LETTRE DE CACHET, 1788
Lettre de Cachet (i.e. arrest warrant) signed "Louis" (secretarial signature for Louis XVI), to the administrators of the Hopital Général of Paris, ordering them to receive Julien Louis Cravillion, 'Limonadier' (someone who so
A document with some unusual features. A prisoner was generally detained "until you have a new order from us", but these printed words have been crossed out and "for three months" written above. According to official notes at the foot and on the verso, Cravillion's wife was living separately from him with a wine merchant called Huguet. In spite of the order to detain him in Paris, it is stated at the end that he was brought from Paris to Brienne on 19 August by the Sieur Sancerre, Inspector of Police.
The term lettre de cachet, literally a sealed letter, was originally used for any letter containing a direct order signed by or in the name of the King of France. However it came to mean particularly a letter by which the Crown could command the arrest and imprisonment of a subject without trial and without any opportunity to submit a defence. While often used by the government as a silent weapon against political opponents or liberal writers, or to punish aristocratic wrongdoers without the scandal of an open trial, the system became open to widespread abuse by private individuals with influence. The Hopital Général, less well known than the Bastille, was apparently used to incarcerate prisoners of lesser importance. The persons in this case are by no means aristocratic, and it seems by no means impossible that a disaffected wife was prepared to pay for her husband's absence.
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