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 all its ideal promises – as when the legislators of 1793 made suffrage universal for all French men, but also established the dictatorship of the Terror. The dominating approach to the French Revolution in historical scholarship in the first half of the 20th century was the Marxist, or Classic, approach. This view sees the French Revolution as an essentially 'bourgeois' revolution, marked by class struggle and resulting in a victory of the bourgeoisie. Influenced by socialist politician Jean Jaurès and historian Albert Mathiez (who broke with his teacher Aulard regarding class conflict), historians on the left led by Georges Lefebvre