Search Results: Storming of the Bastille

The Storming of the Bastille was a decisive moment in the early months of the French Revolution (1789-1799). On 14 July 1789, the Bastille, a fortress and political prison symbolizing the oppressiveness of France’s Ancien Régime was attacked...

The Festival of the Federation (Fête de la Fédération) was a celebration that occurred on the Champ de Mars outside Paris on 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. With over 300,000 people in attendance, the...

The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period of major societal and political upheaval in France. It witnessed the collapse of the monarchy, the establishment of the First French Republic, and culminated in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte...

The Great Fear (French: la Grande Peur) was a wave of panic that swept the French countryside in late July and early August 1789. Fearful of plots by aristocrats to undermine the budding French Revolution (1789-1799), peasants and townspeople...

The decrees of 4 August 1789, also known as the August Decrees, were a set of 19 articles passed by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution (1789-1799) which abolished feudalism in France and ended the tax exemption...

Jacques Necker (l. 1732-1804) was a Swiss banker and statesman who served as finance minister to King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792). He served in the king's ministry three separate times, tasked with navigating France through its dire...

Depiciton of the Storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789. Visible in the center is Bernard René Jourdan, marquis de Launay, the governor of Bastille, who is being arrested by the revolutionaries. Painted by Jean-Pierre Houël in 1789, housed...

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen) is a human rights document adopted in the early stages of the French Revolution (1789-1799). Inspired by Enlightenment Age principles...

An eye witness paiting of the Siege of the Bastille, by Claude Cholat, c. 1789. In the Musée Carnavalet.

Painting depicting the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, specifically of the arrest of the Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille, by revolutionaries. Circa 1789-1791, painter unidentified. Currently in the Museum of the History...