Bastille Day had often held people jailed on the basis of "lettres de cachet" (literally "signet letters"), arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for the imprisonment. The Bastille held a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, and was also known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the attack in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. The crowd was eventually reinforced by mutinous "Gardes Françaises" ("French
Paris in the 18th century replaced by a new model called a "réverbère" which, mounted on a lamp post, gave off a much brighter light. By 1789, there were 5,694 new lanterns in service. A few years later the most popular revolutionary song, "Ça ira!" urged Parisians to hang aristocrats from the new lanterns. The predominant architectural style in Paris from the mid-17th century until the regime of Louis Philippe was neo-classicism, based on the model of Greco-Roman architecture; the most classical example was the new church of "La Madeleine", whose construction began in 1764. It was so widely used that it invited criticism: just