Storming of the Bastille
"It was neither a moment of miracle, nor a conclusion, nor a culminating point of the ‘good’ revolution before the start of the ‘bad’, that of 1793 and the Terror; the storming of the Bastille was one shining point on the trajectory of the Paris insurrection, which continued its upward curve…"
-- Eric Hazan, A People's History of the French Revolution (1996)
Corinne Babineaux, "Le Roi a la Lanterne," July 14, 1789
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- Bastille became a re-purposed jail for the French monarchy, a secure facility where political prisoners and social agitators could be thrown with little or no regard for due process (rejection of arbitrary royal privilege in France July 14th, 1789) --> was a symbol of oppression of the monarch
- Was
A Day in the Miserable Life of Corinne
The Great Fear
"The detestable aristocratic and royalist horde had plotted to submit the nation to slavery by starvation!"
--Claude Fournier L’Héritie, radical militia leader
Corinne BabineauxJuly 18, 1789Today, Les Halles are alight with rumors--seething stories of brigands and aristocratic plots and imminent starvation, rumor spreading insecurity from person to person like the plague. Drunken, muddled, confused stories flittered across Paris' cobblestone streets like the discarded pages of an inflammatory pamphlet: a stolen string of words to Madame Prix by the fishwife's stall, a whispered relic of gossip grown stale proffered to Monsieur Fromage alongside the butcher's juiciest cuts. Only one theme emerges as a constant in the babel of the market--peasant insurrection!
Bloody, malevolent, brutal insurrection, punctuated by arson, bitter revenge, and the Third Estate's token lack of respect for the authority of the nobility. What a beautiful melody this is to my ears, as fragmented and inchoate as it is! Few details and even fewer declarations of motive characterize these uprisings merely a day since they broke out across the countryside, but I doubt it takes a genius to figure out the method behind this bloody madness. The time of the Old Regime is over! France is to be freed not only of the Estates General, but also from the oppressive institution of feudalism! Passion stirs me to derive unfettered joy from this as I imagine peasants with pitchforks dismantling the manorial regime just as we had dismantled the Bastille, brick by brick! I am anxious to see what the future will bring when the nobility are finally forced to listen to our message. August 3, 1789In Paris, it is as though the city is teetering on knifepoint. The National Assembly assembled to address the Great Fear and how best to placate us irascible peasants, all of which unfolded as similar debates swirled and multiplied in the streets below, clogging my ears and exercising the atrophied muscles of my brain. I can still remember the scene, I can still replay it word for word, I can still sense the precipice the Third Estate is tottering on, but I still can't tell you--for the love of God--which side is right.
"Mon dieu, the Great Fear is proof of the aristocrats' plot to bring us back to l'Ancien Régime and total disorder!" Arnaud, the local butcher, hissed through yellowed teeth, "How can we relent in our attacks if the nobility's fear is precisely what allows us to make such revolutionary gains?" The typical burbles of the market were rife with an electric undercurrent that resonated fiercely with Arnaud's statement, mutters of assent flitting from person to person like bisous. At this uptick in conversation, I picked my mind free from the threads of my lacework and strained my ears. "But how can we be in the right if we have set France aflame due to our own impatience and lack of trust in our National Assembly? Are we, in our violence, to become the very enemies of our nation that we seek to destroy?" Heads turned as tension thickened the slack air like a rope pulled taut. Augustin, a libelliste from the literary underground of Grub Street, leapt upon a wooden crate. Stood tall. Surveyed with narrowed eyes. Spoke with an authority so unexpected of a scholarly hermit, all you could do was listen. "Fellow citoyens, have you lost all hope of establishing liberty by just means so soon? To what faraway place has your thirst for beneficial human progress fled? If we are to allow such terrible violence to wrack France, we are turning our egalitarian model of republicanism into an anarchic tragedy. Panic must have seized your minds and hearts, for sons of the Enlightenment, born in the very same country as Voltaire and Rousseau, would never buy into such criminal, rumor-fed plots--for they are contrary to our dear enlightened principles!" Augustin's voice was passionate and sharp, emboldened by revolution and forged by long hours of penning anti-royalist pamphlets, yet when Arnaud surged to his feet with fire in his eyes and butcher's knife in hand, the libelliste visibly shrunk. "How fortunate you are to be able to revolt for principles alone!" Arnaud smirked bitterly, "For many of us, revolution is a matter of life or death, of bread or starvation. When you are too poor to feed yourself, let alone your family, you cannot wait for the National Assembly to bring about change. When you see a noble feasting, living a life of leisure, honorific privileges, and false distinction they never worked a day in their life to earn, is it really so wrong to wish to take everything away from them? A crust of bread for a noble's head--is it really that terrible of a bargain to make? The opportunity for change is staring us in the face. The Third Estate is powerful beyond all reckoning when we unite behind a common goal, and it is clear to me--as clear as it is to anyone who has ever felt the claws of hunger brand their stomach--that our circumstances will not change unless we subjugate the nobles once and for all. Down with the nobles! Vive la Révolution!" And so it replays in my mind like a broken nightmare--vive la Révolution, vive la Révolution, vive la Révolution! I left the market after that, packing my lacework and wares and doubts all into one combined weight that pressed down upon my back as I navigated the slippery cobblestone streets. My mind stings, rough like the alcohol mon mari drinks to fall into a stupor, head reeling like a drunkard with the exaggerated tread and punch my two children have grown familiar with as food supplies dwindle and doubts resurface. I will not lie that I fear--not for their wellbeing, but that mon mari will leave me like all men do when hard times turn families into dead weight. You can sense it in how his gaze sets, turns to rough-hewn cement as his tongue protests for the liquor our dinner could've paid for. Cet Autrichienne. Marie Antoinette's husband may not love her, but he never beats le Dauphin or drowns himself in spirits. That prim, smug little Austrian sitting pretty in dresses that could nourish towns, dripping in jewelry that she never earned as her few pet courtesans play pauvre with her when Madame Veto is bored. What can she do that I can't? What entitles her to a life of luxury while I struggle to right my own? She may be able to speak pretty, dance, apply her makeup just so perfectly, but behind the facade, she's still an Austrian pig masquerading as a French fleur-de-lis. |
Olympe de GougesJuly 27, 1789Like an oppressive wave, a crushing weight, a ponderous burden, the unanticipated symptom of the Great Fear has reared its ugly head and sunk its venomous fangs deep into the hearts of the nobility--FEAR! La peur! Its presence is undeniable, sending cold shivers down the spines of the perpetrators of the Old Regime. Fear--what appears to be the only means to create a platform for the Third Estate's grievances and demands. Fear--how I long to see it expand to full effect, to catalyze the nobles into surrendering their agenda for governmental control! It is a formidable weapon, much worse than any rifles pilfered from the Bastille or soldiers occupying Paris at the whim of our gutless king.
What a great equalizer this fear is, for it is not a prejudiced epidemic. It cannot differentiate between young and old. It cannot rationalize the extrication of a noble by virtue of his purse, nor can it comprehend innocence. It cannot be predisposed to terrorizing men, nor can it be overly fond of tormenting women. Rather, it is a temperamental force in liege with the outrage the Third Estate felt when it stormed the Bastille, in liege with the acrimony so profoundly experienced by the National Assembly when our divinely appointed leader demonstrated both his innate stupidity and his allegiance to the aristocracy in one fell swoop. These forces cannot be bribed nor biased nor benign. They give me hope for change, change that will shake even the most traditional convictions so dearly nursed by Europe as a whole. Potentially even the change to garner interest in the inequality women experience as deeply as any chronic illness or genetic malady, a gross betrayal of natural rights that supersedes the struggles of Jews, Calvinists, and slaves combined! "There was not one action in rural life that did not require the peasants to pay a ransom… Feudal rights thus extended their clutches over every force of nature, everything that grew, moved, breathed […] even over the fire burning in the oven to bake the peasant’s poor bread." August 4, 1789Dumbfounded competes with ecstatic for mastery of my mind, tongue, and spirit--the National Assembly works! Not only that, but an institution whose years number in the thousands has finally sunken into its stinking grave. Here lies feudalism six feet under; the manorial regime is dead! No longer will we be exploited, subjugated, and robbed! It is a day such as this, a day of journess when the populace of Paris redirects the course of the revolution, that reaffirms my hopes for change not only in the public sphere, but in regards to the emancipation of women from the private sphere "jail" Rousseau so keenly guards.
Still, I catch myself wishing to write "just imagine..." as I list off the events of the past weeks, yet they happened. They happened!! In the most advanced country of the entire European continent, a revolution like none other ravaged the countryside and has finally halted its bloody campaign to rest on the minds and hearts of the National Assembly. At the bidding of rumors as catalyzing as any wildfire, peasants took to the chateaux of the aristocrats and ecclesiastical landlords, burning them down, destroying legal records and documents that had detailed the conditions of their "slavery," feudalism, showered the fields with blood, and refused to pay feudal dues. I can barely contain my excitement as I think of the news of the National Assembly's decision reaching the rest of Europe, as I think of the progress we could gift upon the entire continent. A sense of pride, almost nationalism, stirs in my heart as I recount the struggle of my fellow members of the Third Estate to reclaim the rights and property they had lost throughout the 18th century. Non, the significance of the Decrees of August 4th were not lost upon me nor any other citoyen/nes who have been under the other estates' thumbs for too long. What a turning point this is, for now, all French citizens will be subject to the same and equal law, eliminating the preferential treatment that has too long elevated the nobility and clergy on a false pedestal. I greedily watch them teeter as their hunting and fishing rights are retracted, watch them wobble as their judicial authority is zapped, and rejoice as they fall with the refutation of their legal exemptions to the hard, cold ground. Most importantly, the nobles' village monopolies and exactions on peasants were removed without compensation, illustrating to a great degree the effectiveness of unbridled insurrection and the gutless nature of those who would rather invest in their own temporary highs on hedonism than invest in the betterment of the nation and the end of social stratification. Behold them flail as the rug is pulled out from beneath their feet! Yet, my heart still isn't satisfied. Yes, France has pioneered new grounds by eliminating laws that had limited our freedom of action and our exercise of popular sovereignty, but we are not taking full advantage of the fact that a new modern era is dawning in politics. Contemporarily, liberalism and conservatism strictly divide France's political landscape in all aspects except one: women's rights. Liberals and conservatives alike find common ground in the idea that equality between men and women is neither practical nor desirable. Formally, we hold no official political rights as of yet, and our nickname--citoyennes (female citizens)--is an empty promise that continues to ring hollow. The National Assembly, in its rush to wave the magical wand of liberalism and absolve France of tyranny and oppression, is forgetting that precious human progress crystallized during the Enlightenment in the form of women's rights, all of which are reflective of a key Enlightenment theme: human dignity and happiness on Earth. What pitiful creatures women would be if we were all content with our current state! Yes, my belly still isn't full. My purse still is empty. But rights grant me more dignity and happiness than any material object ever shall. By now, France has realized that turning poverty into prosperity is like turning water into wine. Rather, we must realize that opportunity is rife in cementing social progress, the intangible, fickle goddess it is. In our world, where opportunity is so scarce and hope even scarcer, how could we justify limiting women's rights for the sake of tradition when the Great Fear has clearly illustrated our lack of respect for the status quo? |
"Violence signifies...the force one uses against common rights, against the laws, against public liberty. To use violence. To act with violence. He has taken my furniture, my papers, and has carried them off with violence, by violence. To do violence. What violence! Do violence against someone!"
--Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1786)
See Some Examples
“Popular violence defined the French Revolution.[It] pushed the Revolution forward, but it also threatened to dissolve it in an acid wash of blood, vengeance, and anarchic disorder.”
--Lynn Hunt, French Revolution essayist & historian
The Women's March on Versailles
“Imagine the surprise of many members of the [National] Assembly when some 20 fishwives entered, led by a reasonably well-dressed man called Maillard, who spoke on their behalf with great skill and in well educated French. The women had come to say that Paris was short of bread. They sought the help and support of the Assembly. This action was simple and justified, for to be hungry is a terrible state. A proposed decree [by the Assembly] was read out to the women. The king was requested to take the strongest possible action to improve the free circulation of grain, etc. All this took place honourably and peacefully, until some members were unwise enough and bold enough to leave their places to go and chat with the women, which led to some disorder. Viscount Mirabeau (the brother of the famous Mirabeau) grabbed the bosoms of the prettiest women, and the most indecent behaviour occurred in the sacred place of representative government.”
--Adrien Duquesnoy, firsthand account
Corinne Babineaux, "Vive le Roi," October 5, 1789
At first, the bread had been too expensive. Now? The bread never appeared.
Hunger, in my experience, is like a demon. Voracious, compulsive, manipulative, and conniving, it. . . demoralizes people. At the first hunger pain, it shakes rationality out of you like a baby with a rattle. Second pang, it shakes out health. At the last pang, it shakes out God, shakes out all decency from your skull without a last goodbye, for Hunger has guests to occupy these newly vacant rooms. Paranoia will become as dear to you as a neighbor. As venomous as any adulterer, fear will spend an eternity whispering in your ear. Doubt seeds a garden and waits for a bountiful harvest. But unlike the soil of France, my mind is fertile and allows doubt to take deep root. Doubt's plants grow big and strong, and on October 5, their fruits are ready for harvest.
The growing thirst. That's what first registered. Not for water or alcohol, but something far too expensive for my gutter-guided tastes: justice. It was as though the entire crowd, thousands of us, were parched for justice. Just the thought of it warming our insides. Coaxing weapons into our hands, coercing our feet to march. Mutters of liberty, equality, fraternity rising to a fever pitch? A machine revving to life. History like putty in our hands? We swore upon it. The atmosphere was magnetic, electrifying, the embodiment of a revolution that had taken place in the minds of the Third Estate too long ago. How could we not try our hand at wooing Fate? Just prices for bread, death to all hoarders, sustenance over sympathy from dearest Louis XVI. We remain conscientious and simple in our demands, even as our families implode under the strain of starvation. We are the women of Paris, the faces behind the phrase "urban poor" that dirties the lips of all aristos who speak of us. We are the women who celebrated the fall of the Bastille. We are the women who cannot support their dying children. Accompanied by rain, we are the women who walk twelve miles as the Revolution hangs in the balance. We are liberals, not radicals. What we ask for is NOT radical. I promise. What we ask for is a break. A break from being poor and hungry and powerless. A break from being women, the ones responsible for feeding their families, composing the backbone of communities, watching children die, staying docile and quiet. We want to exercise political influence--the taboo right that has been withheld from us for too long! In this environment of revolution, it is not education or property we crave to gain from these changes, but the civil and political rights that will make us independent and active citizens.
And for this, we will wait through the night, pikes, guns, swords, knives, and all.
At first, the bread had been too expensive. Now? The bread never appeared.
Hunger, in my experience, is like a demon. Voracious, compulsive, manipulative, and conniving, it. . . demoralizes people. At the first hunger pain, it shakes rationality out of you like a baby with a rattle. Second pang, it shakes out health. At the last pang, it shakes out God, shakes out all decency from your skull without a last goodbye, for Hunger has guests to occupy these newly vacant rooms. Paranoia will become as dear to you as a neighbor. As venomous as any adulterer, fear will spend an eternity whispering in your ear. Doubt seeds a garden and waits for a bountiful harvest. But unlike the soil of France, my mind is fertile and allows doubt to take deep root. Doubt's plants grow big and strong, and on October 5, their fruits are ready for harvest.
The growing thirst. That's what first registered. Not for water or alcohol, but something far too expensive for my gutter-guided tastes: justice. It was as though the entire crowd, thousands of us, were parched for justice. Just the thought of it warming our insides. Coaxing weapons into our hands, coercing our feet to march. Mutters of liberty, equality, fraternity rising to a fever pitch? A machine revving to life. History like putty in our hands? We swore upon it. The atmosphere was magnetic, electrifying, the embodiment of a revolution that had taken place in the minds of the Third Estate too long ago. How could we not try our hand at wooing Fate? Just prices for bread, death to all hoarders, sustenance over sympathy from dearest Louis XVI. We remain conscientious and simple in our demands, even as our families implode under the strain of starvation. We are the women of Paris, the faces behind the phrase "urban poor" that dirties the lips of all aristos who speak of us. We are the women who celebrated the fall of the Bastille. We are the women who cannot support their dying children. Accompanied by rain, we are the women who walk twelve miles as the Revolution hangs in the balance. We are liberals, not radicals. What we ask for is NOT radical. I promise. What we ask for is a break. A break from being poor and hungry and powerless. A break from being women, the ones responsible for feeding their families, composing the backbone of communities, watching children die, staying docile and quiet. We want to exercise political influence--the taboo right that has been withheld from us for too long! In this environment of revolution, it is not education or property we crave to gain from these changes, but the civil and political rights that will make us independent and active citizens.
And for this, we will wait through the night, pikes, guns, swords, knives, and all.
"Ten, twenty, thirty thousand people were coming to Versailles, intent on seizing the king according to some, seeking to force the [National] Assembly to hasten its work, according to others."
--Adrien Duquesnoy, firsthand account
Olympe de Gouges, "The Monarchy Is Humbled," October 6, 1789
"My friends, I shall go with you to Paris, with my wife and children. It is to my good and faithful subjects that I confide all that is most precious to me."
Yesterday, yet another deadlock was decided by popular violence. Louis XVI's attempts to stall the ratification of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was not kindly accepted by the women of the Third Estate, whose dissatisfaction with the prices of bread and the scarcity of actual progress was aggravated by rumors asserting that Louis XVI's royal guards at Versailles had trampled the revolutionary colors to further accentuate their plot of counterrevolution.
Regardless, one cannot deny that before last night, the Revolution was on unsteady footing and the Third Estate was faring even worse. The terrible bread queues that stretched for entire city blocks, ones that would only be dismissed a couple hours later empty-handed, prompted rumors that Louis planned to starve the revolt out of us. Provocative tall tales leading to threats of violence characterized the mob's demand for a response to the food crisis, a horde comprised primarily of women from the dreaded, unruly Faubourg Saint-Antoine district and a handful of veterans from the Bastille. Many hoped that removing Louis from Versailles would free him from the polluting influences of the aristocracy and his hated wife, Marie Antoinette, and allow him to resume his role as a paternal character-type monarch.
However, the October March on Versailles is much more important than merely allowing people to directly interact with their king. It ended the great monarchy of Versailles and kickstarted a sub-revolution for women where they discovered their incredible power as a collective force. As a result, women are beginning to cultivate visions of political power and civil rights. After all, when the fishwives of Faubourg Saint-Antoine asked the king to go to Paris, he listened to them and went to Paris! Although it is almost embarrassing to admit, it is quite significant that it was women who began the march and began the violence. We weren't taking men's political ideas and acting on them, we weren't listening to instructions from a National Assembly--no! We were acting on our own political instincts, qualities women are supposed to be innately devoid of, correct? D'hommage, les hommes (too bad, gentlemen)! The monarchy is humbled, and all on the account of several thousand women!
"My friends, I shall go with you to Paris, with my wife and children. It is to my good and faithful subjects that I confide all that is most precious to me."
Yesterday, yet another deadlock was decided by popular violence. Louis XVI's attempts to stall the ratification of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was not kindly accepted by the women of the Third Estate, whose dissatisfaction with the prices of bread and the scarcity of actual progress was aggravated by rumors asserting that Louis XVI's royal guards at Versailles had trampled the revolutionary colors to further accentuate their plot of counterrevolution.
Regardless, one cannot deny that before last night, the Revolution was on unsteady footing and the Third Estate was faring even worse. The terrible bread queues that stretched for entire city blocks, ones that would only be dismissed a couple hours later empty-handed, prompted rumors that Louis planned to starve the revolt out of us. Provocative tall tales leading to threats of violence characterized the mob's demand for a response to the food crisis, a horde comprised primarily of women from the dreaded, unruly Faubourg Saint-Antoine district and a handful of veterans from the Bastille. Many hoped that removing Louis from Versailles would free him from the polluting influences of the aristocracy and his hated wife, Marie Antoinette, and allow him to resume his role as a paternal character-type monarch.
However, the October March on Versailles is much more important than merely allowing people to directly interact with their king. It ended the great monarchy of Versailles and kickstarted a sub-revolution for women where they discovered their incredible power as a collective force. As a result, women are beginning to cultivate visions of political power and civil rights. After all, when the fishwives of Faubourg Saint-Antoine asked the king to go to Paris, he listened to them and went to Paris! Although it is almost embarrassing to admit, it is quite significant that it was women who began the march and began the violence. We weren't taking men's political ideas and acting on them, we weren't listening to instructions from a National Assembly--no! We were acting on our own political instincts, qualities women are supposed to be innately devoid of, correct? D'hommage, les hommes (too bad, gentlemen)! The monarchy is humbled, and all on the account of several thousand women!
“The October Days illustrate the delicate balance in the relationship between the people and the monarchy… Constitutional monarchy [was] the only political system really considered at this time, but even violent protestors showed no real hostility to the king’s role. In the face of perceived injustice, a violent mood could easily generate, but it overlay a basic willingness to believe good of the king, an acceptance of his paternal role, and a hope that he would fulfill the new role placed on him, of ‘restorer of French liberty’. In October 1789 most would blame Marie Antoinette and her advisers rather than Louis himself.”
--David Andress, historian