Storming of the Bastille
Parisian revolutionaries stormed the Bastille fortress, igniting the French Revolution
July 14, 1789
A Prison as a Symbol of Tyranny
On July 14, 1789, a crowd of Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had become a symbol of royal despotism. The events of that day became the defining moment of the French Revolution. The crowd had gathered at the Bastille partly to seize gunpowder stored there and partly to demand the release of political prisoners. In reality, the Bastille held only seven prisoners at the time, none of them political heroes. But its massive walls and towers represented everything the revolutionaries hated about the old regime of absolute monarchy. After hours of negotiation and then fighting, the garrison surrendered. The fortress commander, the Marquis de Launay, was killed by the crowd.
The Crisis That Triggered the Attack
The storming did not happen in isolation. France in 1789 was in crisis. Years of poor harvests had driven up bread prices, and ordinary people faced starvation while the royal court at Versailles maintained its extravagance. King Louis XVI had called the Estates-General, a representative body, to address France's financial crisis in May 1789. The Third Estate, representing ordinary citizens, had broken away to form a National Assembly and declared itself the legitimate government of France. When Louis dismissed his popular finance minister, Necker, on July 11, Parisians feared a royalist crackdown. The storming of the Bastille on July 14 was both a defensive act and a revolutionary declaration.
Bastille Day and Its Legacy
The Bastille was demolished in the months that followed, and its stones were sold as souvenirs. The site became a public square. July 14 became a national holiday in France in 1880 and is celebrated to this day as Bastille Day, a commemoration of the French Republic's founding ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The events of 1789 launched a revolution that executed the king, overthrew the aristocracy, and eventually brought Napoleon to power. The ideas of the French Revolution, including popular sovereignty, individual rights, and constitutional government, spread across Europe and the world and remain central to modern democratic thought.