Bastille Day had often held people jailed on the basis of "lettres de cachet" (literally "signet letters"), arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for the imprisonment. The Bastille held a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, and was also known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the attack in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. The crowd was eventually reinforced by mutinous "Gardes Françaises" ("French
Prisoners of war in the American Revolutionary War and by high-ranking captured British officials to dissuade troops from deserting, but it largely failed. Many of the prisoners who escaped captivity took American women with them and reared families. A large number of Hessians remained in the US after the war was over because they married American women. Between the time of the Siege of Yorktown (1781) and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), many of the convention troops, by then mostly Germans, escaped and took up permanent residence in the United States. The American government did not have the means to prevent this. The two other