Le Rat du Châtelet, Of Rats and Men

La Capucinade

Our book features a peculiar frontispiece, illustrating another slang word: capucinade. Two inmates are lying on the ground in the middle of a dormitory, with their trousers around their ankles. They embrace each other in front of dozens of inmates who look at them. On the right, two characters have also dropped their trousers, showing their naked bottoms. The caption reads, La Capucinade. Our rat explains that this is a violent way to extort newcomers: the inmates, pretending to start a ritual, drop their trousers and kiss a lying and half-naked man one by one. When the newcomer lies down on the naked man, some inmates jump on him and beat his naked bottom with rolled handkerchiefs until he reveals where he has put his money (sometimes he has left it with a trustworthy friend, says our rat—as if such a man was ever to be found in such a place). If he has no money, he has to empty the faeces barrel of the dormitory (another character, on the left of the engraving, is obviously filling up the said barrel). Now, what a weird engraving! Half-naked men embracing each other in a prison cell? Come on... “Honi soit qui mal y pense!” laughs our rat. But this capucinade—no explanation given for the name (a capucin is a monk)—makes no sense. Could it be a slang drawing, giving information that only certain rats can fully interpret? Why don’t they simply corner newcomers and beat them up until they speak? That sounds reasonably more efficient. But honi soit moi! After all, criminals may just need some human warmth, from time to time—why shouldn’t they combine business with pleasure?

Rats’ massacre

Our rat crawled away on a promise he didn’t fulfilled. The second part of Le Rat du Châtelet was never published and the names of the monsters of infamy never revealed. What happened to him? Was he fait (caught) while trying to débiner (run away)? Or was he coltiné (arrested) by a newly converted revolutionary who had him marrying the widow (hanged)? Or was he still incarcerated in Le Châtelet when, in September 1792, the Revolutionaries decided to put most prisoners to death? They accused them of plotting with foreign monarchies against the Republic, so they murdered 1,300 of them in Paris alone—and some 150 in the rest of the country. In his Histoire de la Révolution (1848), Jules Michelet wrote: “A dreadful mob swarms the abbey of Le Châtelet at seven in the evening; they start to blindly massacre the prisoners with their swords and rifles. They don’t spare forty out of two hundred.” The bodies were later carried to a nearby town, and buried in a common grave. Who knows? There might have been, among the dead, a little wet rat nobody took notice of? If so, may Havre (God) have mercy on his wicked rat soul.

Thibault Ehrengardt

dreadzine@free.fr

* see the article Cartouche & the Peddlers’ Books on this website.

Le Rat du Châtelet, (anonymous), no place, no printer. 1790 / 1 in-8° volume: frontispiece, title page (author’s note at the back), 48pp (numbered from 3 to 51). Read it here : books.google.fr/books?id=Ed1BAAAAcAAJ

Le Vice Puni ou Cartouche, (anonymous / Nicolas Racot de Grandval), Anvers. 1725 / 1 in-8°volume: frontispiece, title page, avertissement (2pp), 105pp, Dictionaire Argot-François (6pp).

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