The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 was an important development in, and later a symbol of, the French Revolution. Though at the time the Bastille contained only seven prisoners, its taking marked the beginning of open rebellion against the king. The anniversary of the event is still celebrated as Bastille Day, France's national holiday.

Contents

1 Background 2 Necker's dismissal 3 Armed conflict 4 The Bastille is stormed 5 Aftermath 6 References

Background

During the reign of king Louis XVI, France was forced to confront a major financial crisis which had been brewing for decades. On May 5, 1789, the Estates-General of 1789 convened to deal with this issue, but was held back by archaic protocols and the conservatism of the Second Estate. On June 17, 1789, the representatives of the Third Estate reconstituted themselves as the National Assembly, a body whose purpose was the creation of a French constitution. The king initially opposed this development, but was forced to acknowledge the authority of the assembly, which subsequently renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly on July 9.

Paris, close to insurrection, and, in François Mignet's words, "intoxicated with liberty and enthusiasm," unanimously expressed its support for the Assembly [1]. The press published the Assembly's debates; political debate spread beyond the Assembly itself into the public squares and halls of the capital. The Palais Royal and its grounds became the site of a continuous meeting. The crowd, on the authority of the meeting at the Palais Royal, broke open the prisons of the Abbaye to release some grenadiers of the French guards, imprisoned for refusing to fire on the people. The Assembly recommended them to the clemency of the king; they returned to prison, and received pardon. Their regiment now leaned toward the popular cause.

Necker's dismissal

On July 11, 1789, with troops at Versailles, Sèvres, the Champ de Mars, and Saint-Denis, the king, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles of his privy council, banished his finance minister, Jacques Necker, who had been sympathetic to the Third Estate, and completely reconstructed the ministry. The marshal Victor-François, duc de Broglie, la Galissonnière , the duc de la Vauguyon , the Baron Louis de Breteuil, and the intendant Foulon , took over the posts of Puységur , Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin, La Luzerne , Saint-Priest , and Necker.

News of Necker's dismissal reached Paris in the afternoon of Sunday, July 12. The Parisians generally presumed that the dismissal marked the start of a coup by conservative elements. Crowds gathered throughout the city, including more than ten thousand at the Palais Royal. Camille Desmoulins, according to Mignet, successfully rallied the crowd by "mount[ing] a table, pistol in hand, exclaiming: 'Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource is left; to take arms!'" [2] (These foreign, mercenary troops were seen as especially loyal to the king, because they did not have the same ties to the general populace as ordinary French soldiers.)

Armed conflict

A growing crowd, brandishing busts of Necker and of the duke of Orleans, passed through the streets to the Place Vendôme, where they put a detachment of the Royal-allemand (the king's German soldiers) to flight by a shower of stones. At the Place Louis XV, the dragoons of the prince de Lambesc shot the bearer of one of the busts; a soldier was also killed. Lambesc and his soldiers ran rampant, attacking not only the demonstrators but anyone in their path.

The regiment of the French guard favourably disposed towards the popular cause had remained confined to its barracks. With Paris becoming a general riot, de Lambesc, not trusting the regiment to obey this order, posted sixty dragoons to station themselves before its dépôt in the Chaussée-d'Antin. Once again, a measure intended to restrain only served to provoke. The French regiment routed their guard, killing two, wounding three, and putting the rest to flight. The rebellious citizenry had acquired a trained military contingent; as word of this spread, even the foreign troops refused to fight in what looked to be a civil war with a divided military.

The rebels gathered in and around the Hôtel de Ville and sounded the tocsin. Distrust between the leading citizens gathered within the building and the masses outside was exacerbated by the failure or inability of the former to provide the latter with arms. Between political insurrection and opportunistic looting, Paris reeled in chaos. In Versailles, the Assembly stood firm, and went into continuous session so that it could not, once again, be stealthily deprived of its meeting space.

The Bastille is stormed

The insurgents invaded the Hôtel des Invalides to gather arms, and then attacked the Bastille. At this point, the jail was nearly empty, housing only seven inmates: four forgers, two "lunatics" and one "deviant" aristocrat, the Comte de Solages. The attackers were mainly seeking to acquire the large quantities of arms and ammunition stored there - on the 14th there were over 13,600 kg (30,000 lb) of gunpowder stored at the Bastille. The garrison, reinforced on the 7th, consisted of just 32 men of the Salis -Samade regiment together with 82 other staff and guards. The walls mounted eighteen eight-pound guns and twelve smaller pieces. The governor was Bernard-René de Launay, son of the previous governor and actually born within the Bastille.

The list of vainqueurs de la Bastille has around 600 names and the total of the crowd was probably less than a thousand. The crowd gathered outside around mid-morning, calling for the surrender of the prison, the removal of the guns and the release of the arms and gunpowder. Two deputies were invited into the fortress and negotiations began, another deputy was admitted around noon with definite demands. The negotiations dragged on and the crowd grew and also became impatient.

Around 13:30 the crowd surged into the undefended outer courtyard and the chains on the drawbridge to the inner courtyard were cut - crushing one unfortunate vainqueur. About this time gunfire began, which side fired first will never be absolutely decided. The crowd seems to have felt it had been 'tricked', drawn into a trap and the fighting became more intense and attempts by deputies to organise a cease-fire were ignored by the attackers.

The firing continued and at 15:00 the attackers were reinforced by gardes françaises and other veterans carrying weapons taken from the Invalides earlier in the day, and also two cannons. With the possibility of a mutual massacre suddenly apparent Governor de Launay ordered a cease fire at 17:00. A letter offering his terms was stuck through a gap in the inner gates and acrobatically retrieved by the besiegers. The demands were refused but de Launay capitulated because he realized that his troops could not hold out much longer and opened gates to the inner courtyard and the vainqueurs swept in to liberate the fortress at 17:30.

Ninety-eight attackers had died and just one defender. De Launay was seized and dragged towards the Hôtel de Ville in a storm of abuse. Outside the Hôtel a discussion as to his fate began, following a particularly unpleasant suggestion from a man called Desnot, de Launay shouted "Enough! Let me die!" and kicked Desnot in the groin. De Launay was instantly stabbed repeatedly and fell to the street, his head was then sawn off and fixed on a pike to be carried through the streets. Returning to the Hôtel de Ville, the mob accused the prévôt des marchands (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles of treachery; en route to an ostensible trial at the Palais Royal, he was assassinated.

Aftermath

The citizenry of Paris, expecting a counterattack, entrenched the streets, built barricades of paving stones, and armed themselves as well as they could, especially with improvised pikes. Meanwhile, at Versailles, the Assembly remained ignorant of most of the Paris events, but eminently aware that Marshal de Broglie stood on the brink of unleashing a pro-Royalist coup to force the Assembly to adopt the order of June 23 and then to dissolve. The Viscount de Noailles apparently first brought reasonably accurate news of the Paris events to Versailles. M. Ganilh and Bancal-des-Issarts, despatched to the Hôtel de Ville, confirmed his report.

By the morning of July 15 the outcome appeared clear to the king as well, and he and his military supporters backed down, at least for the time being. Lafeyette took up command of the National Guard at Paris; Jean-Sylvain Bailly -- leader of the Third Estate and instigator of the Tennis Court Oath -- became the city's mayor under a new governmental structure known as the commune. The king announced that he would recall Necker and return from Versailles to Paris; on July 27, in Paris, he accepted a tricolor cockade from Bailly and entered the Hôtel de Ville, as cries of "Long live the Nation" changed to "Long live the King".

Nonetheless, after this violence, nobles -- little assured by the apparent and, as it was to prove, temporary reconciliation of king and people -- started to flee the country as émigrés . Early émigrés included the comte d'Artois (the future Charles X of France) and his two sons, the prince de Condé, the prince de Conti, the Polignac family, and (slightly later) Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the former finance minister. They settled at Turin, where Calonne, as agent for the count d'Artois and the prince de Condé, began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France.

Necker returned from Basel to Paris in triumph (which proved short-lived). He discovered upon his arrival that the mob had cruelly murdered Foulon and Foulon's nephew, Berthier, and that the baron de Besenval (commander under de Broglie) was held prisoner. Wishing to avoid further bloodshed, he overplayed his hand by demanding and obtaining a general amnesty, voted by the assembly of electors of Paris. In demanding amnesty rather than merely a just tribunal, Necker misjudged the weight of the political forces. He overestimated the power of the ad hoc assembly, which almost immediately revoked the amnesty to save their own role, and perhaps their own skins, instituting a trial court at Châtelet. Mignet counts this as the moment when the Revolution left Necker behind.

The successful insurrection at Paris spread throughout France. People organized themselves into municipalities for purposes of self-government, and into bodies of national guards for self-defense, in accord with principles of popular sovereignty and with complete disregard for claims of royal authority. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux.

References