Governor of the Bastille nine years after his birth. He was a Black Musketeer of the King, officer in the Gardes Françaises until 1763-1764, then captain of a cavalry regiment. During the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, De Launay was arrested and escorted to the town hall by one of the leaders of the Revolution, Pierre-Augustin Hulin. In the Place de Greve the furious crowd attacked the escort, assaulting and eventually beheading Governor Launay. After the capture of the fortress, Prosper Soulès assumed the interim duties of acting commander. Governor of the Bastille The Bastille or Bastille Saint-Antoine was completed in
French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel of Caleb Williams a critic wrote, "Fancy is a faculty which we should not have expected to find in the brain of a philosopher who had struck his hand upon his heart and felt it stone; yet fancy Mr. Godwin possesses in no common degree." Godwin's use of the fantastic in the form of the gothic novel again let him write about the philosophy of the French revolution without receiving the harsh backlash, because it was under the guise of the fantastic. French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel The French Revolution influenced the English gothic novel. The gothic novel