224 years ago today French citizens, mainly workers, stormed the notorious prison the Bastille and released all the prisoners. They did this in support of the National Assembly recently reluctantly permitted by King Louis XIV, to gather arms, and because the Bastille had a reputation for holding political prisoners who had spoken up and then been locked up on the authority of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments. The next month that Assembly abolished feudalism (which had permitted those lettres de cachet), and then agreed on The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789:

The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to Continue reading →