Prisoners of the Maison des Oiseaux

The following account of the Bonnet-Rouge's prison in the Maison des Oiseaux is taken from the memoirs of Voltaire's great-nephew Alexandre-Marie-François de Paule de Dompierre d'Hornoy (1742-1828), former conseiller maître of the Chambre de Comptes. The manuscript was published with an introductory essay by Guy Périer de Féral in the Mémoires of the Historical and Archaeological Associations of the Ile-de-France in 1952.

Arrest

Portrait said to be Hornoy de Dompierre by Quentin La Tour
(Périer de Féral, p. 110).

In 1794 even a relative of Voltaire had no guarantee of immunity from detention.   Hornoy was arrested on night of 19-20th April 1794 at his father-in-law's property, the château de Monthuchet, near Saulx-les-Chartreux, a full twenty kilometres outside Paris. Local officials were accompanied by two roving representatives from the Bonnet-Rouge section, one of them none other than Piccini, the "ardent admirer" of Voltaire.  Hornoy was told he had been denounced, though he himself considered he had been arrested simply because he was a former nobleman and magistrate (p.168) 

Piccini and his companion Ballière gave Hornoy his choice of prison. He was tempted by the Luxembourg, where he had friends, but in the end chose the Maison des Oiseaux ("my lucky star made me change my mind"). His custodians boasted of its fresh air and garden. He was allowed to take a servant and advised to "bring money", which led him to conclude that the regime would not be too harsh. (p.169)

The Section du Bonnet-Rouge and its prisons

Whatever can be imagined that is ferocious, tyrannical and inhuman, was found in the character of our commissaries, without accepting one among them

 Comment by an anonymous prisoner of the Revolutionary Committee of the Bonnet-Rouge section, 

... I once had the honour of offering you my fist to climb into your carriage.  The only service I offer you now, is to hand you up to the guillotine.

Letter to the former Duchesse de Fleury from Joseph Tosi, her former servant, member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Bonnet-Rouge.

Interior of a Revolutionary Committee. After a drawing by A.-E. Fragonard, 1797. Musée Carnavalet 
 https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/interieur-d-un-comite-revolutionnaire-a-paris-1793-1794-103eme-planche-des#infos-principales

I have now discovered a little more information about the activities of the notorious Revolutionary Committee of  the Bonnet-Rouge section... ..

The area covered by the Bonnet-Rouge centred on the carrefour de la Croix-Rouge (now place Michel-Debré) in the prosperous Faubourg Saint-Germain. It had a reputation as one of the most radical sections of Paris.  Several of its activists - Devaux, Gobeau, Godefroy, Millier - were members of the General Council of the Commune on 10th  August.  Adrien-Nicolas Gobeau was to be guillotined with Robespierre on 10 Thermidor.  Another member, a failed lawyer, Nicolas-Charles Pijeau-Villiers, was Treasurer of the Committee of General Security. Other individuals - Joseph Lebrun,  Louis Seguin, Lecreps and Savoy -  were  known agitators,  "patriotes très decidés", in the orbit of  Hébert and Vincent.

The Revolutionary Committee of the section,  however, seemed primarily intent on making a profit from its situation. The sweeping powers of arrest and detention laid down in the decree of  17 September 1793  offered the opportunity.  Every authority which had the right of arrest acquired a vast "depot" to house its suspects  - the municipality, the chief of police and every Revolutionary Committee. There were perhaps up to sixty such prisons. "We had arrived at that disastrous era when it was necessary to have Maisons d'arrêt everywhere, where every section of Paris jealously guarded its own, at the particular disposition of its Revolutionary Committee"(Histoire des prisons, 1797, t.III, p.89), The legislation specified  that suspects were to be held at their own expense; they were forced to pay for their board and lodging, for transportation,  even for the guard dogs.  It was, as one source has it, "une sorte de spéculation de finance assez lucrative"  (Précis, p.187-8)  The Bonnet-Rouge section was only one of several involved in similar ventures, but its activities were particularly extortionate.   The trial of 1795 revealed that the Committee had gone so far as to destroy whole sections of its register in order to conceal its illicit profiteering.  On the advise of Pijean-Villiers, more than thirty pages had been torn out of their official minutes and rebound with replacement pages.  According to the act of indictment, these were "men without probity and honour, who have deceived public faith, and covered themselves with the mask of patriotism".