Bastille Day is celebrated in France on July 14. The holiday is France’s National Day, just as the Fourth of July is the United States’ National Day.
Bastille Day commemorates the day (July 14, 1789), during the French Revolution, that the fortress/prison known as the Bastille (located in Paris, France) was stormed by the Paris mob and thus control of the prison passed from the French absolute monarchy to the Paris Commune, a revolutionary city government. The Bastille was a symbol of the repressive power of the monarchical regime. Many notable French republican political prisoners, as well as common criminals were freed when the Bastille fell.
The fall of the Bastille symbolizes the ascendance of
the values defined by the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen passed in Paris by the French National
Assembly on August 26, 1789. This declaration contains
values in common to our Declaration of Independence, such
as liberty and equality. The fall of the Bastille ushered
in a new form of government in France, a republic, to
replace the old absolute monarchy.
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