1 / 11

And what prison did these people get thrown into? The Bastille.

The French Independence Day is Bastille Day, July 14. It's called that because it celebrates the storming of the Bastille, a famous prison, during the French Revolution, in 1789. With the taking of this prison, the movement to replace a ruling monarchy (King and Queen) with a government began. .

baris
Download Presentation

And what prison did these people get thrown into? The Bastille.

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The French Independence Day is Bastille Day, July 14. It's called that because it celebrates the storming of the Bastille, a famous prison, during the French Revolution, in 1789. With the taking of this prison, the movement to replace a ruling monarchy (King and Queen) with a government began.

  2. France at that time was ruled by King Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette. Whatever the King and Queen wanted, they got. It didn't matter whether the people were starving in the streets, so long as they had plenty to eat.

  3. And it wasn't just the King and Queen, either, who got to enjoy amazing meals. Rich people and others that the King and Queen liked were invited to eat with them. And all the time, the people of France, people like you and I, starved in the streets.

  4. Marie Antoinette, the Queen, is said to have exclaimed, to a question of what the starving people should eat, "Let 'em eat cake.“ Cake, of course, might taste good, but it wouldn't keep people healthy.

  5. So France had the very rich (symbolized by the King and Queen) and the very poor (symbolized by the street mobs). Caught in the middle were the middle class, some of whom sided with royalty and others of whom sided with the poor.

  6. These middle class people who sided with the poor soon found it very difficult to criticize the King's handling of the growing problems. The more they spoke out, the more likely they were to get thrown in prison. (It was a crime, after all, to criticize the King or Queen.)

  7. And what prison did these people get thrown into? The Bastille. It was one of the more famous prisons. At one time, it had lots famous prisoners, including the great writer Voltaire, who were there for no other reason than that speaking their views.

  8. It also happened that the Bastille had a good number of guns and other weapons. This was the real reason for the storming of the Bastille. The mob had finally had enough of the King's ignoring their pleas and the Queen's empty promises.

  9. On July 14 1789, they attacked the prison. The mob seized the weapons they were looking for and released the prisoners inside. At the time, only 7 prisoners were inside the prison. The French Revolution had begun.

  10. Before its end, the Revolution and the Reign of Terror resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, including those of the King and Queen, who were sentenced to death by having their heads chopped off on a guillotine. France would never be the same. The King and Queen were replaced by a Government.

  11. In 1880, nearly 100 years later, Bastille Day became a public holiday. Today, most locals in France celebrate Bastille Day with dances, fireworks, parades and music.

More Related