July 14 is Bastille Day

If you're here for Jonah Goldberg's classic article on the subject, here you go: The French are Revolting.

Arise children of the fatherland

The day of glory has arrived

Against us tyranny's

Bloody standard is raised

Listen to the sound in the fields

The howling of these fearsome soldiers

They are coming into our midst

To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions

March, march

Let impure blood

Water our furrows

~ Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836) ("La Marseillaise", first verse translated into English. Six more follow, all more or less equally bloodthirsty. *

The Storming of the Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals - apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. 

~ Mark Twain (1835-1910) (Anderson, ed., Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Vol. 2, Notebook 18)

Old France , weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal.

~ Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) (War Memoirs, Vol. 3, Ch. 7)

The Bastille was later demolished - the Place de la Bastille

 sits where the fortress once stood

July 14th is Bastille Day (wiki), which commemorates the storming of the ancient royal prison of that name in Paris on 14 July 1789, an event which marked the beginning of the French Revolution. That storming was, of course, more symbolic than substantial - as Jonah Goldberg points out in his classic Bastille Day column, it consisted of "the capture of an almost entirely empty prison, the cold-blooded murder of six unarmed soldiers, and the execution of one French governor already captured by the mob". On that day the Bastille held only seven inmates: four forgers, two madmen, and a young rake who had displeased his father. All were freed.

The Marseillais volunteers departing, sculpted on the Arc de Triomphe

Formally known as the Bastille Saint-Antoine, the fortress was built during the Hundred Years’ War to defend the eastern approaches of Paris from English attacks. It Consisted of eight 100-foot high towers, all linked together by equally tall walls, surrounded by 80 foot wide moat. By 1789 the Bastille was actually little used and was scheduled to be demolished, part of the reason why there were so few prisoners there that day.

*La Marseillaise, France's stirring national anthem, was written in Strasbourg on 25 April 1792 by French captain Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle and originally titled the "Marching Song of the Army of the Rhine." It gained instant popularity as a rallying song and gained its latter-day name from being first sung in the streets of Paris by newly arrived troops from Marseilles. The remaining verses are available at Wikipedia. 

La Marseillaise was banned in both Vichy and German-occupied France during World War II, and also during the 19th-century French Empire under Napoleon III because of its revolutionary sentiments.  

Has there every been a more stirring rendition than the one at Rick's "Café Americaine" in Casablanca?

Related post: French King Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793. Here's Allan Sherman (because if you're of a certain age it's inevitable to think of Allan Sherman when you hear La Marseillaise:

Friday links

July 14 is Bastille Day, the anniversary of the French revolution in 1789.

What did medieval peasants eat?

That Time When America Air-Dropped Pianos For Troops in Battlefields.

These poorly translated English language T-shirts spotted In Asia are a hoot.

Julius Caesar came. He saw. He conquered. Here's how Rome celebrated.

The Century-Long Evolution of the U.S. Army Helmet.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include why monkey butts are so colorful, Nikola Tesla's birthday, how to buy your kid's way into college, and the 47 names Disney considered for the 7 dwarfs.

Friday links

Apocalypse alert: supermoon, solar eclipse and Friday the 13th. Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Why is Friday the 13th Considered Unlucky?

July 14 is Bastille Day. Here's Jonah Goldberg's classic article on the subject: The French are Revolting.

A Brief History of Trial by Combat.

Supercut: 100 Greatest One-Liners Before The Kill.

Mozart’s Much Less Family Friendly Works (Some NSFW language - apparently his sense of humor had a scatological component).

Secret Policing: How Local Authorities Surveil Americans.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the 19th century fight over Sunday mail delivery, the art and science of creating ice in the desert 2,000 years ago, sporting pastimes from the Georgian era, and some male contraceptive advice (just wear a polyester sling, and let the heat and electrostatics do all the work), with bonus Monty Python.

Friday links

The 47 names Disney considered for the 7 dwarfs.

Happy Bastille Day! Here's an old Jonah Goldberg article on the subject: The French are Revolting.

Museum discovers three cases of Madeira wine from 1796 in cellar. The wine was stocked in anticipation of John Adams’ presidential election.

The 100 Greatest Props in Movie History, and the Stories Behind Them.

A history of the closet.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include how barbed wire changed the West, Nikola Tesla's birthday, the Japanese soldier who refused to surrender for 29 years, the history of the equals sign, and correlation is not causation: charts of weird things that correlate with each other.

Thursday links

Happy Bastille Day: Here's the classic Jonah Goldberg article on the subject.

How to Cook a Pig in the Ground, Hawaiian Style.

Man Spends $51,000 On Supercomputer That Only Plays Tetris.

From Kurt Vonnegut in 1988, a letter to the Ladies & Gentlemen of A.D. 2088.

The U.S.-Canada border runs directly through this Library.

A Brief History of Trial by Combat.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include Nikola Tesla's birthday, an archive of 3,000 vintage cookbooks. why the Star Trek and Star Wars universes turned out so differently, ancient Minoan culture illustrated with scantily-clad Barbies dolls.

Happy Bastille Day. Here's an old Jonah Goldberg article on the subject

Read the whole thing: The French are Revolting:

Today is Bastille Day, which commemorates the capture of an almost entirely empty prison, the cold-blooded murder of six unarmed soldiers, and the execution of one French governor already captured by the mob. Of course there is symbolic importance to the sacking of the Bastille. The French (really the Parisian) poor rose up in a spirit of democratic rage, to overthrow the ancien regime and demand the ability to misgovern the country themselves.

The French Revolution was a disgusting affair of tyrannical ego, greed and power-lust, made all the worse because it took a good idea and corrupted it, like making a BMW into a low-rider.

The single most disgusting aspect of the French Revolution was its attitude toward tradition. In effect, the Revolutionaries looked at the old house of custom, monarchy, and the Church, and said "Well, I don't like the drapes and this carpeting is pretty bad. That dinette set should go over there. And you know, that chaise lounge looks like something out of Greg Brady's swank attic bachelor pad so let's just burn the whole place down, murder the staff, execute the architects and imprison anybody who ever said anything nice about the place — and their families too, just in case."