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What you probably didn't know about the storming of the Bastille

Here are 21 things you might not have known about the turning point in French history - getty
Here are 21 things you might not have known about the turning point in French history - getty

France’s national day, July 14, celebrates the 1789 seizing of the Bastille, which kicked off the French revolution. Or not. The story isn’t quite as clear as that suggests. Here are 21 things you might not have known about the turning point in French history.

1. The storming of the Bastille fortress wasn’t really the start of the French revolution

The most radical political reform was already underway, replacing monarchical absolutism with power derived from the people. Riven by financial problems, King Louis XVI called the Estates General to Versailles on May 5, 1789. This was a sort of docile parliament which hadn’t met in 175 years. Louis wished to give his demand for money a veil of legitimacy. The wheeze didn’t work. While the First Estate, the clergy, and Second Estate, the nobles, were ok with it, the Third Estate – everyone else, lawyers and businessmen through landless peasants – saw it as an opportunity to flex muscles and bring the king to heel. Through June 1789, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly and fount of authority. It vowed to devise a proper constitution. Louis ceded, agreeing to become a constitutional monarch but, vitally, not quite on the terms demanded by the National Assembly. He called in troops to both Paris and Versailles. This game of cat and mouse was nevertheless edging towards extraordinary political change – before the mob took the Bastille.

2. The Bastille was a pretty useless fortress

Built in the 14th-century to protect the St Antoine entry to the city, it was later expanded but maintained a record of buckling every time besieged – not least to the English in the Hundred Years War.

3. So it became a prison – and, as such, a symbol of absolutism and arbitrariness

People could be chucked in without trial, on the king’s say-so. Notable men had been banged up there, from Montaigne through Voltaire, via the Man In The Iron Mask. Less notable men, too. The Marquis de Sade – obese after 13 years in gaol for licentiousness and associated perversions – was moved out only days before the Bastille was stormed. When the mob broke in on July 14, there were just seven prisoners to liberate – four counterfeiters, two lunatics and a minor aristo committed to gaol by his family for incest.

The Marquis de Sade - getty
The Marquis de Sade - getty

4. The Parisian populace had been turbulent for some days before July 14, 1789

They were hungry – following a poor 1788 harvest, a working man had to spend half his wage just to buy bread for the family. (Overall, prices had risen by 65% in 50 years, wages by 22%.) They knew tense events were afoot out at Versailles – still the real seat of power – but also that the ancien régime had called in troops. They feared repression would compound food shortages. In the week preceding July 14, they’d sacked many customs posts which taxed goods arriving in Paris. They had already tangled with troops.

5. The spark was struck at the Palais Royal – where Napoleon lost his virginity

Because private, therefore off-limits to the police, the Palais not only harboured bars, gambling houses and brothels (“your breeches, M. Bonaparte”) but was also a meeting place for radicals. On July 12, after the sacking of the relatively enlightened finance minister Necker, journalist and lawyer Camille Desmoulins leaped onto a café chair, overcame his severe stutter and called surrounding citizens “aux armes”. They were off.

6. Subsequently, the Palais gardens continued to uphold both revolutionary and raunchy traditions

Reports suggest that, in the 1790s, there were 2,000 girls on the game in the vicinity. Plus some lively shows. One apparently featured “a wild man” (in truth, a naked blacksmith) and woman “giving themselves over to the most secret mysteries of love”. On good days, they would apparently stage the show 19 times.

Raucous fun in the Palais gardens - getty
Raucous fun in the Palais gardens - getty

7. First stop, Les Invalides

Around 10am on July 14, the Parisian insurgents arrived at Les Invalides – retirement home for military veterans. Also a weapons store. To avoid bloodshed, Governor de Sombreuil gave in at once. According to some reports, the crowd snaffled around 30,000 and 40,000 firearms and muskets.

8. Next, the Bastille

Because not only it was a symbol of repression but it also housed the powder and bullets necessary for the guns. It was defended by 80 veteran soldiers and 30 Swiss grenadiers. Governor de Launay – conscientious but dour – inaugurated negotiations with mob leaders. These dragged on. Some even suggest they all lunched together. Having grown restless, the crowd surged in. Dickens described it thus in A Tale Of Two Cities: “the remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance and faces hardened in the furnace of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark upon them”. Defenders killed a hundred of them. The insurgents swept on, now backed by soldiers of the Gardes Françaises. Theses élite troops had effectively mutinied so as not to have to fire upon fellow-Parisians. But they also acted with soldierly discipline to stop the mob massacring everyone in the Bastille, once they’d won.

9. Governor de Launay was less lucky

He was dragged out and had his head cut off. In Dickens’ version, it’s Madame Defarge who wields the knife. In real life, versions oscillate between a master butcher and a kitchen boy called Desnut. Undisputed is that the head was stuck on a pike, paraded around Paris and then, on July 15, chucked in the Seine.

10. Anarchy

As the king and the ancient regime had lost control, so things fell apart nationwide. Armed peasants attacked and torched manor houses and châteaux, nobles fled and almost everyone was afraid of almost everyone else. No-one was sure who was in charge in Paris, though things became clearer when the Gardes Françaises became the Garde Nationale with liberal peer, and US war of independence hero, the Marquis de Lafayette in charge. A constitutionalist royalist, he was to act as an interface between revolutionaries and the king.

11. Private enterprise

At the same time, wily folk were looking to make a bob or two out of the chaos. Step-forward Pierre-François Palloy, a building entrepreneur who, by nightfall on July 14 had already, and without authorisation, had his men start demolishing the Bastille. He sold off the stone for building (some went into the Pont de la Concorde over the Seine) or as souvenirs. He had Bastille metal work turned into jewellery and (very shoddy) medals. Palloy had finished within a year – though charged the public purse for 30 months. This bagged him a few months in gaol in 1793.

12. Outline

The former emplacement of the Bastille is outlined on the ground of the present Place de la Bastille, near the entry into the square of the Rue St Antoine. Remnants of the foundations of the fortress may be seen by platform five of the Bastille metro station. The tall column in the middle of the square has, incidentally, nothing to do with 1789 revolution. It commemorates, rather, the 1830 overthrow of Charles X. (In seeking one insurrection in France, you’re always bumping into others.) Corruption in French public works has a long perdigree.

Place de la Bastille - getty
Place de la Bastille - getty

13. Musée Carnavalet

The monumental museum of the history of Paris, in the Marais at 16 Rue des Francs Bourgeois, is maybe the best place to start tracing the French revolution in the capital. Or it would be, if it hadn’t been shut for renovation for four years. It’s due to reopen next December, which should mean that we get access again to a recreation of Louis XVI’s prison room, Robespierre’s shaving brush and a model of the Bastille carved from a big stone taken from the fortress. Best thing, though, is a series of gouache cut-outs depicting key revolutionary moments. They constituted a 1790s road-show, carted round the country as a documentary to show provincials what was happening (carnavalet.paris.fr).

14. Follow-up

Matters moved fast after July 14. The following day, Louis XVI was before (what was now known as) the National Constituent Assembly and, on July 17, he met Paris’s new municipal authorities. At this stage hardly anyone wanted rid of him but, also, hardly anyone knew what he, the king, should be doing, or what his status was. This wasn’t cleared up in August when the National Constituent Assembly came up with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. History offers few more radical, world-changing documents. But the king’s role remained unclear: in the words of US historian Robert R Palmer: was he a sovereign, or an executive officer of the Constitutent Assembly?

15. Feudalism abolished

Along the way, feudalism was ended (so no more tithes, seigneurial dues and privileges or titles of nobility), the legal system revised so that everyone would, in theory, be equal before the law, tax reformed so it would be paid by all in proportion to their property and noble hunting privileges revoked – which is why, in rural areas, autumn and winter can still be lethal as Everyman strolls the landscape with his shotgun, blasting at rabbits. The Assembly also abolished guilds and unions, on the Adam Smith principle that trade organisations were always a conspiracy against the public.

16. Fête de la Fédération

A year on from the taking of the Bastille, July 14, 1790 the new powers-that-be ordained that a great festival be held, to celebrate not only the mob anniversary but also the subsequent peace, the unity of the nation and all the other things which power likes to celebrate. It was to be held on the Champs de Mars esplanade (now in the lee of the Eiffel Tower). Figures differ, but some estimates put the crowd, from all over France, at 360,000. Lafayette was there, swearing loyalty to the nation. Talleyrand, still a bishop – though also an atheist and seducer of his own niece – said the Mass. And the King, his queen Marie-Antoinette and their Dauphin son were all there, pledging allegiance to the constitution. They were cheered to the skies. “Vive le Roi” rang out louder than any other slogan. It seemed unlikely he’d be dead in under three years.

The 1790 Fête de la Fédération - getty
The 1790 Fête de la Fédération - getty

17. Here We Dance

At the same moment, Palloy (see 11 above) organised a parallel fête in a big tent on the site of the Bastille he’d been demolishing. A sign said: “Here We Dance!” He’d caught the mood. Festivities ran on for four days with wine, dancing and, according to some reports, people running through the streets naked, to express their freedom. But of course. Thus were planted the roots of the bals populaires – popular dances – still rife across France on July 14, though I’ve not spotted the running nudes.

18. Fête Nationale

July 14 didn’t become France’s national holiday until 1880 and, unexpectedly, doesn’t specifically commemorate the day they stormed the Bastille. When the French parliament discussed the subject, conservative MPs resisted having a national day rooted in mob violence, bloodshed and decapitation. So it was decided that the Fête Nationale would mark the anniversaries of both Bastille day and the Fête de la Fédération the following year, when France came together in a show of unity. That’s how things still stand.

19. Fetnat

Through to the 1960s, it was usual to follow the calendar of saints’ days when naming a baby. Born on November 15, you’d be Albert, on August 18 Hélène. Except there’s no saint for July 14. The calendar simply says “Fet Nat”... whence, notably in France’s overseas territories, several older folk, of both sexes, called “Fetnat”.

20. Bastille, bastion of the Left

Whenever Parisian socialists wish to join together and rejoice, they still gather on the Place de la Bastille, to underline their radical, fortress-storming credentials. They did so, en masse, on the evenings of the elections of François Mitterrand in 1981 and of François Hollande in 2012.

This year's low-key celebrations - getty
This year's low-key celebrations - getty

21. Covid oblige, the 2020 fête is restricted

Instead of a vast procession of 4,000 or more along the Champs Elysées, some 2,000 soldiers will be confined to the Place de la Concorde, marching before President Macron, who arrived at 1045am. Among 2,500 guests will be health professionals who’ve fought the pandemic but also binmen, supermarket check-out personnel and others who kept the country going. At 11am there was a homage to General de Gaulle on the 50th anniversary of his death, 130th of his birth. At 1115am, a ceremonial fly-past of 52 planes will include two British machines. There followed the march-past. Much later, around 11pm, the trad fireworks extravaganza will explode around the Eiffel Tower – from which the public is barred, gatherings of more than 5,000 people remaining illegal. Watch it from a balcony if in Paris, on TV if not.