by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: June 30, 2008   Last Updated: September 01, 2008

Senseless violence against innocent people waving a flag of surrender: That is perhaps the best way to describe the actual events that transpired on July 14, 1789, more commonly known as Bastille day or 'La Fete Nationalle' [The national holiday]. Poor Louis XVI was not actually any more a cruel despotic tyrant any more than his wife had ACTUALLY said "Let them eat cake," but as they say that history is written by the winners. And there were clearly no bigger losers in the events that comprised the French Revolution than Louis XVI and his tragic queen Marie Antoinette. So the monarchy of old in France may mean more than a sum of the individuals who sat on the thrones: it is the limitation of tyrannical governments on the happiness, freedom and indivuduality of the people, which France is certainly in favor of overthrowing, violently if necessary.

What befell the French monarchy in the eighteenth century and then the successive regimes to replace it during the Reign of Terror - one of the bloodiest periods in European history - was not the romantic success story that one might think it was considering it is celebrated with unabashed French national pride. Possibly Bastile day and what it represents now in France is the rebirth of French pride itself, which was never really allowed to thrive under kings and has remained strong ever since, that is celebrated in a romanticized version of history commemorated in the French national holiday known as "La Fete nationalle." The importance of Bastille Day and the events that it commemorates should be the testimony it leaves to the world that there is no limit to the amount of horror that can result if we justify violence and don't check our baser instincts to commit atrocities toward one another.

HISTORY OF THE BASTILLE

The prison known as the Bastille was initially an "embastillon," 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. In the mid-sixteenth century it started being used for 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).

The Bastille, whatever the reality, grew to be a symbol among the people of the King's tyranny, even if his tyranny was rarely abused at this point. The king could send prisoners there without arrest by "lettres de cachet," but it was one of the least harsh of all prisons

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