No, the Republic has not been established in 1789 and the fall of the Bastille was not necessarily the founding document of our citizenship : there was a lot more steps to freedom, such as the advent of a constituent assembly or the Declaration of the rights of man... Small upgrade of circumstance.
July 14, commemorates the storming of the Bastille
Not necessarily : it also commemorates the fall of the royal prison that the day of 14 July 1790, the great fête of the Federation, which meets in paris, deputies and national guards in the unit found to swear fidelity to the Nation and the king Louis XVI on Champ-de-Mars. When the party national republican is re-established, at the end of the Nineteenth century (July 1880), the Third Republic does not specify what it commemorates that day. Still fragile, born in the bloodbath of the Paris Commune, the young Republic, walking on coals... Some members feel outrageous to pay tribute to a riot popular. The right-wing conservative and royalist is still powerful, it is necessary to spare the opinions...
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The Bastille was a prison and the atrocious, crowded with prisoners
If the fort of the Bastille represented the arbitrary royal, it is because it was used as a State prison since Richelieu, where one could sit on a simple decision royale. It can accommodate up to sixty inmates, but Louis XVI is far from have a heavy hand with the famous " lettres de cachet ", which allow him to deliver justice expeditiously. The 14 July 1789, the Bastille's seven prisoners, four counterfeiters, two lunatics and an aristocrat perverse, the comte de Solages, placed there by his father for acts of debauchery, it is so far from the "monument of despotism" described by the propaganda... With hundreds of guards, and governor, it cost a fortune to maintain so well that the king wished to destroy in order to create a place.
Read also on may 21, 1791. On the day the Bastille is finally totally shaved
the storming of The Bastille signals the end of the monarchy
No, since Louis XVI is going to still reign for three years, until September 1792, the date of the proclamation of the first Republic, which will then be swept away by Napoleon. Up to this date, Louis XVI was the French king, even if he is forced to leave Versailles for the Tuileries, and must deal with a legislative assembly – while getting her famous right of veto if much maligned. The fall of the Bastille causes, however, a shock at the number of sycophants who are afraid to see the crowd walking on Versailles and decide to migrate away including their diamonds in their luggage... It is in particular the case of the prince of Conde, or the count of Artois, the king's brother and future Charles X. the storming of The Bastille symbolizes the beginning of the end, namely, a riot civic, which marks the collapse of the royal authority.
The column of the Bastille celebrated the fall of the prison
No, it commemorates another revolution, that of 1830, the famous " Three Glorious days ", which did cause Charles X, brother of Louis XVI, to leave the place Louis-Philippe Ier. It is the latter which has the idea of erecting the column, inspired by that of Trajan, in Rome, with written on it the name of the victims fallen on the barricades. Their bones are gathered in coffins in the basement, we will add then the remains of those who die in 1848... At the origin, the revolutionaries of 1789 had intended to erect on the square an obelisk from stones of the old jail, on which it would have burned the Declaration of the rights of man. Finally, we built a fountain that represented the nation, nurturing, with the water that came out of her generous breasts, now gone.
Is celebrated on 14 July since the Revolution
No, several festivals are organized during the first Republic, particularly in September to celebrate the month of his advent, sometimes with a few variants, as in 1793 when a procession scrolls in August in Paris, crossing the major "stations" of the story of the young Revolution, the Champ-de-Mars to the Bastille, passing by the place de la Concorde. Napoleon removes these festivities in order to keep the August 15 as the fête impériale annual, the date of his birthday and the Saint-Napoleon : after the Te Deum, the people street on the hams and fountains of wine offered on the seats. The Restoration, she organizes the largesse for the Saint-Louis and Saint-Philippe, there was no question of honoring a revolution regicide. As for Napoleon III, he returned to the 15 August, with military journals, banquets and fireworks in the cities : on July 14, will still have to wait a few years to establish itself...
Read also the 14 July, which have made France
read : The true Story of the Bastille by Claude Quétel, editions Larousse.
