Summary: Storming The Bastille
July 14
Storming the Bastille
In the heart of a poor neighborhood at the eastern edge of Paris, there was a massive fortress prison, the Bastille. It had eight huge towers and thick walls 80 feet high. On the 14th of July 1789, hundreds of ordinary Parisians, mostly men but a few women as well, poured over the drawbridge of the Bastille looking for gunpowder and changed the course of French history. On that day, they made the French Revolution a reality. The paper will cover the storming of the Bastille shortly. But first, let’s talk about July 15th, the very day after the successful assault on the Bastille. Paris was still barricading against a possible attack by the royal army, and a man named Palloy, Pierre- Francois Palloy 1755-1835, …show more content…
What happened in Paris that day that seemed to lay the foundations of the Revolution, of liberty, of the new politics? First, let’s look at the Bastille …show more content…
No fair recourse to trial. Only secrecy. One prisoner embodied this dreadful secrecy of the Bastille most of all: the mythic prisoner, the man in the iron mask. This unknown figure was possibly an illegitimate brother and rival to Louis XIV. He has been inprisoned in 1698. He died five years later and became a skeleton still locked inside his mask of iron. Of course, those of you who have seen the movie know that the mysterious man in the mask was Leonardo DiCaprio. Writers made the stories of the Bastille personal and very human. My favorite prisoner was a man named Latude (Jean Henri Latude) 1725 – 1805. He was soldier accused of attempting to poison Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. He had been thrown into the Bastille in 1749 and was held there and other prisons for some 35 years. He escaped three times once and after making a rope ladder out of bits of shirts, bed linen and pieces of firewood. Once he got all the way to Amsterdam. He recounted that he was recaptured and hauled back to the Bastille wearing a humiliating leather harness. Back in his cell he saved his sanity by befriending rats, feeding them bits of his own food, and giving them names like Butterfly and Swallow. Stories like Latude’s pitted the humanity and tenderness of prisoners against the massive harsh presence of the oppressive pre-revolutionary State, looming over Paris like the Bastille. The Bastille was a representation of the absolutist monarchy as
Storming the Bastille
In the heart of a poor neighborhood at the eastern edge of Paris, there was a massive fortress prison, the Bastille. It had eight huge towers and thick walls 80 feet high. On the 14th of July 1789, hundreds of ordinary Parisians, mostly men but a few women as well, poured over the drawbridge of the Bastille looking for gunpowder and changed the course of French history. On that day, they made the French Revolution a reality. The paper will cover the storming of the Bastille shortly. But first, let’s talk about July 15th, the very day after the successful assault on the Bastille. Paris was still barricading against a possible attack by the royal army, and a man named Palloy, Pierre- Francois Palloy 1755-1835, …show more content…
What happened in Paris that day that seemed to lay the foundations of the Revolution, of liberty, of the new politics? First, let’s look at the Bastille …show more content…
No fair recourse to trial. Only secrecy. One prisoner embodied this dreadful secrecy of the Bastille most of all: the mythic prisoner, the man in the iron mask. This unknown figure was possibly an illegitimate brother and rival to Louis XIV. He has been inprisoned in 1698. He died five years later and became a skeleton still locked inside his mask of iron. Of course, those of you who have seen the movie know that the mysterious man in the mask was Leonardo DiCaprio. Writers made the stories of the Bastille personal and very human. My favorite prisoner was a man named Latude (Jean Henri Latude) 1725 – 1805. He was soldier accused of attempting to poison Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. He had been thrown into the Bastille in 1749 and was held there and other prisons for some 35 years. He escaped three times once and after making a rope ladder out of bits of shirts, bed linen and pieces of firewood. Once he got all the way to Amsterdam. He recounted that he was recaptured and hauled back to the Bastille wearing a humiliating leather harness. Back in his cell he saved his sanity by befriending rats, feeding them bits of his own food, and giving them names like Butterfly and Swallow. Stories like Latude’s pitted the humanity and tenderness of prisoners against the massive harsh presence of the oppressive pre-revolutionary State, looming over Paris like the Bastille. The Bastille was a representation of the absolutist monarchy as