July 14th is Bastille Day. It is hard to name another national holiday that truly commemorates the fight for human rights.
Bastille Day, also called "French National Day" in English speaking countries, is known in its native France as La Féte Nationale, or "The National Celebration". The holiday not only commemorates the French Revolution, but more specifically, the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The Bastille was a fortress prison that held people jailed on the whims of the king, as well as political prisoners whose writings offended the royal government. Even though only seven prisoners inhabited the Bastille at that time, the prison was a symbol of everything wrong with the French monarchy--autocracy, censorship, terror, and unquestioned power based on class. The revolutionaries, with the held of the crowd and household troops of the French Army, took over the Bastille and freed the prisoners.
In 1790, La Féte Nationale was celebrated for the first time. For four days, Parisians of all classes feasted, drank fine wine, and ran naked in the streets together to celebrate their freedom, equality, and common humanity. In 1880, the French Republic voted to have Bastille Day as a one day national holiday that would include a military parade. To this day, the French military parade is the oldest and largest military parade in Europe.
For a short time, the President used Bastille Day to pardon criminals who commit minor offenses; in 2007 President Sarkozy abandoned the practice. This break with tradition may be one reason why Sarkozy lost the recent election.
Today Bastille Day is celebrated in Belgium, Hungary, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and 50 cities in the United States...including the Twin Cities.
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