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
The 120 Days of Sodom criminals. They are: Their accomplices are: The victims are: There are also several cooks and female servants, those in the latter category later being dragged into the proceedings. Sade wrote "The 120 Days of Sodom" in the space of 37 days in 1785 while he was imprisoned in the Bastille. Being short of writing materials and fearing confiscation, he wrote it in tiny writing on a continuous, 12-metre-long roll of paper, made up of individual small pieces of paper smuggled into the prison and glued together. When the Bastille was stormed and looted on July 14, 1789, at the beginning