The Bastille held seven prisoners
The STORMING of the BASTILLE on 14 July 1789 is the founding image of the Revolution, and the fortress was nearly empty. It held seven inmates: four forgers, two men considered insane, and one aristocrat imprisoned at his own family's request. It was scheduled for demolition anyway because it cost too much to run.
The crowd was not there to free anyone. The BASTILLE held gunpowder, and the city had already seized muskets from the Invalides that morning with nothing to fire from them. What made it matter was what it stood for — a royal PRISON where the king could hold someone indefinitely on a signed order — so taking it was a statement that such orders no longer held. France still marks the date.
It began over money, not ideas
The immediate crisis was that FRANCE was bankrupt, largely from funding wars including the American Revolution. The tax system was the problem: the NOBLES and the clergy, who owned much of the land, were substantially exempt, so the burden fell on the PEASANT and the growing middle class.
Calling the Estates-General in 1789 to fix this was the spark, because it forced a question about who counted. The Third Estate represented about 97 per cent of the population and had one vote of three. When they declared themselves the National Assembly, the argument stopped being about taxation and became about sovereignty. Two poor harvests had also pushed the price of bread to around half a labourer's daily wage, which is what put the crowds in the street.
The guillotine was proposed as a mercy
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a doctor who opposed the death penalty and argued that while it existed it should at least be instant and identical for everyone. Until then, nobles were beheaded by sword — quick if the executioner was skilled — and commoners were hanged, broken on the wheel or worse. A machine made execution equal.
It was used in France until 1977, and the last public one was in 1939. Guillotin himself disliked the association so much that his family later petitioned to have the name changed; when that failed, they changed theirs. During the Terror of 1793–94 the machine killed around 17,000 people after trials, and tens of thousands more died in the provinces — including many of the revolutionaries who had built the system, Robespierre among them.
How a revolution ends in an emperor
The ending is the part to follow. The REPUBLIC declared in 1792 abolished the monarchy, executed the KING and QUEEN, and proclaimed LIBERTY, EQUALITY and fraternity. Within twelve years a general had crowned himself emperor.
NAPOLEON came to power in 1799 promising order after a decade of instability, and kept much of the Revolution's substance — the legal code, the abolition of feudal privilege, careers open to talent — while abandoning its politics. The grid holds the rest: the TRICOLOR, the word CITIZEN replacing all the old titles of address, the REVOLT and the RIOT, the PALACE at Versailles, the FREEDOM and REFORM that were argued for, and VOLTAIRE, who died eleven years before it started and whose writing on tolerance and free speech ran underneath the whole thing.