Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the preservation of Ancien Régime police archives after the Revolution, notwithstanding their sensitive nature. Since the storming of the Bastille gave sudden accessibility to the archives produced by the Lieutenance générale de police de Paris, until then stored in the royal fortress to guarantee their secrecy and safety, this collection confronted the Revolutionaries with an unprecedented political problem: what was to be done with old police archives in the context of the political and social changes occurring in summer 1789? Reflections on the very nature of these archives led to different attitudes in the face of this new accessibility. Between efforts of preservation and organised leaks, here the post-revolutionary fate of the Ancien Régime’s police archives is highlighted through a retrospective overview of their production by the quantification of that which remains. It finally stresses the different ways and means of losing archives, between disappearances, oblivion, and definitive destruction.