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Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14, marks the storming of the Bastille in 1789, an iconic moment often seen as the spark of the French Revolution.
On Bastille Day, the French enjoy fireworks, parades, dancing, music, and delicious food. Though the Bastille itself is no more, its legacy continues to live on.
Here are 10 crucial facts about the Bastille every admirer of liberty should be aware of.
On July 14, 1789, the Bastille housed only seven prisoners, a fact that contrasts sharply with its notorious image as a symbol of oppression.
The Bastille's reputation as a stronghold of tyranny is somewhat exaggerated. In its earlier days, it was infamous mainly for the lettre de cachet, a royal decree that allowed the king to imprison anyone without trial. A famous example is French philosopher Voltaire, who in 1726 was imprisoned for offending a nobleman close to the king, and was only released after agreeing to live in exile in England.
In truth, the Bastille was not stormed for being a prison or a symbol of unchecked power, but because revolutionaries wanted to seize the 250 barrels of gunpowder recently stored there, which were considered more vulnerable compared to the Paris Arsenal.
At the time of the Bastille's fall, only seven prisoners were confined within its walls. Among them, four were forgers, two were deemed mad, and one was a young nobleman imprisoned by his own family for incestuous behavior. Instead of freeing him, the angry mob had him transferred to an insane asylum.
9. The Marquis de Sade’s Influence on the Storming of the Bastille
In the days leading up to July 14, 1789, the Bastille held one more prisoner: Donatien Alphonse Francois, the Marquis de Sade. A French aristocrat and writer notorious for his association with sexual cruelty, Sade was imprisoned under a lettre de cachet, which was issued at the request of his mother-in-law.
In April 1789, riots erupted in the area surrounding the Bastille. As the unrest intensified in June, the governor of the Bastille restricted the prisoners' daily walks on the towers.
In protest of this further restriction on his freedom, the Marquis de Sade fashioned a crude megaphone out of a pissing tube. He used it to shout to the people outside the Bastille, urging them: 'They are massacring the prisoners; you must come and free them.' To prevent Sade from inciting more chaos, the governor ordered his transfer to Charenton on the night of July 4. Charenton was an insane asylum known for its relatively humane treatment of the mentally ill.
Before his removal, Sade managed to hide his recently finished novel, The 120 Days of Sodom. He had written it in small script on sheets of parchment connected to form a 12-meter (40 ft) scroll. When the Bastille was stormed, the revolutionaries discovered the manuscript, which has since gained notoriety for its graphic depictions of sexual torture and brutality. Sade's original scroll was recently purchased for nearly $10 million by the investment fund Aristophil, a company currently under investigation by French and Belgian authorities for fraud and money laundering.
8. The Architect of the Bastille Became Its First Prisoner
The Bastille was originally constructed in 1357 as a fortress named Bastille Saint-Antoine. The term 'bastille' is derived from the French word bastide, meaning 'fortification.' Over time, the people of Paris began simply calling it the Bastille.
In the mid-14th century, France was embroiled in the Hundred Years' War with England. King Charles V (also known as Charles the Wise) decided to transform the Bastille into a formidable, eight-towered structure to protect the eastern entrance to Paris.
Ironically, Hugues Aubriot, the provost (mayor) of Paris who supervised the construction of the Bastille, became its first prisoner. Accused of heresy and sodomy, Aubriot's true crime was his attempt to defend Paris' Jewish community.
Aubriot was initially sentenced to death, but the king reduced it to life imprisonment with only bread and water. In an event that prefigured the French Revolution by 400 years, a mob broke into the Bastille and freed Aubriot. When they offered him leadership, he played along with their wishes before quietly fleeing the city under cover of night.
7. People Were Often Drowned in the Moats of the Bastille
The Bastille was made up of eight tightly spaced towers, each standing over 22 meters (73 feet) tall and 2 meters (6 feet) thick. These towers were joined by curtain walls that were 3 meters (10 feet) wide. The towers had distinct names, often reflecting a key feature or purpose, including the Chapel, Treasure, Well, and Corner Towers.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the area surrounding the Bastille was developed into the suburb of Saint-Antoine. Merchants, including barbers, cobblers, and food vendors, were allowed to sell their goods in the outer courtyard of the prison. People could come and go freely, provided they didn’t linger too long.
The outer courtyard featured a large clock, supported by sculpted figures of prisoners in chains. The entire structure was encircled by moats, which once held water from the nearby Seine River. There were no guardrails between the walkways and the moats, resulting in frequent accidents where people would fall in and drown. Over time, the moats were drained and left dry.
6. A Warning Should Have Been Given to Prisoners About the Basement
Each tower of the Bastille had four stories, with rooms that were around 5 meters (15 feet) wide and 4 meters (13 feet) tall. The top floor of each tower contained an octagonal room, known as a calotte. The height of the calottes sloped significantly at the edges, allowing one to stand upright only in the center. To make matters worse, these rooms were unbearably hot in summer and freezing cold in winter.
Aside from the calottes, the prisoners' rooms in the Bastille were fairly comfortable. They featured whitewashed ceilings, brick floors, and large windows, each with a set of three steps leading up to it. Every room was also equipped with either an open fireplace or a stove for warmth.
Beneath each tower lay an underground chamber. While we might think of these as “dungeons,” they were simply referred to as “cells” at the Bastille. The cells were damp and unhealthy, much worse than the calottes. By the late 18th century, their use had been discontinued, except when necessary to temporarily detain unruly prisoners.
The grim reputation of the cells largely comes from the memoirs of Constantin de Renneville, a tax official imprisoned for 11 years on charges of espionage for the Dutch government. He claimed to have been forced to sleep on damp straw in a freezing, rat-infested cell, subsisting solely on bread and water.
However, Renneville’s story is difficult to verify. Upon their release, prisoners of the Bastille were required to take an oath of silence, which means Renneville’s accounts may have been exaggerated to shock the public and boost sales of his memoirs.
5. The Bastille Was Not a Place of Torture
During the early 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, acting on behalf of Louis XIII, transformed the Bastille into an official state prison. Most of the prisoners were members of the nobility who had committed high treason, espionage, or other crimes against the crown.
Although speaking about the Bastille was prohibited, numerous contemporary accounts have survived. Even those describing the “cells” make no mention of torture chambers or “murder rooms.” One prisoner remarked: “Occasionally, prisoners die in the Bastille by secret means, but such events are rare.”
By the time of the French Revolution, King Louis XVI had explicitly outlawed both torture and the use of the cells in the Bastille. When revolutionaries stormed the prison in 1789, they discovered no torture devices, skeletons, or men in chains. The only individuals found in the cells were two madmen who had been placed there for their own protection during the raid.
4. Most Prisoners Enjoyed Comfortable Lives at the Bastille
Even the most impoverished prisoners at the Bastille led relatively comfortable lives. Instead of directly providing for their clothing and food, the king would grant them a pension, allowing them to buy whatever they wished. Some prisoners saved their money and became quite wealthy, while others, who were already better off, purchased items such as chests of drawers, portraits, desks, armchairs, books, atlases, mirrors, folding screens, and other personal luxuries.
The Marquis de Sade added “long and brilliant” draperies to his cell. One 17th-century prisoner established a library within the Bastille, which grew with contributions of books from the governors, fellow inmates, and a wealthy Parisian who sympathized with the prisoners' situation.
To pass the time and decorate their rooms, some prisoners would draw designs or write verses on the walls using chalk. One prisoner painted his walls so beautifully that the governor of the Bastille repeatedly moved him to different rooms just to allow him to decorate the new walls as well.
Most prisoners had the freedom to receive visitors and take walks along the towers. Some were even granted day trips to the nearby town. Many had live-in servants, while others kept pets. Prisoners dined with the governor and spent their days making music, embroidering, weaving, or knitting. They also enjoyed playing cards, backgammon, or chess, and some took up carpentry. One prisoner even had a billiards table in his room.
Prisoners, even those without money, were treated to gourmet meals and a variety of drinks, including wine, brandy, beer, coffee, sugar, and tobacco. Records for the Marquis de Sade reveal that in 1789, he was served a lavish meal of chocolate cream, a chicken stuffed with chestnuts, and pullets with truffles, among other delicacies.
3. The Column in the Place De La Bastille Commemorates a Different Revolution
The bronze column in the Place de la Bastille is referred to as the “July Column.” It was constructed to honor the “July Revolution” of 1830, a three-day uprising in which the middle class overthrew King Charles X, forcing his abdication. This revolution led to the creation of a constitutional monarchy under his cousin, Louis-Philippe, the last king of France, who reigned until he was ousted in 1848 by yet another revolution.
Today, the column stands on an island in the center of a busy traffic circle, roughly where the Porte Saint-Antoine once stood in the Middle Ages. The names of 504 Parisians who perished during the July Revolution are engraved in gold upon the column, and their remains are said to lie in four vaults beneath its stone pedestal. Atop the column is a Corinthian capital and a gilded bronze statue known as the “Spirit of Freedom.”
There are no traces of the actual Bastille remaining in the Place de la Bastille today. However, its former location is marked by large white paving stones set within the smaller cobblestones of the surrounding streets.
To find actual remnants of the Bastille, you don’t have to look far. During the construction of the Paris subway, workers discovered the base of the Bastille’s “Liberty Tower.” It was carefully dismantled and reassembled in a nearby garden to the southwest. The only remaining in situ piece of the Bastille is a section of its wall, now displayed on the platform of the number five line in the Bastille Metro station.
2. Fragments of the Bastille Were Crafted into Souvenir Models
By the end of the 18th century, the Bastille housed, on average, only 16 prisoners each year, mostly for brief stays. This low occupancy hardly justified the immense costs associated with maintaining the fortress and its staff, which included doctors, chemists, priests, and a well-compensated live-in governor.
Additionally, with the expansion of the Saint-Antoine suburb, the Bastille's role as a military stronghold had become almost obsolete. As a result, the government had already been considering demolishing the Bastille long before the revolutionaries began their own destruction of the prison.
The Bastille was only partially destroyed on July 14, 1789, which left the newly established First Republic with the dilemma of how to deal with the remains. Its symbolic significance had shifted after the revolution, and many believed it should remain as a memorial. However, Pierre-Francois Palloy, the enterprising man behind the demolition, saw an opportunity for profit. As people in the streets below the Bastille sought pieces of the prison as souvenirs, Palloy, who owned a construction company, recognized a business venture.
On July 6, Palloy persuaded the newly formed assembly to grant him permission to demolish the prison completely. Some of the rubble was transported to other parts of Paris and used to help build the Pont de la Revolution, now known as the Pont de la Concorde. In a more inventive move, Palloy mixed some of the rubble with plaster and molded it into mini replicas of the Bastille.
He sold many of these replicas, while others were distributed as promotional gifts bearing the name of his construction company. A few of these models have survived the years and can be viewed in museums, such as the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, alongside the actual steel keys of the Bastille.
1. The Mask of the Man in the Iron Mask Wasn’t Actually Made of Iron
The most infamous prisoner of the Bastille was the so-called 'man in the iron mask.' On September 16, 1698, the new governor of the Bastille arrived with a tall, elderly man, his face concealed by a mask made not from iron but from black velvet. The mask covered his face, leaving only his teeth and lips exposed, and he was ordered to remain silent at all times, never allowed to remove it.
He was placed in the best accommodations the Bastille had to offer, with the guards instructed to treat him kindly. However, they were strictly forbidden from allowing him to communicate with anyone, whether through speech or writing. Every item brought into or out of his cell, including his dinner plates, was thoroughly inspected for any signs of written material. If he spoke about anything other than personal matters, the governor was instructed to threaten him with death.
When the man in the mask passed away suddenly on November 19, 1703, after a short illness, all of his belongings were burned. The walls of his room were repainted, and even the floor tiles were replaced, in case he had hidden any writing. The following day, he was buried in the graveyard of the nearby Church of St. Paul–St. Louis under the alias M. de Marchioly.
Numerous theories about his identity flourished. Some believed he was a Marshal of France or even Oliver Cromwell. Others speculated that he could have been the playwright Molière or perhaps an undisclosed twin of Louis XIV. The latter theory inspired Alexandre Dumas' novel The Man in the Iron Mask.
A rumor that likely originated from Napoleon's supporters suggested that the imprisoned individual was actually Louis XIV, who had been replaced by an imposter on the throne. According to this theory, the true Louis XIV had married and fathered one of Napoleon's ancestors during his time in captivity, thereby making Napoleon a descendant of the Sun King.
