It's Bastille Day...Vive la France!

Tomorrow is Bastille Day, the name given in English-speaking countries to the French National Day, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is formally called National Celebration and familiarly Le quatorze juillet (the Fourteenth of July). While the date is the same as that of the storming of the Bastille, July 14 was actually chosen to commemorate the 1790 Fête de la Fédération. It symbolizes the beginning of the modern nation and the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic during the French Revolution. Celebrations are held all over France and the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe is held on the morning of 14 July on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in front of the President of the Republic, French officials and foreign guests. The Bastille Day Military Parade opens with cadets from the École polytechnique, Saint-Cyr and École Navale, followed by other infantry troops, including the Foreign Legion. Then come the motorized troops and motorcycle gendarmes while aircraft of the Patrouille de France aerobatics team fly above and military parachute teams drop down in front of the presidential viewing stand. In recent times, it has become customary to invite units from France's allies to the parade. The celebration highlights the Storming of the Bastille, as everyone calls it. On May 19, 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 the Catholic Church and nobility) decided to break away and form a Nationa Assembly. On June 20 the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. Louis XVI started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The assembly renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution. In the wake of the July 11th dismissal of Jacques Necker (Louis XVI's finance minister who worked with the citizens of Paris to try to grant their wishes for constitutional government), the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain ammunition and gunpowder for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed. Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. When the crowd - eventually reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises - proved a fair match for the fort's defenders, Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre. However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. Ninety-eight attackers and just one defender died in the actual fighting, but in the aftermath, de Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was the 'prévôt des marchands' (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles. Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 4 August feudalism was abolished and on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed. At this point, most French thought the revolution had succeeded and there would be a constitutional monarchy. (Little did they realize that the Terror was waiting for them, with its citizen courts and beheadings, including Louis XVI and his entire family.) The Fête de la Fédération on the 14 July 1790 was a huge, official feast meant to celebrate what people considered the happy conclusion of the French Revolution. The event took place on the Champ de Mars, which was at the time far outside Paris. The place had been transformed on a voluntary basis by the population of Paris itself, in what was recalled as the Journée des brouettes ("Wheelbarrow Day"). A mass was celebrated by Talleyrand, bishop of Autun. The popular General Lafayette, as captain of the National Guard of Paris and confidant of the king, took his oath to the constitution, followed by King Louis XVI. After the official celebration, the day ended in a huge four-day popular feast and people celebrated with fireworks as well as fine wine and running naked through the streets in order to display their great freedom. Much later, on 21 May 1880, Benjamin Raspail proposed a law to have "the Republic choose the 14 July as a yearly national holiday". The law was made official on 6 July 1880, and the Ministry of the Interior recommended to Prefects (the legal officer in each French Department, like American state attorneys general) that the day should be "celebrated with all the brilliance that the local resources allow." The celebrations of the new holiday in 1880 were particularly magnificent. ~~~~~ So, dear readers, remember the French tomorrow, and recall that France, like America, lived through a bloody time before coming to life as a constitutional democratic republic.