On the first Bastille day in 1789, young King Louis XVI certainly didn't show much awareness that his beloved world in Versailles, and his life along with it, was about to come to a violent end. In his diary that day, he wrote of his hunt, "14 Juillet; rien." [July 14th, nothing] Later that night, his adviser, La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, woke and notified him about the uprisings in Paris. He was told that the Bastille had been taken and the governor's head was paraded on a pike. Louis asked him, "Is it a revolt?" "No, sire," said La Rochefoucault-Liancourt, "It is a revolution."
HISTORY OF THE BASTILLE
The structure known as the Bastille was initially a "bastillon," or or military fortress. It was built by Charles V in the turbulent mid-fourteenth century to protect the south entrance of the city along the Seine. It was connected with the wall that surrounded what was medieval Paris. In the mid-sixteenth century it converted to a prison, mainly to house political prisoners with stature and influence. Among the famous prisoners there was the mysterious man in a mask "de fer" (which was probably velvet).
Ironically, even as it grew to be a symbol among the people of the King's tyranny, it was one of the least harsh of all prisons in Europe. Prisoners could keep their own furniture and had a luxuriant daily allowance for food. The supposed 'tyrant' Louis XVI had just furnished it and decorated it with lavish green damask curtains. Prisoners could have servants and were permitted many liberties and types of recreation. But the prison was seen as an example of Louis' absolute power, even though it was rarely abused; the king could send prisoners there without arrest by "lettres de cachet."
The mystery surrounding the fortress, however, fed rumors that ran wild in the turbulent pre-revolutionary atmosphere. The monarchy allowed fear of the Bastille to continue while the important people within were treated with dignity. Louis had no stomach for torture, dungeons or harsh treatment, so it worked well to actually just let people assume such things existed - a strict gag order was imposed on all past prisoners and workers. An occasional malcontent with a bone to pick with the crown caused trouble. The Marquis de Sade, on the July 2, 1789, began to incite those outside his window to free the prisoners because he claimed they were being tortured and executed. Ironically because of this de Sade was transferred before the big day and so he did not benefit from the Bastille's liberation.
COUNTDOWN TO THE FIRST BASTILLE DAY
Even though public hatred toward the fortress and the crown was growing, along with a bourgeoisie populism, there was probably no real reason for Louis XVI to be any more concerned than he was. France had endured four hundred years of turbulent populist uprisings of this sort, since the hundred years' war when mercenary soldiers roamed the countryside committing atrocities against nobles and clergy between battles. There was rarely any impact to those in the monarchy; in 1789 things were different for several reasons. The first was that there was rampant anti-monarchy political philosophy taking hold in the people. Gone were the days where despite their difficulties and resentment toward the rich the people would respect the king as God's representative with a divine right to rule.
Louis had fed this sentiment, again not by his absolute tyranny - ironically by his willingness to go along with seeing his power reduced. He himself had decided to allow more free speech that permitted propaganda against him like never before. And when he desperately needed to raise taxes to finance the bankrupt country the aristocracy balked, and instead of wielding despotic power against them he admitted that he was a mere constitutional monarch and called the Estates General, a body that hadn't been used in years. It definitely didn't help that the aristocracy and the peasantry were all mad at him and joining forces.
Notably, the sense of righteous indignation of the mob was undermined by Louis' lack of force to quell the uprising. He he didn't send his army to suppress the violence in the city like his grandfather and great grandfather (Louis XV and Louis XIV the "Sun King") would have. They knew how to knock some heads to save their own, and thus they were dreaded and feared along with being respected and loved. Louis never enjoyed any of this deference by the people because many sensed he could be walked over.
LE 14 JUILLET, 1789.
There had been a disaffected mob roving about Paris for several weeks by the time of the historic day. Their issues were basic populist discontent, high prices, government and taxation without representation, fueled by a press that was churning propaganda right and left about the monarchy. One of the rumors (immortalized still today in the French National Anthem) was that there was an enormous army of the king right outside the city waiting to take them and restore order.
Led by fear, practicality and classic mob mentality, the growing group decided to take the Bastille and appropriate the arms and grain stored inside. It was nearly empty of prisoners as the mild Louis XVI, probably to his undoing, no longer locked up many who spoke against him. There were only a 7 remaining there, some petty thieves and insane, who probably would have been just as happy remaining. Partly due to the ineffective guard surrounding the Bastille (Swiss soldiers on lone and 'invalides' or soldiers deemed not suited for combat), along with the indecision of Governor, the Bastille was taken.
The prisoners were released, but the crowd was perhaps a bit disappointed that there were not horrors inside to be outraged about. After beating and torturing Governor de Launay he finally committed suicide by kicking a burly baker in the crotch, immediately inciting the mob to tear him to shreds. They began the tradition that the Reign of Terror was known for: for centuries they had made fun of the barbaric Britains who displayed heads on pikes, but now apparently in even this more enlightened age it seemed a good idea. It was an image that likely terrified the King and Queen, but they didn't know that it was also a fate they would share only three years later.
THE REAL BASTILLE (DAY)
Probably because this terrible violence on the day it is named for isn't ever sanctioned, but less in this day and age, the holiday currently known as Bastille Day, "La Fete Nationalle," doesn't actually commemorate the storming of the Bastille itself. A year afterward, on 14 July 1790 there was an event called The Fete de la Federation, a huge feast and official event that commemorated the establishment of what was thought to have been the happy conclusion of the French Revolution.
Oh that that had been the case. The first "Fete" and all since have been to celebrate the very short-lived constitutional monarchy that existed that first year in France. If it had continued the monarchists would have held some amount of power and given more parliamentary rights to the third estate. The Fete de la Federation in Paris was one of a series of celebrations celebrations in the country that tumultuous year, this one participated in by Louis XVI and his Queen Antoinette, who were in reality living under a state of house arrest in the Tuilliaries at that time. The intention was to not be a sign of revolutionary change rather one of reconciliation and unity between the King, the government and the people.
Very few people knew it at the time but Louis XVI was at that time undergoing severe debilitating clinical depression at having failed to hold together his country under the crown, and unfortunately Antoinette, a despised foreigner, afraid and alone, was left to make decisions for the family and the royalty. They both swore oaths on that day. Louis on his part swore: "I, King of the French, I swear to use the power given to me by the constitutional law of the State, to maintain the Constitution as decided by the National Assembly and accepted by myself, and to enforce the laws." The Queen, with the Dauphin (prince) swore "This is my son, who, like me, joins in the same sentiments."
LEGACY OF THE RUINED BASTILLE
Very few remember the hapless Louis XVI when Bastille day is celebrated today, whose young family was destroyed as his nation was transformed. If the constitutional monarchy had followed the course as it did in Britain, more and more power would have been surrendered until they were mere figure heads. But in France the people had tasted blood, and violence is an appetite that is rarely satisfied with a moderate diet of it.
Maximilian Robespierre, one of the patricians of the new regime, said that he found it appropriate for the birth of a republic to be signalled by the death of a king. But that decision, along with countless more like it as the violence continued, cast a shadow over the outcome of the revolution, taking the life of Robespierre eventually also. Louis himself was a quiet shy man who was actually unequal to the task of being as ruthless as a monarch needed to be. In many ways his character was better than rulers of the past. He was the only King of France in recorded history who was never known to take a mistress. He was a family man with interests in learning and diverse hobbies. He lavished money on his wife, whom he loved and who was obligated to dress and spend lavishly to gain favor among the courtiers she needed to impress and flatter. If she had gone around in a simple frock she would have had different insults. She was in a no win situation as were many princesses that were traded on the foreign marriage market.
Louis XV had an official mistress that attended state functions and blew through a full treasury, making the poverty of the nation much more his fault than his grandson's, though neither one could really do to much. On his death bed, Louis XV said "Apres moi, le deluge." [After me, the deluge] The peasants were angry about the prices of bread, but the king's culpability was limited. The royal family didn't live off of tax revenue. They lived off of revenue of what was private land and property passed down to them over the past seven hundred years.
As the revolutionaries learned to their dismay, when they became responsible to run the country on the tax revenue, it did very little good to have confiscated the king's goods. His conspicuous consumption seemed that way because of the comparison with how the poor lived, but the actual money he spent was a drop in the bucket. If there was recession under Louis, there was depression afterward. The stark black and white revolutionary apparel after Bastille day, contrasted against the pastels and wigs before, reflected the hard times brought to the people by the revolution that was supposed to have delivered them. The misery twenty years later reflected in Hugo's "Les Miserables" reflected the sense that absolutely nothing changed for the better by operating guillotines day and night to rid themselves of their aristocracy.
Louis, as he mounted the scaffold, uttered last words that haunt the memory of the French Revolution. He said that he hoped the blood spilt that day would not be visited on France. It most certainly was. After thousands went to the guillotine and many thousands more were simply murdered by a mob (Robespierre encouraged this to save the state time and money), a vacuum was left at the top that was so strong it took an Emperor to fill it. France earned itself a worse tyrant, and that tyrant (Napoleon) began to abuse even the rest of Europe.
Not even the twentieth century ended France's unfortunate alliance with tyranny. If absolute power to them was distasteful, it didn't explain their surrender to perhaps one of the worst dictators in history, Adolf Hitler. Recent mobs in suburban Paris comprised of radical Islamists suggest that even today the risk of surrender to baser parts of humanity is not totally gone. But hopefully by now France, along with the rest of the world that watched, has learned the greatest lesson of the French Revolution which was that no injustice or pain is great enough to justify uncontrolled violence against innocent people.