The Fourteenth of July: And the Taking of the Bastille »

Christopher Prendergast is Professor Emeritus at Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was the general editor of the Penguin Proust.

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the beginning of the French Revolution.

Publishers Weekly

On July 14, 1789, a mob stormed the Bastille, Paris's redoubtable prison. It held only seven inmates, but the Estates-General had achieved political parity with King Louis XVI, and Parisians, fearing a royalist coup, were searching for weapons stored in the Bastille. In a well-written account, Prendergast recounts in detail the events of the day and, as important, those leading up to it, including failed attempts to impose new taxes and the very poor harvest leading to popular unrest. In the book's second and more interesting half, "Memory," the author examines how the French have continually refashioned the meaning of the day and of the French Revolution in general. By the bicentennial in 1989, a commemoration of the founding of modern France, the general public had become, by and large, indifferent to political and intellectual debates over the Revolution. Prendergast notes how French political leaders have used history for political and ideological purposes, and how, in our age of short memory, history and celebration increasingly diverge. (June)

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Pt. 1 Events

1 Humbert's Day 3

2 The Revolutionary journee 17

3 The Convocation of the Estates-General 39

4 A la Bastille! 63

Pt. 2 Memory

5 The Fete de la Federation 97

6 Bastille Day 127

7 The Centennial and the Bicentennial 159

Further Reading 189

List of Illustrations 195

Acknowledgements 197

Index 199