A dawn raid on the Invalides that yielded thousands of muskets but almost no powder (14 July 1789)
The crowd went on to the fortress because the powder had been moved there days before.
History · Revolutions & empires
The Storming of the Bastille
14 July 1789
A Paris crowd takes the royal fortress-prison; France's national day
On the morning of 14 July 1789 a Paris crowd raided the Invalides for muskets and then went looking for powder at the medieval fortress on the eastern edge of the city. After a day of confused negotiation and gunfire the governor surrendered; he was killed on the way to the Hôtel de Ville and his head carried through the streets. Only seven prisoners were inside, but the act was read at once as the collapse of royal authority, and the date became France's national holiday.
How to spot them
- ▸Eight towers on the eastern edge of Paris, a lieutenant de roi named de Launay, and a garrison largely of pensioners and Swiss
- ▸Muskets seized from the Invalides that morning; the hunt was for gunpowder, not for prisoners
- ▸Only seven inmates found inside — forgers, madmen and one aristocrat
- ▸Commemorated every 14 July with a parade down the Champs-Élysées
What happened
The governor, Bernard-René de Launay, seized after surrendering and his head paraded on a pike (14 July 1789)
He was killed near the Hôtel de Ville; the prévôt des marchands, Jacques de Flesselles, was shot the same day.
Seven inmates released: four forgers, two lunatics and one dissolute count
The comte de Solages was the aristocrat; the Marquis de Sade had been moved out ten days earlier.
'Non, Sire, c'est une révolution' — the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt's reply to the king (night of 14–15 July 1789)
Louis XVI had asked whether it was a revolt.
A demolition contractor who sold souvenir stones carved as models of the fortress he pulled down (1789–90)
Palloy marketed the rubble as relics of liberty across France.
A great iron key sent by Lafayette to George Washington, still at Mount Vernon (1790)
Thomas Paine carried it across the Atlantic on Lafayette's behalf.
The Fête de la Fédération, held on the site's first anniversary on the Champ de Mars (14 July 1790)
The 1880 law that made 14 July the national day deliberately left it ambiguous which event was meant.
Quick-fire facts
- •The fortress was begun in the 1370s under Charles V as part of the defences of Paris, and became a state prison under Richelieu
- •The attackers, later honoured as the vainqueurs de la Bastille, numbered around 950; fewer than a hundred were killed
- •Louis XVI's hunting diary for 14 July 1789 reads 'Rien' — a note about the day's game, not a comment on events
- •The Marquis de Sade had been transferred to Charenton on 4 July after shouting to passers-by through a pipe
- •Demolition began almost immediately; the site is now the Place de la Bastille, marked by the July Column of 1840
- •The July Column actually commemorates the revolution of 1830, not 1789
- •Bastille Day is known in France simply as la Fête nationale or 'le quatorze juillet'
- •The Opéra Bastille, opened on the bicentenary in 1989, stands on the square
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Sources
- Fondation Napoléon — History of the Two Empires: the Revolution
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Bastille Consulted for the garrison, the seven prisoners and the demolition; cited without URL as the site blocks automated access.