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12 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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How did the king respond to the creation of the National Assembly?
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"Pressed by the Queen and his family to make a stand against the revolutionary behaviour of the Third Estate, the King had decided to hold a meeting of all three orders, a seance royale, presided over by himself, and to announce that the actions of the Commons were illegal." He locked their meeting hall doors, which is why they met on the tennis court. Three days after the tennis court oath the National Assembly went to the Seance Royale. The King said he would do these things: 1. reform finances 2. consider abolishing the lettres de cachet. 3. start to create a free press. 4. the nation's representatives would have a say about taxes. However, the King was pretty obnoxious and made it clear that the ancien regime was not going to be abolished. He told the National Assembly to meet by themselves and go back to being the Third Estate. Mirabeau said that the National Assembly had to oppose the king, so they did. Finally, the King accepted that there would be no more First and Second Estates in the meetings and that all the nobles and clergy had to join the Third Estate-- everyone had to meet together. However, at the same time that he appeared to agree with the National Assembly in terms of how they met, he was also got ten regiments of troops to come to Paris.
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How did the general population in Paris respond?
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When Necker was dismissed by the King, money lost value and everyone feared prices would rise. Mobs were running around the town, breaking into gunsmiths' shops and "threatening the houses of richer citizens." A group formed the National Guard in response. Busts of Necker and Duc D'Orleans were paraded around town. Crowds gathered in the Palais Royal gardens, and that became a meeting place where revolutionary ideas were talked about in a freer way than in the National Assembly. Revolutionaries wore green ribbons and started to look for arms.
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Why was Paris becoming a violent, dangerous place?
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There were ten regiments of the army, and crowds of tens of thousands of angry people. A new constitution was in the process of being written, and it was a time of major political, economic and social change. Everyone could feel that power was changing hands from the First and Second Estates to the Third Estate, but nobody knew how it would happen and many people were very impatient, excited, angry and crazed about it!
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What was the Bastille?
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the Bastille was originally a fortress in the 14th century. Now it was a state prison for people arrested under lettres de cachet. "It was surrounded by an air of mystery. Prisoners... arrived in coaches with drawn blinds." It had a sinister reputation due to stories like "the man in the iron mask" and people like Voltaire being imprisoned there.
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What did the general population in Paris believe about it? How accurate were their perceptions?
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The population of Paris saw the Bastille as a symbol of oppression and the unfairness of lettres de cachet. They thought it was a kind of secret torture building, like a Pinochet detention center. Actually, though, the book says it was one of the better prisons in France. It only had about ten prisoners in it at a time, the food was okay, prisoners could bring their own possessions, and the dungeons had not been used in years. There was even an idea that it should be torn down because it wasn't used very much.
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Why did a large mob converge on the Bastille on July 14, 1789?
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A large mob converged on the Bastille on July 14 because they were looking for gunpowder that the Bastille had. Unlike when they got 28,000 guns from the Invalides, though, they met resistance at the Bastille. They also were very angry when they converged on the Bastille due to its bad reputation.
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How did the commander of the Bastille attempt to defend his outpost?
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Although the commander, Launay, was not much of a confident guy, he did try to defend the Bastille. He fortified and drew up the drawbridge, had soldiers bring pavement stones up to throw down on attackers, aimed cannon so they could fire on attackers, and blocked up windows. He tried not to make it look like he wanted to fight though, and he moved the cannon away from their firing positions. However, people thought he was doing that to load them, so that did not make him appear to want peace.
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Describe the controversy over who actually started the fighting.
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Two men jumped down and hacked at a drawbridge so it fell down, killing one guy and injuring another. But before they got in they had to open another drawbridge across another moat. At that moment a gun and cannon went off. It is not known if the defenders or attackers started the fighting. Some say the defenders saw the first drawbridge go down and begin to defend; others say that when the defenders would not lower the second drawbridge, the attackers opened fire.
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How did the Bastille eventually fall?
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After some failed attempts to stop the fighting kept ending in people getting shot to death while they were trying to talk it out, Pierre Hulin led some Gardes - francaises and Jacob Elie led some armed citizens. Elie aimed cannon at the drawbridge. Launay decided to surrender, but no one listened, which appears to be typical of the entire French Revolution. Then he wrote a note saying if they didn't accept that he was surrendering, he'd blow the whole place up! But then Launay opened the gate by just giving the key to a corporal. Everyone rushed in.
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What was the fate of those who defended the Bastille?
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Some of the defenders were able to escape with their lives, but not three of the governor's staff and Launay-- the governor- himself. A guy named Desnot attacked Launay; Launay kicked him in the nuts; Desnot said Launay had "done him in" and then Launay got stabbed in the stomach with a bayonette, and Desnot got to cut off his head, which was put on a stick and paraded through the city along with the head of another guy, Jacques de Flesselles.
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What was the fate of those who attacked it?
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Not exactly sure, but a guess is that 83 were killed, 15 died of wounds, and 73 were wounded. 954 who survived were called Vanqueur de la Bastille and got honored as heros.
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How did the people of Paris react when they learned of the Bastille's capture?
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They cheered and partied and went in to the Bastille to see what the 'torture place' was all about. They soon tore the Bastille down and the guy who did it made a lot of money on "Bastille souvenirs."
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