Entrance to Force Prison
At the corner of rue Malher and rue Pavée, the attentive passer-by may have noticed a few stones protruding strangely from the wall, as would be left behind by an unfinished construction.
These superimposed blocks with vermiculated decoration are in fact the remains of an infamous place in the Marais: the Force prison, whose buildings went, roughly speaking, from the current historic library of the city of Paris (Hôtel de Lamavoine ) at rue du roi-de-Sicile.
However, the buildings were not always a prison: in the first half of the 1th century, on the contrary, they housed one of the most beautiful private mansions in the district. The Duke of La Force was the owner until 1715; then it was the Pâris brothers, savvy financiers and collectors, who occupied it until 1754. At that date, the State acquired it, with the idea of creating a military school there. Giving up on this project, he ultimately installed various administrations there.
In 1780, a “model prison” was set up in this private mansion, in order to lock up people sentenced to minor sentences in connection with minor offenses (particularly for debts). Furthermore – we are in the Age of Enlightenment, a time when we are interested, among other things, in the conditions of detention in the Crown prisons – these convicts are subjected to a more “comfortable” prison regime than elsewhere. : here, no more dungeons but rooms with four beds, even a fireplace, for the richest; dormitories with mattress beds, blankets and a common heater for the poorest; walk, infirmary and meals for all.
In 1785, the Force expanded. After the annexation and the addition of new buildings to the north, we now distinguish the “Large” from the “Small” Force, the first intended for men, the second for women. These are mainly “public girls”.
Petite Force Prison
The Force's "greatest hours" were unfortunately also among its most painful: during the Revolution, "suspects", aristocrats, priests, declared or supposed enemies of the regime were locked up there. In 1792, the “September massacres” took place, during which several prisoners were taken from their cells and summarily executed by a worried crowd, inflamed by rumors of royalist plots and the Austro-Prussian invasion.
At La Force, the most famous victim of these massacres was undoubtedly the Princess de Lamballe , superintendent of the Queen's household: savagely decapitated on a post, right in front of the prison gate, her head was then paraded on a pike through the capital, right up to the windows of Marie Antoinette at the Temple.
La Force remained a prison until the middle of the XNUMXth century. Obsolete, enclosed in the Marais district, it was finally closed and then destroyed. Instead, rue Malher was opened and the various plots were sold as building land. The majority of buildings that can still be seen today date from this period. However, despite its destruction, the “memory” of the Force remains alive, particularly through literature. We find mention of it in several extremely popular novels: The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Splendeurs et miseries des courtesans by Honoré de Balzac and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
Famous inmates
Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736 – died guillotined on November 12, 1793 in Paris), French mathematician, astronomer, writer and politician, he was the first mayor of Paris.
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857) was a prolific French songwriter who enjoyed enormous success in his time.
Auguste Blanqui , nicknamed "the Incarcerated" (1805-1881) was a French socialist revolutionary, often wrongly associated with utopian socialists.
Edme-Samuel Castaing (1796 – guillotined on December 6, 1823) was a French physician and criminal. A notorious poisoner, he is considered the first known murderer to use morphine to kill.
Louis-Augustin-François Cauchois-Lemaire dit Lemaire (1789-1861) was a French political writer and polemicist.
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) was a career officer who lived through the French Revolution and wrote extensively on a wide variety of subjects; he is best known as the author of the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses.
Victor Fanneau de La Horie (1766 – shot on October 29, 1812 in Paris), was a French general.
Évariste Galois (1811-1832) was a French mathematician. A branch of mathematics, Galois theory, was named after him, having laid its foundations.
Martin Garat , first Baron Garat (1748–1830), was a French administrator of the 18th and 19th centuries, governor of the Bank of France. Garat was described as the "linchpin" of the bank and the "founder of the admirable order that reigns in the accounting records" by Governor Jaubert in an 1810 report.
Pierre-François Lacenaire (1803 – guillotined on January 9, 1836 in Paris), was a French swindler and criminal who made headlines.
Madame de Lamballe Marie-Thérèse-Louise de Savoie-Carignan , Princess of Lamballe , known as "Mademoiselle de Carignan" or "Madame de Lamballe" (1749-1792) was a princess of the House of Savoy.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806) was a very active French architect, urban planner, and utopian thinker of the late Ancien Régime; he was one of the principal creators of the Neoclassical style. Most of his buildings were destroyed in the 19th century.
Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet (1736 – guillotined on June 27, 1794 in Paris), was a lawyer, man of letters and landowner, opposed to the philosophers, the Jansenists and especially to the economic liberalism put in place by the Revolution, whose consequences he considered disastrous for the working classes he virulently denounced.
Aimé Picquet du Boisguy (1776 – 1839) was a French military officer and a Chouan general during the French Revolution.
The four sergeants from La Rochelle were young French soldiers, accused under the Restoration of wanting to overthrow the monarchy and guillotined in Place de Grève on September 21, 1822.
Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud (1753 – guillotined on October 31, 1793 in Paris with twenty-one other Girondin deputies), French lawyer, politician, and revolutionary. He was one of the greatest orators of the Revolution. President of the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention on several occasions, he declared the "nation in danger" (speech of July 3, 1792). He also pronounced the suspension of the king on August 10, 1792, and the verdict that condemned Louis XVI to death.
