Storming of the Bastille
On 14 July 1789, around 900 Parisians — market workers, artisans, soldiers who had deserted their regiments — marched on the Bastille fortress in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, an imposing medieval prison that had become a symbol of royal arbitrary power. They had already seized the Invalides that morning for its weapons cache. Governor de Launay initially negotiated but then opened fire on the crowd, killing nearly a hundred people. When regular troops and artillery arrived and defected to the crowd's side, de Launay surrendered; he was killed by the mob as he was marched away, his head displayed on a pike. The Bastille held only seven prisoners at the time of its fall — a disappointment to those expecting dungeons full of political prisoners. Its symbolic weight, however, was enormous: the news spread across France within days, triggering the Great Fear across the countryside as peasants attacked manorial records and châteaux, and prompting the National Assembly on the night of 4 August to abolish feudal rights in a cascade of renunciations by noble deputies. The King, visiting the Assembly on 15 July, was presented with a tricolour cockade — red and blue for Paris, white for the Bourbon dynasty — and accepted it. The Old Regime's coercive architecture was crumbling.
- Year: 1789 CE
- Category: Military
