Three Days That Made It Inevitable
11 July. Louis XVI dismissed Jacques Necker, the Genevan banker widely read in Paris as the Third Estate's protector in government. Coming on top of twenty to twenty-five thousand royal troops concentrated around the capital, many of them foreign regiments thought less likely to refuse orders against Parisians, the sacking read as the opening move of a counter-coup against the new National Assembly.
12 July. The news reached Paris. Camille Desmoulins climbed onto a table outside a café in the Palais-Royal and called the crowd to arms. And, in the single administrative act that determined everything, the authorities moved two hundred and fifty barrels of gunpowder out of the Arsenal and into the Bastille.
13 July. The Paris electors formed a standing committee and a citizens' militia, and went looking for weapons. The prévôt des marchands, Jacques de Flesselles, could produce three muskets from municipal stores and directed them to caches that turned out to be empty. The city decided he was a traitor. It would kill him the next evening.
14 July, Hour by Hour
Around 10 in the morning, the crowd took the Hôtel des Invalides. The army pensioners guarding the arsenal declined to fire on them, and Paris walked away with roughly thirty thousand muskets and some cannon. And no usable gunpowder, because it had gone into the Bastille two days before. Thirty thousand guns and nothing to put in them is what turned a crowd toward the rue Saint-Antoine.
Late morning, delegations. The electors sent men in to negotiate, asking for two things: the powder, and the withdrawal of the cannon that stood in the embrasures pointing down into the faubourg. The governor, Bernard-René de Launay, would not surrender the fortress without orders from Versailles, but he let a delegate named Thuriot inspect the defences, walked the battlements with him, and had the guns drawn back. From outside, guns disappearing from the embrasures looked like capitulation.
About half past one, the crowd pushed into the undefended outer courtyard. A small party got onto the roof of a guardhouse and cut the chains of the small drawbridge with axes. It crashed down, crushing at least one man beneath it, and hundreds surged across believing they had been let in. The garrison opened fire into the inner court. Almost all the attacker casualties of the day happened in the next two hours, while the crowd pushed carts of burning straw forward as smokescreens and a truce flag was ignored.
Around three, the thing that actually decided it. Mutinous soldiers of the gardes françaises arrived, about sixty-one of them under Pierre-Augustin Hulin and Jacob-Job Élie, dragging cannon. They laid the guns on the inner gate at point-blank range. De Launay had been holding off a crowd; he could not hold off artillery, and no relief was coming.
About five, he threatened to put a light to thirty thousand pounds of powder and take the district with him. His own garrison physically blocked him from the cellars. He wrote out terms and passed the note through a slot, and a young court official named Stanislas-Marie Maillard walked out along a plank laid over the dry moat to take it. The great drawbridge came down. The crowd went in, took the powder, and found seven men.
The Seven
This is the fact that makes the whole day strange, and it is worth naming precisely what was inside the great prison of royal tyranny on the day it fell.
- Four forgers. Held since 1787 on a court warrant for forging bills of exchange on a bank. Ordinary criminals, lawfully convicted. All four were back behind bars at Bicêtre within days.
- Two men who were seriously mentally ill. One, of Irish descent, had been detained at his family's expense and formally declared incapable earlier that year. The other had been inside since 1759. Both were paraded through the streets as liberated victims and then sent to the asylum at Charenton within a week.
- One aristocrat. The comte de Solages, confined at his own family's request under a sealed royal order over a family scandal. He was the only one of the seven who walked out free and stayed free.
Not one was a political prisoner of the state. And the most famous inmate had missed it: the Marquis de Sade, held there since 1784, had shouted from his window on 2 July that prisoners were being murdered inside, and was moved out to Charenton on the night of the 3rd, ten days before the assault. He left behind the manuscript of a novel he believed destroyed, and later said he had wept tears of blood over it. He is also the best single illustration of what the Bastille actually was: he kept a wardrobe and a library of a hundred and thirty-three volumes in his cell.
What the Casualty Figures Really Look Like
The defenders numbered one hundred and fourteen: eighty-two invalides, army pensioners unfit for field service, and thirty-two Swiss grenadiers sent in shortly before. Against them, somewhere between six hundred and a thousand actual combatants, inside a far larger crowd.
Ninety-eight attackers were killed, the figure from the official count and the one the standard scholarly account adopts, with some tallies adding around fifteen more who died later of wounds. Nearly all of them fell in the two hours after the drawbridge chains were cut.
The defenders' losses are the ones worth pausing on. Perhaps one man died in the fighting. Between six and ten died in total, and most of those were killed after they had surrendered. One invalide who had actually helped open the gate had his hand cut off, which was carried through Paris still holding the key, and was then misidentified as the gunner who fired the first shot and hanged.
De Launay was marched toward the Hôtel de Ville under the nominal protection of Hulin and Élie, beaten and stabbed the whole way. At the Place de Grève he was set on with sabres and bayonets and beheaded with a knife by an unemployed cook's assistant, and his head went up on a pike. That evening Flesselles, who had failed to produce weapons the day before, was shot dead on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville and decapitated. His head went onto a pike beside de Launay's.
Why a Half-Empty Fortress Mattered So Much
The Bastille's importance had nothing to do with its contents. It stood for the lettre de cachet: a sealed order under the king's signature that could imprison a subject indefinitely, without charge, trial, or any possibility of appeal. That is a different and in some ways more frightening thing than a torture chamber, and it is what the fortress meant to people who had never been inside it.
Crucially, it had been made into a symbol before 1789, by a genre of best-selling prison memoirs. Mirabeau wrote one in 1782 after his own detention. Simon Linguet published another from exile in 1783 after two years inside. They exaggerated conditions deliberately, for readers already disposed to believe the worst, and by 1789 the Bastille in the public mind was a dungeon full of forgotten victims.
The actual building was an expensive anachronism that the monarchy itself wanted rid of. Necker had wanted it demolished as early as 1784, and plans existed to replace it with a public square. The revolutionaries destroyed a building the king was already planning to remove.
That gap between the symbol and the object is the real story of 14 July. The crowd attacked a storehouse and destroyed an idea, and the idea turned out to be worth far more than the powder.
Seventy-Two Hours Later
The results arrived fast, and they were constitutional rather than penal. On 15 July the king told the Assembly the troops would withdraw from Paris. On 16 July he recalled Necker. On 17 July he came to Paris himself, was received at the Hôtel de Ville, and accepted the tricolour cockade, which amounted to ratifying the insurrection. Bailly became mayor and Lafayette took command of a new National Guard.
The famous exchange belongs to that night. Told the news at Versailles, Louis XVI is supposed to have asked whether it was a revolt, and been told: no, Sire, it is a revolution. It is a wonderful line and it should be handled carefully, because the earliest traceable source for it is a school textbook from 1883, and the wording varies between tellings. There is no contemporary attestation. It is a story the Revolution told about itself, which is arguably more interesting than if he had actually said it.
Demolition began on 15 July under a contractor named Palloy, with around eight hundred workers, and finished in May 1791. Palloy, who styled himself Palloy the Patriot, understood exactly what he was standing on. He turned the rubble into an industry: Bastille stone carved into scale models of the fortress and sent to every one of the eighty-three new departments, medals said to be forged from prisoners' chains, buttons, rings, inkstands, even domino sets. In autumn 1790 he dispatched men across France with two hundred and forty-six crates of souvenirs, each delivery accompanied by a speech. Lafayette sent the main key of the fortress to George Washington, entrusted first to Thomas Paine. It is still at Mount Vernon.
In July 1790 Parisians held a ball on the ruins, with the names of the eighty-three departments hung around the surviving walls: dancing on the spot where the king had imprisoned his subjects.
Four Things Everyone Gets Wrong
- It did not free hundreds of political prisoners. Seven men, none political, and six of the seven were back in custody or in an asylum within about a week.
- It did not start the Revolution. The Estates-General opened on 5 May, the National Assembly declared itself on 17 June and the Tennis Court Oath was sworn on 20 June. The Revolution was two months old. What 14 July changed was who was driving it.
- Bastille Day does not commemorate only this. The law of 6 July 1880 made 14 July the national holiday deliberately without naming a year, because some legislators found 1789 too bloody to celebrate. The ambiguity lets the date also stand for the Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790, a mass festival of national unity attended by the king. That ambiguity is what got the law passed.
- Louis XVI's Rien is not what you think. He did write it. But the volume was a hunting log recording game killed and entertainments attended, and Rien meant he had not hunted. He also filled entries in retrospectively, sometimes weeks afterwards, so he wrote nothing for 14 July while already knowing the Bastille had fallen.
Knowledge Check
What did the crowd actually take from the Invalides that morning?+
Around thirty thousand muskets and some cannon, handed over without a fight when the pensioners guarding them declined to fire. What they did not get was gunpowder, because it had been moved into the Bastille two days earlier. That gap between having guns and having powder is the entire reason the afternoon happened.
What actually forced the surrender?+
Artillery, and defectors. Mutinous soldiers of the gardes françaises arrived in the afternoon, about sixty-one of them, dragging cannon which they laid on the inner gate at point-blank range. De Launay had beaten off a crowd but could not survive a bombardment, and there was no relief coming.
Was the Bastille a torture dungeon?+
No. It was an expensive and half-empty anachronism where privileged inmates lived comparatively well. The Marquis de Sade, held there until ten days before the assault, kept a wardrobe and a library of 133 books in his cell. The horror of the Bastille was arbitrariness, not cruelty: you could be put there indefinitely by a sealed royal order, without charge or trial.
What happened to the building?+
A contractor named Palloy started demolishing it on 15 July with around eight hundred workers and turned the rubble into an industry. Bastille stone was carved into scale models of the fortress and sent to all eighty-three new departments, along with medals said to be forged from prisoners' chains. Lafayette sent the main key to George Washington, where it still hangs at Mount Vernon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why was the Bastille stormed?+
For gunpowder. On 12 July the authorities moved 250 barrels of powder from the Arsenal into the Bastille. On the morning of the 14th Parisians seized around thirty thousand muskets from the Invalides and came away with nothing to load them with. The Bastille had the powder. A second grievance was concrete too: the fortress's cannon were trained down the rue Saint-Antoine, over a working-class district.
How many prisoners were in the Bastille?+
Seven, and not one was a political prisoner of the state. Four were forgers held on a court warrant for passing false bills of exchange. Two were seriously mentally ill and had been confined privately. One was an aristocrat detained at his own family's request. Within days four were back behind bars at Bicêtre and two had been transferred to the asylum at Charenton.
How many people died storming the Bastille?+
About ninety-eight attackers, the figure from the post-event count adopted by the historian Jacques Godechot, with some accounts adding around fifteen who died later of wounds. On the other side perhaps one defender died in the fighting itself. Between six and ten were killed in total, most of them lynched after they had already surrendered.
Did the storming of the Bastille start the French Revolution?+
No. The Estates-General had opened on 5 May 1789, the Third Estate had declared itself the National Assembly on 17 June, and the Tennis Court Oath was sworn on 20 June. The Revolution was two months old. What changed on 14 July was who was driving it: this is the day royal authority visibly collapsed and the people of Paris became a political force.
Did Louis XVI really write 'Nothing' in his diary that day?+
He did write Rien, but the document was a hunting log, not a personal diary. It recorded game killed and entertainments attended, and Rien meant he had not hunted. He also wrote entries up retrospectively, sometimes weeks later, which means he recorded nothing for 14 July while already knowing perfectly well that the Bastille had fallen.
Is the famous 'No, Sire, it is a revolution' exchange real?+
It is traditional rather than documented. The exchange between Louis XVI and the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt on the night of 14 July is quoted everywhere, but the earliest traceable source appears to be a school textbook published in 1883, nearly a century later. The wording also varies between versions. Treat it as a story the Revolution told about itself.
Sources
- ·Élysée (French Presidency) — Bastille Day, 14 July
- ·Histoire par l'image (French Ministry of Culture) — on the taking of the Bastille and the arrest of its governor
- ·Paris Musées — Five things to know about the storming of the Bastille
- ·Musée Carnavalet — on Palloy's demolition and the Bastille scale models
- ·Parcours Révolution (Ville de Paris) — on the Bastille, Hulin, and Flesselles
- ·Jacques Godechot, La prise de la Bastille: 14 juillet 1789 (Gallimard, 1965)
- ·Château de Versailles — on the Tennis Court Oath of 20 June 1789
- ·George Washington's Mount Vernon — on the Bastille key
