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Revolution 101

LA FÊTE NATIONALE

Discovery of the Cause, Nature, Cure and... (by Moses L. Knapp)
The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis d... (by Gorer, Geoffrey)
The Old Regime and the Revolution (by Tocqueville, Alexis de)
The Marriage of Figaro : A Comic Opera i... (by Henry Rowley Bishop)
The Barber of Seville; A Comic Opera in ... (by Rossini, Gioacchino)

Bastille Day, a French National holiday celebrated July 14th, marks both the storming of the Bastille castle on July 14th, 1789, and the turning point in the French Revolution. The Bastille was a medieval castle that was then used as a prison as well as an armory. It was key that the Revolutionaries stormed the castle not only for the stores of guns and gunpowder, but also to symbolically overthrow the symbol of monarchy the Bastille had embodied for years. The morning after, King Louis XVI was informed by the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and asked him, “Is it a revolt?” To which the Duke famously replied, “No sire, it’s not a revolt; it’s a revolution.”

Here are some books to read in honor of Bastille Day:

Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities concerns itself with London and Paris and the events leading up to the French Revolution, as well as the Reign of Terror, a period during the Revolution where the government enforced a wave of executions and exercised nearly dictatorial control with the hopes of squelching enemies of the Revolution.
Famous French philosopher and libertine Marquis de Sade actually spent ten years imprisoned in the Bastille, right before the French Revolution. While in the Bastille, Sade wrote many of his best works, including Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, a novel which tells the story of a woman recounting the misfortunes that led her up to her death sentencing during the French Revolution. Read more about his revolutionary life in The Revolution of the Marquis de Sade.

The Old Regime and the Revolution is perhaps the first critical works on the French Revolution written by the great French historian and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville. Within The Old Regime, he develops the theory of continuity, which states that even though the French attempted to turn away from the autocratic regimes of the past, they inevitably ended up created a powerful government just as centralized as the last.
The Marriage of Figaro is a play in five acts, written by Pierre Beaumarchais. It is the second part of a trilogy which begins with The Barber of Seville, and ends with The Guilty Mother. The Marriage tells the story of Figaro and Suzanne—who are among the employed of a Spanish Count—and the Count’s subversive plans to take Suzanne as his own. The play was written in 1778, and has been said by many to have foreshadowed the French Revolution with its decrying of aristocratic privilege. Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have described the play as, “the Revolution already put into action.”

By Thad Higa