The Bastille became the focus of the opening of the French Revolution. Why?

The Bastille became the focus of the opening of the French Revolution. Why?

The Bastille had been transformed from being used as a military fortress to protect the Eastern wall of Paris in the 14th Century to it's less imposing role as a prison by the 17th Century . The walls were over eighty feet high and it held weapons arsenals from its glory days as a military fortress . Acting under King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu imprisoned many undesirable characters arbitrarily so that the Bastille's reputation became notorious for the secretive and capricious way that citizens could be taken away by demand of the King (called 'lettres de Cachet') , with no trial and for as long as the State wanted . By the time King Louis XV1 was in power, the Bastille no longer housed commoners but generally held only two classes of people: writers whose work was considered treasonous, and delinquents whose families requested they be put away (the infamous Marquis de Sade was one such prisoner) .

Portrait of Louis XVI

"The Storming of the Bastille", Visible in the cen...

French etching from 1789 depicting the storming of...

The conditions of the prison depended upon the wealth of the prisoner- many secured privileges such as writing materials, visitors, extra pillows, tobacco and alcohol - though the reputation of the Bastille still remained as a dark and vermin- ridden place where the King hid away his opponents. Books circulated in the 1780's- Linguet's ' Memoirs of the Bastille', for example - that cemented the Bastille as a perfect example of why people should be in opposition to state power: it was a secretive process of incarceration, it was given special power over the life and death of its inhabitants and it was careless with its power . The conditions of the Bastille were exaggerated and condemned by the writers of the day, partially because incarceration is a...