Bastille into an open public area, with a tall column at the centre surrounded by fountains, dedicated to Louis XVI as the "restorer of public freedom". The number of prisoners held in the Bastille at any one time declined sharply towards the end of Louis's reign; the prison contained ten prisoners in September 1782 and, despite a mild increase at the beginning of 1788, by July 1789 only seven prisoners remained in custody. Before any official scheme to close the prison could be enacted, however, disturbances across Paris brought a more violent end to the Bastille. By July 1789, revolutionary sentiment
Paris in the 17th century Protestants of Paris permission to build a church, as long as it was far from the center of the city. The new church was constructed at Charenton, six kilometers from the Bastille. In 1680, there were an estimated eight thousand five hundred Protestants in the city, or about two percent of the population. Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, leading to an important exodus of Protestants from the city, and forcing those who remained to practice their faith in secret. The Jewish population of Paris in the 17th century was extremely small, following centuries of persecution and