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
Secret passage it in 1494, when Charles VIII invaded the city, and Pope Clement VII escaped to safety through it during the Sack of Rome, in 1527. Catholic priests, in Britain, used hidden rooms called priest holes to escape Protestant persecution, starting from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1789, at the outset of what would become the French Revolution, angry demonstrators in Paris marched in the streets and stormed the Bastille. The revolution spread to smaller towns, where tax offices were attacked, and to the French countryside, where peasants attacked rich nobles living in manor houses and castles. Many French