479. The French Revolution: The Storming of the Bastille (Part 5)

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 18.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“It was violence that made the revolution revolutionary”. The storming of the Bastille is viewed by many across the world as a moment of celebration, when the French people were liberated from the shackles of tyranny and royal despotism. Yet, it was also a moment of horrific violence and chaos, culminating in countless acts of blunt, bloody murder. With a widespread sense of social unrest throughout France at the beginning of July 1789, things finally reached a peak following the King’s dismissal of his finance minister, Necker, a great favourite of the people. The arrival of 20,000 troops into Paris to maintain order triggered even greater panic in the streets, with the already febrile atmosphere being whipped into a frenzy by firebrand orators. Finally, with fighting breaking out between the soldiers and the mob in the Vendome, and then spilling over into the Tuileries Gardens, the Royal Commander of Paris gave the order to evacuate the city entirely, leaving it in the hands of the rioters. It was then that the mob, in a final desperate effort to procure gunpowder for its plundered weapons, turned its sites on the Bastille, the ultimate monument to repression … Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the apocalyptic Storming of the Bastille fortress, and the truth behind the prison's famously grotesque reputation. Given the gory events that unfolded on that momentous day, was violence innate to the French Revolution from the very beginning - its driving force - and its bloody denouement therefor inevitable? _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the rest is history.
0:02.2	For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series and membership
0:07.3	of our much-love chat community, go to the rest is history.com and join the club. That is, the rest is History. is History.
0:15.0	The Rest is History.
0:16.0	. . . . . . . . Butier is no more. His head is nothing more than a mutilated stump separated from his body. A man, oh God, a man, a barbarian, tears out his heart
0:38.0	from his palpitating viscera. He is avenging himself on a monster. His hands dripping with blood. He holds up the steaming heart under the eyes of the men of peace assembled in this august tribunal of humanity.
0:52.3	Tirens! Cast your eyes! August tribunal
0:53.5	cast your eyes on this terrible spectacle
0:58.0	shudder and see how you and yours will be treated. This body, so delicate and so refined, bathed in
1:07.3	perfumes, is horribly dragged in the mud and over the cobblestones.
1:13.0	Despots and ministers, your reign is over.
1:17.0	Frenchmen, you are exterminating tyrants, your hatred is revolting, frightful, but you will at last be free.
1:26.0	Think how ignominious it is to live as slaves.
1:30.0	Think what good, what satisfaction, what happiness awaits you and your children, when the August and
1:37.9	Holy Temple of Liberty will have set up its temple for you.
1:43.4	That was the journalist Elize Luzdello
1:47.6	writing in his paper,
1:49.6	Revolution of Paris, which he launched in the fateful month of July 1789, and he is describing with some
1:57.1	relish the lynching of the royal official, Bertie de Sovingi, a week after the fall of the Bastille on the 14th of July and Dominic the
2:05.6	fall of the Bastille it is viewed by many people in France and across the world as a
2:12.2	moment of liberation it's the National Day of France of course and it is celebrated and always has been celebrated by many many people as a moment when the chains of tyranny and despotism are broken.
2:26.5	And that is the reading that you have chosen to mark this.
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