No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Keeping you in the dark: the Bastille archives and police secrecy in eighteenth-century France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2023
Abstract
During the French Revolution, the Bastille prison had become synonymous with abuses of power and government secrecy. The Paris police had long exercised secrecy in its operations, but in the eighteenth century, they became a target of the revolutionaries as the most visible arm of a government that was seen as opaque but intrusive. Both the growing power of the modernising state and the rise of public opinion in this period contributed to changing attitudes towards government secrecy and to the valorisation of transparency in the political culture of the Revolution.
French abstract
A la Révolution française, la prison de la Bastille était devenue synonyme d'abus de pouvoir et secret gouvernemental. La police parisienne avait longtemps gardé ses opérations secrètes, mais au XVIIIe siècle, ses interventions sont devenues la cible des révolutionnaires dénonçant le bras visible d'un gouvernement considéré non seulement comme opaque mais intrusif. A cette époque, l'Etat se modernisant gagnait en pouvoir, alors qu'en même temps montait l'opinion publique, ce qui contribua à faire évoluer les mentalités à l'égard du secret gouvernemental et à valoriser la transparence au sein de la culture politique de la Révolution.
German abstract
Während der Französischen Revolution war das Gefängnis der Bastille zum Inbegriff von Machtmissbrauch und behördlicher Geiheimniskrämerei gworden. Die Polizei von Paris war bei ihren Einsätzen seit langem im Geheimen vorgegangen, aber im 18. Jahrhundert wurde sie unter den Revolutionären zur Zielscheibe und galt als der hervorstechende Arm der Regierung, der als undurchsichtig und zugleich aufdringlich angesehen wurde. In diesem Zeitraum trugen sowohl die wachsende Macht des sich modernisierenden Staates als auch der Aufschwung der öffentlichen Meinung dazu bei, dass sich die Haltung zur behördlichen Geheimhaltung änderte und Transparenz in der politischen Kultur der Revolution eine Aufwertung erfuhr.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Notes
1 Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, Pierre-François Palloy, Discours à Messieurs les membres du Directoire des Districts, Cantons et des Municipalités du Departement (1790) CP 5252.
2 See Bocher, Héloïse, Démolir la Bastille: l’édification d'un lieu de mémoire (Paris, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, Pierre-François Palloy, Discours prononcé à la société de Sceaux l'unité, 10 Frimaire, Fête de la raison (Year II) CP 5252.
4 See Habermas, Jürgen, The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, trans. Burger, Thomas and Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar. See also Villa, Dana R., ‘Postmodernism and the public sphere’, The American Political Science Review 86, 3 (1992), 712–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foucault, Michel, ‘On politics and ethics’, in Rabinow, Paul ed., The Foucault reader (New York, 1984), 373–381Google Scholar; Woodward, Ashley, Lyotard and the inhuman condition: reflections on nihilism, information, and art (Edinburgh, 2018)Google Scholar; Lyotard, Jean-François, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar; Arendt, Hannah, The human condition (Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar.
5 For more on the imagination and rumours in pre-revolutionary France, see Jan Goldstein, The post-revolutionary self: politics and psyche in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 2005). For literature on the history of secrecy in the early modern period, see Gérard Vincent, ‘A history of secrets?’, in Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby eds., A history of private life, vol. V, transl. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, 1987), 145–283; Daniel Jütte, The age of secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the economy of secrets, 1400–1800, transl. Jeremiah Riemer (New Haven, 2015); Timothy McCall, Sean Roberts, and Giancarlo Fiorenza eds., Visual cultures of secrecy in early modern Europe (Kirksville, 2013); Jon Snyder, Dissimulation and the culture of secrecy in early modern Europe (Berkeley, 2009); Georg Simmel, Sociology: inquiries into the construction of social forms, transl. and eds. Anthony J. Blasi, Anton K. Jacobs, and Matthew Kanjirathinkal (Boston, 2009); See Barry Coward and Julian Swann eds., Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in early modern Europe: from the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Burlington, 2004); and Peter R. Campbell, Thomas E. Kaiser, and Marisa Linton eds., Conspiracy in the French Revolution (New York, 2007).
6 See Constantin de Renneville, Souvenirs d'un prisonnier de la Bastille, Albert Savine ed. (Paris, 1998). For more on Jansenists in eighteenth-century France, see Monique Cottret, Jansénismes et Lumières: pour un autre XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1998); Catherine Maire, De la Cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation: le Jansénisme au XVIIIème siècle (Paris 1998); Brian Strayer, Suffering saints: Jansenists and convulsionnaires in France, 1640–1799 (Brighton, 2008).
7 Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet, Memoirs of the Bastille. Containing a full exposition of the mysterious policy and despotic oppression of the French Government, in the interior administration of that state-prison. Interspersed with a variety of curious anecdotes. Translated from the French of the celebrated Mr. Linguet, who was imprisoned there from September 1780, to May 1782 (London, 1783), 8–9.
8 Most of the sources for this article come from the Archives of the Bastille in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris, France. The other archival sources come from the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris which houses both private letters and official documents from the revolutionary period. The Archives of the Bastille are where most of the police dossiers from the ancien régime are kept, in remarkably good condition. See Funck-Brentano, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal (Paris, 1892). See also Funck-Brentano, Légendes et archives de la Bastille (Paris, 1898); Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, Die Bastille: zur symbolgeschichte von Herrschaft und Freiheit (Frankfurt am Main, 1990); see also Monique Cottret, La Bastille à prendre: histoire et mythe de la forteresse royale (Paris, 1986); Héloïse Bocher, Démolir la Bastille: l’édification d'un lieu de mémoire (Paris, 2012); Vincent Denis, Une histoire de l'identité: France, 1715–1815 (Seyssel, 2008); Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault, Le désordre des familles: lettres de cachet des Archives de la Bastille au XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1982); Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish (New York, 1995).
9 See James Van Horn Melton, The rise of the public in enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001); Arlette Farge, Dire et mal dire: l'opinion publique au XVIIIème siècle (Paris, 1992); Lisa Jane Graham, If the king only knew: seditious speech in the reign of Louis XV (Charlottesville, 2000); Sarah Maza, Private lives and public affairs: the causes célèbres of prerevolutionary France (Berkeley, 1993); Jürgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, transl. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, 1991); Roger Chartier, Les origins culturelles de la Révolution française (Paris, 2000); Lynn Hunt, ‘The many bodies of Marie-Antoinette: political pornography and the problem of the feminine in the French Revolution’, in Dena Goodman ed., Marie-Antoinette: writings on the body of a queen (Milton Park, 2003), 117–139; Dena Goodman, ‘Public sphere and private life: toward a synthesis of current historiographical approaches to the old regime,’ History and Theory 31, 1 (1992), 1–20; Mona Ozouf, ‘L'opinion publique’, in Keith M. Baker ed., The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture, vol. I (Oxford, 1987), 980–997.
10 Alan Williams, The police of Paris, 1718–1789 (Baton Rouge, 1979), xvi–xvii.
11 Steven L. Kaplan, ‘Note sur les commissaires de police de Paris au XVIIIème siècle’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 28, 4 (1981) 669–86. See also Catherine Denys, ‘The development of police forces in urban Europe in the eighteenth century’, Journal of Urban History 36, 3 (2010), 332–44. Marc Chassaigne, La lieutenance générale de police de Paris (Geneva, 1975); Vincent Milliot, L'Admirable police: tenir Paris au siècle des lumières (Ceyzérieu 2016); and Vincent Denis, Une histoire de l'identité: France, 1715–1815 (Seyssel, 2008); Vincent Denis, Vincent Milliot, Emmanuel Blanchard and Arnaud-Dominique Houte eds., Histoire des polices en France: des guerres de religion à nos jours (Paris, 2020).
12 Alan Williams, The police of Paris, 1718–1789 (Baton Rouge, 1979), xvi–xvii.
13 Louis Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vol. I, (Amsterdam: [s.n.], 1783–88), 184; Vol. III, 264–6.
14 Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Vol. III, 287.
15 Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Vol. III, 289.
16 Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal (henceforth BA) MS 12435.
17 BA Reglements et consignes: consigne du service pour les porteclefs MS 12602.
18 Ibid.
19 BA MS 12602.
20 BA Reglements et consignes: consigne du service pour les porteclefs MS 12602.
21 Ibid.
22 BA Dossiers des prisonniers (1773) MS 12435.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 BA MS 12509.
26 Ibid.
27 BA Service des porteclefs MS 12509.
28 Ibid.
29 BA Reglements et consignes: Consigne du service pour les porteclefs MS 12602.
30 Ibid.
31 See Histoire des polices en France, 112–134.
32 Lisa Silverman, Tortured subjects: pain, truth and the body in early modern France (Chicago, 2001).
33 Ibid.
34 Elise Dutray-Lecoin and Danielle Muzerelle eds., La Bastille, ou, L'enfer des vivants: à travers les archives de la Bastille (Paris, 2010), 165.
35 BA Reglements et Consignes MS 12602.
36 Ibid.
37 BA Sortie des Prisonniers MS 12581.
38 Mercier, Tableau de Paris, Vol. III, 290.
39 Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet, Memoirs of the Bastille. Containing a full exposition of the mysterious policy and despotic oppression of the French Government, in the interior administration of that state-prison. Interspersed with a variety of curious anecdotes. Translated from the French of the celebrated Mr. Linguet, who was imprisoned there from September 1780, to May 1782 (London, 1783), 8–9.
40 See Brian Strayer, Lettres de cachet and social control in the ancien regime: 1659–1789 (PhD thesis, The University of Iowa: Proquest Dissertation Publishing, 1987). See also Claude Quétel, Une légende noire: les lettres de cachet (Paris, 2011), and Quétel, La Bastille: histoire vraie d'une prison légendaire (Paris, 1989).
41 See Quétel, Une légende noire: les lettres de cachet (Paris, 2011); see also Elise Dutray-Lecoin and Danielle Muzerelle eds., La Bastille, ou, L'enfer des vivants: à travers les archives de la Bastille (Paris, 2010).
42 BA Dossier des prisonniers MS 12507.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 BA MS 12507.
47 BA MS 12245.
48 The famine plot was a common conspiracy theory in eighteenth-century France. See Steven A. Kaplan, The famine plot persuasion in eighteenth-century France (Philadelphia, 1982); Kaplan, Le pain, le peuple et le roi: la bataille du libéralisme sous Louis XV (Paris, 1986); E.P. Thompson, Florence Gauthier and Guy-Robert Ikni eds., La guerre du blé au XVIIIème siècle: la critique populaire contre le libéralisme économique au XVIIIème siècle (Montreuil, 1988); Cynthia Bouton, The flour war: gender, class and community in late ancien regime French society (University Park, 1993). For works on rumor, see Lisa Jane Graham, If the king only knew: seditious speech in the reign of Louis XV (Charlottesville, 2000); Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, The vanishing children of Paris: rumor and politics before the French Revolution Transl. Claudia Miéville (Cambridge, 1991).
49 BA Dossier des Prisonniers MS 12351.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 See Marisa Linton, Choosing terror: virtue, friendship and authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford, 2013); Idem., The politics of virtue in enlightenment France (New York, 2001); Lynn Hunt, Politics, culture, and class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984); Timothy Tackett, The coming of the terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2015); Jean-Clément Martin, La terreur: vérités et légendes (Paris, 2017); Antoine de Baecque, La révolution terrorisée (Paris, 2017); Hugh Gough, The terror in the French Revolution (New York, 2010).
53 For example, the revolutionary journalist, Jean-Paul Marat, often decried government secrecy and associated it with despotism and monarchical government more generally in his newspaper, L'Ami du peuple, and his anti-royalist diatribe, Les chaînes de l'esclavage. See Marat, Les chaînes de l'esclavage, ed., Michel Vovelle (Paris, 1988).
54 See J. Gilchrist and W. J. Murray eds., The press in the French Revolution: a selection of documents taken from the press of the revolution for the years 1789–1794 (New York, 1971), 17. See also Hugh Gough, The newspaper press in the French Revolution (Belmont, 1988); Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary news: the press in France, 1789–1799 (Durham, 1990).
55 Jean-Paul Marat, Les chaînes de l'esclavage, ed., Michel Vovelle (Paris, 1988), 144.
56 See The press in the French Revolution, ed. J. Gilchrist and W. J. Murray, 17.
57 Marat, 23, 236.
58 Pierre Manuel, La police de Paris dévoilée (Paris, 1793), frontispiece.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Révolutions de Paris (3 August to 28 October 1793), 89.
62 See Colin Lucas, ‘The theory and practice of denunciation in the French Revolution’, Journal of Modern History 68, 4 (1996), 768–85, 780. See also Jacques Gilhaumou, ‘Fragments of a discourse of denunciation (1789–1794)’, in Keith Michael Baker ed., The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture, vol. 4 (Oxford, 1987), 986–1007. For a recent article that deals with transparency in the early revolution, see Katlyn Carter, ‘The Comités des recherches: procedural secrecy and the origins of the French Revolution’, French History 32, 1 (2018), 45–65.
63 BA MS 12852.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Archives de Paris 4 AZ 719 in 4 AZ 15.
68 Ibid.
69 Révolutions de Paris (12–17 July 1789), 15.
70 Recueil de pièces intéressantes sur la Bastille (Paris, 1790), 12.
71 Woloch, Isser, Napoleon and his collaborators: the making of a dictatorship (New York, 2001), 71–3Google Scholar.