Bagne of Toulon

The bagne was created by an ordinance of King Louis XV on September 27, 1748, to house the convicts who had previously been sentenced to row the galleys of the French Mediterranean fleet.

The galleys were long, narrow craft with cannon mounted on the bow and a high, ornamentally-decorated deck at the stern.

In 1814 they were transferred to a building on shore, 115 meters long, which was perpendicular to the hospital, located on the southwest quay, between the Darse Vauban and the entrance to the old port.

It fired a cannon every morning and evening, the signal to open and close the gates of the arsenal and to move the heavy chains which blocked the entrances to inner ports.

[7] When the prisoners arrived at Castigneau, a town on the harbor of Toulon, they were formally handed over to the Commissaire of the Bagne, an officer of the French Navy.

There the iron collars around their necks were removed, their hair was cut and they were shaved, they were given a bath in large basins under a tent, and then they were conveyed by boat to the Bagne.

The costumes of the prisoners consisted of a white shirt, yellow trousers, red vest and smock and a cap which had different colors depending on the sentence duration.

The trousers were buttoned the whole length of the leg, so they could be removed without taking off the iron ring and chain on their ankle.

In 1821, the Commissaire of the Navy, Reynaud, observing that the prisoners who worked were better behaved, began a program to train and employ prisoners; they were trained as masons, carpenters, stonemasons, metal workers and other professions, and employed as secretaries, nurses, cooks, and other professions.

A number of prisoners were trained to pull teeth, and their services were offered at a reasonable price to the people of Toulon.

[12] In later years the prisoners had the right, at certain times of day, to make handicrafts which they could sell to the Toulonais in the Bazaar, or gift-shop of the Bagne.

The money they earned could be spent to buy additional food, or could be put into a fund they would receive on their release.

He knew the faces of all the prisoners, and could spot a bagnard immediately by his peculiar way of walking, caused by years of wearing a heavy chain.

One was wounded by a gunshot, two drowned in the harbor from the weight of their chains, but the other twelve escaped into the city and the countryside.

[17] A rare successful escape was made by a group of ten prisoners, who were rowing a boat of supplies across the harbor of Toulon.

They disarmed and tied up the two guards and the captain of their boat, rowed past the customs posts, landed on the far side of the port, released their prisoners, and fled.

[18] During the 1793 siege of Toulon in the second year of the French Revolutionary Wars, the city was under the control of an alliance of Royalist, Federalist, British, Spanish, Neapolitan, Sicilian and Sardinian forces.

When they were forced to evacuate Toulon as a result of successful attacks by the French Revolutionary Army, Royal Navy personnel under Sidney Smith set the city's New Arsenal on fire, and prisoners from the Bagne assisted pro-Republican sailors of the French Navy in putting out the fires.

During the French Directory, wealthy prisoners were permitted to wear ordinary street clothing and to promenade freely outside the Bagne.

The bagne also occasionally held military prisoners, including five hundred Prussian soldiers captured by Napoleon, released in 1814, and occasional political prisoners, including those who had participated in various conspiracies against the governments of the Restoration and Louis-Philippe, and the Paris Commune and the Marseille Commune of 1871.

[20] A few of the bagnards, or prisoners, were well-known, notably a famous imposter named Coignard, who pretended to be the Count of St. Helena, and Eugène François Vidocq (23 July 1775 – 11 May 1857) a French criminal who later became the first director of Sûreté Nationale and one of the first modern private investigators.

At the beginning of the Second Empire of Napoleon III the government decided to close the prisons at the naval ports, which were considered undesirable and expensive to run.

[21] Almost all of the important writers of the romantic period, including Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Flaubert stopped by Toulon to see the bagne for themselves.