On July 14, 1789, a huge, angry mob marched to the Bastille, a high security prison that symbolized royal tyranny, searching for gun powder and prisoners that had been taken by the unpopular and detested King, Louis XVI (Time Life 1999). The flying rumors of attacks from the government and the biting truth of starvation were just too much for the fuming crowds. The Bastille had been prepared for over a week, anticipating about a hundred angry subjects. But nothing could have prepared the defenders for what they met that now famous day.
Along the thick rock walls of the gargantuan fortress and between the towers were twelve more guns that were capable of launching 24-ounce case shots at any who dared to attack. However, the enraged middle class population of Paris was too defiant and too livid to submit to the starvation and seeming injustice of their government (Time Life, 1999). It was the first time in European history that a group of commoners had overpowered the nobility. The storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789, has inspired other peoples to fight tyranny and gain independence from their oppressors.
Given that the masses in other lands and at other times shared many of the problems that the French revolutionaries faced explains the widespread influence and symbolism of the Fall of the Bastille. The main cause of the French Revolution involved the differences between the three different social classes in France (Soboul, 1977). This class structure left over from the ancien regime, the Middle Ages, consisted of three orders known as estates. The First Estate, the clergy, made up less than 1 percent of the population but owned about 20 percent of the land.
The Second Estate, the nobles occupied about 4 percent of the population and also owned 20 percent of the land. The Third Estate, the working middle class, made up 95 percent of the population and paid all the taxes needed to pay off the debts that Louis XIV had left behind because he had spent his countrys money to aid the American revolution as to embarrass the British. It is important to note that the First and Second Estates did not pay any taxes. The Third Estate was overwhelmed with these taxes and demanded reform from the government.
Louis XVI had attempted to enact a law decreeing that the First and Second Estates pay taxes as well but this law was not approved at the Estates-General meeting on May 5, 1789. The Estates-General was the legislative body equivalent to a parliament and representative of the three classes, and was mainly made up of the First and Second Estates (Kagan, Ozment & Turner, 1998). On June 17, 1789, the Third Estate collaborated with some of the nobles and lower clergy to form a new legislative body: the National Assembly (Soboul, 1977).
Three days later, on June 20, the National Assembly found themselves locked out of their usual meeting place so they held their meeting in a tennis court where they swore not to leave until they had given France a new constitution. This oath was the famous Tennis Court Oath. Of course, Louis XVI was starting to become worried about his future as an absolute monarch so following the advice of his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, he dismissed his minister of finance, Jacques Necker. This angered the people because they thought that he could have ameliorated Frances economic problems (Kagan, Ozment et al. 998). The French suffered from several bread riots and some were even organizing a citizen militia and collecting arms. On July 14, they marched to the Bastille. The Bastille was governed by an aristocrat named De Launay. Following his orders, the prisons guards fired at the crowd killing over 200 people, which caused further mutiny. De Launay was forced to surrender and soon found his head on a spike parading around Paris to signify the victory of the populace (Time Life, 1999). According to Dr.
Ussama Makdisi, who teaches history at Rice University, the French revolution was important for three major reasons. First, it changed in a profound way the relationship between subjects and governments. In the old regime, rights were a privilege and a dispensation of the king. Following the fall of the Bastille, the notion of the rights was tied to a more democratic citizenship in which rights were not granted but assumed as inalienable for all citizens and eventually this included women!
Second, the fall of Bastille marked the moment when the French revolutionaries decided to take matters into their own hands. Rather than talk, they acted, thereby presaging what a great nineteenth century social critic (Karl Marx) once said: philosophers have always interpreted the world; the point is to change it. Third, the fall of the Bastille become a symbol of the fall of absolutist power not just for Frenchmen but for all nations around the world, yearning for independence (Shehabuddin, 2000, January 13). Dr.
Elora Shehabuddin, who teaches Political Science and Women’s Studies at Rice University, says that the storming of the Bastille demonstrated to the people of Europe–monarchs, aristocrats and ordinary people alike–not only that the monarchy was not infallible and above reproach, that it could be held accountable for past misdeeds, but also that ordinary people were capable of taking power into their own hands and ruling themselves. Over the next few centuries, many European countries followed the example of the French and showed the government that the people ruled (Shehabuddin, 2000, January 9).
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the events that that unleashed throughout Eastern Europe, bringing about the collapse of the so-called Soviet Bloc and the gradual emergence of democratic institutions. The brutal executions of the Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife was very reminiscent of the guillotine executions of Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette. Less brutal but equally powerful upheavals also include the overthrow of the Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran and of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.
In all these instances, the ordinary people of those countries accused their leaders of being completely out of touch with the needs of their people, of living in great luxury while the people suffered from a lack of basic necessities. The French Revolution could also be compared to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The people took over the government and the royal family was executed. Both countries economic problems were similar. Both countries kings meant to do well for their countries but were deviated from doing so by their navet.
The fall of the Bastille did not start the French Revolution. After all, the revolution had underlying causes which were at work and in evidence long before July 14, 1789. Social discontent, inequality, fiscal crisis, enlightenment thinkers, these all contributed to the making of the French revolution (Hunt, 1992). However, in all events such as the revolution we retrospectively point to a single event that can stand for all the different meanings of the French Revolution, and so we choose the storming of the Bastille.
