Where is the key to the Bastille now? or how many riots does it take to make a revolution?

Taking the Bastille by the Citizens of Paris being led by the French Guards on 14th July 1789. 

The taking of the Bastille is generally regarded as the first day of the French Revolution.

The title on the top engraving reads as follows

“The building of this fortress started in 1369 in the reign of Charles Vth. Hugues Aubriot Provost of Paris set the first stone. The building was only finished in 1382.  He was born in Dijon. He was one of the first locked up under the pretext of heresy. He was saved by Parisiens during later upheavals which rocked Paris and escaped to the countryside.”

The title to the second picture reads: This is how we treat tyrants.

Abriot seems to have been a better engineer than politician; he also supervised some new sewers in Paris. It is also said that he arrested citizens who had harassed the City’s jews.

This angered many people and he was arrested and charged with heresy, sodomy and extortion. He was a staunch supporter of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy who prevented his execution. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on bread and water. Later, he was then freed by a mob rioting in Paris against excessive taxation.

How many riots took place in Paris during the Middle Ages and afterwards? Too many to count I imagine. 1789 was a disaster waiting to happen.

The diplomat Talleyrand stated that the Louis Eighteenth on his return from exile in 1814 had “ learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”.

The kings of France seem to have done the same for centuries.

The building itself was quickly taken down by the Paris mobs. It is said that they sold bricks and stones in the markets as souvenirs but the key was given to General Lafayette who had been fighting in America for the war against England. He hurried back to help the Revolution in France and it was the soldiers he led who were able to secure entry. The key was sent to President George Washington and it is still on display at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

That gift illustrates the strong ties between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The American Revolution showed France that a revolution could succeed.

The financial disaster caused by the intervention of the French Monarchy on America’s side meant that was no money available when the situation exploded.

Lafayette’s view of the revolution in March 1790 for George Washington was quite direct:

“Our Revolution is Getting on as Well as it Can With a Nation that Has Swalled (sic) up liberty all at once, and is still liable to Mistake licentiousness for freedom—the Assembly Have More Hatred to the Ancient System than Experience on the proper Organisation of a New, and Constitutional Government (sic).”

This letter is available on American National Archives. I was surprised to see it was written in English!  Was English already becoming the lingua franca of the world?

France would take about eighty years in my view before settling down to a fully democratic republican.  America suffered a civil war before things settled down, France takes a rollercoaster ride and it is that which makes these years so eventful.  So many failed opportunities but finally it all worked, largely due to the second Emperor Napoleon. More about him in another