The Tie that Binds
Bastille Day commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution and the unity of the French Nation. One must know its story in its entirety in able to appreciate its significance.
The Storming of the Bastille (Saint-Antoine) happened on the morning of July 14, 1789. There were a handful of prisoners inside the fortress, and the incident triggered a succession of events that led to the downfall of the monarchy. King Louis XVI became unpopular and the angry mob wanted his head, but the outcome was different. A political vacuum resulted to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. After the Battle of Waterloo, there was a nostalgic feeling on the old days, which brought back the Bourbons. King Louis-Philippe came to the throne, but his reign was barely two decades old, as the monarch's popularity took a nosedive once again. The 1848 Revolution came after, and then the second empire ruled by Napoleon III. It was only the Franco-Prussian War, in which the French were at the losing end, when the republican system planted itself firmly on the ground.
Many would notice the irony behind the series of events. Lasting peace wasn't achieved, and that happenings outside of France caused the revolution and changed the European balance of power many times. If the French didn't lend support to the thirteen colonies of America in their bid to be independent from the British Empire, then Bastille Day might not be celebrated nowadays. More incidents followed, where tension gradually rose in the continent culminating in World War I.
For many Americans, the Bastille Day may not be that important. (It may be apparent this year, as the event takes place the day after the finals of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil.) But a bond linked France and America after the end of the American Revolutionary War. It wasn't about the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, where King George III recognized the United States to be free, sovereign, and independent. It was more than a political triumph for the French people.
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French engineer, made the plan for the new capital city on the Potomace. It was Jean-Antoine Houdon who did the statue of George Washington, the first US president. Alexis de Tocqueville published “Democracy in America" in 1835, the first major study on Americans still widely read. French names are ubiquitous in the mainland. (New Orleans, Au Sable River, and Lake Champlain to name a few.) Many of America's most gifted writers studied and worked in Paris, a rite of passage for artists who made their names in literature. Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Fenimore Cooper, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway and Richard Wright are some of the notable figures in the list, which goes on and on.
The Storming of the Bastille happened years after the Treaty of Paris. Some think it's coincidental, but that makes the tumultuous events back then so simple. It still calls for a celebration.
