7. Emerging From a Dungeon, This Perv Got Himself Elected to the National Convention
The Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in harsh conditions until 1784, when he was transferred to the Bastille. He remained there until he was transferred to a mental asylum in 1789, just two days before the Bastille was stormed at the start of the French Revolution. De Sade was released in 1790 amidst France’s revolutionary turmoil. Taking to the new order, he took to calling himself “Citizen Sade”. Within a few months, he got himself elected to the French National Convention as a representative of the far left.
De Sade barely survived the Reign of Terror, during which he was imprisoned for a year. He emerged from jail in 1794, utterly destitute. In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered de Sade arrested for pornographic and blasphemous novels he had written a decade earlier, and had him imprisoned without trial. In 1803, the Marquis’ family had him declared insane and transferred from prison to a mental asylum. There, he continued writing and staged plays with inmates as actors. His writing career finally to an end in 1809, when the police ordered de Sade kept in solitary confinement, and deprived him of pen and paper.