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
Paris in the 18th century Salpêtrière, which held two to three hundred condemned women, largely prostitutes; and Bicêtre, which held five prisoners at the time of the Revolution. Conditions within were notoriously harsh, and there were several mutinies by prisoners there in the 18th century. La Salpêtrière was closed in 1794, and the prisoners moved to a new prison of Saint-Lazare. For-l'Evêque on the quai Mégesserie, built in 1222, held prisoners guilty of more serious crimes; it was only 35 meters by nine meters in size, built for two hundred prisoners, but by the time of the Revolution it held as many as five hundred