Bastille Day 1789

2 July 1789

Paris.

Le Bastille

In the afternoon the infamous Marquis De Sade, who had been incarcerated in the stone fortress on charges of perversion, shouted from a barred cell window through an improvised megaphone, "Ils tuent les prisonniers."

The guards subdued the inmate, but his words sparked a smoldering rumor and the rumor spread through le Bastille, the poor neighborhood, long awaiting a match to fan the fires of revolution against the corrupt and venal aristocracy.

For his safety the Marquis de Sade was transferred to the insane asylum at Charenton.

Cut to:

14 July 1789.

A wine wagon overturned on the Rue de La Roquette.

The wine flooded the gutter. The people drank their full. In vino revolutio.

The Bastille loomed in the near distance, symbolizing the oppressive Ancien Regime of the Bourbon Dynasty. Fortified by cheap wine the mob stormed the prison. Nearly a hundred attackers were slain by the Swiss Guards in the assault versus one defender before the deluge flooded through the gates to massacre nine soldiers and free seven prisoners; four counterfeiters, two madmen and another perverse nobleman, the Comte de Solages, jailed on charges of incest.

The Comte de Sade liberated by the revolution survived the Terror of the guillotine by espousing a radical destruction of society, going as far as to seek the abolition of religion, earning the wrath of the Church. His fortune disappeared and the Napoleonic courts condemned his novels Justine and Juliette. Imprisoned without trial in 1802 he passed fourteen later to be buried in prison. An unknown grave where his body still rests in anonymity, while the Marquis de Sade lives in our memory. His head was later disinterred to be studied by those seeking to discover the roots of perversion.

Wicked, but it was he, a wicked imprisoned aristocrat, who began La Revolution to topple the Bourbon dynasty.

A bas la Bastille.

A bas le Ancien Regime.

ps “The equality prescribed by the Revolution is simply the weak man's revenge upon the strong; it's just what we saw in the past, but in reverse; that everyone should have his turn is only fair. And it shall be turnabout again tomorrow, for nothing in Nature is stable and the governments men direct are bound to prove as changeable and ephemeral as they.”

Marquis de Sade, Juliette