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| | Lettre de cachet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
 | | The best-known lettres de cachet, however, were penal, by which a subject was sentenced without trial and without an opportunity of defense to imprisonment in a state prison or an ordinary jail, confinement in a convent or a hospital, transportation to the colonies, or expulsion to another part of the realm. |
 | | In this respect, the lettres de cachet were a prominent symbol of the abuses of the ancien régime monarchy, and as such were suppressed during the French Revolution. |
 | | Lettres de cachet were abolished after the French Revolution by the Constituent Assembly, but Napoleon reestablished their penal equivalent by a political measure in the decree of the 8th of March 1801 on the state prisons. |
| en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Lettre_de_cachet (1079 words) |
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