#116 Why did people storm the Bastille on July 14, 1789?

I learned this today. People stormed the Bastille during the French Revolution not to free political prisoners but to get at its stores of gunpowder and weapons.

The storming of the Bastille is taken to be the start of the French Revolution, but the revolution technically started on May 5^thwhen a number of different problems came to a head.

The standard of living in France had started to rise through the 18^th century and a new middle class (the bourgeoise) had developed. These people wanted political power, but they were often snubbed by the aristocracy who didn’t want to give up power.

Between 1700 and 1789, the French population had grown from 10 million to 26 million people. Peasants were becoming aware of their situation and wanted more. Farmers struggled to grow enough to feed the new population and the transportation networks made it difficult to transport food. Food prices rose by 65% between 1770 and 1790. On top of this, there were crop failures in 1788. In these circumstances, the peasants were not willing to support the opulent lifestyles of the aristocracy.

And the nail in the coffin was the fact that King Louis XVI and France were heavily in debt. Thanks to Louis’ lavish lifestyle and a number of wars, including the American Revolution, which France had been heavily involved in, France had a national debt of about 4.5 billion livres. To put this in perspective, the average skilled laborer earned 1,800 livres a year. Louis needed more money, but his government refused to collect it. His advisors tried to solve the problem by devaluing the French coinage. This caused runaway inflation which compounded the problem. In order to raise more tax, Louis was forced to convene a meeting of the Estates-General, which was a meeting of the three estates of France: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.

The meeting was held in a building near the Palace of Versailles. The furnishings, choice of seats, and overall organization of the meeting were intended to show the commoners (the 3rd estate) how inferior they were to the other two estates. The 1^st two estates were supposed to be able to outvote the 3^rd estate and pass Louis’ tax requests. However, the 3^rd estate had had enough, and they declared themselves the National Assembly. Louis tried to force them to disband, but they refused, and Louis backed down. The revolution gradually grew from here. The Estates-General had been called on May 5^th, 1789, and this is taken as the start of the revolution.

Through June and early July, the revolution started to gather speed. There was growing discontent, but the touch paper hadn’t been lit yet.

On 12 July, Louis fired his finance minister, Jacques Necker. Necker had been sympathetic to the commoners. On the same day, news that Royal troops were heading to shut down the newly formed National Assembly reached Paris. Thousands of people started to demonstrate. The demonstrations turned violent through the day. People started to plunder food and weapons.

On the morning of 14 July, revolutionary forces stormed the Hotel des Invalides and took possession of 32,000 muskets, but they had no gunpowder or shot. The revolutionaries found out that 250 barrels of gunpowder had been transferred to the Bastille for safe storage a few days earlier.

The Bastille was built as a fortress in about 1370 to defend Paris from English attacks. It became the state prison in 1417. Enemies of the state were sent there, similar to the Tower of London in England. In 1789, it was governed by the Marquis de Launay and was protected by a guard of 120 soldiers, mostly retired veterans.

A crowd of about 1,000 people gathered around the Bastille. As the Bastille was a fortress, it was not easy to get into. Early in the afternoon the crowd were fired upon, presumably from inside the Bastille. They managed to cut the chains to the drawbridge and get into the inner courtyard. The fighting intensified and the revolutionaries managed to bring in two canons.

There was a garrison of 5,000 French soldiers nearby but, for whatever reason, they did not interfere. They could have easily defended the Bastille.

82 attackers and 2 defenders died in the fighting. The Marquis de Launay realized that he couldn’t win, and he didn’t have enough food or water to survive a siege. He surrendered at 5 o’clock. He was dragged out and brutally killed along with 8 guards. The rest of the guards were released. The revolutionaries took possession of the barrels of gunpowder. The Bastille had been successfully stormed and the revolution would grow and grow.

Later on, the storming of the Bastille was spun as an attack by the people on the state, on the king. It became a symbol of the revolution itself. The oppressed people trying to free the political prisoners of the state. It became such a symbol of political revolution that Lafayette gave the one pound iron key from the Bastille to President George Washington in 1790. However, at the time there were only 7 prisoners in the Bastille and four of them were common forgers. The storming began as a spur of the moment decision to try and get gunpowder, and that is why the Bastille was stormed. And this is what I learned today.

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