Chet Davis, age 14, of Davenport, Iowa, for his question:
WHY DO THE FRENCH CELEBRATE BASTILLE DAY?
One of the most important days in a Frenchman's year is Bastille Day, which falls on July 14. It is a national holiday. The day commemorates the fall of a famous prison in Paris called the Bastille, which stood as a hated symbol of the oppression of the French people.
The Bastille was a forbidding fortress that dominated a poorer section of Paris. It had massive walls and eight huge towers that were 100 feet high. Surrounding the Bastille was a moat more than 80 feet wide.
Charles V started building the Bastille in 1370. He believed that it was important to have a fortress to protect the city walls against English attack. it was called Bastide St. Antoine. The word Bastille comes from "bastide," the French word for fortification.
At the time it was built, the fortress formed one of the gates to the city of Paris.
In the 17th century the Bastille became a state prison. Held here were those who were thought to be dangerous to the state, even though they might not have been convicted of any crime.
In those days, people were often arrested by (ital) letters de cachet (unital). These were direct orders from the king, bearing his signature, by which a person could be put into prison for as long as the king wanted him to stay there.
An average of 40 prisoners of this type were held in the Bastille each year. They included high ranking foreigners, secret agents, writers and those the king thought were political troublemakers.
Sometimes the prisoners were noblemen whose families preferred this type of imprisonment to the scandal of a public trial.
On the morning of July 24, 1789, at the beginning of the French Revolution, a Paris mob marched to the Bastille demanding gunpowder they knew was stored there. Chains of the outer drawbridge were shot away. It was only a matter of time before the mob had its way and the Bastille fell.
After the attackers shot away the chains to the outer drawbridge, they advanced to the inner approaches and started to fire at the main drawbridge.
It is possible that the attackers' few cannon might never have been able to make a breach in the walls. But the governor, in a defensive move, threatened to blow up the fortress. His garrison, in sympathy with the people, demanded that he surrender. The main drawbridge was lowered and the crowd rushed in, opening the dungeons and destroying everything they could.
Although only seven prisoners were found in the Bastille, its fall was regarded as a victory for liberty. The Bastille had become a symbol of the tyranny of the French kings. Two days after it fell, the electors of Paris voted to have it torn down. This job took more than two years.
The Marquis de Lafayette, who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, gave George Washington a key to the Bastille because it was believed that the American Revolution had inspired the French Revolution.
A monument in memory of the revolution now stands on the site of the Bastille. It is an open square called the Place de la Bastille.