History of Bastille Day: Its Relation to the French Revolution

By Yann Caradec, from Paris, France — Feu d’artifice du 14 juillet 2017 depuis le Champ de Mars à Paris, devant la Tour Eiffel, Bastille Day 2017. Image: Wikipedia

HISTORY OF BASTILLE DAY

Each year on July 14, Bastille Day commemorates the Storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789, an important date in the French Revolution. Also known as French National Day, it features feasting, fireworks, public dancing, and an address by the French President.

L’Arc de Triomphe

However, the center of this celebration is the largest and oldest European military parade along the Avenue of the Champs-Élysées. This wide boulevard runs through Paris and is called la plus belle avenue du monde.

Lined by high-end shops and eateries, as well as the Arch of Triumph (l’Arc de Triomphe) near the western end, it is undoubtedly the most beautiful avenue in the world I’ve walked along.

Bastille Day is celebrated across the globe wherever French expatriates, people of French ancestry, and Francophiles live.

What is its origin, how has it been celebrated, what’s the American connection, what does it mean today?

Origin of Bastille Day

The Bastille

The event’s history goes back to 1789 in France’s monarchy under King Louis XVI, when he convened the Estates-General, where the Third Estate, the common people, voiced their grievances about high taxes and rising food prices. The people were unhappy about the economic crisis brought on by:

• Louis’ extravagant spending at Versailles
• The building of his navy
• His financial support of the American Revolution, thanks to the negotiations of Benjamin Franklin, the first American Minister to France

The Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly on June 17, 1789, and swore the famous Tennis Court Oath on June 20. Five days later, on July 9, the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly — still nearly a week before the Bastille fell.

It was the king’s perceived threat to that Assembly — including his dismissal of the popular finance minister Necker on July 11 and the massing of royal troops around Paris — that helped trigger what followed. On July 14, fear of reprisal drove the people to storm the fortress and prison known as the Bastille, seizing gunpowder and ammunition. This was considered the start of the French Revolution.

Historical Irony:

The Bastille held only seven prisoners when stormed — and they were not heroic political prisoners. The symbol of royal tyranny held seven largely unremarkable inmates on the day it fell.

The National Constituent Assembly, already in session, continued its transformative work in the weeks that followed. It abolished feudalism of the Ancien Régime on August 4, 1789, and passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen later that month, which became a fundamental document of the French Revolution.

The following year, on July 14, 1790, the Fête de la Fédération was held to celebrate.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

Historical Progression of Bastille Day

Monet’s Rue Montorgueil

As we now know, the celebration commemorated in a painting by Claude Monet called Rue Montorgueil was held on June 30, 1878. It became an annual national holiday. Throughout the 1880s, it was celebrated famously as a victory over the ancien régime, when the monarchy ruled France. Bastille Day didn’t become the official French national holiday until July 6, 1880, first celebrated that July 14. The Monet painting is a lovely illustration of French national celebration, but it’s technically depicting a different holiday. 

The military parades we now see began along the main boulevard, including marches by the Allies following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I on June 28, 1919. The Bastille Day parade of July 14, 1919, was the famous Allied Victory Parade following the armistice and treaty.

Of course, the Liberation of Paris in World War II – 80 days after D-Day – was celebrated here along the Champs-Élysées on August 25, 1944. (My father visited Paris as a U.S. soldier during WWII some months later.) The parades pass along the boulevard from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where the Champs-Élysées ends. Beyond that are the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden) and the Impressionist art gallery Musée de l’Orangerie. If you keep walking, you’ll reach the Louvre. 

Ironically, Place de la Concorde was called Place de la Révolution. Many notable public executions were carried out by guillotine during the French Revolution, including those of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in 1793.

American Connection to Bastille Day

This “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” document was written in August 1789 with French General Lafayette. “Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette,” had previously come to America to aid George Washington and the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War in 1777. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a close friend of General Lafayette and reviewed drafts of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

It was influenced by Jefferson’s other writings, including the American Declaration of Independence, and itself inspired the later 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As the Declaration of Independence led later to the writing of the American Constitution, so too did the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which led to the drafting of a constitution for France.

And Bastille Day is strategically placed after the American National French Fry Day.

Bastille Day Today

Champs-Élysées and l’Arc de Triomphe

Bastille Day, or La Fête Nationale, the National Celebration, or simply Le Quatorze Juillet, the Fourteenth of July, has been celebrated for over two hundred years in Paris, except during the German occupation during World War II, when General Charles de Gaulle led it in London.

The French say,

“Vive la France!”

How do you celebrate la fête du 14  juillet?

Guillaume Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com