On this day, the fortress-prison known as the Bastille — for centuries a symbol of royal authority and the arbitrary power of the ancien regime — was besieged by a crowd of Parisians. The morning had begun with an uneasy quiet, the kind of silence that precedes upheaval. Citizens had spent the previous days arming themselves from the Hotel des Invalides, and by mid-morning a delegation approached the fortress walls to negotiate the surrender of its garrison.

Governor de Launay, commanding a modest force of Swiss guards and invalides, initially attempted to parley. But the crowd's patience had been exhausted by years of bread shortages, royal indifference, and the fresh provocation of Necker's dismissal. When chains to the drawbridge were cut from within — whether by accident or by sympathizers remains debated — the crowd surged forward into the outer courtyard. The violence that followed was brief but decisive.

By late afternoon the Bastille had fallen. Only seven prisoners were found within its walls — a fact that surprised the revolutionaries, who had imagined dungeons full of political captives. The symbolic weight of the act, however, far exceeded its material reality. The fall announced to France and to the world that the old order could be challenged, that stone walls built to intimidate could be torn down by collective will. It became, by general consent, the founding act of the Revolution.