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
French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel of Caleb Williams a critic wrote, "Fancy is a faculty which we should not have expected to find in the brain of a philosopher who had struck his hand upon his heart and felt it stone; yet fancy Mr. Godwin possesses in no common degree." Godwin's use of the fantastic in the form of the gothic novel again let him write about the philosophy of the French revolution without receiving the harsh backlash, because it was under the guise of the fantastic. French Revolution and the English Gothic Novel The French Revolution influenced the English gothic novel. The gothic novel