Today (14/07/2022) is Bastille Day (the ‘Fête nationale française’), a national holiday celebrated throughout France and its overseas territories every year, as well as in former French colonies, including parts of Canada and India.
The event commemorates the storming of the Bastille Saint-Antoine in Paris, a historical landmark which, many argue, sparked the beginning of one of the most dramatic political upheavals in modern history: the French Revolution. On this day, in 1789, a crowd of protestors captured the Bastille fortress – then used as a prison for political opponents of the government – and released the inmates housed there. This building encapsulated the authoritarian nature of France’s Ancien Régime, and its seizure marked a profound shift in the balance of power, paving the way for the abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of the First French Republic, in 1792. Since then, the storming of the Bastille has remained symbolic of opposition to tyranny and oppression, across the world.