On the morning of 14 July 1789 a Paris mob stormed the medieval fortress that has given France its national holiday ever since. They were expecting to free hundreds of political prisoners. They actually found seven. Who were the seven?
The Bastille held seven inmates on 14 July 1789: four convicted forgers, two men declared insane by their families, and the Comte de Solages, whose family had used a *lettre de cachet* (a royal arrest warrant for private use) to lock him up over an incest scandal. The Marquis de Sade had been in the Bastille until ten days earlier; he was transferred out on 4 July after shouting from his window that the guards were murdering the prisoners. The storming was symbolic — the Bastille had been planned for demolition for years. Symbolism, however, was the point.
Read the full facts →The French Revolution was a period of radical political and social transformation in France that lasted from 1789 to 1799. It abolished the absolute monarchy, established the principle of popular sovereignty, and reshaped political thought across Europe for the following two centuries.
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