I thought that it was fitting that this should be the 2001st topic of the forum when we have exactly 911 members...
July 14 is Bastille Day in France. Bastille Day is a National holiday in France. It is very much like Independence Day in the United States because it is a celebration of the toppling of the old, corrupt regime.
The Bastille was a prison in France where the ruling elite locked up people they didn't like or who didn't agree with them.
From Wikipedia:
July 14 is Bastille Day in France. Bastille Day is a National holiday in France. It is very much like Independence Day in the United States because it is a celebration of the toppling of the old, corrupt regime.
The Bastille was a prison in France where the ruling elite locked up people they didn't like or who didn't agree with them.
From Wikipedia:
Let's hope that one day there will be a Global "storming of the Bastille."On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were clergy and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly.
On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath (named after the hall where they had gathered which was frequently used for playing "jeu de paume", an ancestor of tennis), swearing not to separate until a Constitution had been established. To show their support, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a prison where people were jailed by arbitrary decision of the King (lettre de cachet). The Bastille was, in particular, known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government. Thus the Bastille was a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy.
There were only 7 inmates housed at the time of the siege. The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance. No less important in the history of France, it was not the image typically conjured up of courageous French patriots storming the Bastille and freeing hundreds of oppressed peasants. However, it did immediately inspire preparations amongst the peasants for the very real threat of retaliation. Despite the mythology of freeing revolutionaries, the storming of the Bastille, which housed only a handful of common prisoners, was actually done to raid the prison's supply of arms and ammunition against a false rumor that the king's troops were moving on Paris from Versailles.
Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed.