Storming of the Bastille Storming of the Bastille The Storming of the Bastille ( ) occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress, armory, and political prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained just seven inmates at the time of its storming, but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuses of power; its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. In France, "Le quatorze juillet" (14 July) is a public holiday, usually called Bastille Day in English. During the reign of
Historiography of the French Revolution the 1789 revolution in a "long" history of 19th century revolutionary France. Another seminal figure in the revisionism debate is the Francophile Englishman Richard Cobb, who has produced a number of immensely detailed studies of both provincial and city life, avoiding the revisionism debate by "keeping his nose very close to the ground". "Les armées révolutionnaires" (1968, translated as "The People's Armies" in 1987) is his most famous work. William Doyle, professor at Bristol University, has published "The Origins of the French Revolution" (1988) and a revisionist history, "The Oxford History of the French Revolution" (2nd edition 2002). Another recent