A Representation Of Royal Dominance And Revolutionary Success

In the history of Europe, there are only a few places that carry such a powerful memory and inspire such a potent image as the feared Bastille. While the structure of the dreaded Bastille de Paris is no more, the importance of the structure and the symbolic meaning of that fateful day in 1789 has survived not only in the memory of the French, but in other parts of the Europe as well.

In comparison to other prisons of the time, the cells were actually rather calm. By far, as a place of imprisonment, the Bastille was relatively mild and, contrasting other prisons during the time of the Bourbon dynasty of France, the conditions can be considered humane. However, what had singled out the place was the fact that the people took the Bastille de Paris as the ever-present symbol of the madness and despotism of the French king, who sent innumerable political and religious dissidents to the place. At a time when the king seemed preoccupied with wasteful parties and costly errors, the peasants saw the political prisoners in the the Bastille as heroes of the common man.

The hated Bastille, as I've said, is gone, but the legacy stays. Remembered by many as the first shot fired in the French Revolution, the fall of the loathed detainment facility would become, in time, the herald to the removal from power of many other monarchs and, in a way, a catalyst for improvements across the governments of Europe.