HeadRUSH

Happy Bastille Day every­body! On this day back in 1789 Parisians stormed the Bastille, free­ing its inmates and tak­ing the prison’s large quan­ti­ties of arms and ammu­ni­tion, thereby set­ting in motion the French Rev­o­lu­tion. More impor­tantly, back in 1975 Rush decided to write a song about it. There’s no bread, let them eat cake!

There’s no bread, let them eat cake
There’s no end to what they’ll take
Flaunt the fruits of noble birth
Wash the salt into the earth
But they’re march­ing to Bastille Day
La guil­lo­tine will claim her bloody prize
Free the dun­geons of the inno­cent
The king will kneel, and let his king­dom rise

Blood­stained vel­vet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by

And we’re march­ing to Bastille Day
La guil­lo­tine will claim her bloody prize
Sing, o choirs of cacoph­ony
The king has kneeled, to let his king­dom rise.

Lessons taught but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guil­lo­tine — claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the cen­turies
Power isn’t all that money buys

- Rush, Bastille Day from Caress of Steel

Bastille Day is the French national hol­i­day, cel­e­brated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called Fête Nationale (“National Cel­e­bra­tion”) in offi­cial par­lance, or more com­monly le qua­torze juil­let (“14 July”). It com­mem­o­rates the 1790 Fête de la Fédéra­tion, held on the first anniver­sary of the storm­ing of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniver­sary of the storm­ing of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a sym­bol of the upris­ing of the mod­ern nation, and of the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of all the French inside the con­sti­tu­tional monar­chy which pre­ceded the First Repub­lic, dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

On 5 May 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 Church and nobil­ity) decided to break away and form a National Assem­bly. On 20 June 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; Louis started to rec­og­nize their valid­ity on 27 June. The assem­bly re-named 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 11 July dis­missal of Jacques Necker, 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.

The storm­ing of the Bastille was more impor­tant as a ral­ly­ing point and sym­bolic act of rebel­lion than a prac­ti­cal act of defiance.

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 proclaimed. 

–From Wikipedia…