The history of Bastille day

In 1880, the Third Republic gave France a national public holiday, July 14, in memory of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. This commemoration, whose purpose was to unite all French people around an alter to the mother country, was also a throwback to the Fete of the Federation of July 14, 1790, a symbol of national reconciliation. The popular merrymaking to which it gave rise, ensured that it would last.

On May 21, 1880, Benjamin Raspail, the parliamentary representative for Paris, introduced the following bill: "The Republic adopts July 14 as its national annual public holiday." The proposal was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies on June 8, ratified by the Senate on June 29 and decreed as a law on July 6, while the minister of the interior had already set up a commission to draw up the program for the day so that this public holiday would take on a national character right from its first year.

According to the budgetary means of the municipalities and their goodwill, secular ceremonies in schools, the inauguration of republican statues, distribution of provisions to inhabitants, lighting, bell ringing, flag and bunting decorations, and reviewing of the troops was encouraged throughout France.

Indeed, the participation of the army was to bring together all those afflicted by the loss of Alsace and Lorraine as a result of the disaster of Sedan, which had let to the capitulation of the French army to the Prussians in 1870, and to the signature of the Treaty of Frankfurt on May 10, 1871.

Towns which had a conservative majority were naturally reluctant to celebrate a secular, republican "ideology", which their town councillors rejected. Monarchists and Catholics saw the revolution as a vile act of history and they considered July 14, 1789, more as a drama than an epic.

They refused to see the conquest of freedom and civic emancipation in it. In their eyes, the triumphant processions going through the streets of the capital on the evening of the surrender of the fortress of the Bastille, a symbol of royal arbitrariness, were nothing but gatherings of rioters.

However, such an attitude was limited in time and space because of the implicit reference to July 14, 1790, and the display which made this day a fete for the mother country and, thereby, its opponents bad French citizens.

As early as May, 1878, a faithful follower of the republican Gambetta asserted in a speech in front of more than 4,000 people, "The French people freed themselves on July 14, 1789, but where the glory of our fathers was great was July 14, 1790, on the Champs de Mars. That was when the French nation was founded."

On July 14, 1790, the Feast of the Federation had brought a vast movement of fraternization to a triumphant close. In Paris, the Champs de Mars had been turned into a huge amphitheater, dominated by an alter to the mother country, which had been erected on a central island. Some 14,000 federates, coming from the provinces and representing the nation, flocked around it and there was an estimated crowd of 300,000 people.

After the mass, celebrated at the alter, La Fayette, the hero of the American War of Independence, took the oath in the name of the federates, uniting the French among themselves and the French to their king to defend liberty, the constitution and the law.

Then, the king, in turn, swore to uphold the constitution decreed by the Assembly. In the provinces, this federative pact was simultaneously made by all inhabitants, grouped together on the initiative of the municipalities. The citizens thus appropriated their feast day in a single burst of patriotism. The unity of the nation was no longer just a concept but a fact which bloody measures, among which the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 stands out, weakened for many years.

July 14, 1880, was to be the country's feast of the patriotic restoration with the distribution, postponed for several years, of the flags to the recreated regiments. The loss of the standards on the Prussian front in 1870 had caused a trauma which only a fete with a strong symbolism could reduce.

The main function of this national public holiday, which established the cult of Marianne, a personification of the Republic, was to ensure national cohesion and to reestablish France's military power based on the collective memory.

Busts of Marianne were inaugurated in public places and citizens could buy lithographs of her in shops, showing her wearing the Phrygian cap (a symbol of the freedom conquered by the people) and draped in the three colors of the French flag or surrounded by a cluster of flags (a symbol of the triumphant nation).

The patriotic exaltation in common hope was quickly accompanied by the intoxication of the public gathering together in the lighted streets, the public dances around the fairground stalls and fireworks.

City dwellers and country folk took part in this festive July 14 with the same fervor, the former with many entertainment possibilities and the latter with their enthusiasm and a conviviality which was revitalized by working the earth.

Even July 14, 1919, at which time the victory parade took place in Paris (the apotheosis of the sacred union which had prevailed during the terrible 1914-1918 war), ended in a flurry of entertainment.

Towards the end of the 20th century, the French Bastille day can be described as a republican feast combined with a recreational fete. The parading of the troops before the head of state (4,100 men from the three services in 1995), broadcast live on television, continues to mobilize television viewers of all ages, and the little public dances with bands perched on wooden platforms which had been erected the day before, draw all those who feel happy that ceremony does not encroach on merrymaking.

The celebrations call for a host of common memories and hopes. July 14, reinforced by the impact that the history of the Republic and of Year One of liberty, which has become a legend, can have on the collective sensitivity of the French, will remain a national feast day for a long time to come.