#onthisday: 14th July 1789
Storming of the Bastille
Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. Today’s post is the first in a new series of #onthisday historical deep dives. We’re starting off strong with my favourite historical period, around which most of these deep dives will be focused: the French Revolution. This is the event that started it all…
If you like this post and want more historical content sent straight to your inbox, consider subscribing:
What was the French Revolution?
Ah, the big question. Put simply, the French Revolution was a major socio-political event which disrupted the course of European history. It spanned just over a decade, from 1789 to 1799, and is often cited as the foundation of Western modernity:
La révolulion française est la consequence dernière et la plus avancée de la civilisation moderne
- Philppe Buchez, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française (Paris: Hetzel, 1846)
Be warned: the French Revolution is a very complex and highly debated topic. Even my 2-sentence summary can be contested (see the periodisation asserted by The National Archives). I want to emphasise that this is my opinion, based on years of academic study. I’d generally place myself in the camp of cultural historians like Ozouf, Furet and Tackett, but there are many other opinions, and many other scholars who would disagree with me, and with them.
History as a discipline is based on argumentation: we all have the same evidence, it’s what we do with that evidence and how convincing our argument is that gives us historical credibility. So no, we can’t deny that the storming of the Bastille happened on the 14th July 1789 because we have various contemporary sources telling us so. What we can contest, however, is when the Revolution started. No-one stood up and declared “this is the moment the Revolution begins”, to cheers from a unified crowd.
The French Revolution has attracted significant debate and is possibly the most contested moment in history. I have aimed to make this article as simple and as un-biased as possible, but at the end of the day, it is my opinion. What I say is not gospel, it did not happen, I am not “right”. No-one is. If you’re down for some confusing and wildly complex history, I’ve provided a list of sources at the end of this article to help you gain a wider perspective.
How did we get here?
End of the 17th century
The French monarchy was a symbol of absolutism
French society was organised into corporations (church, nobility, guilds, etc), all of which had their own rights and privileges, and who looked to the king to defend those rights
18thC - the “pre-Revolution”
The cost of running the kingdom was becoming increasingly problematic. The main expenditures went towards war efforts and servicing the debt - over 40% was just directed towards repayments by 1788
c. 1770 - France’s financial situation worsened, especially due to harvest failure, and Louis XV was forced to declare bankruptcy
Calling an Estates-General was first suggested during the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and a royal edict officially announced its assembly in January 1789 by Louis XVI. This was the first time the Estates-General had met since 1614.
Ahead of this meeting, French citizens were asked to write up a list of complaints, known as the Cahiers de Doleances (register of grievances)
There was a question of who should sit in the 3rd Estate, the largest body of lower-class French people, who had traditionally been shut out of politics
17th June 1789 – in a growing sense of panic that they were being shut out, the 3rd Estate declared themselves as the National Assembly
20th June 1789 – Tennis Court Oath was a meeting by members of the 3rd Estate, alongside other Enlightened minds and disgruntled members of the other 2 Estates. Inspired by the political landscape of England, they refused to disband until France had a constitution
12th July 1789 – huge crowds gathered in the public squares in Paris to discuss / debate what is happening, attacks on property (granaries, toll gates) around this time
13th July 1789 – National Guard (popular militia) is founded
14th July 1789
By this point, royal authority had almost entirely broken down: 5 out of the 6 royal battalions had mutinied.
Crowds of 80,000 angry, French people gathered by the Bastille, a building which used to function as a prison but which was now primarily used as an armoury. After a tense 3.5hour standoff, the Governor of the Bastille (De Launay) finally lowered the drawbridge, and both he and his men were murdered.
The mob held aloft his severed head and paraded it through the Place de Greve, where public executions used to take place. It was a symbolic moment which carried a clear message: the French people had now taken the King’s power for themselves.
Prise de la Bastille, Jean-Pierre Houël (1789)
The start of Revolution?
So, was this the start of the French Revolution? …maybe.
Some historians argue that the Estates-General was the start of Revolution as it signalled that both King and country had lost faith in the existing system of governance. It sparked riots, debates, and 2 of the Revolution’s foundational documents: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and Abbé Sièyes’ What is the Third Estate? (1789). It also directly linked to the key revolutionary ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the Enlightenment philosophy on which they were based.
However, others say that the storming of the Bastille was the Revolution’s formative moment. It signalled what was to come: the loss of a monarch, separation of church and state, gaining civil liberties, acts of violence. I would like to stress this last point in particular: because violence came to define the Revolution. Some scholars have argued that the death and paranoia of the Terror were a mere “blip” in the progression of the Revolution, but the events of 14th July 1789 prove that violence had always been an integral part of it.
Bastille Day
Today, France holds their national Bastille Day on 14th July. This annual tradition started with the Fête de la Fédération in 1790 which, interestingly, was not intended to be a celebration of the storming of the Bastille. It was scheduled for the same day, yes, but it aimed instead to commemorate the progress of Revolution and the unity of the French people. It remains unclear whether the current Bastille Day intends to celebrate the original event, or the subsequent Fête!
Recommended reading
Aulard, François-Alphonse, The French Revolution: A Political History, 1789-1804 (Scribners, 1910)
Denby, David J., Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Doyle, William, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1990)
^ this is an excellent starting point
Furet, François, ‘Interpreting the French Revolution’ in The French Revolution: The Essential Readings, ed. by Ronald Schechter (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2001)
—— ‘The French Revolution Revisited’, in The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies, 2nd edn, ed. by Gary Kates (New York; London: Routledge, 2006)
Lefebvre, Georges, The Coming of the French Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
McPhee, Peter, Liberty or Death: The French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016)
Michelet, Jules, History of the French Revolution, trans. by Charles Cocks (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2018)
The New Cultural History, ed. by Lynn Hunt (California: University of California Press, 1989)
Van Kley, Dale, Kaiser, Thomas (eds.), From Deficit to Deluge: the Origins of the French Revolution (2001)
Nice work
Funny, I feel the US Independence War is the beginning of Western democracy, not the French Revolution, which came 13 years later. Ultimately though, what started both of them was the Enlightenment, which propelled new ideas in otherwise very static and stratified societies. Anyway, I enjoyed your post as always.