Fill in the Blanks BASTILLE FORTRESSOnline version Read the text and complete the gaps with key vocabulary. by Alfonso Poza 1 prison heretics fortress affairs Voltaire Hundred debts philosophes detained Paris prisoners The Bastille was a , built in the mid to late 1300s to house a garrison of royal soldiers . The fortress and its garrison were installed to protect the eastern flanks of Paris from English during the Years' War ( 1337 - 1453 ) . By the early 1400s , the fortress had been expanded to become one of the largest structures in . A contingent of royal troops was permanently housed there , both to defend the city walls and keep order inside them . By the reign of Louis XI ( 1461 - 1483 ) , the Bastille had become a royal , though by the late 1700s there were rarely more than 20 or 30 prisoners . The majority of those in the Bastille were not common criminals but or men held at the king's pleasure . They tended to be rebellious or troublesome noblemen , aristocrats with large gambling , rogues caught in with the wives of powerful men , religious or critics of the church , seditious journalists and political pornographers . Several notable and revolutionary figures spent time in the Bastille , including ( twice ) , Denis Diderot , Jacques Brissot , the playwright Pierre Beaumarchais , the pornographer Marquis de Sade .
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