Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined French President Emmanuel Macron for the Bastille Day parade as the Guest of Honour on July 14.

A 269-member Indian tri-services contingent participated in the parade on the French National Day celebrations. 

Bastille Day

• The National Day of France, commonly known as Bastille Day, is celebrated on July 14. The day marks the anniversary of the ‘Storming of the Bastille’ on July 14, 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution.

• In 1789, the French monarchy under Louis XVI was struggling to get an economic crisis under control as tensions started to rise between reformist and conservative powers. 

• Following the dismissal of the King’s finance minister, who supported the people demanding a constitution for the kingdom, crowds gathered in Paris with the objective to arm the population and prepare for a fight against the royal army. 

• A group of several hundred people marched towards the eastern part of the city and stormed the fortress-prison, the Bastille, where they hoped to find hoarded ammunition. They freed prisoners, though there were only seven of them.

• The state prison Bastille had become a symbol for the arbitrary rule of the French monarch since political prisoners were often held there without indication of the reason for their imprisonment. 

• The ‘Storming of the Bastille’ is widely considered the starting point of the French Revolution.

• The Fête de la Fédération (Feast of the Federations) held on July 14, 1790, celebrated the first anniversary of the insurrection. 

• Today, Bastille Day is celebrated with one of the oldest and largest military parades in Europe, taking place on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

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