Bastille Day, the French
national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which took place
on 14 July 1789 and marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The Bastille
was a prison and a symbol of the absolute and arbitrary power of Louis the
16th's Ancient Regime. By capturing this symbol, the people signaled that the
king's power was no longer absolute: power should be based on the Nation and be
limited by a separation of powers.
Bastille is an alternate spelling of bastide (fortification), from
the Provençal word bastida (built). There's also a verb: embastiller (to establish
troops in a prison). Although the
Bastille only held seven prisoners at the time of its capture, the storming of
the prison was a symbol of liberty and the fight against oppression for all
French citizens; like the Tricolore flag, it symbolized the Republic's three
ideals: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity for all French citizens.It marked the
end of absolute monarchy, the birth of the sovereign Nation, and, eventually,
the creation of the Republic, in 1792.
Bastille Day was declared the French national holiday on 6 July
1880, on Benjamin Raspail's recommendation, when the new Republic was firmly
entrenched. Bastille Day has such a strong signification for the French because
the holiday symbolizes the birth of the Republic. Marseillaise La Marseillaise was written in 1792 and declared the French
national anthem in 1795. Read and listen to the words.As in the US, where the
signing of the Declaration of Independence signaled the start of the American
Revolution, in France the storming of the Bastille began the Great Revolution.
In both countries, the national holiday thus symbolizes the beginning of a new
form of government. On the one-year anniversary of the fall of the Bastille,
delegates from every region of France proclaimed their allegiance to a single
national community during the Fête de la Fédération in Paris - the first time
in history that a people had claimed their right to self-determination.
The French Revolution
-Parliament wanted the king to share his absolute powers with an
oligarchic parliament. Priests and other low-level religious figures wanted
more money.
-Nobles also wanted to share some of the king's power.
-The middle class wanted the right to own land and to vote.
-The lower class were quite hostile in general and farmers were
angry about tithes and feodal rights.
-Some historians claim that the revolutionaries were opposed to
Catholicism more than to the king or the upper classes.
