Paris in the 18th century were both used for high-ranking political prisoners, and had relatively luxurious conditions. The last three prisoners at the Chateau de Vincennes, the Marquis de Sade and two elderly and insane noblemen, were transferred to the Bastillle in 1784. The Bastille, begun in 1370, never held more than forty inmates; At the time of the Revolution, the Bastille had just seven prisoners; four counterfeiters, the two elderly noblemen, and a man named Tavernier, half-mad, accused of participation in an attempt to kill Louis XV thirty years earlier. Priests and other religious figures who committed crimes or other offenses were tried by
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