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THE BASTILLE
Place de La Bastille |
The Bastille has a lot of importance to the French history. By crossing
the Seine and following the Boulevard de la Bastille, you will find
the site of the Bastille Saint-Antoine, which was a major part of
the defences ordered by Charles V, built from 1370 onwards. Louis
XIV had the ramparts demolished but kept the Bastille as a luxury
prison for people of quality. Promoted to the rank of a symbol of
the arbitrariness of the old monarchy, the Bastille was stormed
by the Parisians on 14th July 1789, and later razed. To
Place de La Bastille |
remember not the surrender of the prison with its last seven occupants
in 1789, but the July Revolution of 1830, which replaced the autocratic
Charles X with the "Citizen King" Louis-Philippe, a column
surmounted by the "Spirit of Liberty" on place de la Bastille
was erected. Months after the birth of the Second Republic in that
year, the workers took to the streets. All of eastern Paris was
barricaded, with the fiercest fighting on rue du Faubourg-St-Antoine.
The rebellion was quelled with the usual massacres and deportation
of survivors, but it is still the less contentious 1789 Bastille
Day that France celebrates. Political protestors have always, however,
used place de la Bastille as a rallying point, and still do.
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