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Event Information:
Bastille Day is the French National
Day which is celebrated on 14 July
of each year. In France, it is
formally called La Fête Nationale
(The National Celebration) and
commonly le quatorze juillet (the
fourteenth of July). It commemorates
the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held
on the first anniversary of the
storming of the Bastille on 14 July
1789; the anniversary of the
storming of the Bastille
fortress-prison was seen as a symbol
of the uprising of the modern
nation, and of the reconciliation of
all the French inside the
constitutional monarchy which
preceded the First Republic, during
the French Revolution. Festivities
and official ceremonies are held all
over France. The oldest and largest
regular military parade in Europe is
held on the morning of 14 July, on
the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris
in front of the President of the
Republic, French officials and
foreign guests.
On 17
May 1789, Louis XVI convened the
Estates-General to hear their
grievances. The deputies of the
Third Estate representing the common
people (the two others were the
Catholic Church and nobility)
decided to break away and form a
National Assembly. On 20 June the
deputies of the Third Estate took
the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not
to separate until a constitution had
been established. They were
gradually joined by delegates of the
other estates; Louis XVI started to
recognize their validity on 27 June.
The assembly re-named itself the
National Constituent Assembly on 9
July, and began to function as a
legislature and to draft a
constitution.
In the
wake of the 11 July dismissal of
Jacques Necker, the people of Paris,
fearful that they and their
representatives would be attacked by
the royal military, and seeking to
gain ammunition and gunpowder for
the general populace, stormed the
Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris
which had often held people jailed
on the basis of lettres de cachet,
arbitrary royal indictments that
could not be appealed. Besides
holding a large cache of ammunition
and gunpowder, the Bastille had been
known for holding political
prisoners whose writings had
displeased the royal government, and
was thus a symbol of the absolutism
of the monarchy. As it happened, at
the time of the siege in July 1789
there were only seven inmates, none
of great political significance.
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