The Marquis de Sade was held there from 1777 to 1784, the writer Honoré Mirabeau from 1777 to 1784, and the famous swindler Jean Henri Latude, who escaped twice from the Vincennes and once from the Bastille. In 1784, after Mirabeau wrote a series of articles which exposed the abuses of the royal judicial system and the practice of keeping prisoners without trial, the use of the keep as prison was discontinued.
