Storming of the Bastille of gunpowder to the Bastille for safer storage. At this point, the Bastille was nearly empty, housing only seven prisoners: four forgers, two "lunatics" and one "deviant" aristocrat, the Comte de Solages (the Marquis de Sade had been transferred out ten days earlier). The high cost of maintaining a garrisoned medieval fortress, for what was seen as having a limited purpose, had led to a decision being made shortly before the disturbances began to replace it with an open public space. Amid the tensions of July 1789, the building remained as a symbol of royal tyranny. The regular garrison consisted
Paris in the 18th century were an estimated 8,500 Protestants in Paris in 1680, both Calvinists and Lutherans, or about two percent of the population. At Charenton, an act of religious tolerance was adopted by the royal government in November 1787, but it was opposed by the Catholic Church and the Parlement of Paris, and never put into effect. After the Revolution, the new mayor, Bailly, authorized Protestants to use the church of Saint-Louis-Saint-Thomas, next to the Louvre. The Jewish community in Paris was also very small; an estimated five hundred persons in 1789. About fifty were Sephardic Jews who had originally come from Spain