on 14 July 1789 marked as the beginning of the French Revolution. The Bastille was a prison and a symbol of the absolute and arbitrary power of Louis the 16th's Ancient Regime.
Shortly thereafter, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette took refuge in Versailles as the violent peasants pillaged and burned châteaux, and destroyed records of feudal dues—this reaction is known as the grande peur (great fear).
By capturing this symbol, the people signaled that the king's power was no longer absolute: power should be based on the Nation and be limited by a separation of powers.
Although the Bastille only held seven prisoners at the time of its capture, the storming of the prison was a symbol of liberty and the fight against oppression for all French citizens; like the Tricolore flag, it symbolized the Republic's three ideals: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity for all French citizens.
On the one-year anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, delegates from every region of France proclaimed their allegiance to a single national community during the Fête de la Fédération in Paris - the first time in history that a people had claimed their right to self-determination.
The French Revolution
The French Revolution had numerous causes which are greatly simplified and summarized here:
- Parliament wanted the king to share his absolute powers with an oligarchic parliament.
- Priests and other low-level religious figures wanted more money.
- Nobles also wanted to share some of the king's power.
- The middle class wanted the right to own land and to vote.
- The lower class were quite hostile in general and farmers were angry about tithes and feodal rights.
- Some historians claim that the revolutionaries were opposed to Catholicism more than to the king or the upper classes.
Sources :
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/99bastilleday.html
http://french.about.com/od/culture/a/bastille-day.htm
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