Bastille Day

Tonight, my mom picked up some baguettes, brie and chevre. Jaci made ratatouille. I pulled together some research on Bastille Day to share with the family, and now I’ll share that with you. (Keep in mind they were written for an audience spanning five to fifty-eight.)

The Bastille was a fortress and a prison in Paris which symbolized the king and queen’s total control over the people, because it held captive those prisoners who wrote in defiance of the government as well as other political prisoners who were imprisoned on any whim of the monarchy. If the royal government decided it didn’t like what you had to say, they could lock you up for it for as long as they wished without excuse and without giving you an opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law. The French revolutionaries, as part of the conclusion to their bloody overthrow of the monarchy, on July 14, 1789, stormed the Bastille, overcame its guards and entered the castle.

The event was an important symbol and rallying point that preceded the abolition of feudalism and the proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

These events were heavily influenced by the American Revolution that we celebrated just a few days ago, on July 4, with many fireworks. America was declared an independent nation in 1776, twenty-two years prior to the storming of the Bastille, and independence was won at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781.

The same principles that the American revolutionaries were fighting for—freedom from monarchical rule, personal rights and liberties—these were shared by their French brethren. In fact, France was America’s principle ally in our war for independence. Ironically, it was France’s eagerness to help us defeat England—sworn enemy of France—that bankrupted it and heightened the misery of its people to such a fever pitch that they rose up in rebellion.

But the eighteenth century was marked by a movement toward individual liberty in philosophy even before politics. Humanist and Enlightenment thinkers began as early as the 13th century to note the human capacity for accomplishment. The development of the humanities in the arts and sciences flourished throughout the Renaissance, and human learning exceeded all expectations and predictions, even endangering the power that controlling organizations such as the church and government had formerly vested in themselves.

These Enlightenment thinkers were determined that mankind was endowed with fundamental rights that were from a natural reason, not granted from a divine king or a sacred pope. As these ideas developed and spread, they took root in local governance: communities meeting to determine when and where and how things should be ordered. This locally-sourced governance blossomed and grew to encompass more and more area until the United States became the first nation-sized, wholly secular republic state, winning the first successful war for colonial independence in the modern era (according to author Joseph Ellis, in his book American Creation).

Again, the irony is the number of Europeans, particularly revolutionary Frenchman who poured into America to fight with us because they shared our philosophy and wanted to be a part of something historic. Many of them carried letters of introduction claiming they had far more military experience than they really did, so that they might gain a commission in the Continental Army. Once the Revolutionary War was won, they returned to France and helped it overthrow its monarchy.

Thomas Jefferson, our third President and the author of the Declaration of Independence, thought the French Revolution was going to be a peaceful and utopian affair. He was very wrong. The French Revolution was an awful, bloody thing. At the storming of the Bastille, once the fort’s commander saw his forces were outmatched, he opened the gates to prevent a slaughter. In the confusion, the fighting resumed, and almost a hundred men died in the fighting.

The next year began the first official celebration of what has become the modern-day Bastille Day celebration. It was celebrated with feasts and fireworks and, notably, people running naked through the streets to prove their new-found freedom.

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