FRENCH NATIONAL FESTIVAL

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1929, Page 3

FRENCH NATIONAL FESTIVAL

FALL OF THE BASTILLE. On Sunday France celebrated the one hundred and fortieth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. On July 14, 1789, Paris was strangely agitated —following the triumphant violence which had been shown after the National Assembly had been called together, and the masses felt that a change was coming fast. To them the Bastille, the very centre of repressive authority, was the sign of all that was tyrannous and hateful. Moreover, rumour had it that most of the arms had been conveyed to the Bastille, where the commander had orders to fire upon the people if need be. This was the spark which lit the flame of rebellion, which ultimately led to the French Revolution,

Later in the day a vast concourse gathered beneath the battlements of the Bastille, and the commander. De Launay, opened fire. In reply, the people planted five cannon in front of the great drawbridge and De Launay gave himself up as lost. He threatened to blow up the whole place if a capitulation was not accepted, and on the strength of the besiegers’ promise to agree to this, the keys of the fortress were surrendered, and an immense crowd surged into the courtyard. The leaders of the multitude did all they could to prevent harm from befalling De Launay, but it was all in vain. On the way to the Hotel de Ville, to where he was being escorted, a furious crowd bore down on him with the . inevitable result. Thus did the citizens capture the hated Bastille —which stood not only to Paris and to France, but to Europe as well, as a symbol of oppression and injustice. And what of the Bastille, that haunt of despotism, what was to be found there to atone for the atrocities of the past? Alas, for the deception of the people, their investigation of the hated fortress revealed nothing remotely in the vision of their imaginations—no skeletons or corpses were to be found, no captives in chains, no oubliettes, no torture chambers. True, an iron corselet was discovered, “invented to restrict man in all his joints and to fix him in perpetual immobility," but this proved to be an ordinary suit of armour. Equally disappointing were the prisoners found—seven all told, including two lunatics.

However, France still remembers the fall of her ancient Bastille, and regards it as a fete day. After the fall of the monarchy the new French Government decided that a column should be erected to Liberty on the site of the old prison, and there it has stood ever since, a national symbol, every year the centre of rejoicings in honour of -the liberty won for the people in the Revolution.