Europe
A Defender of the Bastille Explains His Role
The soldiers stationed at the fortress did not see themselves as resisting the Revolution so much as keeping watch on a rather insignificant outpost that had nothing at all to do with the major events transpiring in Versailles.
A Conqueror of the Bastille Speaks
Having assembled at the traditional protest place in front of the City Hall, known as place des grèves (meaning sandbar, which it was, but which has come to mean "strike"), the crowd set off in search of ammunition.
Parisian Riots on 14 July
As demonstrations spread across Paris on the morning of 14 July, Pierre–Victor Besenval, commander of the royal soldiers stationed in the capital, contemplated ordering his men to suppress the protests.
Desmoulins on His Own Role
Camille Desmoulins, an aspiring journalist and author of an anti–aristocratic pamphlet, had been closely following political events.
Street Demonstrations of Support for Necker (12 July 1789)
Gouverneur Morris, an American in Paris, wrote about the street protests that followed the King’s dismissal of the royal minister of finance, the popular Jacques Necker. Many Parisians considered Necker the man most able to enact reforms that might solve France’s fiscal and economic problems.
Fears for the Bastille: A General’s Concern
In this excerpt from a letter of 5 July 1789, the Marshal de Broglie, head of the royal army who led a conservative faction at court, expresses his fears that amid the current unrest, the royal garrison and prison at the Bastille might come under attack.
The Réveillon Riot (28 April 1789)
The "manufactory" owned by Jean–Baptiste Réveillon in the Saint–Antoine neighborhood of Paris made decorative wallpaper, a lucrative luxury item that required highly skilled (and generally well–paid) workers.
Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen, Constitution of the Year III (1795)
After the fall of Robespierre and the dismantling of the Terror, the National Convention drafted yet another republican constitution. The new constitution was also approved in a referendum and put into effect 26 October 1795. It remained until Napoleon came to power in November 1799.
Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, 29–30 October 1793
On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that female militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the Revolution, but they also presented a petition demanding the suppression of the women’s club behind
Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791)
Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who, under the name Olympe de Gouges, wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she attacked as being founded on greed and blind prejudice.