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The Bastille history
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The Bastille or San Antonio Bastille was a fort built to protect the oriental part of the city.
During many centuries it was fundamental to protect the city, but later it was no longer useful and that is when it becomes a state prison. It was located where nowadays se found the Place de the Bastille.
It was build by Hugh Aubriot during the reign of Charles V (from 1370 to 1383) and it was made up of four towers, following the style of that time. The other towers were later added. It measured 66 meters long, 34 meters width and 24 meters height. It was surrounded by 8 meters depth holes. The names of the eight towers are: Tour du Coin, Tour de la Chapelle, Tour du Trésor, Tour de la Comte, Tour du Puits, Tour de la Liberté, Tour de la Bertaudière and Tour de la Basinière.
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The military use was soon insufficient so they built another enclosure. It was used as a fort and reception place for Francis I, before being turned into a State Prison by the cardinal Richelieu. It was a comfortable prison for important personalities (aristocrats and bourgeois). They have their own apartments with private service and amounts of food. However there was a conventional part for the regular prisoners that wan not that nicer. The building also had special cells used to punish the disobedient prisoners like the famous Latude.
Louis XVI have already closed the Vincennes Tower, he wanted to do it since 1784. The people did not seem to be afraid of the building, but Cahiers des doléances wanted to destroy it. As any other imposing fort, this was the proof of the king’s power.
The Bastille represented the beginning of the French Revolution. Thousands of people wanted to invade the fort to obtain arms which was defended by only a few men. There is only recognized death, mentioned by history, the one of Bernard Jordan de Launay.
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Storming of the Bastille
It was taken the 14th of July of 1789 by the revolutionaries in the look of gunpowder. The people of Paris showed concern. They believed that the foreign tropes located around Paris were not going to be used. They formed a militia with 48.000 men without any arm because the electorate could not get the arms from Les Invalids the 13th of July.
The 14th of July between 40 or 50.000 people stood themselves in front of the Les Invalids to take possession of the arms. In order to defend Les Invalids there are big canyons only used by the residents who did not want to shoot fire over Parisians.
This is the main event of the day. The crowd of people the moats of Les Invalids, knocked down the inner doors and took possession of 30.000 to 40.000 rifles approximately, 12 canyons and one mortar. The people were armed now they only needed the gunpowder which was said to be in The Bastille.
One delegation could not convince the governor Bernard-René Jordan de Launay to give them what the Parisian people needed. Then a second delegation gave it a second shoot again worthless. That is when the whole crowd crowded together in front of The Bastille.
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The defenders of The Bastille (82 Invalids and 32 Swiss soldiers from the Salis-Samade regiment) fired the revolutionaries, ordered by the governor.
A third and a fourth delegation is sent again with no achievements. The Bastille garrison and the rebels confront each others.
A 61 guards detachments leaded by Pierre Hulin, former sergeant of the Swiss guard, arrives to the Bastille with five canyons took that same morning from Les Invalids. They stood in front of the doors and the drawbridges from The Bastille and they shoot and the Bastille surrenders.
The crowd invades the place, free the 7 prisoners and take possession of the gunpowder and the bullets. During the track the governor was murdered chopping his head. Many other invalids were also murdered. The rebels had one hundred victims and 73 hurt.
The Bastille begun to be demolished the 16th of July by a private businessman that sold stones as a memory (sculpted stones that represented The Bastille). Everything founded there like carpentry or forge irons was considered piety objects. The majority of those things were used to build the Concorde Bridge.
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Since the 16th of June of 1892 it was decided that the place where The Bastille used to be was going to be turned into a square called Freedom and that a column was going to be erected. Palloy put the first stone, but the construction was not finished. In 1793 a fountain was installed.
Napoleon proposed in his remodelling projects in 1808 to construct a monument with an elephant shape. It should measure 24 meters high and they would be able to use the bronze from the canyons taken away to the Spanish people. They could enter by a stair located in the drakes of the animal. Only a model was realized with the natural size in plaster.
In the book of Victor Hugo, The miserable, he mentions the model because he used it as a shelter in Gavroche. The model was built in 1846.
You can still contemplate some traces in the line 5 of the metro. In the Bastille stop you will be able to see the freedom tower (where Sade was locked up) in the arrondissement of the Henry IV Boulevard.
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