Storming of the Bastille

The storming of the Bastille, a pivotal event in the early days of the French Revolution, is vividly captured in this meta description. It examines the historical significance of the dramatic storming of the Bastille prison by a mob on July 14, 1789. This moment symbolized the people’s dissatisfaction with the monarchy and served as a catalyst for revolutionary fervor that reshaped the course of French history. This account explores the symbolism of the Bastille as a hated symbol of royal tyranny and highlights how its fall became a powerful emblem of the people’s struggle for freedom and a key milestone in the struggle against oppressive monarchies.

Storming of the Bastille

Historical Event	Storming of the Bastille
Date	July 14, 1789
Location	Bastille, Paris
Significance	The symbolic start of the French Revolution
Key Participants	Parisian revolutionaries, common citizens
Trigger	Economic hardship, political unrest, and perceived tyranny
Outcome	The fall of the Bastille, a symbolic victory for the people
Consequences	The fall of the Bastille, a symbolic victory for the people

Introduction

The storming of the Bastille took place in Paris, France, on July 14, 1789, when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and take control of the medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. After four hours of fighting and 94 deaths, the rebels managed to enter the Bastille. Governor de Launay and several of the crew were killed after the surrender. The Bastille then represented royal authority in the center of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of her attack and was already slated for demolition, but it was seen by revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy’s abuse of power. His fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.

What was the bastille

The Bastille was a fortress built in the late 13th century to protect Paris during the Hundred Years’ War. At the end of the 18th century, the Bastille was mostly used as a state prison by King Louis XVI.

Who stormed the Bastille

The revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille were mostly artisans and shop owners who lived in Paris. They were members of the French social class called the third estate. About 1,000 men took part in the attack. The Third Estate had recently made demands on the king and demanded that the commoners be allowed to participate more in the government. They were worried that he was preparing the French army to attack. To arm themselves, they first occupied the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, where they managed to obtain muskets. However, they had no gunpowder. The Bastille was said to be full of political prisoners and to many, it was a symbol of royal oppression. It also had stores of gunpowder, which the revolutionaries needed for their weapons.

Background

(1) During the reign of Louis XVI, France faced a major economic crisis, caused in part by the costs of intervention in the American Revolution and exacerbated by regressive taxation as well as poor harvests in the late 1780s. In addition, Calonne’s finance minister, Louis XVI, who succeeded Necker, thought that lavish spending would secure loans by presenting the monarchy as wealthy. This only added to Louis’s financial woes. On May 5, 1789, the Estates-General met to deal with the matter but was held back by archaic protocols and the conservatism of the Second Estate, representing the nobility, who made up less than 2% of the French population. On June 17, 1789, the Third Estate, with its representatives chosen from the commoners, reconstituted itself as the National Assembly, a body whose purpose was to create a French constitution. The king was initially opposed to this development but was forced to recognize the authority of the assembly, which was renamed the National Constituent Assembly on July 9.

(2) Paris, close to the uprising and, in the words of François Mignet, “intoxicated with freedom and enthusiasm,” showed widespread support for the assembly. The press published the debates, and political debate spread beyond the assemblies themselves into the public squares and halls of the capital. The Palais-Royal and its grounds became the site of the ongoing meeting. The mob, acting on a meeting at the Palais-Royal, broke open the prison at the Abbaye to release several grenades from the French guards, who were said to have been imprisoned for refusing to shoot at the people. The assembly recommended that the imprisoned Guardsmen receive the king’s pardon, return to prison for a symbolic one-day period, and receive a pardon. The position of the regiment, which had been considered reliable, now turned to the popular cause.

Necker’s Impeachment

(1) On July 11, 1789, Louis XVI, acting under the influence of conservative nobles in his privy council, dismissed and expelled his finance minister, Jacques Necker (who sympathized with the Third Estate), and completely restored himself. ministry. Marshals Victor-Francois, Duke de Broglie, La Galissonnière, Duke de la Vauguyon, Baron Louis de Breteuil, and Intendant Joseph Foullon de Doué took over the posts of Puységur, Armand Marc, Comte de Montmorin, La Luzerne, Saint-Priest, and Necker. News of Necker’s release reached Paris on the afternoon of Sunday, July 12. Parisians generally assumed that the release marked the beginning of a coup by conservative elements. Liberal Parisians were further enraged by the fear that a concentration of royalist troops, brought from the frontier garrisons at Versailles, Sèvres, Champ de Mars, and Saint-Denis, would attempt to shut down the National Constituent Assembly, which was sitting at Versailles. Crowds gathered throughout Paris, including more than ten thousand at the Palais-Royal. Camille Desmoulins successfully rallied the crowd by “sitting on the table with a pistol in hand and exclaiming, ‘Citizens, there is no time to waste time; the dismissal of Necker is the prostration of St. Bartholomew for the patriots! This very night, all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource remains: to take arms!”

(2) The Swiss and German battalions mentioned were among the foreign mercenary units that formed a significant part of the pre-revolutionary royal army and were considered less likely to sympathize with the popular cause than regular French soldiers. By early July, approximately half of the 25,000 regular troops in Paris and Versailles were drawn from these foreign regiments. The French regiments included in the concentration seem to have been chosen either because of the proximity of their garrisons to Paris or because their colonels were supporters of the reactionary “court party” opposed to reform. During the public demonstrations that began on July 12, the crowd displayed busts of Necker and Louis-Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and marched from the royal palace through the theater district before continuing west along the boulevards. The crowd clashed with the Royal German Cavalry Regiment (“Royal-Allemand”) between the Place Vendôme and the Tuileries Palace. From the top of the Champs Élysées, Charles Eugene, Prince of Lambescu (marshal of the camp and owner of the Royal Allemand-Dragoons), launched a cavalry charge that drove the remaining demonstrators into Place Louis XV, now the Place de la Concorde. The royal commander, Baron de Besenval, fearing the consequences of a bloodbath among the ill-armed mobs or desertion among his men, then withdrew his cavalry towards Sevres.

(3) Meanwhile, riots grew among the inhabitants of Paris, who expressed their hostility to the state authorities by attacking the customs authorities, who were accused of raising the prices of food and wine. The people of Paris began looting any place where food, weapons, and supplies could be stockpiled. That night, rumors spread that supplies had been stockpiled at Saint-Lazare, a vast clergy estate that functioned as a monastery, hospital, school, and even prison. An enraged mob broke in and looted the property, seizing 52 wagons of wheat, which were taken to the public market. On the same day, a large number of people ransacked many other places, including an arsenal. The royal troops did nothing to stop the spread of social chaos in Paris in those days.

Armed conflict

(1) The regiment of the Guard Francaise (French Guards) formed the permanent garrison of Paris and, with many local connections, was favorably inclined to the popular cause. During the initial stages of the riot in mid-July, the regiment remained confined to its barracks. When Paris became the scene of general riots, Charles Eugene, not trusting the regiment to obey his orders, sent sixty dragoons to post in front of his depot in the Chaussée d’Antin. The officers of the French Guard tried unsuccessfully to rally their men. The rebellious citizens have now acquired a trained military contingent. As word of this spread, the commanders of the royal forces encamped on the Champ de Mars began to doubt the reliability of even the foreign regiments.

(2) The future “Citizen King,” Louis-Philippe, Duke d’Orléans, witnessed these events as a young officer and thought that the soldiers would obey orders if put to the test. He also noted in retrospect that the officers of the French Guards had neglected their duties in the run-up to the Rebellion and had left the regiment too much in the hands of his NCOs. Besenval’s uncertain leadership, however, led to the de facto abdication of royal authority in central Paris. On the morning of July 13, the electors of Paris met and agreed to recruit a “bourgeois militia” of 48,000 men from the sixty constituencies of Paris to restore order. Their identification cockades were blue and red, the colors of Paris. Lafayette was elected commander of this group on July 14 and subsequently changed its name to the National Guard. On July 27, he added white, the king’s color, to the cockade, creating the famous French tricolor.

Attack on the Bastille (July 14, 1789)

(1) On the morning of July 14, 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of alarm. Guerrillas of the Third Estate in France, now under the control of the Paris Bourgeois Militia (soon to become the National Guard of Revolutionary France), had previously attacked the Hotel des Invalides without meeting much resistance. They intended to collect the arms held there (29,000 to 32,000 muskets, but without powder or shot). The commander of the Invalides had taken precautionary measures in the previous days and transported 250 barrels of gunpowder to the Bastille for safer storage. At this point, the Bastille was almost empty, with only seven inmates: four counterfeiters arrested on warrants issued by the Grand Châtelet Court; James F.X. Whyte, an Irish-born “madman” suspected of espionage and imprisoned at his family’s request; Auguste-Claude Tavernier, who tried to assassinate Louis XV thirty years ago; and one “deviant” aristocrat suspected of murder, the Comte de Solages, imprisoned by his father with a lettre de cachet. The previous prisoner, the Marquis de Sade, had been transferred ten days earlier after shouting at passers-by that the prisoners were being massacred.

(2) The high cost of maintaining the garrisoned medieval fort, which was considered limited, led to the decision shortly before the riots to replace it with an open public space. Amid the tensions of July 1789, the building remained a symbol of royal tyranny. The regular crew consisted of 82 invalids (veterans who were no longer fit for field service). On 7, however, it was reinforced by 32 grenadiers from the Swiss Salis-Samade Regiment from regular units on the Champ de Mars. 18 eight-pounder guns and 12 smaller pieces were mounted on the walls. The governor was Bernard-René de Launay, the son of the previous governor, and was born in Bastina. The official list of vainqueurs de la Bastille (conquerors of the Bastille) subsequently compiled has 954 names, and the total crowd was probably less than a thousand. A breakdown of the occupations included in the list shows that the majority were local artisans, along with a few common army deserters and a few special categories, such as 21 wine merchants.

(3) A mob assembled before the fort about noon and called for the withdrawal of the menacing cannon from the embrasures of the towers and ramparts and the release of the guns and gunpowder stored within. Two representatives from the Hotel de Ville (municipal authorities from the town hall) were invited to the fort and negotiations began. another was admitted around noon with definitive demands. Negotiations dragged on while the crowd grew impatient. Around 1:30 p.m., the crowd poured into the unprotected outer courtyard. A small group climbed onto the roof of the building next to the gate to the inner courtyard of the fortress and broke the chains on the drawbridge, crushing one of the vainglorious as it fell. The soldiers of the garrison urged the people to retreat, but amid the noise and confusion, these shouts were mistakenly interpreted as an inducement to enter. The shooting began, apparently spontaneously, turning the crowd into a mob. The mob appeared to feel that it had been deliberately lured into a trap, and the fighting became more violent and intense, while attempts by MPs to organize a truce were ignored by the attackers.

(4) The firing continued, and after 15:00, the attackers were reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises, together with two cannons, each of which was said to have been fired about six times. A considerable force of Royal Army troops encamped on the Champ de Mars did not intervene. When the possibility of a mutual massacre suddenly appeared, Governor de Launay ordered the garrison to cease firing at 5:00 p.m. A letter written by de Launay was passed to the besiegers through a gap in the inner gate, offering to surrender but threatening to explode the powder stocks held unless the garrison were allowed to evacuate the fort unharmed. His demands were not met, but Launay surrendered anyway, realizing that with limited food supplies and no water supply, his troops could not last much longer. Accordingly, he opened the gates and the Vanities stormed in to take over the fort at 5:30 p.m.

(5) Ninety-eight attackers and one defender died in actual fighting or subsequently from wounds, a disparity due to the protection afforded the garrison by the fort’s walls. Launay was seized and dragged towards the Hôtel de Ville in a storm of abuse. In front of the hotel, a discussion about his fate began. Badly beaten, Launay screamed, “Enough! Let me die!” and kicked a confectioner named Dulait in the groin. Launay was then stabbed repeatedly and died. An English traveler, Dr. Edward Rigby, reported what he saw: “noticing two bloody heads raised on pikes, said to be those of the Marquis de Launay, Governor of the Bastille, and M. Flesselles, Prevot des Marchands.” it was a chilling and horrible sight! … Shocked and disgusted by the scene, he immediately left the streets.” The mob also killed three officers of the Bastille’s permanent garrison; surviving police reports detail their injuries and clothing.

(6) Three invalids from the crew were lynched, and possibly two of the Swiss rank and file of the Salis-Samade regiment were reported missing. The remaining Swiss were protected by French guards and eventually released to return to their regiment. Their officer, Lieutenant Louis de Flue, wrote a detailed account of the defense of the Bastille, which was incorporated into the diary of the Salis-Samade Regiment and survives. He criticizes the dead Marquis de Launay, whom Flue accuses of weak and indecisive leadership. The blame for the fall of the Bastille seems to lie more with the inertia of the commanders of the 5,000 soldiers of the Royal Army encamped on the Champ de Mars, who did not act when the nearby Hotel des Invalides or the Bastille were attacked. A short order sent from the Baron de Besenval to the governor read-only, “M. de Launay is to hold fast to the end; I sent him sufficient forces.”. Back at the Hotel de Ville, the mob accused the Prevot des marchands (roughly mayor) Jacques de Flesselles of treason, and he was assassinated on the way to the supposed trial at the Palais-Royal.

(7) The King first learned of the attack only the next morning through the Duke of La Rochefoucauld. “Is it a riot?” asked Louis XVI. The duke replied, “No, sir, it’s not a rebellion; it’s a revolution.” Indeed, the storming of the Bastille is occasionally suggested as the pivot point of the revolution in the national discourse. However, in his book The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny, historian Ian Davidson argued that Louis XVI capitulating to the Third Estate at Versailles had a better claim to be the founding event, noting that “bourgeois revolutionaries” at Versailles had a major role in managing the future of the revolution using parliamentary and political mechanisms for the next three years. However, the fall of the Bastille is the first time that the regular citizens of Paris, the sans-culottes, have significantly intervened in the affairs of the revolution. For this phase of the revolution, the sans-culottes were allies of the “bourgeois revolutionaries.”.

Immediate Reaction (July 14–15)

At Versailles, the assembly was kept in the dark about most of the events in Paris for several hours. However, the deputies remained concerned that Marshal de Broglie might still launch a pro-royalist coup that would force them to accept the order of June 23 and then dissolve the assembly. Noailles was the first to bring reasonably accurate reports of events in Paris to Versailles. M. Ganilh and Bancal-des-Issarts, sent to the Hôtel de Ville, confirmed his report. On the morning of July 15, the outcome seemed clear even to the king, and he and his military commanders retreated. The twenty-three regiments of royal troops concentrated around Paris were dispersed to their frontier garrisons. The Marquis de la Fayette took command of the National Guard in Paris, and Jean-Sylvain Bailly, leader of the Third Estate and instigator of the Tennis Court Oath, became mayor of the city under a new government structure known as the Commune de Paris. The king announced that he would recall Necker and return from Versailles to Paris. On July 17, in Paris, he accepted the blue and red cockade from Bailly and entered the Hôtel de Ville amid shouts of “Long live the King” and “Long live the nation.”.

The Storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution

The storming of the Bastille had a major impact on the course of the French Revolution.

(1) Sans-Culottes Emerge as a Significant Force

One of the significant effects of the storming of the Bastille on the French Revolution was the elevation of the urban working class as an influential driver of the revolution. They were called Sans-Culottes, literally translated as without trousers, because they used long trousers instead of knee-length trousers or pants favored by the wealthy. Up to this point, the revolutionary events were carried out by the richest representatives of the bourgeoisie of the third estate. The lower classes took a leading role in driving the revolution forward.

(2) Violence as a characteristic of revolution

The reform actions of the National Constituent Assembly have been peaceful up to this point. Therefore, another consequence of the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution was the use of violent and direct popular action. The storming of the Bastille heralded further direct action by the working and lower classes. A few days later, on July 20, the Great Fear began in the countryside as peasants feared a counter-revolution by the landowners. In towns and villages across France, they seized local control and formed militias that often killed landowners and nobility. A few months later, the Women’s March took place in Versailles. Once the more radical phase of the revolution began, violence and the apparent mob rule of the Sans-Culottes during the Reign of Terror characterized the French Revolution.

(3) Signal that the Old Order was over

Just as the Bastille was chosen as a target in part because of its symbolic representation of the monarchy and the old order, its collapse signaled the end of that order. While technically Louis XVI remained King of France, he lost control. He was now subject to the demands of the people, as his reappointment of Necker showed. Any hope of crushing the popular demands or stopping the revolution in its tracks was now gone. The storming of the Bastille provoked many nobles to leave France entirely and emigrate to Italy and other neighboring countries. Historians debate whether the storming of the Bastille should be considered the beginning of the French Revolution. Today, it is celebrated as a public holiday in France. Some historians would argue that the declaration of the National Assembly by the Third Estate should be considered the beginning of the revolution. Others, meanwhile, argue that the storming of the Bastille is more important because it marked the entrance of the popular classes and moved events from declarations and calls for reform to the complete collapse and eventual destruction of the old order.

Political reference

(1) Immediately after the violence of July 14, members of the nobility—little assured of the apparent, and as it turned out, temporary reconciliation between king and people—began to flee the country as emigrants. Among the first to leave were the Comte d’Artois (the future Charles X of France) and his two sons, the Prince de Condé, the Prince de Conti, the Polignac family, and (somewhat later) Charles Alexandre de Calonne, formerly Minister of Finance. They settled in Turin, where Calonne, as an agent of the Comte d’Artois and the Prince de Conde, began planning civil war in the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. The news of the successful uprising in Paris spread throughout France. By the principles of popular sovereignty and with complete disregard for the claims of royal power, the people established parallel structures of municipalities for civil administration and militias for civil protection. In rural areas, many went overboard: some burned title deeds and no small number of castles as the “Great Fear” swept through the countryside in the weeks from July 20 to August 5, with faith-fueled attacks on wealthy landowners. that the aristocracy was trying to suppress the revolution.

(2) On July 16, 1789, two days after the storming of the Bastille, John Frederick Sackville, the British ambassador to France, announced to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds: “Well, my lord, the greatest revolution that we know of , was affected, comparatively speaking – if we consider the scale of the event – ​​by the loss of very few lives. Henceforth we may consider France a free country, the king a very limited monarch, and the nobility reduced to the level of the rest of the nation.” On 22 July 1789, the population lynched the Comptroller General of Finance, Joseph Foullon de Doué, and his son-in-law[66] Louis Bénigne François Bertier de Sauvigny. Both held official positions under the monarchy. About 900 people who claimed to have stormed the Bastille received a certificate (Brevet de vainqueur de la Bastille) from the National Assembly in 1790, and many of them still exist.

Demolition of the Bastille

(1) Although there were arguments that the Bastille should be preserved as a monument to the liberation or as a depot for the new National Guard, the Standing Committee of the Communal Electors of Paris City Hall gave construction entrepreneur Pierre-Francois Palloy the mandate to dismantle the building. Palloy immediately began work and employed about 1,000 workers. The demolition of the fort itself, the melting down of its clock depicting chained prisoners, and the smashing of four statues were carried out within five months. In 1790, Lafayette presented a forged pound and three-ounce Bastille key to US President George Washington. Washington displayed it prominently at government functions and events in New York and Philadelphia until his retirement in 1797. The key remains on display at Washington’s Mount Vernon residence.

(2) Palloy also took bricks from the Bastille and had them carved into replicas of the fortress, which he sold, along with medals said to have been made from prisoners’ chains. Pieces of stone from the building were sent to all quarters in France and some were found. Various other pieces of the Bastille also survive, including the stones used to build the Pont de la Concorde over the Seine and one of the towers, which was found buried in 1899 and is now in Place Henri-Galli in Paris. the clock bells and pulley system which are now in the Musée d’Art Campanaire. The building itself is bricked up where it once stood, as is most of the Paris Metro station below it, where a piece of the foundation is also exposed.

Interesting facts about the storming of the Bastille

People beheaded Governor de Launay, put his head on a spike and marched him around Paris. There were only seven prisoners in the Bastille at the time. They were released after the attack. Four of them were convicted counterfeiters. Over the next five months, the Bastille was destroyed and reduced to a pile of ruins. Today, the site of the Bastille is a square in Paris called Place de la Bastille. In the middle of the square is a monumental tower commemorating this event. The men who took part in the attack were considered heroes during the revolution and adopted the title “Vainqueurs de la Bastille”, meaning “Victors of the Bastille”.

Bastille Day

In France, July 14th is a national holiday, Fete nationale Francaise, which commemorates the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the Fete de la Federation, which took place on its first anniversary in 1790. In English, this holiday is commonly referred to as Bastille Day.

Conclusion

The Bastille is no longer standing today. After the revolution, it was destroyed and scattered throughout Paris. It was broken down into individual stones, which those who survived the revolution took away as souvenirs or were used in the construction of new Parisian roads. There is a memorial on the site of the Bastille to help the people of Paris with the events that led to their freedom.

(FAQ) Questions and Answers about the Storming of the Bastille