IUST1I.K. 



lUfiTII.K. 



ordinance, 'indigni nan lunt qui alieno ritio laborant.' 

 "i doctrine* arc now obsolete in Scotland. There U no 

 I a bastard and another man, in respect of power to 



dispose of hi* property in life or after death, and he may succeed to 

 any estate, real or penonal, by ipeeial destination. To hU lawful 

 children, alto, he may appoint testamentary guardian* ; and his widow 

 has her provisions like other relicts. It U to be noted, however, that 

 in the eye of law a bastard is nuUim JUim ; and being thus of kin to 

 ii.-i- Jy, he cannot be heir-at-law to any one, neither can he have such 

 heir* save his own lawful issue. Where a bastard dies, leaving no heir. 

 the crown,* as ullimm kirrtt, succeeds both to his personal and real 

 estate, but commonly makes a gift of it to the person who would have 

 been his heir if he had not been a bastard. As regards land held of a 

 subject superior, the grantee mint obtain from the Court of Session 

 a decree declaring the bastardy, and thereupon he is presented by 

 the king to the superior as his vassal. 



But though bastards are legally tiulliui Jilii, yet the law takes notice 

 of their natural relationship for several purposes, and particularly to 

 enforce the natural duties of their parents. These duties are com- 

 prised under the term aliment, which here, as in the civil law, compre- 

 hends both maintenance and education ; including under thin latter 

 term, as Lord Stair says (b. L tit. 6, sec. 6), " the breeding of them 

 for some calling and employment according to their capacity and 

 condition." In determining who is the father of a bastard, the Scot- 

 tish courts again proceed on the principles of the civil law. In Scotland 

 there must first be semi-plenary evidence of the paternity, and then, 

 u luii Mich circumstantial or other proof of that fact is adduced as will 

 amount to temiplena probatio, the mother is admitted to her oalk in 

 tufplfment. The whole aliment is not due from one parent, but from 

 both parents ; and therefore, in determining what shall be payable by 

 the father, the ability of the mother to contribute U also considered. 

 The absolute amount of aliment, however, is in the discretion of the 

 court, as is likewise its duration. 



The mother of a bastard is entitled to its custody during its infancy ; 

 but afterwards the father may take the rearing of the child into his 

 nwii hand, and may also nominate to it .'!..'.; in the event of his 

 death. 



BASTILE, or BASTILLE, the name used in France to denote a 

 fortress or state-prison. There have been three of that name at Paris, 

 the Bastile du Temple, the Bastile of St. Denis, and that of the Hue 

 St. Antoine. We shall only treat of the last, which lias obtained 

 historical celebrity, and is usually denominated The Bastile. This 

 fortress stood at the east end of Paris, on the north side of the Seine. 

 It was originally intended for the protection of the city, but afterwards 

 was used as a state-prison. Hugues d'Aubriot, Prevost des Marchanda 

 in the reign of Charles V., laid the first stone on the 22nd of April, 

 1369, by the order of that king. There had previously been a fortified 

 entrance to Paris on the same spot, on a small scale, which was built 

 *;. Kticiine Marcel, the predecessor in office of Hugues d'Aubriot. 

 The Bastile consisted at first of two round towers, with an entrance 

 between them ; afterwards, to render it stronger, two additional towers, 

 parallel to the two first, were built, and the whole connected by walls. 

 The building, however, was not completed till 1383, in the reign of 

 Charles VI., when four more towers were added, of the same dimen- 

 sions, and at equal distances from the first four, and the whole eight 

 were united by masonry of great thickness, in which were constructed 

 a great number of apartments and offices. The entrance to the city 

 by the original gate was closed, and the road carried without the 



View of the Bollit, from a Print la the llrituh Miucom. 



building. In 1634 a fosse was dug round it, 120 feet wide and. 26 

 feet deep ; and beyond that a stone wall, 3C feet high, was built all 

 round. Thus the Bastile became, from a fortified gate, one of the 

 strongest fortresses of the kind in Europe. The towers contained 

 several octagonal rooms one above the other, each having one window 

 pierced in the walls, which were rather more than sue feet thick. 

 This window wu without any gluing, was wide internally, but narrow 

 like a loop-hole on the uuUide : in the centre was a perpendicular bar 

 of iron, and two cross-barred gratings between that and the internal 

 part. The entrance to each of them rooms was secured by double 



doors eight inches thick, strapped with iron, and placed at the distance 

 of the thickness of the walls from each other. There were no fire- 

 place* or chimneys in these rooms. The only article of furniture, if 

 it may be so called, was an iron grating, raised about six inches fr M 

 the floor, to receive the prisoner's mattress, and prevent its decay from 

 the damp of the stone floor. To each tower there was a way by a 

 narrow winding staircase. The apartments constructed in the walls, 

 connecting the towers, were larger and more commodious than the 

 others, and were provided with fire-place* and chimneys, but with 

 similar precautions for preventing the escape of prisoners. They were 

 usually assigned to persons of some importance, or to those who were 

 treated with indulgence. The rest of the Bastile consisted of tw.> 

 open courts : the larger, 102 feet by 72, called the Great Court ; thn 

 smaller, 72 by 42 feet, French measure, called the Court of the Well, 

 was separated from the first by a range of buildings and offices, having 

 a passage through them. The height of the building within was 78 

 feet, but greater on the outside next the fosse. (See the Plan in the 

 British Museum.) 



In modern times the establishment of the Bastile consisted of a 

 governor, a deputy-governor or lieutenant du roi, a major, an aide- 

 major, a physician and surgeons, a certain number (usually about 100) 

 of invalid soldiers and Swiss in the pay of France to perform the 

 military duty of the fortress, with turnkeys to watch over the prisoners, 

 and cooks and other domestics. The office of governor was very lucra- 

 tive; the pay and perquisites being supposed to amount to 60,000 franca 

 per annum. Prisoners were almost always taken to the Bastile by an 

 exempt of police and two or three armed men in a hackney coach, to 

 avoid observation, and were conducted direct to the governor at his 

 house, to whom the exempt delivered the Irttrc Jf racket and took a 

 receipt for it. The prisoner was then led into the body of the fortress, 

 a sign being first made to all the soldiers on duty to cover their faces 

 with their hats during his passage. This was invariably done whenever 

 a prisoner entered or left the Bastile. The prisoners were subjected 

 to frequent and minute interrogations, with a view to extort from 

 them their secret, if they had any, the names of their accomplices, Ac. 

 Their treatment depended entirely on the will of the governor, who 

 was interested in their being detained, as he contracted with the 

 government for their maintenance, and derived a profit from it ; and 

 he being the only channel by which the prisoners could communicate 

 with their friends or with the government, he could suppress their 

 applications if he thought fit. We have the concurrent testimony of 

 almost all the prisoners who have written their memoirs, that the food 

 was bad and scantily supplied, and that all other necessaries were of 

 the worst description. The duration of a prisoner's detention was 

 arbitrary. No term was ever specified. The longest we have been 

 able to discover, from the registers published after the taking of the 

 BaatUe, is that of Isaac Armet do la Motte, who was removed to 

 Charenton (a lunatic asylum and prison), after a confinement in the 

 Bastile of fifty-four years and five months. In this registry there are 

 several others of thirty years and upwards. The first historical men- 

 tion of any imprisonment in this fortress is that of Hugues d'Aubriot 

 himself, who having given offence to the clergy, and being accused by 

 them of blasphemy and impiety, was sentenced to be imprisoned for 

 life, but being transferred to another prison, he regained his lilicrty in 

 the insurrection of a faction called the Mailliotius. The only pr 

 who ever effected their escape from the Bundle were two person* of the 

 name of De la Tude and D'Aligre. They were confined together in 

 one of the apartments constructed in the walls of the Bastile. By 

 unravelling their linen, stockings, and other parts of thoir clothe*, and 

 by saving from time to time the billets of wo.xl allowed for their 

 Tiring, they contrived to make two ladders, one a rope-ladder, near 180 

 feet long, with rounds of wood covered with flannel to prevent any 

 rattling noise against the walls; the other a wooden ladder, about 80 



ug, consisting of a centre piece, in joints to be fastened by 

 tenons and mortices, and through which passed wooden pegs to hold it 

 together. The first was to enable them to descend from the platform. 

 or the top of the Bastile, into the fosse; the second to ascend the 

 rampart into the garden of the governor. The ladders, as well as the 

 tools they had formed for making them, were concealed, when the 

 turnkeys visited them, under thn floor of their apartment. They rut 

 through the iron gratings in the chimney, which they ascended, and 

 taking advantage of a dark night, got upon the platform. Having first 

 lowered their wooden ladder, they fastened that of rope to one of d..- 

 cannons of the fortress and descended into the fosse. Finding a pat role 

 with a light in the governor's garden, they altered their plan, ami with 

 a handspike formed of one of the iron bars of the chimney grating. 

 made a hole in the wall nxt the Rue St. Antoino, through which they 

 effected their escape on the 26th of February, 1766. After the revolu- 

 tion of 1789 La Tude claimed and received these ladders, and they 

 were publicly exhibited at Paris in the autumn of that year. 



The Bastile was besieged and taken three times: in 1418, )>y (lie 

 Bourgignons; in 1694, by Henry IV. ; and on the 14th July, 1789, by 



isians, from which day the French Revolution may be dated. 

 Its demolition was decreed by the Permanent Committee of Paris on 

 the 16th, and carried into immediate effect. The materials were em- 

 ployed in the construction of a new bridge, called the Bridge of Louis 

 XVI., and there is not now remaining the smallest vestige of this 

 edifice. 



