Chapter Ten...
In which Charlotte explains what really happened to drive the angry mob to the Bastille on 14 juillet 1789.
On July 13, the morning after Citizen Desmoulins’ speech, 60,000 people met at Les Invalides, the home for veterans of French wars. They got away with over 10 cannon and 28,000 muskets belonging to the king’s army without any resistance from the troops on guard there. But, they found no gunpowder.
Oh, how I wished I had been there. My father forbade me to travel to Paris that summer. He said it was too dangerous. He was probably right. For the next day, July 14, a mob even larger than the day before met at the Bastille, a 14th century fortress, turned prison. The Bastille was enormous: eight stone towers linked 80 foot walls. The gunpowder needed to fuel the army’s munitions was hiding there. The Bastille had long been associated with the worst abuses of the monarchy’s power - torture, deprivation, unfair trial - and we French people hated it.
Armed with cannon and guns stolen from Les Invalides, as well as scythes, clubs, pikes, even stones – anything that could be used as a weapon – the mob demanded the fortress guards to give them gunpowder and to free their prisoners. The guards would not allow the mob inside and prepared to defend the Bastille with rooftop cannon. No one knows who actually fired first. But after a standoff lasting many hours, a gun blast was suddenly heard. The mob, thinking it was under attack, stormed the fortress. Members of the new Revolutionary police force, the National Guard, joined them.
The mob chopped off the head of the Bastille guard and stuck it on a pike. His head, dripping with blood, was held high for all to see.
The people went wild, tearing the Bastille apart, stone by stone, until their fingers bled. They freed the prisoners being held there, surprised to find only seven. They stole the king’s gunpowder to fuel the king’s arms.
A violent, more radical Revolution was now upon us.
Chapter Eleven...
The king's reaction...
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Images:
Unknown. Reveil du tiers état (Awakening of the Third Estate), 1789. Digital reproduction of hand- colored etching [LC-USZC2-3595] courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, French Political Cartoon Collection, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
Unknown. Prise de la Bastille (Taking of the Bastille). Crédit photographique: Musée de la Révolution Françaises, Vizille, France, http://www.domaine- vizille.fr, Inv. MRF 1988-117.