More than any other event of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, which began
in 1789, changed the face of modern politics across Europe and the world.
It overturned the longstanding French system of monarchical government and introduced the
ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, and human and civil rights to modern political practice.
It also helped to usher in modern nationalism and nation-states.
And it became a model of revolutionary political change that was followed throughout the world
from Europe, to Haiti, Latin America, Russia, and East Asia.
And it all began one July day when the people of Paris captured a fourteenth-century gothic
prison known as the Bastille.
In the summer of 1789, Paris was at a boil.
The people had been from suffering from food shortages and from the weight of taxes used
to pay King Louis XVI’s vast debts.
They found themselves in the midst of unprecedented political turmoil caused by the opening of
the Estates General, France’s Parliament, for the first time in more than a hundred
years.
Many Parisians were also angered by the dismissal of the popular minister Jacques Necker on July 11th.
But what really stirred them was the fact that, since the beginning of June 1789, Louis
XVI had concentrated troops around Paris.
The sense of menace that the militarization of the city caused provoked a march to the
Hôtel des Invalides, where Parisians looted approximately 3,000 firearms and five canons.
The weapons, however, required gunpowder, and this was stored in the Bastille.
So the marchers went to the prison to grab the gunpowder for their newly liberated weapons.
After arriving at the prison and negotiating with its governor, Parisians burst into an
outer courtyard and a pitch battle erupted.
By the time it was over, the people of Paris had freed the prisoners held in the Bastille
and taken the governor captive.
The cost was steep: nearly one hundred citizens and eight prison guards were killed.
Soon, too, the governor and three of his officers would not only be killed, but then beheaded by
an infuriated crowd, their heads then were paraded through the streets atop pikes.
Hearing that the Bastille had fallen, Louis XVI asked the duke de La Rochefoucauld: “So,
is there a rebellion?”
To which the duke retorted: “No, Sire, a revolution!”
All of this happened on July 14, which has been known ever since in France and all over
the world as “Bastille Day”.
Like many other world-changing revolutionary acts, the storming of the Bastille was not
originally intended as such.
Yet, it was a decisive moment in the unfolding of the French Revolution.
It was the spark that forced the King to begin concessions and emboldened the people’s
movement to overthrow him (and later even to behead both him and his wife in the hope
of burying monarchy forever).
Throughout the nineteenth century, the fall of the Bastille was chronicled by historians,
depicted by artists, and celebrated by common people.
In 1880, the French chose to make the Storming of the Bastille their national holiday.
And through all the upheavals of France’s century of revolutions (1789-1871), the events
of July 14 retained their power as the most dominant symbol of the people bringing down
a despotic government and putting an end to arbitrary rule.
Today, in times of global terrorism, outsourced prisons, bitcoins, and subcontracted state
and military arbitrariness, the Storming of the Bastille might look like a quaint scene
from an old-fashioned opera.
Yet, the world in recent years has had its own share of Bastilles, from Tahrir Square
in Cairo to Independence Square in Kyiv (not to mention the recent commemorations of the
1989 Tiananmen Square Movement).
And we have much to learn from the taking of the Bastille.
It reminds us that on the long, bumpy road toward representative democracy and justice—
that is, on the road towards rule with the consent of the people and for the benefit of the people—
it is sometimes easier to strike down the visible signs of authoritarian power than to deal
with the complicated, often shadowy sources of that power.
After it took the French the better part of a century to embed the democratic ideals
of 1789, the Bastille prompts us to remember just how hard it is for the voices of the
people to become solidified into enduring democratic governments and the rule of law.
The storming of the Bastille also reminds us that modern citizens were not only born
out of acts of valor or cruelty, but also out of the act of remembering.
The fall of the Bastille was one of the crucial moments in the eruption of the modern popular
historical consciousness.
The power of history and historical understanding have become central to the proper functioning
of a democratic society.
In 1789, the Bastille was not just a prison but also served as an archive holding the
documents of the Parlement de Paris, of the King’s household, and of the Parisian police.
Pillaged, scattered, and burned with the fall of the fortress, large parts of the archive
were recovered by Beaumarchais and by the Russian diplomat and bibliophile Pierre Dubrowsky.
Realizing the importance of the Bastille archives, the Paris Commune appealed to the citizens
to return any papers they might have in their possession in order to help document the future
trial of royal despotism.
The citizens of Paris answered promptly and 600,000 pieces were returned.
Today, together with a copy of the documents saved by Dubrowsky, they constitute the Archives
of the Bastille found at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
On July 14, 1789, the people of Paris seized not only a prison, but also control over their
own historical memory, too.
It is this sudden blooming of subjects into citizens, willing and able not only to change
history, but also to contribute to its writing, which set the precedent for all the revolutions
of the modern age.
It is a privilege which we should strive not to lose.