The storming of the Bastille was the first violent act against the monarchy

The argument

The Storming of the Bastille by the French Revolutionaries on July 14, 1789, was one of the most significant acts against the Monarchy and a movement that marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Before the Storming of the Bastille, France was in turmoil. People were suffering from food shortages and high taxes, as they were paying off King Louis XVI's large debts. France was in political turmoil caused by the opening of the Estates-General. The Bastille prison's military governor Bernard-René Jordan de Launay feared that the Parisian Revolutionaries would target his base. Launay called for reinforcements, which came as gunpowder and men. A large crowd armed with muskets, spears, and assorted homemade weapons started to assemble around the Bastille at dawn on July 14. Launay's men were able to push back the crowd, but Launay lifted a white flag of surrender over the fortress as more and more Parisians were converging on the Bastille. Launay and his men were taken into custody, gunpowder and cannons were recovered from the Bastille, and the seven inmates were released. Upon arrival at the Hotel de Ville, where a revolutionary council was to arrest and prosecute Launay, he was instead taken away by a mob and killed. The Revolutionaries tore down the Bastille brick by brick. The Storming of the Bastille gave the Revolutionaries the momentum to end the Ancien Regime as it was the first official violent act against the monarchy, and there was no turning back. When King Louis XVI was informed of the storming the next morning by Duke of La Rochefoucauld, the king replied: "Is it a revolt?" asked Louis XVI. The duke replied: No sire, it’s not a revolt; it’s a revolution. "

Premises

Counter-arguments

The claim in the title is inaccurate as stated. The storming of the Bastille was not the first violent act against the monarchy. The Day of the Tiles at Grenoble in 1788 saw crowds fight royal troops; the Réveillon riots in Paris in April 1789 were put down by soldiers with considerable loss of life; grain riots through the preceding months involved attacks on convoys, property and officials; and in the days immediately before 14 July the customs barriers around Paris were burned and a crowd clashed with cavalry in the Tuileries. The Bastille was the most consequential of the early acts, not the first one. The body also supports a different position from the one it is filed under. Nearly everything it identifies as background — food shortages, high taxation, the king's debts, the turmoil around the opening of the Estates-General — is fiscal and political rather than social revolt in the sense this position requires, and the immediate trigger it describes is the dismissal of Necker and the concentration of troops near the capital, which is an act of government. A narrative of a single day cannot in any case establish what caused a revolution: it describes the event that marked the beginning rather than what produced it. Nothing here excludes the rival positions either, since Enlightenment ideas shaped the demands the crowd and the Assembly pressed, and the debt the body itself names was incurred largely in foreign wars — which is the international-affairs position.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The Bastille was not the first violent act against the monarchy: the Grenoble Day of the Tiles in 1788, the Réveillon riots of April 1789 and the grain riots before them all involved crowds fighting royal forces, and the Paris customs barriers were burned and cavalry engaged days earlier. [Rejecting P2] The causes the premise itself names — debt, taxation, food shortages, the Estates-General and the dismissal of Necker — are fiscal and political rather than social revolt, and a narrative of one day describes the revolution's beginning rather than what produced it.