What Happened at the Storming of the Bastille?

Documented context Paris in July 1789: a city expecting an attack

By the summer of 1789 the revolution was already under way. The Estates-General had met at Versailles in May; in June the deputies of the Third Estate declared themselves a National Assembly and swore, in an indoor tennis court, not to disperse until France had a constitution. Louis XVI looked as if he had given way. At the same time, thousands of royal troops, many of them foreign regiments, were gathering around Paris and Versailles.

Then, on 11 July, the king dismissed Jacques Necker, the popular finance minister. The news reached Paris the next day. To many Parisians it looked like the first step of a crackdown on the Assembly. Bread was at its most expensive in years, crowds were burning the customs posts around the city, and in the gardens of the Palais-Royal a young journalist named Camille Desmoulins was telling people to arm themselves. Paris spent 13 July looking for weapons.

If you want the longer story of how France got here, we cover it in what caused the French Revolution.

Documented record They came for gunpowder

On the morning of the 14th, a huge crowd broke into the Hôtel des Invalides, the military hospital on the Left Bank, and carried off muskets and cannon. Muskets are useless without powder, though, and a large stock of it had just been moved for safekeeping to the Bastille, on the eastern edge of the city. That is why the crowd went there. Freeing prisoners was not the point.

The Bastille itself was a tall, eight-towered fortress from the 14th century, defended that day by 82 invalides, veteran soldiers no longer fit for field service, and 32 Swiss soldiers sent as reinforcements. The governor, de Launay, had little food and no water supply inside the walls. He was not a man anyone expected to hold out against a whole city.

Contemporary accounts The afternoon: talks, a falling drawbridge, and shooting

Several delegations from the city's new governing committee at the Hôtel de Ville went in to negotiate. De Launay received them, even invited one group to lunch, refused to hand over the powder, and pulled his cannon back from the embrasures as a gesture of goodwill. Outside, the crowd kept growing and had no idea what was being said.

In the early afternoon, a few men climbed onto the roof of a building next to the outer wall and cut the chains of a drawbridge. It crashed down, crushing a man underneath, and the crowd poured into the outer courtyard. Shots were fired, and the fighting began. Who fired first is still argued over: attackers later said the garrison lured them in and opened fire, while the Swiss officer Louis de Flue, who was inside, left an account that tells it quite differently. Both versions survive, and neither side had any reason to be neutral.

Documented record The turning point: soldiers change sides

For a few hours, the attack got nowhere. Civilians with muskets could not do much against thick stone walls. What changed things, at around 3:30 pm, was the arrival of companies of the French Guards, a royal regiment whose men had gone over to the people, led by two veterans, Pierre-Augustin Hulin and Jacob Élie. They brought cannon and aimed them at the main gate.

Inside, de Launay is said to have considered blowing up the powder magazine, which would have taken a good part of the neighbourhood with it. His own men talked him out of it. In the late afternoon the garrison lowered the inner drawbridge and the crowd surged in.

Documented record Seven prisoners

The cells held exactly seven people: four men accused of forgery, two who were mentally ill, and a count, the Comte de Solages, locked up at his own family's request. There were no political prisoners. The Bastille had held famous ones in the past, including Voltaire, and the idea of a place where the king could imprison anyone without a trial was exactly what made it hated. By 1789 the reality was a half-empty building the government had already talked about closing.

That did not matter. The crowd had taken the king's fortress, and the symbol was bigger than the building.

Documented record The violence afterwards

De Launay was marched toward the Hôtel de Ville through a furious crowd. On the way, or on arrival, he was killed, and his head was cut off and carried through the streets on a pike. Several defenders were also killed after the surrender. Encyclopaedia Britannica counts 98 attackers and one defender dead in the fighting itself; other counts differ, and you should treat any exact number with some caution.

This is the uncomfortable part of the story, and it was noticed at the time. The day that became the symbol of liberty also introduced Paris to heads on pikes, a sight that would come back, much worse, in the years that followed.

Disputed interpretation Did it start the French Revolution?

Not really, and historians are careful here. The revolution had begun at Versailles weeks earlier, with the National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath. What 14 July did was show that the Assembly had an armed city behind it. Louis XVI pulled back his troops, recalled Necker, and on 17 July came to Paris and accepted the red, white and blue cockade of the new citizens' militia. Within weeks, peasant revolts were sweeping the countryside and the Assembly was abolishing feudal privileges. The Bastille did not start the fire, but it made it very hard to put out.