“la parole exportée”

Just back to see the fireworks for the Bastille Day celebration, in a park nearby (and take pictures, not easy with my little Fuji FinePix). Hundreds and hundreds of people watching the display to opera music. Nowadays, this happens in the night from the 13th to the 14th. There is a ball here, too, but I wonder how many people will really go.

France is celebrating today the storming of the Bastille prison, 219 years ago. The people of France were rebelling against the monarchy, with a king who was seen as more preoccupied with his own comfort and pleasure, and aristocrats that were desperately clinging to their privileges. The political landscape was just about to change, and Louis XVI was perhaps unlucky to be the wrong man at the wrong time.

The First Republic was not proclaimed until 1792, when the king was deposed and monarchy officially ended. The French Revolution ended in 1799, after ten terrible years that ushered France into the 19th century.