Storming of the Bastille
A crowd took the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and found seven prisoners in it. The fortress had been a state prison and had become mostly a symbol and a storehouse. Its garrison was some eighty invalides and thirty Swiss, and the government had already decided it was too expensive to maintain. What the crowd wanted was gunpowder. Paris had spent two days arming itself after the king dismissed Necker, the popular finance minister, and concentrated troops around the capital; the Invalides had been raided that morning for some 30,000 muskets, and the powder had been moved to the Bastille. The negotiations lasted most of the day, deputations went in and did not come out, and the crowd got into the outer courtyard by cutting the drawbridge chains. Firing began, some ninety-eight of the attackers were killed, and the governor de Launay surrendered in the late afternoon on a promise of safety and was killed on the way to the Hôtel de Ville, his head cut off with a pocket knife by a cook. The prisoners were four forgers, two lunatics and a nobleman detained at his family's request. The significance was immediate and understood by everyone. The king could no longer use force in his own capital, and he went to Paris three days later wearing the tricolour cockade. An entrepreneur bought the demolition contract and sold models of the fortress carved from its own stone. The date became the national holiday in 1880, and the official justification given at the time was that it commemorated the Fête de la Fédération of 1790 rather than the storming, which allowed deputies who disliked the violence to vote for it.
- Year: 1789 CE
- Category: Military
