The Destruction of the Bastile as 'The Destruction of the Bastille' and 'Monody on the Death of Chatterton' behind him". The Destruction of the Bastile The Destruction of the Bastile was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1789. The poem describes Coleridge's feelings of hopes for the French Revolution as a catalyst for political change. When the Bastille was overrun during the French Revolution and destroyed in July 1789, many political liberals within Britain celebrated. The schoolboy Coleridge, in particular, leaned towards radical views and would later become more and more radical although his views within "The Destruction of the Bastile" are more moderate. Although
Historiography of the French Revolution wrote in the 1911 edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," "Thiers' historical work is marked by extreme inaccuracy, by prejudice which passes the limits of accidental unfairness, and by an almost complete indifference to the merits as compared with the successes of his heroes." The constant stream of major books began with Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790). In it he established the conservative stream of opinion, wherein even the revolution of July 1789 went "too far". His book is not so much studied today as part of Revolution studies, but rather as a classic of conservative political