Bastille Day

Bastille Day is a national French holiday commemorating the storming of Paris's Bastille prison by a revolutionary mob on July 14, 1789, at the start of the French Revolution (1789–99). The mob was composed of commoners who had grown weary of the absolutist rule of the French monarchy and sought to acquire the Bastille's armaments to attack royal forces. The event marked the beginning of the French Revolution that ultimately led to the formation of the French Republic.

July 14 became a holiday known as Bastille Day only in the late nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century, the storming of the Bastille is not as much the focus of the day as is the celebration of French national pride. The French people mark the holiday with fireworks, dances, festive meals, and military parades. The Bastille Day parade that takes place on Paris's Avenue des Champs-Élysées is the oldest military parade in the world, dating back to 1880.

Background

The Bastille prison was built in Paris in the 1370s as a stronghold during the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) between France and England. The stone castle was more than one hundred feet tall, and it was protected by a moat more than eighty feet wide. The Bastille was converted to a state prison in 1417. Over the next three and a half centuries, it was used to hold certain classes of prisoners, usually political dissidents, spies, and upper-class criminals. Most prisoners were never permitted to defend themselves in actual courts and were sentenced to the Bastille on the direct orders of the French kings, who ruled France with absolute power. Louis XVI, who became king in 1774, was particularly notorious for sending citizens who questioned his authority directly to the Bastille.

By the mid-1780s, Louis's absolutist rule combined with numerous economic problems had truly begun to anger French citizens. For decades, France had experienced droughts and diseases that spoiled grain harvests and drove up bread prices. Additionally, France's assistance in the American Revolution (1775–1783) had left the country deeply in debt. Louis attempted to resolve France's economic situation by raising taxes on the working classes. Poor farmers who were already struggling financially now had to pay even more of their income to the state. As a result, France's lower classes started to resent government officials, particularly Louis.

Around 1787, the French people began seeing revolution as a viable option for saving their failing country. They were inspired by the humanist philosophies of the Enlightenment, which supported fair government and civil liberties for all. Louis's 1789 attempt to raise national taxes again sent the Parisian people into a rage. Encouraged by revolutionary firebrands, mobs of commoners formed across Paris and began attacking Louis's forces.

By July of 1789, the governor of the Bastille suspected that the prison would soon become a target of the rebellion, as it represented the monarchy's oppression of the French people. The governor raised the fortress's drawbridges and waited. On the morning of July 14, armed with weapons from the Paris arsenal, a mob of about three hundred surrounded the prison. The people were primarily searching for the gunpowder they knew was being stored there. Some of the rebels climbed over the castle's walls and lowered one drawbridge, allowing the rest of the mob to rush into the Bastille.

The royal forces stationed at the prison defended themselves against the mob for several hours, but more revolutionaries arrived at the Bastille over the course of the day. They eventually overcame the king's guards, captured the prison, and released the prisoners being held there. The mob destroyed the Bastille over the next five months, leaving the site in ruins.

The storming of the Bastille marked the beginning of the French Revolution, though the mob had not truly attacked the building to free the prisoners. It was only in later years that the incident of July 14 began to take on political significance as an assault on absolutist government.

Overview

On July 14, 1790, one year to the day of the Bastille attack, France held a national holiday known as Fête de la Fédération, which honored the beginning of the French Revolution and the French people's commitment to unity and just government. However, the ongoing revolution soon became the Reign of Terror and led to the formation of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte. Consequently, July 14 was not observed as a holiday again until almost one hundred years after the start of the revolution.

July 14 officially became the French national holiday of Bastille Day in 1880. That year also marked the first annual military parade down Avenue des Champs-Élysée in Paris. In the twenty-first century, the annual parade featured about four thousand soldiers, police officers, firefighters, and other armed forces personnel. The president of France traditionally attends the event.

People across France generally observe Bastille Day with group meals and parties. In Paris, the epicenter of Bastille Day activity, crowds of people gather near the Eiffel Tower at night to watch a grand fireworks display. The tower itself is illuminated in the colors of the French flag: blue, white, and red. Many cities and towns throughout France stage their own fireworks shows. Dance parties are also popular among the French people on Bastille Day. A tradition beginning in the 1930s calls for firehouses to host raucous dances that raise funds for firefighters around the country. Bastille Day is even celebrated in other countries, such as the United States, where citizens of New Orleans and New York hold rowdy parties in honor of the day.

On Bastille Day in 2016, a man drove a large truck into crowds of onlookers watching a fireworks display in Nice, France. He killed nearly ninety people and injured hundreds of others before being killed by police. The assailant was later identified as a Tunisian man who had been influenced to kill Westerners by the Islamic terror group ISIS, or the Islamic State. France's then-president, François Hollande, noted that the individual's choice of Bastille Day to inflict violence on French citizens was a symbolic attack on the liberty represented by the holiday.

Bastille Day celebrations, at times, have also served as an opportunity for French leaders to host foreign dignitaries in a high-profile setting. For example, in July 2023, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was the guest of honor at that year's Bastille Day festivities in Paris. The parade included a marching band from the Indian military, and the Indian Air Force performed a flyover while Modi stood side-by-side with Emmanuel Macron, president of France at that time.

Bibliography

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