storming of the Bastille, iconic conflict of the French Revolution. On July 14, 1789, fears that King Louis XVI was about to arrest France’s newly constituted National Assembly led a crowd of Parisians to successfully besiege the Bastille, an old fortress that had been used since 1659 as a state prison. As a victory by ordinary Parisians over a prominent representation of the king’s coercive power, the event quickly became a symbol of revolutionary struggle. The episode’s anniversary is now a national holiday in France: Bastille Day. At the time of the assault on the Bastille (formally the Bastille Saint-Antoine),