Years’ War, and Paris felt exposed. That’s when King Charles V decided the city needed more than luck and a few crumbling walls to defend it.

Construction began in 1370. What started as two towers guarding the eastern gate quickly expanded into something far more serious: a full-blown fortress with eight massive towers, thick stone walls, a moat over 24 meters wide, and drawbridges. It looked like something straight out of a medieval battle scene, and that’s exactly what it was designed for. This wasn’t a prison. Not yet. It was a military outpost meant to keep enemies out and royal power in.

The location wasn’t random, either. The Bastille stood guard over the Porte Saint-Antoine, an essential entry point into the city. Anyone coming in from the east had to pass under its watchful eye. A warning to anyone thinking of marching on Paris. 

From Royal Stronghold to State Prison

By the early 1600s, the Bastille had started to shift roles. The wars had moved on, but the need to control people hadn’t gone anywhere. Under Cardinal Richelieu, the fortress changed from a military defence post to a place where inconvenient voices went to disappear. Not through a court. Not through a trial. Just a signature on a royal document called a lettre de cachet, and you were in.

Conditions varied wildly depending on who you were and how much money you had. Nobles often brought their own furniture, books, even servants. Some rooms had fireplaces and windows. Others were little more than stone cells. The Bastille became less about punishment and more about control, containing people the monarchy didn’t want stirring the pot.

What Was a Lettre de Cachet?

The lettre de cachet was basically a royal fast-pass to prison. Signed by the king and sealed with the royal mark (cachet), it allowed someone, often on the advice of a minister or powerful court figure, to have a person locked up without any trial, hearing, or explanation. No judge. No jury. Just the stroke of a pen.

It wasn’t always used for treason or scandal. Sometimes it was personal. A father might request to send his rebellious son to the Bastille. A noble family could have a troublesome daughter locked away to avoid gossip. Writers who offended the wrong people were imprisoned just for what they published. Voltaire is a classic example.

It all came down to control. The lettres de cachet weren’t about justice. They were about keeping order and silencing dissent without dragging things through the courts. And the Bastille was the perfect place to send someone you wanted out of sight, but not necessarily tortured or executed. It was clean, quiet, and out of reach. He reportedly used the silence to write. 

The Bastille’s Quirky Side

The Bastille was full of odd stories and little twists that most history books skip. Here are a few I found during my time going into the depths of the history books:

• Not your average prison food.
  Some prisoners dined really well. Voltaire, who was locked up for insulting a nobleman, reportedly had wine and oysters delivered to his cell. Not exactly bread and water.
  
• The mystery man.
  One of the Bastille’s most puzzling prisoners was the Man in the Iron Mask. No one really knows who he was. Some say he was the king’s twin brother. Others think he was just a valet with very inconvenient secrets. The Bastille was one of four prisons in France where he spent time.
  
• Napoleon’s giant elephant.
  After the Bastille was torn down, Napoleon had big ideas. He wanted a 24-meter-tall bronze elephant to rise from the ruins. The full version was never built, but a life-size plaster model stood on the site for years. It even made a cameo in Les Misérables, where Gavroche used it as a hideout.

The Fateful Day: Storming of the Bastille

By July 1789, Paris was on edge. Bread prices were soaring, and rumors of royal crackdowns were everywhere. The people were tired of taxes, corruption, and feeling powerless while the aristocracy waltzed around in powdered wigs. When Louis XVI sent troops into Paris, it felt like a threat. The city was ready to explode, and it did.

On the morning of July 14, a crowd gathered, not yet a mob, but angry and armed with whatever they could find. They weren’t after prisoners. What they really wanted was gunpowder, which was stored in the Bastille. But the fortress was still heavily guarded, and its governor, Bernard-René de Launay, wasn’t exactly planning to hand over the keys.

Negotiations started. Tensions rose. Shots were fired. The standoff lasted hours until finally, the gates were breached. Launay was captured and killed by the crowd. Inside the Bastille? Just seven prisoners. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the symbolism. The people had taken down the king’s fortress. Brick by brick, they were pulling the old world apart, and the Bastille’s fall became the spark that lit the French Revolution.

Demolition and Legacy

The Bastille didn’t stand for long after the revolutionaries took it. Within days, the real demolition began. A man named Pierre-François Palloy took charge of the project and quickly saw an opportunity. He started turning chunks of the Bastille into souvenirs such as paperweights, medals, and even replicas of the fortress itself. Revolutionary marketing at its best.

Some stones were used to build the Pont de la Concorde. Others were shipped across France as physical proof that the monarchy’s grip had been shattered. Today, there’s no fortress left to see. The Place de la Bastille is now a busy roundabout with the July Column at its centre, marking a later revolution in 1830. 

But look closely, and history hasn’t vanished entirely. A few stones from the original moat still lie hidden near the Boulevard Henri IV. And every 14 July, Bastille Day, the memory of that fortress still echoes through the parades, the fireworks, and the deep sense that something powerful happened there which changed France forever.

So next time someone says, “Oh, the Bastille? That prison they stormed?” you’ll know better. And hopefully, you’ll have a few stories up your sleeve that go far beyond the gates.