NOTHING happened that day. And Louis XVI wrote in his diary: “rien”.

On 14 July 1789, the King of France, at the Tuileries Palace where he had been since he was made to leave Versailles and move to Paris, did not know what was happening just a few kilometers away. Towards evening on that long summer’s day, the people attacked the Bastille.

Shots had been fired since early afternoon. Earlier, in the square outside the prison, around 900 Pa