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The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom (Bicentennial Reflections on the French Revolution)

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Anyone looking for a book on the workings and history of the Bastille as a physical entity and working legal institution should know that this important and excellent book really is not on the Bastille itself - for that you would do better to look at, say, Linguet's Memoirs of the Bastille (which provides a detailed look at life inside the castle). Lüsebrink and Reichardt are far more concerned with how the IDEA of the Bastille, and in particular the idea of its downfall, has been handled since the 18th century and coming into modern times. The book is, in other words, more like a case study of public opinion and how it absorbs and transforms an event than it is on a particular prison; it is, as the sub-title says, a history of a symbol - "A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom" - and far less of the thing being symbolized. It does however include some useful tables, including one that breaks down the imprisonments for religious and literary reasons and another that compares key elements of the most famous memoirs of being incarcerated there, and the first two chapters do linger on or near the Bastille as it actually was. The third chapter - the bulk of the book - then explores the Bastille as an example of the "self-mystification" of the Revolution. This chapter does not limit its scope to France or even to the Revolutionaries - it seems that Louis XVI's public approval of the castle's destruction was part of what won the event (including its more sanguinary aspects) approval in the German press, for instance. Nor was the event's influence merely symbolic or literary - subsequent demolitions in Marseille and Lyons took it as a model. The fourth chapter - on "Bastille Symbolism in Modern France" - begins by exploring some of the later works on the Bastille (and again providing a useful chart comparing these). Here we also learn how the 14th of July was transformed from a "subversive day of commemoration to a national holiday". The chapter brings us up to the current day when "the Bastille myth, which had just about been declared state ideology, has lost much of its virulence." Those seeking the rich roiling of criminal histories and violent popular confrontations will find little of these here, but readers who want to understand how established ideas come to us and to trace the evolution of a symbol in the same way one traces how a dinosaur evolved into a canary will find this journey well worth taking.