By Kristen Feathers

PARIS – La Fête Nationale, or Bastille Day, is an annual reminder of freedom and liberty for the people of France. Today, the holiday’s festivities come in the form of fireworks, parades and dancing in the streets.

However, 228 years ago, fireworks came from guns, parades consisted of angry mobs and dancing was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

By the end of the 18th century, the French monarchy began to hear whispers of discontentment from the people. King Louis XVI, who ruled 1754-1793, somehow exceeded his predecessor’s self-serving spending habits. 

A portion of Eugene Delacroix’s wall-size “Liberty Leading the People,” which commemorates the French Revolution of 1830. It can be seen in Paris’s Louvre museum.

The king’s greed, accompanied by the nation’s accumulated war debt, spiraled France toward bankruptcy.

In a desperate attempt to avoid total financial ruin, Louis XVI established the Estates General in Paris in the early months of 1789, an edict that proposed a solution to the financial crisis by categorizing the French people into three separate socioeconomic estates.

The first estate included clergy, the second was for nobles and the third pertained to common people. These social categories corresponded with tax rates and voting influence for political reform. Not surprisingly, the system quickly became corrupt, with nobles and clergy wielding far more power than the ruled. The third estate, which was of course the vast majority of French, added this to a growing list of grievances that would ultimately lead to revolution.

In addition to political and social inequalities, the French faced drought throughout the late 18^th century, yielding years of paltry harvests. In order to prevent further debt, the higher classes within the Estates General voted to heavily increase taxes on bread. As bread prices continued to rise, so did the anger of the third estate.

By early summer 1789, the third estate rejected the standards set by the monarchy and formed the National Assembly in response. This assembly’s legitimacy was not surprisingly rejected by the king, but the people had momentum. Nobles and clergy sensed this, joining the Assembly’s ranks. The king had to cooperate.

He also ratched up the military presence in Paris. As oppression increasingly became identified with the king and his military, the conditions for violence ripened.

On the morning of July 14, 1789, Bernard-René de Launay watched an aggressive and furious mob gather outside of the Bastille. Launay was the governor of the Bastille, which was a prison reserved for those who committed various crimes against the monarchy; often times, people were admitted without just cause or a trial. The prison was also rumored to house large amounts of gunpowder for the French army, and rebels desperately wanted to get their hands on it.

Without an order from the King, Launay negotiated with the rebels swarming his prison. He promised to make the soldiers surrounding the facility hold their fire. As negotiations continued, the crown turned mob, and they began to climb over the structure’s tall walls. As revolutionaries lowered the drawbridges to the Bastille, the mobs swarmed inside and the battle was on.

As guards stood firm, it seemed certain that the attempted assault would fail. The people of France had taken a daring risk, but it appeared that all would be lost. However, French Guards suddenly shifted allegiance and joined the rebels to alter the outcome. Launay surrendered shortly after the rogue soldiers began to use cannons on the side of the prison.

The mobs burned the Bastille to the ground, and the National Assembly had succeeded in gaining another huge step towards freedom.

The storming of the Bastille did not mark the end of the fierce struggle; a bloody and momentous revolution would require most of the next decade. However, the values of equality, liberty and brotherhood – liberté, égalité, fraternité – were being enshrined and enacted. Thus, each year the French mark their rejection of tyranny and the beginning of the Republic.