The Storming of the Bastille as Recorded on Footnote.com

Footnote.com has millions of records online of historical interest. Most of those records concern events in American history. However, there are a few exceptions. Monday is Bastille Day in France; so, it seems appropriate to focus on one of those records that is an eyewitness account of the biggest event in French history. The letter was written in English and is easy to read.

In the 1780s, the Bastille was a prison in Paris. The king kept political prisoners there, along with criminals of all sorts. The Bastille was an irregularly-shaped fortress, 220 feet long (70 meters) and 90 feet wide (30 meters)  with walls of up to 80 feet high (25 meters), surrounded by a broad moat.

Following several days of disturbances, a crowd stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789. Their purpose was not so much to release the prisoners as to capture or destroy the gunpowder and arms being stored there. The people of Paris believed that French troops would use the gunpowder and arms against the local population. In fact, on that day, only seven prisoners were incarcerated at the Bastille.

A crowd of around 1,000 people gathered outside the Bastille in mid-morning, calling for the surrender of the prison, the removal of the guns, and the release of the arms and gunpowder. In the early afternoon, the crowd broke into the undefended outer courtyard, and an exchange of gunfire began. In mid-afternoon the mutinous Gardes Françaises of the Royal Army joined the crowd. The fortress was liberated around 5:30 PM.

The storming of the Bastille is the most famous event in French history and is considered the beginning of the French Revolution.

A number of foreigners were in the area at the time, including a diplomat from the new nation called the United States of America. Thomas Jefferson was an eye-witness, and that evening he wrote about the events he had observed. He sent this report back to his government, and his words became the first report that a second nation was about to join the USA in the new social experiment called democracy.

Footnote.com has images of Thomas Jefferson's letter available online as part of the "Papers of the Continental Congress" collection. You can read about the storming of the Bastille in Jefferson's own words and, even better, in his handwriting. Best of all, this collection is available to everyone free of charge.

To read Thomas Jefferson's account of the Storming of the Bastille in his own handwriting, go to http://www.footnote.com/image/259035/bastille.

The controls in the upper left corner let you zoom in and out on the displayed words. If you want to read Jefferson’s account of events leading up to this celebrated event, use the Filmstrip controls at the bottom of the window to display preceding pages.

Comments

[Joseph Lake]

Jeffersons' letter was displayed so that it was necessary to (SLOWLY)scroll from right to left to read the beginning & end of each line, and annoying "informational" popups kept appearing and effectively blotting out portions of each line (seemingly there was no handle to delete the popups). An unsatisfactory and frustrating experience to put it mildly.

[Tim Agazio]

I had the opposite experience of the previous commenter. I centered the page on my screen, using the slider on the upper left corner of the image viewer, and found the text quite easy to read. I found this a fascinating letter and appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

Tim Agazio

[Dick Eastman]

I found Thomas Jefferson's "Storming of the Bastille" pages to be very easy to read and the scrolling worked quickly. The display of each page appeared almost instantly on my broadband connection although I suspect they will take longer on dial-up. I encountered no other "pop-ups."

Is anyone else having problems?

- Dick Eastman

[History Lady]

I believe the "pop-ups" to which he refers are the annotations. Those can be turned off (hidden) by going to the right-hand menu under "Annotations."

[theKiwi]

I saw two "issues" with the page using Safari 3.1.2 (the latest) on Mac OS X

On initial opening, the zoom wasn't calculated correctly, so that I had either zoom out some, or make the window wider (to 1680 pixels) to see the width of it at the default zoom. On reload of the page even with the window out to 1680 pixels wide it recalculated the zoom, so again I only saw half the width of the document, just zoomed in even more. So I'm thinking there may be a wee glitch in the calculation that decides what zoom to load the page at initially..

There are some popups on the page that indicate that "Chris" identified a name or place or some text on the page. I had some trouble with these opening and then not closing as I moused over them, and if I scrolled the page vertically, the pop up boxes slid to the top of the window, and then stayed there, even as the content to which they referred had disappeared from view.

In some ways I find these pop ups an intrusion - I can clearly read the text of the letter, and I don't need Chris popping up with a box telling me what a word, or a whole line actually says, as well as that line getting a border drawn around it which detracts from the appearance of it - kind of like on TV when they sub-title the text of someone who doesn't seem to quite speak "American", but yet is speaking English clearly enough that my wife (an American) and I (a New Zealander) both can clearly understand every word - heck once they even sub-titled a New Zealander speaking!!!!

Roger

[Vicki Shelton]

I had the same experience as Joseph; however, I discovered that the size can be adjusted by the sliding bar at the top left, and the pop-ups can be disabled by choosing "annotations" on the right side and then unchecking the boxes that say "show annotations by..." This second fix was not readily apparent but I figured there must be a way to turn it off.

Also I have dial-up and it took 10-15 minutes for the thing to load. When I clicked to view the next page, it sat for several minutes before I gave up. I think my dial-up is slower than others. I usually have to go to the library to view this type of thing. Which I'll do next time I get up there. Thanks for posting about it. It does look interesting.

[Alexa]

At the top of the viewer to the far right, you can choose to view "Full Screen". If you do that, the page is very easy to read.