French Revolution: Seven Bastille Prisoners, Assignats and 18 Brumaire

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When Parisians stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, they found seven prisoners: four forgers, a lunatic, a failed assassin and a deviant nobleman. France was not poor: population grew from 21 to 28 million between 1715 and 1789 and the middle class tripled, but gains flowed to elites. A 1785 recession and poor harvests in 1787 and 1788 met a tax system run by tax farmers who bought collection rights and kept the surplus, while nobles and clergy were exempt and the Parlements blocked reform. Louis XVI called the Estates General in May 1789, the first since 1614, where the clergy and nobility, under 5 percent of the people, could outvote the Third Estate. It declared itself the National Assembly and took the Tennis Court Oath.

Troops ringing Paris sent crowds to the Bastille for powder, and the Great Fear saw peasants burn feudal records until the Assembly abolished feudalism in August 1789. Church land backed the assignats, which were overprinted into hyperinflation, and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy helped spark revolt in the Vendée. Postmaster Jean-Baptiste Drouet recognized the king at Varennes in June 1791. War came in 1792, the Brunswick Manifesto and an iron safe of letters sealed Louis's fate, and he was guillotined in January 1793. Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety ran the levée en masse and the Terror, about 16,000 were executed, and he fell in July 1794. Napoleon took power in the coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799.

• The crowd paraded the Bastille governor's head on a pike and pulled the fortress down.
• Robespierre argued revolutionary government needed both virtue and terror.
• Under the Law of Suspects, using monsieur instead of citizen could lead to execution.
• The Directory crushed François-Noël Babeuf's Conspiracy of the Equals in 1796.
• Abbé Sieyès, author of a famous 1789 pamphlet for the Third Estate, helped Napoleon's coup.