Mont Saint-Michel During the French Revolution

The Revolution ended a thousand years of monastic life on Mont Saint-Michel in a single decree. The monks were expelled by 1791, the rock was renamed Mont Libre, and the abbey spent the next seven decades as a state prison that held some 14,000 inmates before it closed in 1863.

The Prison Years

The first prisoners were priests who refused the revolutionary oath, locked in the abbey that had trained men like them. Under later governments the Mont held common convicts and the century’s political prisoners, including the republicans Armand Barbès and Auguste Blanqui after the 1839 rising. Cells and workshops filled the Romanesque halls, and a giant wooden treadwheel, turned by prisoners to haul supplies up the rock, still stands in the abbey and turns up on every visit.

The Campaign That Saved It

Victor Hugo visited in 1836 and spent years attacking the prison in print, writing that caging men in the abbey was like shutting a toad inside a reliquary. The campaign worked twice over: Napoleon III closed the prison by decree in 1863, and the argument that the building itself deserved protection carried through to its listing as a historic monument in 1874 and the restorations that followed. The irony stands: the prison’s ugly decades kept the abbey roofed and standing while other monasteries were quarried away. The timeline page carries the story forward to the monks’ return.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Mont Saint-Michel really a prison?
Yes, from the Revolution until 1863. Some 14,000 prisoners passed through the abbey in those decades, from refractory priests to the political prisoners of the nineteenth century.

What is the big wooden wheel in the abbey?
A prisoner-powered treadwheel from the prison era. Men walked inside it to winch supply sledges up the rock, and it remains in place on the abbey visit.

Why did the prison close?
A public campaign led by Victor Hugo and others shamed the government into it, and Napoleon III closed the prison by decree in 1863. Protection as a historic monument followed in 1874.