376 BASTILE with no opening but a narrow loophole com- municating with the ditch. The Bastile could contain 50 state prisoners in solitary cells. When a greater number were placed within its walls, they were confined in cells opening on the ditches which carried off the ordure and sewerage of the prison, amid odors insuf- ferable. They were miserably fed, but this was owing rather to the abuses of the governor than to the government, which paid enormous sums for the maintenance of the state prisoners. Benneville asserts that in his time Bernaville, who was then governor, had a great number of prisoners at all prices, up to 25 francs a head per diem, and that their daily subsistence did not cost him on an average 20 sous. There was a regular tariff of expenses for the table, lights, and washing of all prisoners, according to their rank. Thus a prince of the blood was allowed 50 francs a day ; a considerable burgher, or an advocate, 3 francs; and the members of all the inferior classes, 2 francs and 10 sous, the same being the rate allowed for the guards, wardens, and servants of the prison. The inhuman treatment to which pris- oners in the Bastile were subjected has few par- allels in the history of penal cruelty. Put there without accusation or trial, on a simple lettre de cachet, allowed no communication with friends, their final fate was dependent upon the caprice of despotism and unknown to the world. Up to the date of the accession of Charles VII. the Bastile continued to be merely a royal fortress, when it became a state prison, under the gov- ernment of Thomas Beaumont, who was in command when in 1418 the populace broke into its precincts and massacred the princes of the house of Armagnac. Within the walls of this prison died Charles de Gontaut, sieur de Biron, marshal of France, for treason against Henry IV. Here also were imprisoned Bas- sompierre, Marshal Richelieu, Voltaire, Latude, who in vain made an extraordinary escape, and that victim of Louis XIV. known as the Man in the Iron Mask, whose identity has never been absolutely established. (See IRON MASK.) After the death of Louis XIV. the Bastile de- generated from being a place of incarceration for suspected princes, pretenders to the throne, and subjects too powerful for the state, into a common jail. The imprisonment of Blaizot, the king's librarian, by the minister De Bre- teuil, nominally at the king's order, brought to light the whole system of iniquity. Blaizot was delivered, but De Breteuil was not pun- ished. On July 14, 1789, after a brief defence by Delaunay, then governor, and the guard consisting of 82 invalids and 32 Swiss, the Bas- tile was captured by the people, ransacked, and on the following day its towers were razed and its dungeons filled with the copings of its battle- ments. Seven persons were found in its cells and dungeons : one, the count de Solage, a pris- oner since his llth year ; another, Tavernier, who, after 10 years at the Marguerite islands, had passed 30 years in the Bastile, and who BAT reappeared on his liberation bewildered, with a broken intellect, like a man awaked from a sleep. Records of horrors even worse than this were found inscribed on the registers of the prison. On its site now stands the column of July, which was erected in memory of the pa- triots of 1789 and 1830. BASTION. See FORTIFICATION. BASTROP, a S. central county of Texas, in- tersected by the Colorado river; area, 1,001 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 12,290, of whom 5,233 were colored. It is watered by numerous small affluents of the Colorado, which is navi- gable for steamboats during six months in the year. The soil is generally fertile and the sur- face moderately uneven. Lumber is abundant, and lignite is found. The chief productions in 1870 were 356,874 bushels of corn, 8,728 bales of cotton, and 6,690 Ibs. of wool. There were 6,781 horses, 1,339 mules and asses, 6,895 milch cows, 37,805 other cattle, 1,957 sheep, and 19,383 swine. Capital, Bastrop. BAT, a mammiferous quadruped, whose dif- ferent genera constitute the order cheiroptera. Its general form is disposed for flight ; an ex- pansion of the skin is stretched between the Common Bat (VesperHHo communis). four limbs and the greatly elongated fingers of the anterior extremities ; this flying membrane is naked, or nearly so, on both sides ; the breast has mammas ; the clavicles are very strong ; the forearm is incapable of rotation in consequence of the union of the bones. The bats consist of two very distinct groups, charac- terized mainly by the structure of the teeth. The first, containing the genera pteropw and cephalotes, is frugivorous, has the molar teeth with flattish crowns, obliquely truncated and longitudinally grooved, 3 joints in the fingers, generally provided with a nail on the second finger, and the tail wanting or rudimentary. The second group, containing the genera ves- pertilio, phyllostoma, nycterig, &c., has the molars with sharp points like the true insecti- vora, showing at once the different nature of their food. The skeleton of the bats combines a great degree of lightness with peculiarities in the anterior extremities suitable for pur- poses of flight. The head is the longest in the frugivorous group ; in all, the portion of the
