July 14, 1789 –
Paris was not a happy city in 1789. Paris has never been an especially happy city, especially for those who don’t speak French, but in that fateful year it was especially grouchy. And it wasn’t just the city, but the whole country. All of France was cranky and irritable, and all the other countries were like, “What?“
Finally, the queen said they should eat cake, and the nation snapped. The people rose up in protest, and, it being time for the French Revolution, they stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
A mob of 20,000 people stormed the Bastille prison in Paris, killing several of its defenders and freeing all seven prisoners incarcerated therein: four forgers, two men judged insane, and an aristocrat imprisoned at his family’s request. (The Marquis de Sade had actually been transferred to another prison ten days earlier. Yes, that guy.) The governor was decapitated, and his head was carried around on a pike. So began the French Revolution.
It quickly became clear that the peasants were revolting. (Not that anyone ever thought they were all that attractive.) The storming of the Bastille gave way to the Rain of Terror, a political cataclysm in its own right, which eventually led to Napoleon, Waterloo , and Able was I ere I saw Elba,, all of which have been covered in previous postings and can therefore be ignored for the time being. Eventually the French (who had always been whiners) immersed themselves in Bourbon.
And so it goes.
The Haus of Dcaligari 