By July 1789, France was already in the middle of a political revolution. The Estates-General had transformed into the National Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath had challenged the authority of the King, and Louis XVI’s government was struggling to maintain control over Paris. What had begun as a dispute over taxation and political representation was rapidly becoming a confrontation between the monarchy and a population increasingly willing to use force to defend the Revolution.
The situation became even more dangerous when Louis XVI began concentrating troops around Paris and Versailles. Several thousand soldiers, including foreign regiments in French service, were brought into the region. To many Parisians, this appeared to be preparation for a military coup against the National Assembly. Their fears intensified when Louis dismissed Jacques Necker, his popular finance minister, on July 11th. Necker had become a symbol of financial reform and was regarded by many ordinary people as one of the few members of the government sympathetic to their suffering. His dismissal therefore convinced many Parisians that the King intended to crush the revolutionary movement. The news spread rapidly. Paris erupted.
The revolutionary response was not initially a plan to storm a fortress. Parisians began arming themselves. Crowds gathered throughout the city, searching for weapons with which they could defend themselves against the troops surrounding Paris. On July 13th, a citizens’ militia was organised, eventually becoming known as the National Guard. The Marquis de Lafayette, an aristocrat and veteran of the American Revolution who had joined the revolutionary cause, was appointed its commander. Even some regular French soldiers began refusing to fire upon the population or defecting to the revolutionary side. The monarchy’s ability to control Paris was rapidly disappearing. On the morning of July 14th, thousands of Parisians attacked the Hôtel des Invalides, a large military complex and veterans’ hospital. They seized thousands of muskets and several cannons. There was, however, one major problem. They had very little gunpowder. The revolutionaries knew where they could find more. The Bastille.
The Bastille was a medieval fortress in eastern Paris that had been used as a royal prison. By 1789, it was no longer the enormous prison of popular imagination. Only seven prisoners were being held there when the Revolution began. Its military importance was nevertheless considerable. The fortress contained a substantial supply of gunpowder, and its enormous walls and cannons made it a powerful defensive position. More importantly, however, the Bastille had become a symbol of royal absolutism. For centuries, the French monarchy had possessed the power to imprison people through lettres de cachet, allowing individuals to be detained without a conventional trial. Although the Bastille was not filled with political prisoners in 1789, its reputation had become associated with arbitrary royal power. To the revolutionaries, therefore, the fortress represented much more than a collection of stone walls. It represented the authority they were trying to overthrow.
The Bastille was commanded by Bernard-René de Launay, a relatively inexperienced military governor. His garrison consisted primarily of about 80 elderly soldiers known as Invalides, supported by several dozen Swiss soldiers. Thousands of Parisians surrounded the fortress. They demanded that de Launay surrender the Bastille and hand over its gunpowder. De Launay refused. The situation became increasingly tense as representatives of the Parisian population attempted to negotiate with him. The defenders lowered a drawbridge at one point, allowing some of the crowd into the outer courtyard. Confusion followed, and fighting eventually broke out. The revolutionaries attacked.
The Bastille’s defenders opened fire, killing and wounding numerous people. The attackers, however, vastly outnumbered the garrison. The fighting continued for several hours. Eventually, de Launay realised that the fortress could not be held indefinitely. With the possibility of a much larger massacre looming, he agreed to surrender. The drawbridge was lowered. The Bastille had fallen. The surrender did not save de Launay.
As the revolutionary crowd entered the fortress, the governor was seized. He was beaten and eventually killed. His head was cut off and placed on a pike, before being carried through the streets of Paris. The violence shocked even some revolutionaries. The Bastille’s defenders also suffered casualties, although the majority of those killed during the battle were among the attackers. Around a hundred revolutionaries were killed or wounded during the fighting, while only a small number of the defenders were killed. The revolutionaries had nevertheless achieved something enormously significant. They had captured a royal fortress. More importantly, they had demonstrated that the government could no longer simply order the people of Paris to obey.
The fall of the Bastille sent shockwaves throughout France. Louis XVI was reportedly informed of the events by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. According to the famous story, the King asked whether the events constituted a revolt. Liancourt allegedly replied:
No, Sire, it is a revolution.
Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt to Louis XVI
Whether the exchange occurred exactly as later accounts claimed is uncertain, but the sentiment captured the reality of what was happening. Louis was losing control. The King eventually recalled Necker and ordered the withdrawal of many of the troops surrounding Paris. He also travelled to the city himself, where he appeared before the revolutionary authorities and publicly accepted the newly established National Guard. The Bastille had therefore achieved something that the National Assembly had struggled to accomplish through political debate. It had forced the monarchy to retreat.
The consequences were not limited to Paris. News of the Bastille spread throughout the countryside, where rumours circulated that aristocrats were preparing to use armed forces to crush the Revolution. Peasants began attacking aristocratic estates and destroying documents recording feudal obligations. This wave of panic became known as the Great Fear. Across France, peasants demanded an end to feudal privileges. Some attacked manor houses and burned records relating to rents and obligations. The National Assembly now faced a problem. The Revolution was no longer merely a political movement taking place in Paris. It had become a mass uprising across the country.
On the night of August 4th, 1789, members of the National Assembly responded by abolishing many of France’s remaining feudal privileges. In a matter of hours, centuries of aristocratic and feudal rights were swept away. The old social order was beginning to collapse. The Revolution was not simply about destroying the existing system. It was also about deciding what would replace it. Inspired by Enlightenment philosophy and influenced by the American Revolution, the National Assembly began developing a new political philosophy based upon individual liberty, equality before the law and popular sovereignty. One of the figures involved was the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought alongside the Americans and had become familiar with the political ideas that had inspired their revolution. Lafayette also corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as the American ambassador to France. Jefferson offered suggestions and discussed the principles of the emerging document, although he was not its author. On August 26th, the National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It proclaimed that men were born free and equal in rights and that sovereignty ultimately belonged to the nation. It was one of the most important political documents of the Revolution.
However, its vision of equality had significant limitations. Women were not granted equal political rights, slavery continued in French colonies, and the declaration’s language about universal liberty would coexist uneasily with the realities of colonialism and economic inequality. Nevertheless, its principles represented a fundamental challenge to the old order. Political authority was no longer supposed to exist simply because a king or aristocrat possessed it by birth. It had to be justified by the rights of the nation. The Storming of the Bastille therefore represented a turning point. The Revolution had begun as a constitutional and financial dispute between Louis XVI and the representatives of the French people. By July 14th, it had become a popular uprising capable of overthrowing royal authority by force. The Bastille itself was not particularly important as a prison by 1789. Its real importance was symbolic. The people of Paris had destroyed one of the most recognisable symbols of arbitrary royal power and demonstrated that the monarchy could be challenged directly. But the violence of July also foreshadowed the increasingly radical character of the Revolution.
One of the most prominent voices calling for further violence was Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist whose newspaper, L’Ami du peuple (“The Friend of the People”), attacked aristocrats, royal officials and political opponents. Marat increasingly argued that the enemies of the Revolution could not be defeated through moderation alone and that force would be necessary to destroy them. His rhetoric became increasingly extreme as the Revolution progressed. Marat was not responsible for the Storming of the Bastille, nor did the National Assembly simply order or endorse the killing of de Launay. However, the events demonstrated how quickly political conflict could turn into popular violence once the authority of the state began to collapse.
The Revolution had crossed a threshold. The King could no longer rule France in the way his predecessors had. The aristocracy was beginning to lose its privileges. The National Assembly claimed to represent the French nation. And the people of Paris had discovered that they possessed something that the monarchy could not easily take away: the power of the crowd. The Bastille had fallen. The French Revolution was only beginning.