Can you tell us more about the Brissot prison break out from the Bastille?
Brissot was thrown in the Bastille on July 12 1784, not long after he had just returned from London where he has spent twenty months working on several failed literary projects, and then held imprisoned there until September 10 1784, almost exactly two months. Here is his prison registry, cited in Les lettres de cachet à Paris, étude suivie d'une liste des prisonniers de la Bastille (1659-1789) (1903) page 413:
Brissot de Warville (Jacques-Pierre), lawyer in Parliament. Entered 12 July 1784 on the order of countersigned Breteuil. For libels. Exited 10 September 1784 on the order of countersigned Breteuil.
The place where we find the most detailed account of this prison stay is in the memoirs Brissot pieced together in the few months preceding his execution in October 1793 (chapter 48-49, page 340-348). Here is how he describes the moment of his arrest there (page 343):
It was almost midnight when a police inspector, accompanied by several henchmen, entered my apartment and arrested me in the name of the king. At first, I was more astonished than overwhelmed by this news. I was innocent, who could cause me to tremble? They asked for my keys, my books, my portfolio: I handed over everything. My papers didn’t contain anything save my affairs and my works, I calmly explained what they were about. My books were all in English, I translated the titles. After several other formalities I heard the fatal word Bastille getting pronounced, I was soon locked up there.
Brissot spends the first 48 hours in isolation, ”left to my own devices and to all the horror of my situation.” He recalls that he ”collapsed, overwhelmed, near an armchair, wetting it with my tears and crying out to heaven,” worried not about himself but his wife who is still in London and weak after having given birth to their first child Félix just three months prior. ”During two full days I had before my eyes only a dying Félicité, and our child dying on her breast, during two full days the tears didn’t cease to fall.” (memoirs, page 344)
Om the third day he receives a visit from Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir, the head of the Paris police, who begins by asking him what he is guilty of. When Brissot says such a question is nothing but a very mean joke, Lenoir answers it himself and tells him he is accused of while in London having written libels against Marie-Antoinette. ”This slander outraged me,” Brissot recalls, ”and I rejected it with passion.” Lenoir then cites a dozen of these libels to find out if Brissot at least knows the author of them. Brissot only recognizes one — les Passe-Temps d’Antoinette, and tells Lenoir that his business partner in London Anne-Gédéon de La Fitte de Pelleport (who got put in the Bastille the day right before him) had wanted to sell it, but that neither of them had anything to do with its creation. (memoirs, page 245)
Brissot himself claims both in his memoirs and in the 1791 pamphlet Réponse de Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a tous les libellistes qui ont attaqué et attaquent sa vie passée that he had no trouble convincing Lenoir of his innocence. Nevertheless, he is kept imprisoned and made to go through three long interrogations (The Innocence of Jacques-Pierre Brissot (2003) by Simon Burrows, I’ve unfortunately not managed to find these interrogations in full).
Brissot did however have a lot of contacts that set about trying to get him free. He recalls that ”Loyseau, a distinguished jurist, who showed enlightened patriotism during the revolution,” wrote a memorandum which he addressed to the noblewoman Madame Boufflers, begging her to in her turn make the Prince of Conti write in Brissot’s favor to Delaunay, the governor of the Bastille. Someone else who got called out to help was Madame de Genlis, governess of the children of the Duke of Charles (the future Philippe Égalité) and a friend of Brissot’s wife Félicité from when the latter worked under her prior to her marriage. Brissot recalls that his correspondant Larivée wrote a letter to her and then sent her response over to him in the Bastille — ”The note from this lady […] was the first relief I felt.” According to Brissot, Madame de Genlis wrote that she had spoken to the Secretary of State Breteuil, and was certain that such a convinced that such a ”just and enlightened minister” would hasten to come to the rescue, but that she couldn’t do more without the Duke of Chartres who unfortunately was in England at the moment. (memoirs, page 347-348)
Madame de Genlis too writes about this incident in her own memoirs, although she recalls her contribution slightly differently:
[Brissot] wrote to me from the Bastille, his letter and his misfortune interested me, I engaged M. the duke of Orléans (who at that point was still the duke of Chartres) to do something for this unfortunate man. M. the duke of Orléans put a lot of effort and zeal into this affair, and after two weeks Brissot regained his liberty. He came to see me to thank me.
In his memoirs, Brissot also writes that his imprisonment caused an ”almost universal cry from men of letters, even those I at that point barely knew,” who were all convinced of his innocence and loudly called for his release. He names Condorcet, Bitaubé, Berquin, Parmentier, Philippon de la Magdeleine, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Marivetz, and even the Englishmen Kirwan, Priestley and lord Mansfield who all wrote to France and ”gave public and spontaneous testimony to the austerity of my principles and morals.” (page 348)
Eventually, Félicité Brissot manages to leave London for Paris, and Brissot writes it was due to ”her persistent solicitations, as much as to my innocence, that I owed my enlargement.” (memoirs, page 348) On September 5 1784, Secretary of State Breteuil wrote the following report (cited in Réponse de Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a tous les libellistes qui ont attaqué et attaquent sa vie passée (1791) page 19-20):
Sieur Brissot de Warville was taken to the Bastille the day after Monsieur de Pelleport arrived in Paris, having been arrested in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Because of his dealings with this man, guilty of libel, he was suspected of having participated in it. A certificate from the printer's assistant at the printing shop where one of these libels originated reinforced these suspicions; however, this certificate, sent from London, lacked authenticity, and Monsieur Brissot de Warville, who answered very well during the interrogations he underwent, attributed it to the animosity of enemies he may have in London.
Sieur Brissot de Warvillé has spirit, he is a man of letters, he appears to have extraordinary systems and principles: but it is a fact that, for seven to eight months, his relations with Mr. de Pelleport had ceased, and that he was solely occupied with a periodical paper, which he had obtained permission to bring in and distribute in France, after the examination of a censor.
Sieur Brissot de Warville has a wife and children, he was born to honest parents, and sieur Mentelle vouches for his conduct. Sieur Brissot has declared having the intention to leave London and go fix his residence in Boulogne. I believe it is right to grant him his freedom, on the condition, however, that he remain in France and declare where he intends to live after he has finished his business in England.
Five days later, September 10 1784, Brissot was released. In his memoirs, he recalls that ”it was Félicité herself who brought me the happy letter that opened the door of my dungeon. What a sweet joy to see the light again after being plunged into thick darkness for two months!” (page 361)