Storming of the Bastille

6 Key excerpts on "Storming of the Bastille"

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  Discovering the Western Past

  A Look at the Evidence, Volume II: Since 1500

  • Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Andrew Evans, William Bruce Wheeler, Julius Ruff(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  [105] CHAPTER FIVE A DAY IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: JULY 14, 1789 THE PROBLEM Tuesday, July 14, 1789, dawned cool and cloudy in Paris. Leaden skies threatening heavy rainfall cast little light into the narrow, crowded streets of the capital. But the rain held off until evening, thereby providing the opportunity for events to occur in the city’s streets and squares that set off a fundamental change in the politi-cal history of France and the West as a whole. When rain finally fell, sending Parisians scurrying home, the forces of King Louis XVI had lost control of the capital, and, ultimately, much more. The French Revolution initiated by the events of July 14 eventually would destroy the royal absolutism that we examined in Chapter 3 and replace it with a government founded on the principle of popular sovereignty, the idea that political authority rests with the people, not the king. We can better understand this revolution if we ex-amine which Parisians took part in the events of July 14, and why they did so. On that Tuesday, the people of Paris seized the great fortress and prison on the city’s eastern edge known as the Bastille. Construction of the Bastille had begun in 1370 as part of the eastern defenses of Paris. The fortress had eight towers, set in walls about 80 feet high and 10 feet thick. Its only entrance was by two draw-bridges across a moat that was dry in 1789; by that date the Bastille had been obsolete as a fort for several cen-turies. Developments in modern artil-lery had rendered its walls vulnerable, and the growth of Paris meant that the Bastille was no longer on the city’s pe-riphery, but instead was surrounded by the streets of the suburb known as the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. As early as the fifteenth century, the monarchy had confined prisoners in the Bastille, but the systematic use of the old fort as a prison began dur-ing the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu in the early seventeenth century.

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  The French Revolution

  Faith, Desire, and Politics

  • Noah Shusterman(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The actual taking of the Bastille was a long, drawn-out affair, full of smoke and gunfire and confusion. Delegates from the city’s electors came several times but were unable to prevent bloodshed and, once the fighting started, they were unable to stop it. For most of the day, the people attacking the Bastille—including those who were members of Paris’s brand new militia – had little in the way of military training. The prison had an outside gate, then an inner courtyard, and then a second round of towers surrounded by a moat. The Parisians were able to get into the inner courtyard quite quickly, only to discover that they were sitting ducks for the Swiss guards firing on them. To the people storming the prison, it felt like a trap: they had been drawn into the courtyard only to be massacred.

  Figure 2.1 The Storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789. By the end of the day, reinforcements had come to help the protesters take over the prison. From Révolutions de Paris. © Penn Special Collections.

  The battle was a stalemate for several hours. The turning point came with the arrival of soldiers from a unit called the French Guard. These soldiers had been stationed in Paris for years; earlier in the summer, though, they had declared their support for the people of Paris and the third estate. On the afternoon of July 14, they arrived at the Bastille, along with several cannons seized that morning from the Hôtel des Invalides. From that point on, the soldiers inside knew that time was running out on them. They could have held out in the hope that reinforcements would come for them too, but it was telling that the first soldiers to arrive as reinforcements came in on the side of the people. Indeed, the allegiance of the area’s soldiers was a major question in July of 1789; the troops stationed outside of Paris might not have been the force of despotism that the people of Paris feared.

  By the end of the fighting, 83 of the attackers were dead; one had been crushed by the drawbridge, most of the others shot dead after entering the courtyard. Only one of the soldiers defending the Bastille was killed during the fighting. Some would be killed that night by members of the crowd, angry at what they saw as the betrayal of luring them into the courtyard just to shoot their comrades down. De Launey, for his part, surrendered himself to be taken to the Hôtel de Ville. The surrender did not save him. Upon reaching the Hôtel de Ville the crowd succeeded in getting de Launey away from his protectors. One of de Launey’s last actions was to kick one member of the crowd, an unemployed cook named Desnot, in the groin; Desnot did not have to wait long for revenge. After the crowd had killed de Launey, Desnot cut off his head and placed it on a pike, which cheering crowds then paraded throughout the city. This grisly practice (as shown in Figure 2.2

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  The French Revolution: A History in Documents

  • Micah Alpaugh(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The capture of the Bastille fortress, a hated prison on the eastern edge of Paris, was not pre-meditated. Rather, it organically developed on the third day of a Parisian insurrection opposing the King’s dismissal of reformist minister Jacques Necker. As seen in the published personal account of Jean-Baptiste Humbert, a humble journeyman watchmaker, the Bastille’s taking developed from a plan to forage gunpowder to stop both the King’s troops rumored to be planning an invasion of the city and lower-class Parisian rioters considered a threat to property. Humbert’s July 14 is chaotic in the extreme: he is nearly suffocated by overzealous fellow insurgents, shot by friendly fire, helped by one of the Swiss Guards defending the Bastille, hospitalized with a flesh wound, and almost lynched by a confused revolutionary crowd, yet still continues fighting for liberty. Despite the complicated machinations of politics, alliances, and loyalties in mid-1789, common Frenchmen came to strongly identify with the National Assembly and Revolutionary cause, risking their lives in its defense. The concrete act of seizing such a symbol of despotism led partisans to believe they were now undertaking a Revolution beyond all precedent.

  Frenchmen, my compatriots, I am a native of Langres.

  1

  I learned to be a watchmaker in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was a journeyman when that Republic lost its liberty.

  2

  I peacefully slept on a cot in a guardhouse when French troops seized that city after several traitors opened the gates.

  I witnessed the consternation of the bourgeois residents, and heard the complaints they made against a Minister of France who, they said, had misled my king,

  3

  I heard their sighs, complaints, and regrets, that I will long hold in my heart against this Minister, a part of the sad sentiments I felt for the unfortunate Genevans.

  I came back to Paris in 1787. There I became accustomed, without feeling it, to carrying the yoke weighing heavily on my compatriots, the brave Parisians.

  Like them, on the twelfth of July [1789], at the news that the armed populace attacked bourgeois residents instead of defending them, I went to the electoral district of St. André des Arts to offer my services.

  4

  I believed what I heard there: the attack near the Tuileries by the Prince of Lambesc, and several other well-known incidents, had raised bourgeois alarm and led them to take arms. I submitted myself to the commanders they named.5

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  The French Revolution as Blasphemy

  Johan Zoffany's Paintings of the Massacre at Paris, August 10, 1792

  • William L. Pressly(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  Almost immediately, sympathetic members of the clergy and nobility joined them in this effort, including the king's own cousin, the due d'Orleans. Some Parisians, confronted with the king's calling up of troops and exiling of Jacques Necker, the popular minister of finance, became convinced of a conserva- tive conspiracy. They took to the streets on July 12, with the climax coming two days later when crowds, in search of gunpowder, stormed the Bastille. This gloomy fortress, a legendary prison, was a powerful symbol of tyranny, and its capitulation and subsequent demolition came to represent the nation's liberation from despo- tism. The victory of July 14 required sacrifices, including the decapitation of the gov- ernor of the Bastille, his head, like those of others who had displeased the insurgents, being paraded on a pike. From the beginning, punitive violence went hand in hand with revolutionary ardor. The shift of the center of power from Versailles to Paris was completed soon there- after. Angered by reports that royalist troops had insulted the patriotic cockade and starved by the high price of bread, several thousand women, whose core was com- posed of the Parisian poissardes (fishwives and market women), marched to Versailles on October 5 to confront the king. They were followed by units of the National Guard, a bourgeois militia commanded by General Lafayette that had only recently been created to maintain order. The guardsmen were marching in support of the women against the wishes of their commander, who accompanied his troops only after realizing he was powerless to stop them. Louis's concessions helped to defuse the anger of many, but others, who were less easily appeased, decided that the royal family should accompany them on their return to Paris. The uneasy stalemate was broken early in the morning of October 6, when an armed crowd forced its way into the queen's apartments, killing two of her bodyguards before she narrowly escaped.

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  The Rough Guide to Paris

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  • 0(Publication Date)
  • Rough Guides

    (Publisher)

  Bastille and around A symbol of revolution since the toppling of the Bastille prison in 1789, the Bastille quarter used to belong in spirit and style to the working-class districts of eastern Paris. After the construction of the opera house in the 1980s, however, it became a magnet for artists, fashion folk and young people, who brought with them over the years stylish shops and an energetic nightlife. Much of the action takes place around rues Amelot, de Charonne and de Lappe, where cocktail lounges and theme bars have edged out the old tool shops, cobblers and ironmongers. However, some of the working-class flavour lingers on, especially along rue de la Roquette and in the furniture workshops off rue du Faubourg-St-Antoine, testimony to a long tradition of cabinet making and woodworking in the district. LE BARON ROUGE WINE BAR 7 110 BASTILLE AND AROUND PLACE DE LA BASTILLE South of Bastille, the relatively unsung twelfth arrondissement offers an authentic slice of Paris, with its neighbourhood shops and bars, plus traditional markets, such as the lively Marché d’Aligre. Attractions include the Promenade Plantée , an ex-railway line turned into an elevated walkway running from Bastille to the green expanse of the Bois de Vincennes , and Bercy Village ’s appealing cafés and shops set in old wine warehouses. Place de la Bastille M Bastille The vast Place de la Bastille , its centre marked by a green-bronze commemorative column, is indissolubly linked with the events of July 14, 1789, when the Bastille prison fortress was stormed, triggering the French Revolution and the end of feudalism in Europe. Bastille Day (July 14) is celebrated throughout France and the square is the scene of dancing and partying on the evening of July 13; it still has strong symbolic value and is often the starting point for rallies and demos.

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  Non-Violence and the French Revolution

  Political Demonstrations in Paris, 1787–1795

  • Micah Alpaugh(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  48 2 Political demonstrations and the politics of escalation in 1789 What did protesters expect as they marched from the Palais-Royal on July 12, 1789, beginning what would become the Bastille uprising? Largely abstaining from carrying weapons, and including many women and children, the thousands of demonstrators did not seem prepared for an armed encounter. Yet the march did not lack ambition: demand- ing popular minister Jacques Necker’s reinstatement, protesters moved westwards along the boulevards – possibly intending to continue their demonstration to Versailles to confront the king with public displeasure. Despite scuffles with soldiers at Place Vendôme, the march continued onwards to Place Louis XV (today Place de la Concorde), where a brutal cavalry charge dispersed the mostly peaceful protesters. 1 Only thereafter did Parisians undertake a violent insurrection. Building from the movements of 1787–8, Parisian demonstrations developed a growing importance in the budding Revolutionary pro- gression of 1789. The emerging artisan-led contention of the late pre- Revolution spread political contention through much of the capital. Four geographically diverse marches opened the Réveillon disturbances of April 1789, while tens of thousands, drawn from all quartiers, par- ticipated in the early Bastille uprising and October Days. Profiting from unprecedented opportunities to influence the course of political events, demonstrations expressed popular discontent while still not resorting to unbridled insurrection. Likely the most surprising aspect of the initial demonstrations in each major journée was their typical restraint from physical violence, and emphasis upon conciliation with the state. This chapter will examine the origins and early development of 1789’s three central insurrections.

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