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The Real Story of the Sacking of the Bastille Most people don’t
realize that the event marking French Independence Day, known in
France as La Fête Nationale, began well before July 14, 1789,
and the sacking of the Bastille Fortress. In fact, the storming
of the Bastille was the climax of a quickening political drama
whose acts included the looting of Les Invalides the day before,
and the emergence of a revolutionary mob the day before that,
all of which stemmed from a mounting national economic crisis.
So let’s begin there, in the spring of 1789: King Louis XVI
could no longer deny that his country faced financial
catastrophe. He called for a meeting of the Estates General – a
counseling body comprised of equal numbers of representatives
from the nobility, the clergy, and everybody else (the Third
Estate) – to help him resolve the situation. But the Estates
General had not been conven