In going over it, every one was penetrated with horror; and
feelings of the most melancholy interest were excited by reading the
various inscriptions on the walls, indicative of the hopeless misery
that had been experienced within them! Many were expressive of piety
and resignation at the approach of death!--others complaining of the
cruel oppression which had immured them! On one wall was written, "Il
faut mourir, mon frere; mon frere il faut mourir, quand il plaira a
Dieu". On the door of another prison were, "Beati qui persecutionem
patiuntur propter justitiam, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum". On
the same spot were, "Carcer Socratis, templum honoris".
This Donjon remained unoccupied until 1791. At this period, the
prisons of the capital being filled with criminals, Government ordered
it to be prepared for the reception of that class of prisoners; but on
the massacres that followed, the mob either murdered or released them
all, after a bloody contest, and it remained again without prisoners
until the Imperial Government under Buonaparte. It was then garrisoned
by a detachment of the Imperial Guard, and multitudes of victims were
transferred there whose fate remains, and probably ever will remain,
unknown.
It was to this place that the Duke D'Enghien, who was arrested the
15th March, 1804, at Ettenheim, in the Electorate of Baden, was
conducted the 20th of the same month, at five in the evening, and
condemned to death the night following, by a military commission, at
which Murat presided.
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