Civilized people don't celebrate Bastille Day. They mourn it. Two-hundred and sixteen years ago, a mob stormed a Paris prison "liberating a mere seven prisoners (including two lunatics, four forgers and an aristocratic delinquent who had been committed with de Sade)," informs Simon Schama, author of Citizens (buy it here). The jail-break of four criminals, two crazies, and a pervert was the immediate effect. Bastille Day's short-term effects included the murder of the King and Queen, the destruction of the Catholic Church in France, the Terror, revolution as end and not means, and twenty-three years of revolutionary wars to spread "liberty." In the long term, the French Revolution served as the dress rehearsal for the 20th Century.

"Liberty is a bitch who likes to be bedded on a mattress of cadavers," Desmoulins reported. "French Republicans," Robespierre pled, "it is for you to purify the earth that has been soiled and to recall to the earth Justice which has been banished from it." "Let us be terrible so that the people will not have to be," argued Danton. "There must be blood to cement the revolution," Madame Roland declared. Indeed, the "cadavers" and "blood" would include their own. The revolutionists planted skull and bones throughout France, but liberty did not grow.

Not all Frenchmen celebrated this bloodfest. Abbe Bernier, in the Grand Council's "Address to the French," charged: "Patriots, our enemies, you accuse us of overturning our patrie by rebellion but it is you, who, subverting all the principles of the religious and political order, were the first to proclaim that insurrection is the most sacred of duties. You have introduced atheism in the place of religion, anarchy in the place of laws, men who are tyrants in the place of the King who was our father. You reproach us with religious fanaticism, you whose pretensions to liberty have led to the most extreme penalties." "Citizens," Pierre Vergniaud courageously implored the Convention in 1793, "let us profit from the lessons of experience. We can overturn empires by victories but we can only make revolutions for other peoples by the spectacle of our own happiness. We want to upset thrones. Let us prove that we know how to be happy with a Republic." "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," Chamfort recognized, evolved into "Be my brother or I'll kill you."

My favorite episode of the revolution is Robespierre's invention of the god of reason. He introduced the new deity in a grand ceremony involving a massive artificial mountain. At its peak stood Robespierre himself clothed in white.

Those French sure know how to party.

The raid on the Bastille wasn't to free prisoners it was to acquire weapons.

Wilds is spot on there. Liberating people was not the goal of the French attack on the Bastille. They wanted to acquire weapons and also to kill Monarchist soldiers.

Aims are subjective. Facts aren't. The mob DID free seven prisoners. You miss something rather glaring if you reduce the events of July 14, 1789 to simply a "raid...to acquire weapons." Prior to 1789, Frenchmen had been inundated with books detailing the horrors--both real and imagined--of the Bastille. Schama writes: "The 1780s were the great age of prison literature. Hardly a year went by without another contribution to the genre, usually bearing the title, The Bastille revealed (La Bastille Devoilee) or some variation." If this were just about gunpowder, or as you put it, weapons, why did the citizens raze the Bastille within months of storming it? Why did the revolutionists provide guided tours of old cells in the immediate aftermath of July 14? Why did the mob parade the prisoners through the streets after liberating them? Obviously, the Bastille had, and took on, mythical qualities symbolizing unjust oppression. This is its significance--as a symbol. Its significance isn't kegs of gunpowder.

Ben T: You state the mob went to the Bastille to kill "Monarchist soldiers." The results of the initial battle: soldiers kill 98, mob kills 1. In the aftermath, the mob killed a handful more. Had the mob's main, or even secondary, intent been to kill soldiers, there were hundreds of other sites where the pickings would have been easier to come by. As Will and Ariel Durant point out, the Bastille's walls were "thirty feet thick, one hundred feet high, protected by towers concealing artillery, and surrounded by a moat eighty feet wide." Obviously, this made the Bastille among the worst places in Paris to kill soldiers (which is incidentally why the King's forces thought it a good place to store gunpowder). Or perhaps in your vast scholarly research on the subject of the French Revolution, Ben, you've uncovered something that has escaped the notice of historians thus far?

Didn't the Parisians seize sufficient weapons from the armory at the Invalides? Then start the march on the Bastille? They had to have enough weapons and ammunition to engage the fortress with such an aggressive attack.

"Who can trust a people who celebrate, as their national event, a jailbreak?" - Maggie Thatcher.

Can someone answer this question - I've heard tell that subsequent to the storming of the Bastille, the edifice was torn down, and the blocks were employed in the construction of many miniature replicas of the original Bastille around the French countryside? T or F?

Yeah, Feck, the mob had weapons--they just didn't have much ammunition. Distributist: They started tearing down the Bastille almost immediately, paused, and completed the job by November. I don't know about the replicas, but it sounds plausible.

Ben T: You state the mob went to the Bastille to kill "Monarchist soldiers." The results of the initial battle: soldiers kill 98, mob kills 1. In the aftermath, the mob killed a handful more. Had the mob's main, or even secondary, intent been to kill soldiers, there were hundreds of other sites where the pickings would have been easier to come by. As Will and Ariel Durant point out, the Bastille's walls were "thirty feet thick, one hundred feet high, protected by towers concealing artillery, and surrounded by a moat eighty feet wide." Obviously, this made the Bastille among the worst places in Paris to kill soldiers (which is incidentally why the King's forces thought it a good place to store gunpowder). Or perhaps in your vast scholarly research on the subject of the French Revolution, Ben, you've uncovered something that has escaped the notice of historians thus far?
Posted by Dan Flynn at July 15, 2005 04:58 AM

Dan you misunderstood me I wasn't debating anything in your post, it was spot on. I was just confirming Wilds pretty minor historical comment.

Take a deep breath. Deep.

Just as it did 216 years ago with the French, Bastille Day makes people crazy!!!

BTW Dan saw you on Bullshit and it was great. =P

Ben-t: what are you talking about?

When an agitator like Camille Desmoulins frightens the Parisians with another St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre unless they take up arms against the encroaching foreign mercenaries, acquiring weapons is the immediate concern and not attacking symbols of the Old Regime.

Ben-t: what are you talking about?

When an agitator like Camille Desmoulins frightens the Parisians with another St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre unless they take up arms against the encroaching foreign mercenaries, acquiring weapons is the immediate concern and not attacking symbols of the Old Regime.
Posted by Eric Wilds at July 16, 2005 07:06 AM

You don't think propaganda was on the mind of those who orchestrated the Bastille attacks? I find that hard to believe.

I don't have enough command of facts or aims to directly add much what's passed above, but ... a not so bad French movie, "Danton" from around 1980, has a fine last scene where Robespierre is confronted about what he's set afoot by one of the most morally compelling characters imaginable. It was directed by Polishman Andrzej Wajda, who offers some interesting production notes (about filming it during the Solidarity movement) here: http://www.wajda.pl/en/filmy/film25.html

Thanks Jeremiah, I'll be sure to check the film out.