July 14, 1789 — The storming of Bastille.
Dear diary,
The rumble started as a whisper and grew into a roar, a sound I will carry with me forever. All morning, the air has been thick with a strange energy, a nervous current that ran through the cobbled streets like a chill. Papa left with the garde bourgeoise at dawn, his face a grim mask of determination, his hand tight around the musket he’d traded our last good silver for. He joined the makeshift militia that gathered outside the Hôtel de Ville, their weapons a mismatched collection of pikes, old kitchen knives, and desperate resolve. The rumour that the King would send his soldiers to crush the people has everyone terrified, a whisper of a massacre that hangs over our heads. But our hunger is a stronger force than our fear. For months, the price of bread has been climbing, a relentless thief stealing the food from our plates. Mama says the aristocracy, those powdered and preening peacocks at Versailles, sit in gilded rooms feasting on roasted birds while we gnaw on hard, dark loaves and watch our children grow thin. Today, it felt like the whole city was screaming that she was right.
The shouting began hours ago, a frantic chorus demanding gunpowder, and I heard the unmistakable sound of cannons from across the city, a heavy, pounding beat that shook our tiny windows. It was different from a storm; it was a noise made by men, by their anger and their desperation. Our neighbour, the baker’s wife, stood at her door, her face pale, a rosary clutched in her hand. She said they were going to the Bastille, of course, that ancient fortress we all pretend not to see. It is old and half-empty, a relic of a time we thought was long past, but it looms over the city, a cold, stone promise of the King’s power and his merciless justice. We all hate it, a symbol of everything that is wrong with this kingdom, of secret arrests and forgotten lives. I never thought I would see it threatened, much less attacked, by ordinary people like us.
The smoke now, a dark, bruised cloud drifting over the rooftops, tells us the fighting is fierce. It spreads across the sky like a sickness. A man just ran past, his face streaked with dirt and sweat, his breath coming in ragged gasps, shouting that the governor, de Launay, is dead. He said the crowd dragged him from the fortress, beat him, and then beheaded him with a butcher’s knife right there on the street, his terrified cries for mercy ringing in my ears even though I wasn’t there. My stomach turns just thinking of it, at the sheer, brutal violence of it all. It is frightening, a sign of what desperation can do, yet a part of me feels a twisted sort of justice; a sign that we will no longer accept the status quo. What has been happening in the shadows of this city has now burst into the light, and it is a terrible, beautiful thing to witness.
Papa returned just as the sun began to set, covered in dirt and with a wild look in his eyes that made him seem like a stranger. His clothes were torn, and there was a streak of blood on his cheek that I did not dare to ask about. He clutched his musket tightly, his knuckles white, and his voice was hoarse with shouting. He said the mob poured into the fortress like a flood, a tide of angry men and women seeking the gunpowder stored inside. He saw them searching for what they thought were political prisoners, but they found only seven men, a poor madman and a handful of others. He saw the governor’s death, though he would not speak of it beyond a single shudder. But it didn’t matter, he said. The crowd destroyed the place anyway, piece by piece, as if tearing down the old world itself. He brought back a small, grey stone, a fragment of the Bastille, and placed it on the mantelpiece, a morbid souvenir of a revolution. People were already gathering them up, he said, selling them in the streets as if they were holy relics.
Tonight, Paris screams for bread and liberty. The Bastille, the very symbol of the King’s ancient tyranny, is gone, and nothing feels certain anymore. The air is still charged with the wild energy of the day, a feeling both exhilarating and terrifying. Papa says this is the start of something new, that our lives will be different now. But as I look out our window at the chaos below, at the crowds still shouting and celebrating in the streets, at the uncertain future that hangs over us all, I can only pray it doesn’t lead to something worse. I fear what comes after the Bastille is torn down, after the shouting dies away. What will be left? Will we really be free? Or have we just traded one kind of fear for another? The future feels as uncertain as the smoke that drifts across the darkening sky.
— Anna
