Place de la Bastille many worse prisons in France, including the dreaded Bicêtre, also in Paris. However, in terms of popular literary accounts, the Bastille was a place of horror and oppression, a symbol of autocratic cruelty. The confrontation between the commoners and the Ancien Régime ultimately led to the people of Paris storming the Bastille on July 14, 1789, following several days of disturbances. At this point, the prison was nearly empty, with only seven inmates: four counterfeiters, two madmen, and a young aristocrat who had displeased his father. The regular garrison consisted of about 80 'invalides' (veteran soldiers no longer capable of
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