On July 14, 1789, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille, freeing its (uh, seven) prisoners. The symbolic gesture was an act of violent defiance against Louis XVI’s ancien regime. In 1880, it was made the official French national holiday.
So what did they celebrate before that?
King’s birthdays? Coronations? Napolean’s victories were 20 years in the future, and I doubt Vercingetorix’s resistance against Julius Caesar were worth celebrating.
Not that a national birthday has to be linked to a military victory. We weren’t exactly trouncing the British in July of 1776. We may have waited to see the “whites of their eyes” at Bunker Hill… but then we ran out of ammunition and ending up throwing stones at the Redcoats. The British took the hill.
So, did the French have a founder’s day before 1789? And what took them nearly 100 years to decide that July 14 was the day they wanted?
You might think the Feast day of St. Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, would have been a national holiday in pre-Revolutionary France. But she was not canonized into sainthood until 1920.
Before the Revolution, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day was a very important event in France. In the night between the 23rd and 24th, the king himself used to light a great Saint-Jean bonfire.
It was all religious holidays before then. The concept of holidays didn’t really exist either. Leisure time is a very recent invention. And the 14th July only became the Fete National in 1880 because that’s about how long it took for the transfer from an absolute monarchy to become permanently established. The 1789 revolution led to a Republic of sorts, but the Assembléee Constitutionelle couldn’t agree on a constitution. Then a chap called Napoleon Bonaparte turned up with one that he had prepared, and they adopted it short of anything better. The Directoire was essentially a copy of the Roman triumvirate, but prett quickly Napoleon became Consul for Life by referendum, then Emperor, so that was the end of the Republic thing and we were back to Absolute Monarchy. Then came the Restoration and Louis XVIIIth, the Napoleon piped up again, was sent into exile and the king returned. Then in 1830 there was another revolution and we have a constitutional monarchy. In 1848, the monarchy was abolished again and we had the Second republic. But the president du Conseil was a guy called Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who had a bit of an agenda. Three years later, we’re back to being an empire. When the Prussians invaded France in 1870, there was an uprising, Napoleon III went into exile, and the 3rd Republic began.
So in 1880, France was only a decade into being a true Republic.