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1704East India Co's sales
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1704East India porcelain
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1709Queen's Royal Cookery
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1710Cabinet of curiosities
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1715Sugar in Britain
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1720Bartholomew Fair
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1721Gulliver's Travels
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1725Executions at Tyburn
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1730Textile production
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1730Cities in chaos
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1731East India textiles
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1733The Harlot’s Progress
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1741Handel's Messiah
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1742Advert for a giant
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1743Surgery
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1743Muffin Seller
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1744JS Bach manuscript
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1747The Art of Cookery
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1751Henry Fielding: Crime
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1751Gin addiction
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1753Ranelagh pleasure gardens
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1755Johnson's Dictionary
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1761'The British Giant'
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1766Jigsaw Puzzle Map
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1770The Spinning Jenny
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1771Pleasure gardens
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1771Factories
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1773London prostitutes
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1775Captain Cook's journal
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1776Declaration of Independence
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1780Map of the Gordon Riots
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1780Storming of the Bastille
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1781Runaway slaves
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1784First curry powder advert
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1784First hot air balloon
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1787Abolitionist meeting notes
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1787Georgian entertainments
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1790Georgian Theatre
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1791Mozart’s notebook
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1791Poverty
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1791Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
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1792Mary Wollstonecraft
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1793Execution of Louis XVI
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1794William Blake's Notebook
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1795An acrobat's 'Surprising Performances'
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Intro
On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy’s dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed. This article reporting the events of 14 July was published in an English newspaper called The World, a few days after the event took place.
A medieval fortress, the Bastille’s eight 30-metre-high towers, dominated the Parisian skyline. When the prison was attacked it actually held only seven prisoners, but the mob had not gathered for them: it had come to demand the huge ammunition stores held within the prison walls. When the prison governor refused to comply, the mob charged and, after a violent battle, eventually took hold of the building. The governor was seized and killed, his head carried round the streets on a spike. The storming of the Bastille symbolically marked the beginning of the French Revolution, in which the monarchy was overthrown and a republic set up based on the ideas of ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ (the French for liberty, equality and brotherhood). In France, the ‘storming of the Bastille’ is still celebrated each year by a national holiday.
Shelfmark: British Library Newspaper Archive
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