It is interesting to note here that one of the English governors of the Bastile was a certain Sir John Falstaff, not Shakespeare's Sir John but a very different person, a stalwart knight of unblemished character, great judgment and approved prowess. He was a soldier utterly unlike the drunken, and disreputable "Jack Falstaff," with his unconquerable weakness for sack, who only fought men in buckram. The real Sir John Falstaff was careful to maintain his charge safely, strengthening the fortress at all points, arming and victualling it and handing it over in good order to his successor, Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. History has to record other good things of Sir John Falstaff, who is remembered as a patron of letters, who paid a price for the translation of Cicero's "De Senectute," who endowed Magdalen College, Oxford, with much valuable property and whose name is still commemorated among the founders of the College in the anniversary speech. He was a Knight of the Garter, held many superior commands and died full of honors at the advanced age of eighty. Lord Willoughby was governor at the time of the surrender. He withdrew in safety and evidently in good heart for he won a victory over the French at Amiens after his retreat.
After the exodus of the English and with the accession of Louis XI, the two State prisons of Paris were very fully and constantly occupied. The chief episodes in the checkered history of France, conspiracies, revolts and disturbances, were written in the prison registers and their records are a running commentary upon the principal events of French history. The personal qualities of the rulers, their quarrels with their great subjects, the vindictive policies they followed, their oppression of, and cruelty to the people, may be read in the annals of Vincennes and the Bastile. By taking the reigns seriatim and examining the character of the sovereigns, we shall best realise passing events and those who acted in them.
Let us take up the story with Louis XI to whom some reference has already been made. Some of his victims, the prisoners of Loches and the Comte de Saint Pol have figured on an earlier page. To these we may add the story of the two Armagnacs, Jacques and Charles. Charles, although wholly innocent, was arrested and imprisoned because his brother Jacques had revolted against the king. Charles d'Armagnac was first tortured horribly, then thrown into one of the cages of the Bastile, which he inhabited for fourteen years and when released was found to be bereft of reason. Jacques, better known as the Duc de Nemours, had been the boy friend and companion of Louis, who lavished many favors on him which he repaid by conspiring against the royal authority. When orders were issued for his arrest he withdrew to his own castle, Carlet, hitherto deemed impregnable. It succumbed, however, when besieged in due form, and the Duke was taken prisoner. He had given himself up on a promise that his life would be spared, but he received no mercy from his offended king. His first prison was Pierre-Encise, in which his hair turned grey in a few nights. Thence he was transferred to a cage in the Bastile. The minute instructions were issued by the King as to this prisoner's treatment, and in a letter it was directed that he should never be permitted to leave his cage or to have his fetters removed or to go to mass. He was only to be taken out to be tortured, in the cruel desire to extort an avowal that he had intended to kill the King and set up the Dauphin in his place. The Duke made a piteous appeal, signing himself "Pauvre Jacques," but he was sent for trial before the Parliament in a packed court from which the peers were absent. He was condemned to death and executed, according to Voltaire, under the most revolting circumstances. It is fair to add that no other historian reports these atrocities. It is said that the scaffold on which he suffered was so constructed that his children, the youngest of whom was only five, were placed beneath clad in white and were splashed with the blood from his severed head that dropped through the openings of the planks. After this fearful tragedy these infants were carried back to the Bastile and imprisoned there in a narrow cell for five years. Other records, possibly also apocryphal, are preserved of additional torments inflicted on the Armagnac princes. It is asserted that they were taken out of their cells twice weekly to be flogged in the presence of the governor and to have a tooth extracted every three months.