Today is the French national holiday known as La Fête Nationale du 14 Juillet. In America, most people know it as Bastille Day, the day that they stormed the bastille prison to release the prisoners and tear them apart. In July 1789, while tensions were high in Paris due to people being fed up with the crisis hitting their pocketbooks people began to revolt.
They would seek out guns and ammunition along with food and stockpile it. An angry group broke into Hôtel des Invalides to gather all the weapons and gunpowder held inside, but they were outsmarted when over 250 barrels of gunpowder were moved the day before the Bastille.
On the morning of July 14, a crowd of over a thousand men took to the Bastille. Demanding the release of the prisoners and gunpowder the crowd began to grow angrier as these demands were not met. Gunfire rang out and the fight began. Cutting the drawbridge, killing people beneath it when the Royal Army arrived.
Over 100 people would die and in the end, the Bastille was emptied of all seven prisoners. Yes, you read that correctly, seven prisoners.
It would take almost two years to dismantle the Bastille prison and the stones would be used around France including being carved into tiny replicas of the prison.
Today in Paris, if you keep your eyes open you can find a few of these stones. In 1791, stones would be used to build the Pont de la Concorde. One hundred years later in 1899 while Paris was taken over with the building of the new Metro the base of the Bastille would reappear and be unearthed. Just off the banks of the Seine at the Square Henri Galli, the tower base would be rebuilt among the foliage.
A short walk away, in the Place de la Bastille where the prison once stood is a column in the center, although it commemorates the revolution in 1830. However, look down as you cross the street, the outline of the original prison remains today (some parts have been paved over and brass markers have now been added). As you take the metro below your feet, look around, you may just spot a few more stones.
