Today’s animated Doodle, illustrated by Asnières-sur-Seine-based guest artist François Maumont, celebrates Bastille Day on the 231st anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. On this day in 1789, French revolutionaries charged the Bastille military fortress turned prison on the edge of Paris, an event considered the spark of the French Revolution.
Built in the 1300s as a medieval fortification to guard Paris’s eastern border, by 1789 the Bastille had come to represent the tyranny of the French monarchy. On July 14, a crowd of disaffected citizens besieged the stronghold, and with assistance from a group of sympathetic French Guards, forced the Bastille’s military governor to surrender. Soon, the rallying cry of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”) was embraced by the French people, and it remains the country’s official motto to this day.
Known in France as la Fête Nationale (the National Holiday) or le 14 Juillet (July 14), Bastille Day was made an official holiday in 1880 and today serves as a worldwide celebration of all things French.
Vive le 14 Juillet! Long live the 14th of July!
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