by Artie Vandealy

Created on: July 03, 2008

Bastille Day is awash in contrast. The tragedy of the family of hapless Louis XVI and his family (including the poor duchess turned despised and slandered foreign Queen, Marie Antoinette) contrasts the the triumph of a proletariat that finally cracked through to the upper echelons of the government. The lavish balls and feasts of the aristocracy during booming pre-Revolutionary France contrasted the twenty years of economic depression that the horrors of the Revolution brought about. In fact Dickens' opening to "A tale of two cities" comes to mind: it REALLY WAS the best of times and the worst of times.

But French are agreed on one part of it: July Fourteenth - Bastille Day or La Fete Nationalle - is at least these days a happy event to a UNITED France, and not a tale of two countries anymore. The traditions that have been established in France to look back on their struggle for independence have not been a nod to the violence in the process of the proletariat, but the struggle for France to become an independent nation, with an independent pride and identity - no longer just part of the monarchy-controlled and feudalistic systems of Europe it was previous to the Revolution.

BACKGROUND OF BASTILLE DAY

The Bastille was a fortress that is no longer standing at the south entrance to Paris along the Seine. It was originally built in the tumultuous fourteenth century when English mercenary soldiers roamed the countryside between battles in the hundred years' war. During the seventeenth century it became a political prison. Louis XV and XIV (who were much more despotic than Louis XVI) saw people marched into the Bastille with axe blades pointing toward them (indicating the condemned) and they would never be seen again.

Under Louis XVI the Bastille was undergoing another transformation. Louis XVI was not nearly as tyrannical as his predecessors, (being very humanistic and believing in equality of men) and he didn't have a taste for locking up those who spoke out against him, much less dungeons or torture. The Bastille was still seen as a sign of the King's power (since he could send people there without formally arresting them with Lettres of Cachet) but the Bastille was the least harsh of all the prisons in Europe, with good food, easy living, nice quarters and furnishings, and recreation (it was rumored even courtesans!)

Louis fed rumors by insisting that prisoners not discuss their treatment there. He probably figured that if he could instill fear and submission without

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