STORMING OF THE BASTILLE

sTORMING OF THE BASTILLE

* It was a legislative and consultative assembly of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects.

* It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king.

* It had no true power in its own right.

* In the last week of June, Louis took action and moved

more troops into the Paris/Versailles area.

* These were foreign mercenaries (German and Swiss), rather than French regiments.

* Louis decided to dismiss his finance minister: Jacques Necker.

The trigger for armed revolt was the oratory of Camille

Desmoulins, a street speaker and pamphleteer. He jumped onto a table outside the Café Foy in the garden of Palais Royal to announce to the crowd that Necker had been dismissed. And called everyone to take up arms.

People armed themselves by breaking into gunsmiths´ shops. There were clashes with royal troops, the German cavalry, in the Tuileries gardens (a royal palace in Paris). Everyone was fighting in the streets. Barricades were set up to stop any more royal troops entering the city. In Versailles the National Assembly called for the removal of all troops from Paris.

On the 14 July 1789 the people of Paris seized control of the arsenal, Les Invalides, and took 28.000 muskets and 20 cannon.

They still needed gunpowder and cartridges stored in the Bastille, a fortress and prison in Paris,. So they went there...

* It was originally built in the 14th century to guard one of main entrances to Paris, but by the 18th century the Bastille served only as a prison and occasionally as a store for arms.

* Throughout the 18th century there were never more than 40 inmates, most of them serving short sentences.

On July 14, 1789, when the Bastille was stormed, there were only half a dozen prisoners, two of whom were insane.

* The officers and commander knew they could not rely on their soldiers to fire on the crowds...

* The governor de Launay was at the Bastille.

* When a group of people got into the inner courtyard de Launay panicked and ordered his men to open fire, killing 93 people.

* So people used cannon fire on the defenders of the Bastille.

* The governor surrended and was promptly murdered by the crowd and his head paraded through the streets on a pike.

Those who stormed the Bastille

were not the bourgeois middle classes who had led the protests against the monarchy but the sans-culottes

Louis had lost control of Paris. The electors formed themselves into the new revolutionary council , the Commune. They turned the citizen´s militia into the National Guard and appointed Lafayette as its commander. They were anxious to keep the sans-culottes under control.

Louis now had to share his power with the National Assembly. He recalled Necker and on the 17 July visited Paris where he recognised the legality of the Commune and the National Guard.

He even wore the red and blue cockade of the Revolution in his hat...

• The seven prisoners were freed. They were two madmen, four forgers, and one aristocrat jailed for debauchery.
• 98 men were killed.
• 100 were wounded.
• Three officers from the Bastille were marched to City Hall and hung from lampposts.
• DeLaunay had his throat cut and his head paraded on a pitchfork.

Nevertheless, France suffered the

Terror and the King was executed.

THE

BASTILLE

LOUIS XVI

REACTED

THE TRIGGER:

THE TUILERIES

ROYAL MEASURES

OUTCOMES OF THE STORMING

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

by Anabel C. Ferreirós

THE TENNIS COURT OATH

1789

Causes of the Revolution.

THE ESTATES-GENERAL