Sergei TSVETKOV, historian.

On July 14, 1789, eight hundred Parisians and two Russians captured the Bastille. Since then, in the minds of people, the storming of the famous royal prison has become a symbol of the people's impulse for freedom - in France this day is still celebrated as a national holiday. True, from our Russian bell tower it is difficult for us to understand why this event touches the French so much. We, the descendants of the executioners and victims of the “Great October Revolution,” no longer so easily succumb to the charm of revolutionary symbols, knowing that any of them personifies not so much freedom, equality and brotherhood as lies, blood and madness. The Storming of the Bastille is no exception.

Science and life // Illustrations

Science and life // Illustrations

Paris plan mid-16th century century. The Bastille fortress rises almost in its center.

This is what the Bastille looked like at the end of the 18th century - shortly before it was destroyed.

Late 18th-century engraving depicting the storming of the Bastille. The day of the destruction of the Bastille, July 14, 1789, is considered the beginning of the bourgeois French revolution.

Plan of the Bastille dating back to 1765. Towers: 1 - Corner; 2 - Hourly; 3 - Treasury; 4 - De La Conte; 5 - Well; 6 - Freedom; 7 - Bertodiere; 8 - Basinera. 9 - Council Hall; 10 - library; 11 - Don Jon; 12 - arsenal gate; 13 - chapel.

Prison for aristocrats

Let's start with the question: why did the people destroy the prison for the aristocrats and why did this event cause great rejoicing among the so-called ordinary people?

Indeed, the Bastille existed for a long time as a privileged prison, designed for 42 people. But until the reign of Louis XIV, it rarely housed more than one or two prisoners at a time - mostly rebel princes of the blood, marshals of France, dukes or, at worst, counts. They were given spacious upper rooms (though with iron bars on the windows), which they could furnish to their liking. Their lackeys and other servants lived in adjacent rooms.

At Louis XIV and XV Bastille was somewhat “democratized”, but remained a prison for the noble class. Commoners rarely went there. The conditions of detention of prisoners corresponded to the aristocratic status of the prison. Prisoners received allowances according to their rank and class. Thus, 50 livres a day were allocated for the maintenance of the prince (remember that on this amount the four famous musketeers of Dumas lived for almost a month without knowing sorrow), the marshal - 36, the lieutenant general - 16, the parliamentary adviser - 15, the judge and the priest - 10 , lawyer and prosecutor - 5, bourgeois - 4, footman or artisan - 3 livres.

Food for prisoners was divided into two categories: for the upper classes (at the rate of 10 livres per day and above) and for the lower classes (less than 10 livres). For example, a first-class lunch consisted of soup, boiled beef, roast, and dessert on fast days, and soup, fish, and dessert on fast days. There was wine every day for lunch. Lunches of the second category consisted of the same number of dishes, but were prepared from lower quality ingredients. IN holidays- St. Martin, St. Louis and for Epiphany - an extra dish was provided: half a chicken or roasted pigeon. In addition, prisoners had the right to walk in the Arsenal garden and on the towers.

With the accession of Louis XVI, the Bastille lost its character as a state prison and turned into an ordinary one, with the only difference being that criminals were kept there in comparatively better conditions. In the Bastille, torture was finally abolished and it was forbidden to put prisoners in a punishment cell. On September 11, 1775, Minister Maleserb, who contributed greatly to the easing of prison rules, wrote to the commandant of the fortress: “Prisoners should never be denied reading and writing. Due to the fact that they are kept so strictly, the abuse that they could do in these classes is not inspires fear. Nor should we refuse those of them who would like to engage in any other kind of work. We must only ensure that such instruments do not fall into their hands as may serve them for escape. If any of them wishes to write "to your relatives and friends, then this should be allowed, and the letters should be read. Likewise, they should be allowed to receive answers and deliver them to them after reading them first. In all this, I rely on your prudence and humanity."

Such a fairly humane institution - the prototype of modern prisons in civilized countries - for some reason aroused the fiercest hatred of the French. The other two prisons, Bicêtre and Charenton, where political prisoners and commoner criminals died of hunger and swarmed in the mud, no one touched a finger.

With the greatest enthusiasm, having taken and destroyed the prison for aristocrats, the French soon began to throw these same aristocrats into not one, but many prisons, cut them up and guillotine them. Purely revolutionary logic!

The prison that no longer existed

Was it necessary to destroy the Bastille? From 1783 to 1789, the Bastille stood almost empty, and if it were not for the occasional placement of criminals, whose place was in ordinary prisons, the fortress would have been uninhabited. Already in 1784, for lack of state criminals Vincennes prison, which served as a kind of branch of the Bastille, had to be closed. Of course, the Bastille was very expensive for the treasury. Its commandant alone received a salary of 60 thousand livres annually, and if we add to this the costs of maintaining the garrison, jailers, doctor, pharmacist, priests, plus the money given for food for prisoners and their clothing (in 1784 alone, 67 thousand livres were spent on this), then the amount turned out to be enormous.

Based on these considerations - “for the sake of economy” - Finance Minister Necker proposed abolishing the Bastille. And he wasn’t the only one talking about this. In 1784, the city architect of Paris, Courbet, presented an official plan, proposing to open a “Place Louis XVI” on the site of the fortress. There is information that other artists also developed designs for various structures and monuments on the site of the Bastille. Particularly interesting is one of them, who proposed tearing down the seven towers of the fortress and erecting a monument to Louis XVI in their place. On a pedestal from a pile of chains of the state prison, the figure of the king was supposed to rise, who, with a gesture of liberation, extends his hand towards the eighth, preserved tower. (Perhaps now it is worth regretting that this plan remained unfulfilled.) And on June 8, 1789, after the convening of the Estates General, a similar project by Davi de Chavigne was submitted to the Royal Academy of Architecture. It was with this project that the Estates General wanted to honor Louis XVI, “the restorer of popular freedom.” The monument was never erected, but prints have been preserved: the king extends his hand to the high towers of the prison, which are being destroyed by workers.

The archives of the Bastille contain two reports submitted in 1788 by Puget, the second person in the fortress after the commandant. He proposed demolishing the state prison and selling the land to the treasury.

All these projects would hardly have existed and been discussed if they had not reflected the mood of the supreme power: the destruction of the Bastille was a foregone conclusion, and if the people had not done it, the government itself would have done it.

By July 14, 1789, all the towers and bastions of the Bastille were still intact, but it seemed to no longer exist - it had turned into a ghost, a legend. As you know, those who took the fortress, after a long search, found only seven prisoners in this “stronghold of despotism.” Four of them turned out to be financial swindlers, the fifth was a libertine imprisoned in the Bastille at the request of his father, the sixth was involved in the case of the assassination attempt on Louis XV, the seventh had annoyed one of the king's favorites. The day before the assault, another prisoner was transferred from the Bastille to Charenton - the notorious Marquis de Sade, who was imprisoned for his numerous crimes. Otherwise, on July 14, he would have been released by the people as a “victim of royal tyranny.”

Encore Assault

The taking of the Bastille is the result of purely French frivolity. It was, first of all, the authorities who showed the height of frivolity. Although, after the convening of the Estates General, Paris became more and more revolutionized every day, Louis XVI (not a bad man in general, who adored hunting and carpentry more than anything else in the world) stubbornly refused to take countermeasures. We must give him credit - he loved his people. To all proposals to send troops into Paris and suppress the rebellion by force, the king exclaimed in horror: “But this means shedding blood!” At Versailles they tried not to notice what was going on.

On July 13, the city found itself at the mercy of armed gangs. An eyewitness recalls that on the night of July 14, “a whole horde of ragamuffins, armed with guns, pitchforks and stakes, forced them to open the doors of houses, give them food, drink, money and weapons.” All city outposts were captured by them and burned. In broad daylight, drunken “creatures pulled out earrings from the ears of civilians and took off their shoes,” brazenly making fun of their victims. One gang of these scoundrels broke into the Lazarist missionary house, destroying everything in their path, and plundered the wine cellar. After they left, thirty corpses remained in the shelter, among which was a pregnant woman.

“During these two days,” writes the deputy of the Estates General of Bailly, “Paris was almost completely plundered; it was saved from the robbers only thanks to the National Guard.” On the afternoon of July 14, the bandits were disarmed and several bandits were hanged. Only from this moment did the uprising take on a purely political character.

The Parisians behaved frivolously. True, about eight hundred people responded to Camille Desmoulins’ call to go to the Bastille. (Here are the lines from this drum-revolutionary demagoguery: “Once an animal is caught in a trap, it must be killed... Never before has such rich booty been given to the victors. Forty thousand palaces, hotels, castles, two-fifths of the property of all France will be the reward for courage. .. The nation will be cleansed.") The rest of Paris gathered in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to admire the spectacle. The square in front of the Bastille was crowded with gawking people, the aristocracy took better places - on the ramparts and hills, noble ladies watched what was happening, sitting in chairs specially taken with them. The applause for the “artists with guns” did not stop.

The price of this magnificent spectacle was famine, terror, general brutality, twenty-five years of war, and the death of six million French people.

Disabled winners

The taking of the Bastille is militarily a more than modest affair. The success of the assault should be entirely attributed to the numerical superiority of the rebels and the fear of the besieged. On July 14, the commandant of the Bastille de Launay had at his disposal only 32 Swiss soldiers of the Salis-Samad regiment, 82 invalids and 15 guns. But even with these insignificant forces, de Launay managed to hold out for almost twelve hours.

The signal to begin the assault early in the morning was given by two young men, Davan and Dassin. They went down the roof of the perfume shop onto the fortress wall adjacent to the guardhouse, and jumped into the outer (commandant) courtyard of the Bastille; Aubert Bonmaire and Louis Tournai, former soldiers, followed them. The four of them used axes to cut the chains of the drawbridge, which fell down with such force that it jumped almost two meters from the ground - the first victims appeared: one of the townspeople crowding at the gate was crushed, another was crippled. With shouts of triumph, the people rushed through the commandant's yard to the second drawbridge, leading directly to the fortress. But here they were met by a musket volley. The crowd scattered across the courtyard in confusion, leaving the bodies of the dead and wounded on the ground. Most of the attackers did not know how the first gate was opened, and decided that the commandant himself had done it in order to lure them into a trap. Meanwhile, Commandant de Launay, despite the constant shelling of the fortress, still kept the soldiers from returning fire.

The wounded were carried into the city as proof of the “treason” of the commandant of the Bastille. Among them was a dying guardsman, whose sight forced his comrades in arms to move to the aid of the besiegers. About two thousand guardsmen proclaimed as their commander Güllen, the director of the royal laundry, and the grenadier Lazar Gosch, the future famous revolutionary general.

When the soldiers entered the commandant's yard, thick smoke covered the fortress - the barracks and shops were burning. In front of the second drawbridge, the attackers set fire to several carts of hay, which, however, only prevented the cannons from being aimed at the gate. The garrison, in turn, through the loopholes at the gate randomly showered the besiegers with grapeshot from two small guns. Elie, an officer in the queen's regiment, and the merchant Reol rushed forward to pull the carts away from the gate. As soon as the place in front of the gate was cleared, they began to fire at the drawbridge from cannons, hoping to break the chains holding it. At the same time, guns were fired at the fortress from all the surrounding roofs, although without causing the slightest harm to the garrison.

Return gunfire from the fortress only increased the fury of the crowd, which was constantly repeating someone’s throw bright phrase: "We will fill the ditches with our corpses!"

A girl found in the barracks was dragged to the gates of the fortress. Those who caught her assured that she was the daughter of the commandant himself. The girl explained: “I am the daughter of the commander of the disabled, Mansigna,” as it really was. But they didn’t believe her, the crowd surrounding her shouted: “We must burn her alive if the commandant does not surrender the fortress!” From the height of the tower, Mansigny saw his daughter lying unconscious on the ground and rushed to her aid, but was killed by two shots. And they actually began to cover the girl with straw to burn her, but one of the stormers, the already mentioned Aubert Bonmer, snatched her from the hands of the brutal crowd and carried her to a safe place, after which he returned under the walls of the Bastille.

The assault on the fortress was going on for six hours, and hopes for its successful completion were gradually fading. The rebels had neither a single leadership nor military experience (the guards were limited to fire support, not directly participating in the assault). During this time, the garrison lost, with the exception of Mansigna, only one defender, an invalid killed by a cannonball. The losses of the besiegers amounted to 83 killed and 88 wounded.

The most absurd projects were used, with the help of which they wanted to force the garrison to lay down their arms. They pumped water in the hope of filling the powder boxes placed on the towers near the guns, but the stream barely reached the middle of the tower. Some brewer suggested burning “this block of stone” by pouring lavender and clove oil mixed with gunpowder over it. And a certain young carpenter, who apparently had a passion for history and archeology, was running around with a drawing of a Roman catapult.

The Bastille, of course, would have survived if it had not included the disabled among its defenders, who with great reluctance shot at their compatriots. “The Bastille was not taken by storm,” testifies one of the participants in the assault, “it surrendered even before the attack, having secured a promise that no harm would be done to anyone. The garrison, which had all the means of defense, simply did not have the courage to shoot at living bodies, with on the other hand, he was greatly frightened by the sight of a huge crowd. The besiegers numbered only eight to nine hundred people - workers and shopkeepers from nearby places, tailors, coachmen, sternworkers, wine merchants, mixed with the national guard. But the Place de la Bastille and all the surrounding streets were crowded with curious people who They came running to see the spectacle." From the height of the walls, it seemed to the garrison that the whole million-strong city of Paris was coming towards them. And the disabled, who from the very beginning of the assault expressed dissatisfaction with the commandant, forced de Launay to agree to surrender.

The drawbridge lowered. Bonmer, Eli, Güllen and other leaders of the assault entered the fortress. Meanwhile, the rest, not knowing about the capitulation of the fortress, continued shooting. One of the officers of the guard, Humbert, climbed the rampart to give the people a sign of the surrender of the Bastille, but his uniform misled the crowd, and he was killed by several shots. Then the grenadier Arne tore his hat off his head, put it on his gun and waved it. Without stopping shooting, people poured towards the gate.

At four forty minutes in the afternoon the Bastille fell.

The rebels carried out brutal reprisals against the commandant of the Bastille. Abbot Lefebvre, an eyewitness to this massacre, testified that de Launay “defended himself like a lion.” Wanting to get rid of the torment, he kicked one of the attackers in the groin and shouted:

Let them kill me!

These words of his sounded like the last order, he was raised on bayonets and dragged to the ditch, screaming: “This monster has betrayed us! The nation demands his head!” The person who received the kick was given the right to cut off the commandant's head himself. This unemployed cook, says the historian Taine, “came to the Bastille simply to gawk at what was happening... reasoned that if, by all accounts, this was such a “patriotic” matter, then he could still be awarded a medal for cutting off the head of a monster,” and without unnecessary words got down to business.

Massacre was carried out against almost all the officers of the garrison. The corpses of the killed officers were taken to the morgue, except for the body of de Launay, which was not found. Only six months later, a soldier brought the commandant’s family his watch and other precious things, but categorically refused to explain how they got to him.

The next day, a mass massacre of aristocrats began in the city. France was entering an era about which one deputy later put it this way: “The Throne of God would have been shaken if our decrees had reached it.”

To the ground, and then? Then we'll sell the pieces

In Versailles they learned about the capture of the Bastille only at midnight (the king noted in his diary that day: “Nothing”). As is known, only one courtier - the Duke de Liancourt - understood the meaning of what happened. "But this is a riot!" - Louis XVI exclaimed in surprise when he heard the news. “No, Your Majesty, this is not a rebellion, this is a revolution,” Liancourt corrected him.

And when the king was informed of the death of de Launay, he responded indifferently: “Well! He fully deserved his fate!” (I wonder if he thought that way about himself when he ascended the scaffold three years later?) On the same day, Louis put on a tricolor cockade, seeing which Marie Antoinette winced with disgust: “I didn’t think that I was marrying a tradesman.”

This is how the court reacted to an event that heralded the future death of the monarchy.

But in both hemispheres the storming of the Bastille made a huge impression. Everywhere, especially in Europe, people congratulated each other on the fall of the famous state prison and on the triumph of freedom. In St. Petersburg, the heroes of the day were the Golitsyn brothers, who took part in the storming of the Bastille with fuses in their hands. General Lafayette sent his American friend, Washington, the keys to the gates of the Bastille - they are still kept in the country house of the US President. Donations were sent from San Domingo, England, Spain, and Germany in favor of the families of those killed during the assault. Cambridge University established a prize for the best poem to storm the Bastille. The architect Palua, one of the participants in the assault, made copies of the Bastille from the stones of the fortress and sent them to scientific institutions in many European countries. Stones from the walls of the Bastille were in great demand: set in gold, they appeared in the ears and on the fingers of European ladies.

On the day of the storming of the Bastille, July 14, the mayor's office of Paris, accepting Danton's proposal, created a commission to destroy the fortress. The work was led by Palua. When the walls of the Bastille were demolished by more than half, a folk festivals and hung a sign: “They dance here.” The fortress was finally destroyed on May 21, 1791. The stones of its walls and towers were auctioned for 943,769 francs.

The destruction of the Bastille did not mean that the new government no longer needed prisons. On the contrary, very soon there came a time when many French began to remember the Bastille, as, perhaps, the entire old regime with nostalgia. Revolutionary tyranny left the abuses of royal power far behind, and each city acquired its own Jacobin Bastille, which, unlike the Royal Bastille, was not empty.

Until recently, there were two incomprehensible holidays in the world glorifying fratricidal massacres: November 7 and July 14. Now there is only one left - July 14, Bastille Day.

Every year on July 14, the French celebrate Bastille Day. The holiday is very unique and quite unexpected. And to understand what it is connected with, a short excursion into history is needed.

A powerful fortress, with high walls and eight towers, the Bastille took more than 10 years to build, 1370-1381. And almost from the very beginning the fortress served as a prison. At first the most dangerous criminals were kept there, but over time it became a political prison. And in the same 18th century, many were its prisoners famous people, including two times Voltaire, the great philosopher of that time, was imprisoned in it, as well as Countess de Lamotte, Marquis de Sade, Nicolas Fouquet, etc. The list goes on, but that is not the purpose of the article.

They were imprisoned in this prison by personal order of the king, without trial or investigation, so to speak. And the rules in the Bastille were much stricter than in any other prison. It is quite natural that this particular fortress was associated among the Parisians, and some of the French, with despotism and political tyranny. And this, coupled with the fact that ammunition was stored in the basement of the fortress, made the capture of the Bastille almost inevitable.

The revolutionary mood among the people in 1789 grew rapidly. By mid-July of that year, the feudal estates, convened in May of the same year, spontaneously transformed into a classless institution, which positioned itself as the bearer people's will and on this basis laid claim to supreme power. Following this, the National Assembly, created by deputies of the “third estate”, declared itself the National

In order to stop the beginning of the revolution, troops consisting of more than 20,000 foreign mercenaries were brought to Paris. Then one of the popular ministers, Jacques Neckar, was dismissed. Baron Breteuil took his place. This news alarmed the residents of Paris, who were afraid of the defeat of the National Assembly, because such hopes were pinned on it. Each of these events gradually increased popular anger and thereby brought the storming of the Bastille closer.

The revolutionaries began to call on the people to revolt, the most famous of the agitators being Camille Desmoulins. As a result, riots began in Paris on July 13, in particular the Saint-Lazare monastery was looted. His granary, to be precise. The Parisian master Jacques de Flesselles sought to stop the unrest and created a city militia, which included about 48 thousand people. However, they did not arm the police.

And then there was the storming of the Bastille. On July 14, an armed crowd of Parisians, numbering about 50,000 people, plundered weapons warehouses at the Invalides (this word was then used in France to describe veterans who had already retired). Thus, about 40,000 guns ended up in the hands of the rebels. The next point on their route was the Bastille, because in its basements, as mentioned earlier, gunpowder and bullets were stored.

The rebels sent a delegation to the Marquis de Launay with a request for ammunition to arm the city police. De Launay received the delegation in highest degree friendly, but refused to give out the ammunition. One after another, the delegations left with nothing.

Meanwhile, people were still arriving in the square. At the same time, the garrison of the Bastille consisted of only 114 people, of which 32 were Swiss guards, and the remaining 82 were disabled. In addition, 13 cannons were installed on the walls of the fortress. In the middle of the day, namely at half past one, fire was opened from these cannons on the crowd gathered near the fortress. The result of this action was the death of 89 people, and 73 were injured. After this, several more delegations were sent to the Marquis, and then the guns captured in the Invalides were brought to the drawbridge.

Seeing such a demonstration of strength and intentions, de Launay no longer hoped for reinforcements from Versailles and therefore decided to blow up the fortress. To do this, he went down to the basement, where gunpowder with a lit wick was stored. However, he was not allowed to accomplish his plan. The garrison of the Bastille convened a military council, at which they voted almost unanimously to surrender.

In exchange for a promise to save the lives of the defenders of the fortress, they surrendered the Bastille by 17:00. Thus ended the storming of the Bastille. Almost all the defenders of the fortress, as well as Master de Flesselles, were killed by the indignant crowd. This event was the first victory people's revolution. Even though the storming of the Bastille was not a great victory, it still played an important role in French history. Over time, this event became a symbol of the inevitable victory over despotism.

Since 1880, Bastille Day has been celebrated as a national holiday.

TO end of the XVIII century, a lot of political, social and financial problems have accumulated in France. King Louis XVI (1774-1792) was unable to resolve this complex of contradictions. The country lacked clear and understandable legislation, the taxation system was confusing, and the system of class privileges had long been outdated. The situation was also aggravated by the absolute power of the king. Thanks to her, corruption and the sale of government positions flourished.

Day by day, the monarch's power was losing credibility. And not only among the people, but also among the clergy, nobility, and bourgeoisie. In this matter huge contribution Such enlighteners as Charles de Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau contributed to the change in people's consciousness. They argued that the absolute power of the king limits the rights of classes and people and does not allow the country to develop normally.

This attitude gradually captured the minds of educated Frenchmen. They began to argue that one-man rule was an anachronism. And although Louis XVI, trying to save power and the crown, tried to carry out liberal reforms both in economics and politics, but he was doomed. The situation was aggravated by the king's weakness and indecisiveness. But it must be said that even a strong-willed ruler would not have been able to reverse the current state of affairs, since a crisis of power had arrived, and the time had come to change the entire existing system.

The beginning of dramatic upheavals and transformations in France was the capture of the Bastille by Parisians on July 14, 1789. And after that, a terrible series of events began, which went down in history as the Great French Revolution. When Louis XVI was informed that the Bastille had fallen, he exclaimed: “Unthinkable, this is a riot!” To which one of the courtiers replied: “No, Your Majesty, this is not a riot - this is a revolution.”

It must be said that this is what everything was leading to. It all started with the convening of the Estates General on May 5, 1789. Sami is a class-representative institution. It arose in the 14th century as a body that smoothed out social contradictions and strengthened statehood. But since 1614, the Estates General was not convened, since the absolute monarchy did not need them. However, in conditions of a severe financial crisis, the king remembered this institution and ordered its convening.

But the Estates General did not want to obey the king, and on June 17, 1789, they declared themselves a National Constituent Assembly with a committee to draft the Constitution. That is, with their initiative, the deputies not only crossed out all of His Majesty’s plans, but also showed complete disrespect for royal authority.

Meeting of the Estates General

It is quite clear that Louis XVI could not allow some alien gentlemen to begin to command, manage and decide the fate of the state under his nose, ignoring the will of the king. Already on June 26, by order of His Majesty, an army of 20 thousand gathered near Paris. It consisted of hired Swiss and German soldiers. Many decided that now they could give up on the Constituent Assembly. But then ordinary Parisians intervened in the course of events. They began to gather in public places and express outrage at the king’s action.

However, these disturbances have not yet been aggressive in nature. People talked, exchanged opinions and waited for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. And the troops arrived at Paris, and the king changed several ministers, replacing them with supporters of drastic measures. On July 11, Finance Minister Jacques Necker was dismissed. He enjoyed authority among the deputies of the National Constituent Assembly, but this was not the main thing.

Necker was supported by wealthy Parisians, who considered him the only person capable of leading the country out of the financial crisis. After his resignation, bankers, the wealthy public, and stock exchange workers fell into panic. It quickly spread to the common people. Soon the whole city was in commotion, and on July 12 a huge crowd of Parisians gathered at the Place Palais Royal.

There was a rumor that at night German and French mercenaries would enter Paris and begin slaughtering the townspeople. After this, there were calls to take up arms. The crowd of people put green leaves on their hats to distinguish their own and moved towards Place Vendôme. A detachment of German dragoons blocked her path. A hail of stones flew at them, and the mercenaries retreated.

Inspired by the victory, the crowd moves further through Paris and reaches Place Louis XV (Place de la Concorde). But at this time, mercenary soldiers appear under the command of Chief of the Horse, Charles Eugene Lambesc. The latter acts harshly, and his subordinates disperse the rebels. They begin to run away, and Lambesk, led by a soldier, pursues them. The Chief of the Horse, with a saber in his hands, attacks the people who are walking peacefully in the Tuileries Garden and have nothing to do with the rioters. Several people are injured, and the rest are deeply outraged.

Parisians call for revolution

The unbridled behavior of the mercenaries shook the whole of Paris. Clashes with soldiers begin on the streets, squares and alleys. The French Guard regiment stationed in Paris goes over to the side of the insurgent people. People start breaking into institutions state power, burn tax lists and other documents. Prisons open, prisoners are released, the city plunges into anarchy and arbitrariness. The remaining troops in the city, loyal to the king, hastily leave it.

The next morning, July 13, the bourgeoisie decided to subjugate the rebellious people to their field, rather than turn to the king for help. Rich people rallied around People's Assembly and declared that they were ready to help with money and weapons. A Standing Committee was created in the city, representing a completely new municipal authority. To maintain order in Paris, they created a national guard and immediately began to enroll everyone in it. The guard was led by Gilbert Lafayette, a participant American Revolution (1775-1783).

National Guard battalions are being created in the districts of Paris. They choose commanders and put two-color badges on their hats - red and blue. All this was done very quickly - within a few hours. By lunchtime, patrols took to the streets and began to protect them from robbers and thieves. Law and order were established in the city. But the rebel people had almost no weapons, and the royal troops stood near Paris.

On the afternoon of July 13, people began actively searching for weapons and ammunition. They stole everything that was in the arms shops, emptied the arms warehouse on the island of Louviers, and took several thousand guns and cannons from the Invalides' Home. But it soon became clear that there was little gunpowder, however, there were large reserves that were stored in the Bastille. But it was a powerful impregnable fortress in the east of Paris. Its commandant was the Marquis de Launay, a man loyal to the king. He ordered the cannons to be moved to the embrasures, and they aimed their muzzles at the Saint-Antoine suburb.

On the morning of July 14, 1789, the Permanent Committee of Paris sent parliamentarians to the commandant of the Bastille. They should have demanded that the guns be pulled away from the embrasures and that all the gunpowder that was stored in the bins of the fortress be given to the rebel people.

It must be said that the entire fortress garrison did not exceed 120 people. He would not have been able to withstand thousands of Parisians if he had not been protected by thick, high walls and a wide moat filled with water. At that time, there were only seven prisoners in the fortress. These were counterfeiters, mentally ill citizens and one particularly dangerous criminal serving time for murder.

The commandant of the fortress, the Marquis de Launay, seeing the parliamentarians, showed politeness and respect. He invited them to his place and ordered them to pull the guns away from the embrasures. When the representatives of the people sat down at the negotiating table, the clock on the city hall showed 10 o'clock in the morning. Half an hour later the parliamentarians left with nothing. The commandant refused the offer to give up gunpowder and certainly did not want to capitulate and withdraw the garrison from the fortress.

An hour later, one representative of the people was already sent to the Bastille. He was attorney-at-law Thurio. He strongly advised the commandant to surrender, guaranteeing him and his men immunity. However, the Marquis de Launay again refused. At the same time, he assured that he would not shoot at the people and asked them to leave him alone.

When the commandant's decision was conveyed to the crowd gathered near the fortress, excited voices were heard calling for an immediate assault and capture of the Bastille. Two men climbed onto the drawbridge raised above the ditch and lowered it. People immediately poured into the courtyard and filled it. Seeing this, the commandant ordered to open fire. The garrison of the fortress began to shoot at the rebels with cannons and rifles. As a result of this, about a hundred people were killed and the same number were injured.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a detachment of the National Guard under the command of Pierre-Augustin Hulen approached the fortress. After this, under the cover of 5 guns, the second assault began. The attackers dragged carts of straw into the courtyard, set them on fire, and the cannons began firing directly at the fortress. The shelling was led by Jacob Job Ely.

The rebel people storm the Bastille

The guns fired for about 2 hours. After this, Eli stopped firing because he ran out of gunpowder. But then it soared above one of the towers White flag. The Marquis de Launay agreed to surrender, but only under honorable conditions of surrender, otherwise he threatened to blow up the powder magazine and thereby destroy the Bastille and destroy all ammunition supplies.

The rebels did not accept these conditions, and then the commandant lit a torch and began to descend into the powder magazine. He was stopped in time by two garrison officers and persuaded to convene a military council. It was there that the decision was made to surrender the fortress. After this, the prison gates were opened, the rebels broke into the interior, and the storming of the Bastille was completed. This significant event took place around 6 pm.

The commanders of the assault, Jacob Job Elie and Pierre-Augustin Yulen, gave their word of honor that the garrison of the fortress and the commandant himself would not suffer. After this, the Marquis de Launay was sent under guard to the Hotel de Ville, where the new city municipal government was located.

However, the defender of the Bastille did not reach his destination. On the way, a raging crowd recaptured him from the convoy. They cut off the commandant's head, put it on a pike and began to carry it around the city. A similar fate befell the garrison officers and several soldiers. This is how it ended historical event, which went down in history as the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the Great French Revolution.

What happened to the Bastille fortress

After the significant day of July 14, the city authorities decided to demolish the Bastille. The townspeople took up this task with enthusiasm, and within 2 months a wasteland formed on the site of the fortress. A sign was installed on it with the inscription “Place for dancing.” A bridge was built across the Seine from fortress stones, replacing a temporary crossing.

Currently this is the Concorde Bridge. It connects the Quai des Tuileries with the Quai d'Orsay. And on the site of the fortress, Bastille Square was formed. The July Column was erected in its center in 1840, but it had nothing to do with the storming of the Bastille. But July 14 became a national holiday. The French have been celebrating it since 1880.

On July 14, 1789, in Paris, an armed crowd approached the walls of the Bastille. After four hours of firefight, having no prospects of withstanding the siege, the garrison of the fortress surrendered. The Great French Revolution began.

For many generations of French, the Bastille fortress, where the garrison of the city guard, royal officials and, of course, the prison were located, was a symbol of the omnipotence of kings. Although initially its construction was purely military in nature - it began in the middle of the 14th century, when France was in hundred years war. After the devastating defeats at Cressy and Poitiers, the issue of defense of the capital was very acute and a boom in the construction of bastions and watchtowers began in Paris. Actually, the name Bastille came from this very word (bastide or bastille).

However, the fortress was immediately intended to be used as a place of detention for state criminals, which was quite common in the Middle Ages. Building separate structures for this was expensive and irrational. The Bastille acquired its famous outlines under Charles V, during whose time construction was especially intensive. In fact, by 1382 the structure looked almost the same as when it fell in 1789.

The Bastille was a long, massive quadrangular building, one side facing the city and the other to the suburbs, with 8 towers, a vast courtyard, and surrounded by a wide and deep moat, over which a suspension bridge was thrown. All this together was still surrounded by a wall, which had only one gate on the side of the Saint-Antoine suburb. Each tower had three types of premises: at the very bottom - a dark and gloomy cellar, where restless prisoners or those caught trying to escape were kept; The length of stay here depended on the commandant of the fortress. The next floor consisted of one room with a triple door and a window with three bars. In addition to the bed, the room also had a table and two chairs. At the very top of the tower there was another roofed room (calotte), which also served as a place of punishment for prisoners. The commandant's house and the soldiers' barracks were located in the second, outer courtyard.

The reason for the storming of the Bastille was rumors about the decision of King Louis XVI to disperse the Constituent Assembly formed on July 9, 1789 and about the removal of the reformer Jacques Necker from the post of state controller of finance.

On July 12, 1789, Camille Desmoulins made his speech at the Palais Royal, after which an uprising broke out. On July 13, the Arsenal, Les Invalides and the city hall were looted, and on the 14th, a large armed crowd approached the Bastille. Gülen and Eli, both officers of the royal troops, were chosen to command the assault. The assault had not so much a symbolic as a practical meaning - the rebels were mainly interested in the Bastille arsenal, which could be used to arm volunteers.

True, at first they tried to resolve the matter peacefully - a delegation of townspeople invited the commandant of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, to voluntarily surrender the fortress and open the arsenals, to which he refused. After this, from about one o'clock in the afternoon, a shootout began between the defenders of the fortress and the rebels. Launay, knowing full well that there was nothing to count on for help from Versailles, and that he would not be able to withstand this siege for long, decided to blow up the Bastille.

But at the very time when he, with a lit fuse in his hands, wanted to go down into the powder magazine, two non-commissioned officers Beccard and Ferran rushed at him, and, taking away the fuse, forced him to convene a military council. Almost unanimously it was decided to surrender. A white flag was raised, and a few minutes later Gülen and Elie, followed by a huge crowd, entered the courtyard of the Bastille over a lowered drawbridge.

The matter was not without atrocities, and several officers and soldiers, led by the commandant, were immediately hanged. Seven Bastille prisoners were released, among them the Count de Lorges, who had been imprisoned here for more than forty years. However, the reality of the existence of this prisoner is questioned by many historians. Skeptics believe that this character and his entire story are the figment of the imagination of the revolutionary-minded journalist Jean-Louis Kapp. But it is reliably known that the extremely interesting archive of the Bastille was looted, and only part of it has survived to our times.

The day after the assault, it was officially decided to destroy and demolish the Bastille. Work began immediately, which continued until May 16, 1791. Miniature images of the Bastille were made from broken fortress stones and sold as souvenirs. Most of the stone blocks were used to build the Concord Bridge.

Subsequence

On July 12, 1789, Camille Desmoulins made his speech at the Palais Royal; on July 13, the Arsenal, Les Invalides and the city hall were looted, and on the 14th, a large armed crowd approached the Bastille. Gülen and Eli, both officers of the royal troops, were chosen as commanders of the offensive. The garrison of the fortress consisted of 82 disabled people and 32 Swiss with thirteen cannons, but its main defense was drawbridges and thick walls. There were only seven prisoners in the fortress - four counterfeiters, two mentally ill and one murderer. After the negative response of the commandant of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, to the offer of voluntary surrender made to him, the people, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, moved forward. Easily penetrating the first outer courtyard and cutting the chains of the drawbridge with axes, he rushed into the second courtyard, where the apartments of the commandant and the service were located. Fierce firing began from both sides; to protect themselves from shots from above, the people dragged three huge carts of straw and set them on fire; thick smoke hid them.

Launay, knowing full well that there was nothing to count on for help from Versailles, and that he would not be able to withstand this siege for long, decided to blow up the Bastille. But at the very time when he, with a lit fuse in his hands, wanted to go down into the powder magazine, two non-commissioned officers Beccard and Ferrand rushed at him, and, taking away the fuse, forced him to convene a military council. Almost unanimously it was decided to surrender. A white flag was raised, and a few minutes later Gülen and Elie, followed by a huge crowd, entered the courtyard of the Bastille over the lowered drawbridge.

Several officers and soldiers were hanged; As for Launay, Gülen and Eli wanted to save him, but on the way to the city hall, the crowd took him away from them and, beheading him, stuck the unfortunate man’s head on a pike, with which they then walked around the entire city.

Contrary to popular belief, the Marquis de Sade was not kept in the Bastille during the storming; on July 2, he was transferred to a mental asylum near Paris. Immediately after his release, he made a speech. The extremely interesting archive of the Bastille was looted, and only part of it has survived to this day.

After July 14, the Parisian municipality decided to demolish the Bastille, and a sign was placed on the vacant lot with the inscription “Désormais ici dansent,” which means “From now on, people dance here.” Within two months, the fortress was destroyed by the common efforts of the townspeople. In 1790, its stones were used to build the Louis XVI Bridge (later the Bridge of the Revolution, and now the Bridge of Concorde). Currently, in its place and to the east is the Place de la Bastille, in the center of which stands the July Column, erected in 1840.

Storm

One of the central episodes of the Great French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille prison fortress on July 14, 1789.

The fortress was built in 1382. It was supposed to serve as a fortification on the approaches to the capital. Soon it began to serve as a prison, mainly for political prisoners. For 400 years, there were many famous personalities among the prisoners of the Bastille. For many generations of French, the fortress was a symbol of the omnipotence of kings. By the 1780s, the prison had practically ceased to be used.

The French Revolution

In France, starting from the spring-summer of 1789, the largest transformation of social and political systems state, which led to the destruction of the old order and monarchy in the country, and the proclamation of a de jure republic (September 1792) of free and equal citizens under the motto “Liberty, equality, fraternity.”

The beginning of the revolutionary actions was the capture of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and historians consider the end to be November 9, 1799 (the coup of the 18th Brumaire).

Bastille

Originally a fortress, built in 1370-1381, and a place of detention for state criminals in Paris. At the beginning of the French Revolution on July 14, 1789, the fortress was taken by the revolutionary-minded population and a year later destroyed, and in its place Pierre-François Palloy (demolition contractor) installed a sign with the inscription “They dance here and everything will be fine.” Currently, on the site of the demolished fortress there is the Place de la Bastille - the intersection of a dozen streets and boulevards with an underground node of the Paris metro of three lines and the new Paris Opera.