Bernard René Jourdan, marquis

Marquess

A marquess or marquis is a nobleman of hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The term is also used to translate equivalent oriental styles, as in imperial China, Japan, and Vietnam...

 de Launay (1740–1789) was the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 governor of the Bastille

Bastille

The Bastille was a fortress in Paris, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It played an important role in the internal conflicts of France and for most of its history was used as a state prison by the kings of France. The Bastille was built in response to the English threat to the city of...

, the son of a previous governor, and commander of its garrison

Garrison

Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base....

 when it was stormed on 14 July 1789 (see Storming of the Bastille

Storming of the Bastille

The storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris on the morning of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. While the prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint...

).

Early life

The marquis Bernard-René Jordan de Launay was born on the night of 8/9 April 1740 in the Bastille where his father was governor. At the age of eight he was appointed to an honourary position in the King's Musketeers (mousquetaires du roi). He subsequently entered the French Guards (gardes-françaises), a regiment permanently stationed in Paris except in time of war.

In 1776 de Launay succeeded M. de Jumilhac as Governor of the Bastille. The thirteen years that he spent in this position were uneventful, though on 19 December 1778 he made the serious mistake of failing to fire the cannon of the Bastille as a salute on the birth of a daughter (Madame Royale

Madame Royale

Madame Royale was a style customarily used for the eldest living unmarried daughter of a reigning French monarch.It was similar to the style Monsieur, which was typically used by the King's second son...

) to King Louis XVI. Until 1777 he was Seigneur of Bretonnière in Normandy.

Role on 14 July 1789

Unlike Sombreuil, the governor of Hôtel des Invalides, who had accepted the revolutionaries' demands earlier that day, de Launay refused to surrender the prison and hand over the arms and the gunpowder in it. He promised that he would not shoot unless attacked and tried to negotiate with revolutionary representatives, but the negotiations drew out. As parts of the crowd, impatient, started entering the courtyard of the fortress (on some accounts, this had been made possible by soldiers lowering the drawbridge

Drawbridge

A drawbridge is a type of movable bridge typically associated with the entrance of a castle surrounded by a moat. The term is often used to describe all different types of movable bridges, like bascule bridges and lift bridges.-Castle drawbridges:...

), the garrison opened fire - according to some accounts, on de Launay's orders, resulting in about 100 casualties among the crowd and one killed defender. The besiegers interpreted this as treachery on the part of de Launay. Eventually de Launay decided to capitulate on the condition that nobody from within the fortress would be killed, and threatened that he would blow up the entire fortress and the surrounding district if these conditions were rejected. His conditions were rejected, but he nevertheless capitulated.

De Launay was then seized and was supposed to be escorted to the Hôtel de Ville

Hôtel de Ville, Paris

The Hôtel de Ville |City Hall]]) in :Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...

 by one of the leaders of the insurrection, soldier (future general) Pierre-Augustin Hulin

Pierre-Augustin Hulin

Pierre-Augustin Hulin was a French general under Napoleon Bonaparte who took part in the storming of the Bastille, the trial of the Duke d'Enghien, and the foiling of the Malet coup.- Early life :...

, but on the way there, the furious crowd assaulted him, beat him and eventually lynched him by stabbing him repeatedly with their bayonet

Bayonet

A bayonet is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit in, on, over or underneath the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar weapon, effectively turning the gun into a spear...

s and shooting him once. The actual killing was reported to have been unleashed by the fact that de Launay, desperate and abused by the crowd, kicked an unemployed cook named Desnot in the groin. After the killing, his head was sawn off by Mathieu Jouve Jourdan, a butcher. It was fixed on a pike to be carried through the streets. Several other defenders of the Bastille were also lynched.

Character

A detachment of thirty Swiss grenadiers from the Salis-Samade Regiment had been sent to reinforce de Launay's small garrison of Invalides (military pensioners) shortly before the attack on the Bastille. Their officer Lieutenant Deflue, who was besieged together with him, later commented on the events and accused his late superior of military incompetence, inexperience, irresoluteness and outright cowardice, which he had allegedly displayed before the siege. Deflue's report, which was copied into the log book of his regiment and has survived, may not be fair to de Launay, who was put in an impossible position by the failure of the senior officers commanding the Royal troops concentrated in and around Paris to provide him with effective support. The Marshal de Broglie, who as Minister of War was in overall charge of the abortive efforts to suppress the disturbances of 1789, had however written on 5 July that "there are two sources of anxiety concerning the Bastille; the person of the commandant (de Launay) and the nature of the garrison there".

De Launay had three daughters by two wives. Some of de Launay's descendants settled in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, see Boris Delaunay

Boris Delaunay

Boris Nikolaevich Delaunay or Delone was one of the first Russian mountain climbers and a Soviet/Russian mathematician, and the father of physicist Nikolai Borisovich Delone....

 and Vadim Delaunay

Vadim Delaunay

Vadim Nikolaevich Delaunay was a Russian poet and dissident, who participated in the1968 Red Square demonstration of protest against military suppression of the Prague Spring.- Biography :...

 for details. His killing is described graphically in Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....

" (Book II, Chapter 21).