Bastille Day Anniversary

In 1789, the French people could tolerate their situation no longer. Anxiety over food shortages, unemployment and a fear of possible government take over produced a feeling of anger that caused the people to revolt. French history was forever changed by these angry people, who took a stand and stormed the Bastille on 14 July, 1789. Today the French people celebrate Bastille Day as a day of freedom from an intolerant rÐ"©gime and that the revolution is over.

Hugh Aubriot built the Bastille in 1382 as a fortress guarding the eastern border of Paris. It was placed here to protect the city from English invasion. The fortress consisted of eight round towers linked by walls seventy-three feet high and five feet thick. There were twelve rampart guns on the towers and eighteen larger cannons were placed on the ground level, as well as on some of the towers. The only entrance to the Bastille was by way of two moats. It was Robert Hubert, the painter of ruins, which gave the Bastille its Babylonian look. His paintings made the towers take on the appearance of huge cliffs that could not be conquered. Incidentally, when the Parisians attacked the fortress in 1789 these moats were empty producing a good advantage to the angry mob.

It was during the seventeenth century that Cardinal de Richelieu transformed the citadel into a prison. The main prisoners held in the Bastille were political troublemakers who were arrested according to the letters de cachet. The letters de cachet ordered the imprisonment of an individual by the king and without recourse to the courts of law. The other prisoners were placed there by the request of their own family members. This was done because they had disgraced their family's honor by marrying the "wrong person" or into the "wrong family." The prisoners would arrive to the prison in curtain drawn coaches and were then escorted inside where the soldiers on duty had to then turn and face the wall. This was done to ensure that nobody knew the prisoner's identity.

The Bastille was, in fact, one of the more lenient prisons on Paris during the eighteenth century. The prisoners were allowed to bring their own possessions with them and were provided with adequate food and other furnishings. The dungeon had been vacant for many years as well. Those prisoners who maintained good behavior were allowed to leave the Bastille for part of the day and walk through Paris. Another element to point out is that the prison was never heavily populated. There were usually no more than ten prisoners in the immense structure at any given time and it was felt by many that it should be demolished and transformed into a market square. The architect and contractors, who supported this idea, were pleased when they learned that only seven prisoners were held in the Bastille and none of them were serious offenders.

Because the Bastille gave an ambiguous impression to the Parisians they had a pessimistic approach towards the ominous edifice. Because of this the Parisians believed that when a person entered the Bastille, he or she were either severely tortured or would never come out alive. This ambiguity of the prison led the Parisians to symbolize the Bastille as a reminder of an intolerable rÐ"©gime.

This idea of the Bastille as a reminder of something the Parisians could no longer tolerate was not the only element that contributed to its fall on the 14 July, 1789. There were also problems with the inflation of bread prices, which was so bad that the poor could scarcely afford to pay for it. The cost of bread was so high that a laborer with a wife and three children had to spend half of his wages to buy bread for his family. The biggest concern, however, was that of the government. Attention had drawn to the king's forces as they were accumulating in numbers on the frontiers of the city. The peasants feared an aristocratic plot against them and believed the king had ordered the troops to mobilize. This fear resulted in the peasants taking arms to protect themselves.

The Parisians were also alarmed at the recent actions of the government. The king had been moving troops from the frontiers to Paris and the size of the Paris forces increased from 4,000 to 17,000. The peasants feared that they would be treated unmercifully by the aristocratic land owners and grain speculators under a reinforced government. It is of importance to note that some of the troops felt unprepared to deal with riots and in some townships they even socialized with the people. Two of these divisions and their five cannons were of great value to the people on July 14, 1789.

Some of the troops sympathized with the people in the shops where they bought tobacco and where they drank their wine. It would be difficult for them to open fire on the people they knew and it was said that they would shoot into the air before they would fire on a crowd of people. Experiencing dire poverty and alarmed by the political crisis, the Parisians knew something had to be done and they progressed decisively towards revolution.

On the 14 July, 1789, six hundred or more Parisians crowded the streets outside the Bastille. They were looking for ammunition to help defend them from the king's army. After many hours of attempting to penetrate the doors of the prison, the peasants succeeded and stormed inside. The Bastille had been conquered.

On July 14, 1789, six hundred or more Parisians, who were in favor of a Republic, with the help of three hundred guards that had deserted their regiments, began to crowd the streets outside of the Bastille. They thought they would find ammunition there to help defend themselves from the king's army. The mob had begun to frighten the Governor of the Bastille, Count de Launy, and the drawbridges to the Bastille were raised. The rioters then began to cross the first moat, since it was not filled with water, and advanced toward the second moat.

Count de Launy's doubt soon overcame him and he began to panic. He then ordered the guards to shoot small fire at the people. Eighty-three people attempting to enter the Bastille were killed and seventy-three injured. Only one of the defenders was killed and three wounded. Two men in the crowd, as retaliation to this, put two cannon in front of the Bastille in order to blow the door down. Count de Launy's men pleaded with him to surrender the prison to the Parisians, but he would not do it. Count de Launy then decided to write a letter to one of the lieutenants in the crowd asking to be allowed to march out freely with his men. He heard no response and thirty minutes later assumed everything was all right. The drawbridges were then lowered and the revolting Parisians swarmed the Bastille. The revolutionaries took all the guards as prisoners and seized