Happy Bastille Day. Resist austerity.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Freeing the prisoners was not the objective of the attack

The Parisians were after a cache of weapons and gunpowder after learning that royal troops were surrounding the city. Earlier in the year, King Louis had been forced to make concessions to the Third Estate and even recognize the National Assembly after he failed to break it up. The troop maneuvers were seen as a threat to the assembly.

Of course, the Parisians could have taken the cache without tearing down the fortress. That is where the symbols came into play. It was a symbol of the tyranny of the landed aristocracy. Thus, the fortress was torn down, the few prisoners it held were freed and the governor of the Bastille was dragged through the streets, killed and beheaded, with his head stuck on a pike and paraded though Paris.

The King was told the news in Versailles, which was at the time seen as something near Paris but not part of it. He had been hunting that day and failed to bag anything. The King was unconcerned about the events in Paris that day. His entry into his diary for July 14, 1789, referred only to his hunting that day with a single word: Rien (Nothing).