14 Juillet by Eric Vuillard
Today is Bastille Day, the French national celebration highlighting the storming of the Bastille in 1789.
We take this opportunity to place a spotlight on a book by Eric Vuillard entitled '14 Juillet' (July 14th).
The storming of the Bastille prison is one of the most famous events of all of history. Those who have traditionally recounted the details however have been elites from the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) who had in fact never experienced the events as they unfolded on the ground. This book reveals to us the accounts of those ordinary people who witnessed the downfall.
Summary
It all begun on 23 of April 1789. The head of a walllpaper factory, Jean-Baptiste Révillon wants to reduce the wages of three hundred of his employees. Five days later, anger turns to action as the employees invade Révillon's home: "They pillaged the beautiful dwelling, broke the windows, tore the canopies out of the beds, and scratched the tapestries off the walls. Everything was broken, destroyed. The trees were cut down..."
Slowly but surely, as the story develops, Eric Vuillard gives names and identities to these unknowns. They became Antoine Salomon, coachman, Jean Morin, stonecutter, Charles Glaive, papermaker, Jean Robert, lighter of street lamps as well as so many others caught in the mass of a crowd, excited by the exceptional heat of this summer of 1789. They headed for the Bastille, the symbol of oppression to be defeated. Each person had his own grievance. Eric Vuillard tells us that '14 Juillet' describes, like no other history book has done before, the fall of the Bastille through the eyes of the ordinary people who really lived through it. Here, there are no heroes or protagonists, we simply follow the crowd...
14 Juillet is available to read online in French via Culturetheque
Eric Vuillard is a French writer and film director. He is well-known for his work 'Tristesse de la Terre' (Sorrow of the Earth) which was awarded the Joseph-Kessel Prize in 2015. The book is published by Pushkin press.