JULY is the month the Bastille fell. Centuries ago, in Paris. For most of us who studied history in English-medium private schools, history tended to focus on the West, as the West has prepared the syllabi we follow. As a result, the French Revolution or the Boston Tea Party are familiar events — as familiar as the 1857 war of independence. And so hopefully, readers will also be familiar with the fall of the Bastille which is synonymous with the French Revolution — when ordinary people brought down one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe. The first blow was struck when they took over the Bastille prison, which was seen as a symbol of Louis XVI’s oppression.

But while the stories about the French Revolution of 1789, the Bastille and even poor Marie Antoinette who is still associated with a phrase she never uttered are perhaps well known, few realise how long this revolution had been in the making.

The financial crisis, at the heart of the matter, dated back multiple decades. The French had spent enormous amounts on fighting wars. The last war it waded into was the American War of Independence in which Paris assisted the rebels against the British. Most people know how that ended but it was a victory that brought no advantage as such to the French (except that they got to help inflict a defeat on the Brits, a long-time enemy). But in the process, the state simply added to an already precarious financial position. According to some accounts, by the 1780s, half of the royal revenues were going into paying the interest on debt.

This was compounded by the indecision of the monarch, who understood the need for reform but lacked the political will to do it. And the reform he had to undertake concerned a bankrupt state which seemed incapable of fixing its regressive tax system in which the nobility and the clergy paid very little tax and the ordinary people bore the brunt of it. For instance, the ordinary people had to pay a tax on salt, from which even children were not exempt. The numbers were so absurd that the need for reform seemed obvious but proved impossible for a young king who retreated each time the nobility pushed back against any burden.

Few realise how long the French Revolution had been in the making.

During his reign of around 15 years before the revolution, he hired and fired around 10 economic managers, some of whom lasted mere months. But the most famous of these and their departures were linked to the issue of reform. The first one — Turgot — was fired around 1776 under pressure from the nobility. The next one, Jacques Necker, left in 1781. After that came two who departed because they proposed taxing the nobility and failed. It was at this moment that Necker was brought back, a step that was welcomed by the people and scared the monarch into firing him, leading to the siege of the Bastille.

Necker was well known to the people then and to history. When he first held this position, he had helped finance the war in America by taking loans. In fact, he was also known for having fudged the figures so well that he had been able to convince the French people and the monarch that the country was sound financially. But this is not what made him popular with the people at large; he had won them over with his decision to publish the details of royal finances, which was a major change from the earlier stance that they were a state secret. The king had a divine right to rule (and spend), but by making the details public, ordinary people had a right to read and judge the government. And the details also created public anger against the privileged classes with the outing of court expenses and the amounts spent on pensions for the nobility.

So when Necker returned to the position, there was public expectation that he would fix the system in favour of the ‘third estate’ (the people). His firing was the last straw for the angry crowds, who set out towards the Bastille.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But there is still one other interesting bit of detail left. The public anger would perhaps not have boiled over had it not been for what happened in Iceland, where a volcano had erupted in 1783. Lasting for nearly eight months, the eruption led to haze and dust settling over much of the European continent.

In France, it disrupted agriculture on which the majority of the French citizenry depended. For instance, 1788 brought a drought as well as hailstorms that damaged crops and pastures the livestock grazed on. This led to a crisis where poor people were forced to spend nearly all their income on ‘bread’ (which might explain the famous words about bread and cake), according to many accounts. Even in the past, high food prices had led to riots and mayhem — high taxes and prices; an unjust system; a poor crop and a country dependent on a sector that more or less collapsed. People moved to the cities, which had little to offer.

But cities did allow people to collect together easily and discuss matters including dangerous ideas such as the rights of people (rather than kings) or even the state of royal finances and the excesses of the rich. By this time, pamphlets and newspapers were widely available and helped shape public opinion, not just by commenting and reporting on financial matters but also by mocking the monarchy. The king and his wife were scandalised in particular, reflecting not just anger but also the weakening authority and legitimacy of royalty. And then came the fall of the Bastille in July, a month and an event that is familiar to those who have studied Western textbooks.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2026